What's the Point of It?

The Times, 13 February 2003, p.18

What's the point of it?

JeremyHazelhurst

Are philosophy studies education for education's sake, or do they have apractical use? Jeremy Hazelhurst thinks they do.

AS A PHILOSOPHY graduate I am painfully aware of many people's sneering views on the subject, and I admit that it is easy to mock people who sit around discussing whether they are really a human being or just a brain in a vat that is being prodded by a mad scientist.

So when Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, said recently that he was worried about "education for education's sake", it was predictable that his interviewer would ask whether philosophy fell into this category. Clarke later insisted that he valued philosophy (he could hardly do otherwise; his mother studied with Wittgenstein). But this does raise an important question: what is the point of the subject? What use is a knowledge of Godel's theorem and an understanding of referential opacity in modal contexts if you are going to end up working in a call centre after graduation?

In short, does philosophy matter? Dr Janet Radcliffe Richards, the director of the Centre for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine at UniversityCollege, London, who is to take part in a debate entitled Does Philosophy Matter? at the BritishAcademy next Tuesday, passionately believes that it does. "Essentially the reason why philosophy is important is that there are few questions of interest that do not have philosophical elements and need philosophical techniques to deal with them," she says. "At a basic level, philosophy is about avoiding contradictions and confusions, something that is obviously useful to everyone. What we call philosophy is just systematised reasoning; it is on a continuum with everyday reasoning. In the way that observing and theorising about the world become science when they are systematised, so reasoning becomes philosophy when it is systematised. Clearly this is useful to everyone."

Radcliffe Richards recently started working with scientists, and thinks that they could benefit from a bit of philosophical rigour. "Some of them are surprisingly unequipped to deal with complex problems," she says. "For example, medics do not know how to talk about ethical questions and are not aware that there might be problems with giving something a purely clinical description. Cognitive psychologists, too, often think that their way of talking about the mind is the only way, and have trouble seeing that their own terms are value-laden.

"It is obvious that philosophy might be useful in areas such as medical ethics, but it is also important in the social sciences, biology and even physics."

Nonetheless, critics still question whether the State ought to subsidise students through three years of highfalutin' pontification just so that they can think better at the end of it. Is it not just the case that philosophy graduates are a bunch of unemployable, dope- smoking layabouts who would have been better off studying something practical? Well, no. In fact, the "logicchopping" skills taught on philosophy courses are extremely useful in the "real world". Professor Jonathan Wolff, head of the philosophy department at University College London, says: "Studies in America have shown that the people who do best in graduate business courses are those who studied mathematics, followed by those who read philosophy.

They do far better than those who did business studies courses."

Wolff also says that philosophy is more useful for the economy than vocational courses. "People who do vocational courses often find that by the time they reach the workplace the things that they have been taught are out of date. It is often argued that it is more important to teach people how to research, evaluate and understand an argument. This is what philosophy has always done," he says. In addition to these practical considerations, there is a more general sense in which philosophy is important.

Professor Edward Craig, of the University of Cambridge, believes that philosophy is a prerequisite for a healthy culture.

"The most important thing about having people study philosophy is that it helps to raise the level of public debate," he says.

"One of the strengths of philosophy is that it teaches you what an argument is, what is evidence and what is rhetoric. It is abundantly clear from many of the debates in the media about Iraq, for example, that people have no idea about how to argue, and this is dangerous."

Craig also believes that the study of philosophy is intrinsically good. "Nearly all of us have some sketchy set of beliefs about the Universe and God, whether only physical things exist or whether there is something else. Most people also have some sort of value system, and they try to keep to it and get cross if others don't. If you believe that these things matter, and most people do, then it must matter that people are talking about them."

It is not only sad that people belittle "useless" subjects such as philosophy and classics, but a sign of a decline in interest in intellectual life. At one time no one could be called educated who did not have at least a passing acquaintance with such writers and thinkers as Homer, Horace, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and Hume.

An understanding of the past is vital to an understanding of the present, and of oneself. "Philosophy and classics ought to be taught to everybody, as well as things like the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer," says Radcliffe Richards.

"How can you understand anything about our culture unless you know these things?

"An understanding of where you come from and an ability to handle complex arguments are the basic elements of intelligence. If it was up to me, I would teach them in primary schools."

END