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Comment by fastaguy88 | Hacker News Reader

I am not particularly knowledgeable about philosophy as a modern discipline, but taking philosophy courses as an undergraduate taught me a lot, particularly about the limits of knowledge and scientific enquiry. I'm happy to argue that there are a lot of courses taught at university that are considerably less useful than philosophy -- but I'm sure there are lawyers (classics and rhetoric) and screen writers (comparative literature) who can point out how those disciplines contribute.

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The trouble is, we have to take your word for it that philosophy taught you a lot that the rest of us find useful, as there's little Independent verification. At least with math, or physics, or engineering, there are some fairly standard means for independent verification (tests, job interviews, work product, etc.)

That doesn't look like an independent verification: it's done by humans engrossed in math. If math was verified by someone who doesn't believe in math, that would be independent. But such things don't happen, naturally stuff are verified by people already interested in the topic. If you don't believe in math, you won't bother to verify it.

Do you think non aircraft engineers who fly in airplanes would tend to have their confidence increased, or decreased, if they discovered their airline had hired mechanics without checking their qualifications?

That's trust based on belief that qualification checking is supposed to work. Again layman here can't be bothered to verify anything, belief is enough.

I think you're forgetting how we got here. fastaguy88 wrote

> I am not particularly knowledgeable about philosophy as a modern discipline, but taking philosophy courses as an undergraduate taught me a lot, particularly about the limits of knowledge and scientific enquiry.

to which I replied

> The trouble is, we have to take your word for it that philosophy taught you a lot that the rest of us find useful, as there's little Independent verification

Personally, I don't trust anyone to certify that someone else has learned "a lot...about the limits of knowledge and scientific enquiry" the way I trust the FAA to certify (indirectly) that someone has learned aircraft mechanics, or the State Bar of California to certify that someone has learned California law. Do you?

I don't think I said that philosophy taught me things that the "rest of us" find useful. I said it taught me things that I found useful. And I'm happy to argue that many non-technical subjects that I might not consider useful are useful to people in other disciplines (including disciplines that measure success by income levels).

I don't know you personally, so I'm not interested in what you personally find useful about what you know. If I'm interested in anything you know, it's only in those things that are recognized to be useful to other people in the society we both live in: medicine, law, art, agriculture, engineering, science, etc. If you find someone else personally enriching for you, that's great and I'm happy for you, but it's got nothing to do with anyone who doesn't know you personally.

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