Ok cool I can see you haven't actually taken a philosophy course at Uni

edit: just so I don't leave you hanging m8er, but unlike many Uni courses most philosophy courses don't require heavily sourced essays. Instead they're mainly marked from the use of logic to create/further ideas and the way someone is able to use another's philosophy/thinking to further their ideas/argue against it/reveal implications of their ideas that they may not have foreseen. I remember getting an A for an essay where I had 2 sources, 1 of which was a guys paper which I was arguing against. My point is, is that your marks had almost nothing to do with taking notes & thenrepeating them in an essay m8

I took it in high school and I've sat in on one a few times at uni, and it is literally the same as any other critical essay based literary subject. You may have group debates or something but I doubt you're assessed on them, and they are nothing like the methods of learning philosophy of old

Read above, I started the edit before I jumped in the car.

Lol, m8 high school is all about repeating what was said. I did have one exam that required repeating some of the shit from lectures, do not saying it doesn't happen, but that was first year and my other 3 were nothing like that one. They all allowed argumentative critical essays & gave us the choice of a very broad range of topics. (honestly most would allow you to come up with your own question if it was suitable). Sitting in lectures is nothing like the tutorials btw, I didn't go to the vast majority of mine.

Keep in mind I'm not saying that philosophy in Uni is some holy grail of knowledge, it's definitely not & most ppl are scrubs just using the subjects to make up their course grid. However I'm just saying it was still quite useful to practice critical thinking outside the box in a (many times vigourous) group environment while then being forced to really articulate your own ideas onto paper.

p.s: Kim, I think philosophy has evolved to become the sciences, including social sciences etc, so I'd agree it's probably not so useful on its own anymore. Saying that iirc philosophy literally means something like striving for knowledge or something similar, which would obviously encompass what science does.

what should I study if I'm already capable of critical thinking?

women's studies, to go full circle

glad you finally joined the conversation, the quality of debate can only go up from here

ps. okay morel if that's your division of "producers" and not, how do you feel about people who come into an inheritance? i.e.: let's say i inherited about ~£5mil, that's not even that much in the grand scheme of things (which is a bit depressing in itself), but it's enough to hire someone to manage my wealth and i could quite happily live much better than the average person just off the interest

(some conservative maths, say 1%/year ignoring inflation would be ~£50k. the median uk salary is about £24k/year.)

where would i fall into the "producer"/"consumer" scale? would it be acceptable for me not to add anything to society whatsoever because my parents or grandparents or greatgrandparents were "super producers" or whatever?

omfg i deleted my post by accident

i'm talking about me personally. am i a "producer"? don't obsfucate, i know very well why banks pay interest you dipshit.

delete this post plz shit is fucked