philosophy is pretentious?

Philosophy is basically the act of sitting around and thinking about stuff.
There is only 1 valid conclusion that can be drawn from doing that, and that you need to go outside and touch grass do science.
Nobody has ever figured out anything about the real world without interacting with it.

No, saying it is pretentious is just an insult those who have zero interest in working their brain and thinking about deeper meanings of stuff decided to call people who actually do. I hate when people feel like they need to lecture others because they have read Kant once and now they think they know it all. A wise person in my eyes is the one who can apply philosophy to real life and see the bigger picture.

Do I think life has any deeper meaning? No. but I still like to think about things from various perspectives and read philosophical books.

Maybe some can argue there are better things to do with your life and fair enough, but I still think philosophical debates can lead to better conversations than your usual whose waifu has better boobs. although ... maybe that´s someone else´s life philosophical question of life and I respect that.

it´s like when people say "you are pretentious because your grammar is good" .... well ..

@JaniSIr formal philosophy teaches logic though that is now heavily use in math and computer science

plus ethics is philosophy too that is at times use in law making

@deg Logic is a mathematical field.
At best what you can say is that philosophers created the need for someone to properly formalize it.

So that leaves you with morality, which is subjective...

@JaniSIr im not sure if morality is totally subjective when moral philosophy like i said is at times use for law making

i do not often see that situation since maybe i got bad grammar and i see more people hating on us

@deg Countries have different laws. That's further evidence that it's subjective.
I mean there are general beats where most people will agree, such as "murder = BAD".
But people will never fully agree on the details.
To talk about morality, you need to have an individual declare what they find valuable.
At that point it's possible to investigate if a law reaches that goal or not.
But there is no guarantee people will agree on the initial value judgement.
Or that the individual's values are consistent, and don't change over time...
If anything you can take it for granted that people won't, agree, won't be internally consistent, and will change their opinion.

@JaniSIr man made laws are subjective and relative sure but does that not mean law making is useless and as long as laws are needed then philosophy is still needed

No, saying it is pretentious is just an insult those who have zero interest in working their brain and thinking about deeper meanings of stuff decided to call people who actually do. I hate when people feel like they need to lecture others because they have read Kant once and now they think they know it all. A wise person in my eyes is the one who can apply philosophy to real life and see the bigger picture.

Do I think life has any deeper meaning? No. but I still like to think about things from various perspectives and read philosophical books.

Maybe some can argue there are better things to do with your life and fair enough, but I still think philosophical debates can lead to better conversations than your usual whose waifu has better boobs. although ... maybe that´s someone else´s life philosophical question of life and I respect that.

it´s like when people say "you are pretentious because your grammar is good" .... well ..

No, philosophy is not pretentious if it's driven by a genuine curiosity for the unexplored. But a lot of times people conflate philosophy with rehashing centuries old semantics problems and cliches that are more for the historian than anyone trying to spearhead original thought. That's pretentious. You know, every time someone makes yet another post about "subjectivity" or "free will" is pretentious. Every time someone gets asked about mathematics and resorts to quoting fanciful jargon of people in the past, and hijacks the conversation from the exploration of the unknown to the memorization of the known -- is pretentious. And yes, I'm referring to real life MAL members and you know who I'm referring to, but that's what populates MAL nowadays, not actual philosophy.

No one in modern times would pursue philosophy... Sure, centuries ago in Ancient Greece before many things had been discovered there may have been great opportunity in being a philosopher which is why all the greatest works/literature of philosophy come from this period, but how many people have you known in real life that went ''Huh, I'm going to stay fed and keep rent paid by being f**king Socrates''. It's almost as bad as people that get degrees in Art or art schools but even that I could argue would have more benefit and use than getting a degree in philosophy.

@katsucats isnt that gatekeeping? only professional philosophers can talk about philosophy and the layman should stay out of it?

@deg That's not what I said at all, but posting the same old threads every year about "is there a soul" or "determinism or free will" never establishes new ground, and is not born out of a genuine curiosity for exploring the unknown. This person is not a layman at this point, not a professional philosopher either, but a professional "rhetoricist". I relish the actual layman that has a genuine, informed question about the world and is willing to expand their perspective with informed discussion. There's nothing professional about feeling comfortable and complacent from the familiarity of seeing "Wittgenstein" or "Descartes" for the 50th time. If anything, rhetoricists are the attempted gatekeepers. They're the ones trying but failing to make philosophy into this esoteric compendium of memorized theories, thought experiments and fallacies, closing off thought and transforming it into a history lesson. Philosophers know these things, recite it only when asked about it, then move on. Because they're not important, they're not interesting, and they're not philosophy.

@katsucats ye i know youre referring to me again im making repeat threads every year not just philosophy because every year there are new faces in the forums

@deg So? Why are these topics so important that every new person has to participate in them? There's only so much someone can say about something metaphysical that fixed. You're never going to get any new responses that hasn't been said by someone else prior. Everyone here can think up a million topics every day like:

"What does it mean for MAL to have an overall site average?"
"What's the difference between manga and comics?"
"Does the blue bar above the post affect a person's posting mood if it was changed to red?"
"Does your avatar affect how other people approach you?"
"What do you think about people not answering unknown numbers when it comes to polls?"

Maybe they take the modicum of thought but they're trite, probably exactly what @ghostsamurai thought of when he mentioned "Socrates". These are the errant thoughts we smoke weed to and everyone sober just shake their heads. Philosophy is much more than this. People form cohesive ideas about something and then have discussions about those ideas instead of destroying thought by leaving it with an open ended question. You could write a book about what averages mean to people but nobody who approaches these without preparation will have anything meaningful to say. And I bet money that after you press post, you're off to the next question. That's why you're posting a million threads. You're not asking these questions because you're curious about exploring them. You're asking them because posting threads itself feels like an accomplishment. You're not even interested in interacting with responders of these threads, because quick scans through the responses after the 3rd thread in 2009 would have given you the realization that there's hardly anything worth responding to.

@katsucats i do not reply but that does not mean i do not read the replies most of the time and im posting threads and replying just to waste time

why so serious about what threads to repeat and make? its not like they are repeated threads every week

@deg
Okay lol, then to answer your question philosophy is pretentious, because I guess that's the level that we are operating at on the internet nowadays.

@katsucats well you take average internet discussions too seriously so that is pretentious too

@deg

I mean he's got a point. Why bring up any topic, if the intent is to not explore that topic?

@DreamWindow because most people on the internet are not experts so we just discuss things casually? casual discussions forum?

@deg

I don't think being an expert has anything to do with it. It's just that, a topic such as philosophy, which is very subjective, broad, and open ended, is a little bit more involved than "casual" discussions, such as the weather, or your favourite snack. There's a good bit to explore, so bringing up something like that doesn't make a whole lot of sense if the purpose is just to kill time.

@DreamWindow you said it yourself though philosophy is subjective and open ended so good for casual discussions every year

What's the point of there's something good or wrong if you can't do a fucking thing about it?

@HyroSan its just casual discussion for fun like is there any point in anime watching too besides fun? why everything should be serious

@deg

It's open ended, but because of that, it doesn't lend itself to the same level of surface level discussion. It is something that inherently demands high-autism levels of exploration of a given subject matter for it to even be considered philosophy in the first place. I think that's what @katsucats is trying to say, here. If it's just surface level analysis, of any given subject, then it's not exploring the subject at all. I can't imagine any philosopher comes up with an idea, and doesn't expect it to be explored.

@DreamWindow
You don't have to be a philosophy major to come to an idea on your own and be open to changing them when presented with something that makes more sense. Though like I said in another thread some philosophy subjects are not really worth the time for most due to lack of any way to falsify them and lack of applicability.

@ghostsamurai Then you'd be surprised that philosophy majors have the highest overall standardized test scores over both verbal and math, and stand among the best paid college majors next to engineers and premed. That's because every field that requires logical and abstract thought hires philosophers, from physicists and software engineers to lawyers and city planners.

Gonna be honest I've only seen dimwits and eogtistical pseuds come out with this "opinion". There's nothing pretentious about trying to understand the world around us through logic and using our brains (why else do we have them?).

It's quite telling when someone shits on a discipline they a) know nothing about and b) are clearly incapable of participating in. It's just cope.

@Kamikaze_404 That's the thing though, Philosophers DON'T try to understand how the world works, they pretend to try to understand how the world works.
True understanding can only be obtained through experimentation, that's what differentiates real science and philosophy.

@JaniSIr The truths of reality can also be arrived at through logic. That is the basis of the science systems you worship. And yes, you can test philosophical theories in the real world also. Cope.

@Kamikaze_404 No, the basis of science is trying to predict how the world works. And really mathematics, including logic was created in a way to fit our observations of reality, not the other way around.

And test what? The meta physical arguments that are inherently untestable, the moral argumentation, that's totally subjective, or semantic arguments, where the meaning of the words being ill-defined is the issue?

@JaniSIr The basis of science is rationality. Theories are literally based on this and, if I'm not wrong, the etymological source of the word theory is even linked with philosophical terms. Mathematics is an abstract way to predict the mechanisms of the world and to explain them. It is a tool born out of philosophy.

Anyways, to test our conception of reality and to further deepen our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of it along with WHY they happen in the first place. You do not even understand the scientific systems you worship beyond a pop science standpoint, so I think you trying to separate the two when they're inherently linked to their very roots is a little misguided. Maybe read some more books that aren't featured prominently on r/books.