Studying Philosophy as an amateur

Yeah, that would really suck if the worms ate you before you died.

 

If you are interested in the Philosophy of Science, you need to know about the University of Pittsburgh's Philosophy of Science preprint archive. This makes available literally thousands of scholarly articles on all aspects of the philosophy of science, even before they are published in the journals. They have conference proceedings for recent conferences and all kinds of stuff. You don't have to be a subscriber to log in either. Most of the papers are downloadable in PDF format, so you can save them to your computer to read there and/or print them out.

An Archive for Preprints in Philosophy of Science - Philsci-Archive

Here it is, broken down by subject areas within the philosophy of science

Browse by Subject - Philsci-Archive

(The U. of Pittsburgh has what is arguably the best philosophy of science doctoral program in the United States.)

 

Here are two extraordinary online philosophy encyclopedias.

One is the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (the 'IEP')

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy | An encyclopedia of philosophy articles written by professional philosophers.

The other is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (the 'SEP')

https://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html

Both consist of articles on all topics written by professional philosophers. Both are routinely updated. But each has its own strengths.

I often find the IEP more useful when I'm investigating a subject that I'm not already somewhat familiar with. Its articles are often survey articles more comprehensible to beginners. But it's professionally done and never over-simplifies.

The SEP seems to commission its articles from big names publishing on the subjects in question. That means that the SEP's articles can be highly technical, pitched at the graduate/professional level, and occasionally spend most of their time expounding the author's own views.

 

This may or may not be new but HES has a Certificate program in Philosophy and Ethics

https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/professional-graduate-certificates/philosophy-ethics-certificate

To me it seems expensive but maybe not to you. I didn't check but I'm assuming that you could roll the credits over into a Bachelors degree program and get some sort of Liberal Arts - Philosophy concentration degree.

 

cat update

https://gizmodo.com/scientists-save-schrodingers-cat-1835208353

 

Probably a North Korean Panther.

 

I think the best semi-serious would be "pathways to philosophy".

 

The stupidest I've ever felt--other than in attempting to best my logical wife in debates--was taking a graduate philosophy seminar for PhD students when I was a law student. You could take a couple grad classes in the graduate college and have them count for law school credit, so I signed up for this one. It was called something like "Seminar on Law and Ethics in Modern Philosophy." I'd taken a class in undergrad and had read Hobbes and Kant and Socrates and others, and I was a 3L law student, so I figured piece of cake, I'm going to go in there and teach those philosophy schlubs a thing or two. Wow, the readings were NOTHING like Hobbes or Plato. I couldn't even get a grasp on the language, it was insane and insanely dense and incomprehensible. I really can't describe it, was almost as lost as if I'd been trying to comprehend the wife's PhD studies in math. Have never had a class before where I didn't understand a blasted thing--and haven't had one since. Got a gift B and went back across the street to the law school with my tail between the legs.

 

For those who missed the reference, Greg is referring to this

https://philosophypathways.com/

I agree that it's a high quality learning opportunity.