good, and timely, question. of course you're asking a bunch of humanities folks, so you might expect a not entirely unbiased answer. :-) On the other hand, it is probably the humanities folks who would be best equipped to speak to the value of a humanities degree. but just for a brief start of an answer -- 'better' is obviously a many-meaninged termed. Better with respect to what? If your only goal in life is to get a certain kind of job, then you need to figure out which degrees are best for that job. But if you don't know what kind of job you want? Or it's not actually clear which degrees would lead to that job? Moreover, you must factor in who YOU are -- what interests you, what you WANT to study -- it is probably more desirable to find something you love and throw yourself into it than to force yourself into studying something because of vague speculations about how 'useful' it might be toward some future you currently think you want .... (Keep in mind that whatever you study will also change...

Good for you! .... There's also this organization you might want to check out, interested in promoting philosophy in high school: http://plato-philosophy.org/lesson-plans-2/pre-college-course-material/ What you clearly need is a slogan and a t-shirt. How about "Philosophy: It's What You Think"? Andrew Pessin

a great question -- a deep one, and an old one -- basically grounded in the classic theistic question addressed by Plato (in Euthyphro) and many others since -- does God command us not to do things (such as murder) because they're wrong, or are they wrong (simply) because God commands us not to do them ... Stephen's response is excellent, but I'll offer another angle. Re the first half -- is murder illegal b/c it's wrong -- no doubt those legislators who have illegalized murder are at least partly (maybe primarily/exclusively) motivated by its wrongness (that's the sociological/empirical question) -- but presumably your question is meant to be more general, i.e. not merely restricted to murder, whose 'wrongness' most everyone can agree to (though not everyone). If you were to ask 'of all those things that are illegal, are they illegal b/c they are wrong?' surely for many/most of them the answer would be 'no.' It's illegal to go through a red light, not b/c going thru red lights is morally wrong but b/c...

or for another kind of response, you might still ask why many/most philosophers don't publish philosophies of life. You'd have to do an empirical survey there, but i'm guessing that for many, a philosophy of life is too big and hard to construct. Much easier to focus on some relatively narrow problem and work out a sophisticated view on it ... And I bet that professionally the incentive is to do the same. A "philosophy of life" is something that aims to the wider market, the general public, but the professional incentive is to impress the professional philosophers rather than the public. (Alternatively, perhaps many professional philosophers feel pretty confident that the main value in life, at least for them, is the very professing of philosophy -- so they are acting out their philosophy of life even without publishing their philosophy of life ....) great question! ap

or for another kind of response, you might still ask why many/most philosophers don't publish philosophies of life. You'd have to do an empirical survey there, but i'm guessing that for many, a philosophy of life is too big and hard to construct. Much easier to focus on some relatively narrow problem and work out a sophisticated view on it ... And I bet that professionally the incentive is to do the same. A "philosophy of life" is something that aims to the wider market, the general public, but the professional incentive is to impress the professional philosophers rather than the public. (Alternatively, perhaps many professional philosophers feel pretty confident that the main value in life, at least for them, is the very professing of philosophy -- so they are acting out their philosophy of life even without publishing their philosophy of life ....) great question! ap

Great question (and great response by Allen). Let me just add a tiny bit, by encouraging you to check out both Norman Malcolm's and Alvin Plantinga's work on the ontological argument. (The latter is a lot more technical and difficult, so start with the former.) From them you get something like the idea that if God exists at all, He exists necessarily (for God surely isn't a contingent being); to say that God exists necessarily is to say that He exists in every possible world. But now, if it's even possible that God exists -- i.e. the idea of God contains no contradictions -- then God would exist in at least one possible world. But if He exists at all He exists in every possible world, so if He exists in one PW He exists in every PW. Now is it possible that God exists? Does the idea of God involve any contradictions? Lots of discussion in the history of philosophical theology on that topic (lots of purported contradictions posed, then response to), but lots of people, even many ordinary atheists, think...

This is a terrific question/problem, and Stephen's response is a very good one. I merely want to point out that it's possible to have another kind of response to the situation you're confronting. I would characterize the situation as one where you realize that everything is ultimately connected to everything else, every belief has infinite implications that require exploring before they are rationally affirmed, to every position there is an objection, to every objection there is a response, and the whole process never ends ... Now if you believe that in order to know anything, or act in some rational way, the process of inquiry that produces that knowledge or action must be "completed", then you'll be in the bind you describe. But maybe THAT is the belief to be given up (and maybe the bind you describe is itself a key argument for giving up that belief). Instead recognize that deliberation and explanation must always come to a temporary end at some point -- and that you should always believe/act with...

This one is basically above my pay grade, but I'll take a stab. I share your doubt that humans "can represent infinitely many numbers with arbitrary precision" in any way beyond what we find with computers. After all, our own hardware (our brain) is finite in the same ways/senses as are computers, so if sheer finitude establishes the limits of representation it's hard to see why we would differ from computers. If, on the other hand, you're imagining this as an argument for dualism -- i.e. our minds are distinct from our brains because they have infinite capacity in a way that our brains don't -- then you would definitely first have to prove the infinite capacity of our minds. Simply writing or thinking "pi" isn't enough; the fact that "pi" represents something infinitely expandable/expanded doesn't make the symbol "pi" infinite. The clearest proof would be if we could grasp (say) the complete infinite expansion of pi in one mental glance -- but we can't. At best we can grasp THAT the expansion goes on...

who KNOWS what would make sense to Hegel ... :-) Personally I appreciate your suggested interpretation of that sentence, though I can't quite see how to get from the Python to your (very reasonable) exegesis ... So I'm going to go with "it is indeed gibberish," but add that (with due credit to hegel) it probably wouldn't make much sense to Hegel either (who also would probably not have been amused by Monty Python....) :-) best, ap

Terrific question, and I completely share your intuitions (not to mention your weak-willedness....). If pain or suffering are somehow intrinsically 'bad', then it must be right that killing animals is bad (assuming that involves inflicting pain, of course). Or more precisely, causing that pain without having some more compelling overriding reason is bad (and presumably we don't with respect to animals for food -- since human beings can live without meat, and even live well -- and indeed many argue that, economically, meat-eating causes horrible suffering all over the globe etc.) My guess is that those who might invoke 'self-awareness' as a justification for meat-eating -- who must merely presume that animals lack it, by the way; hard to know! -- are perhaps thinking that having self-awareness increases the degree of suffering of the animal. after all, knowing you are about to die, to be killed, along with some idea that the process will be unpleasant, indeed increases the suffering (and empirically it...

This is a terrific question and I look forward to seeing some of my colleagues' answers to this one ... no doubt many different factors are in play, from those designing courses and curricula, to those editing journals and anthologies and reference sites (such as wikipedia or Stanford Encyclopedia of PHilosophy), to marketers/publishers trying to sell books etc ... also as research progresses, things may begin to branch off in semi-'natural' ways ... there's 'philosophy of science' which historically was quite broad -- but now with hyper-specialization it's common to see philosophy of x, where x is some particular science (chemistry, biology, etc) ... I have a colleague who is working with just a few others to develop a whole new sub-discipline called 'philosophy of paleontology' (check out the book by Derek Turner of that name if it interests you) ... and of course one other factor is simply personalities: if someone became interested in 'philosophy of the fashion industry' and put his/her mind to it,...