This is one of those moments when you wonder why someone bothered to reply without mentioning a single one of these "sophisticated and difficult" parts of philosophy that we could then happily explain in simple terms. You only had to mention a single name or sub-discipline.
For example one of my modules was philosophy of mathematics. It was sophisticated and difficult, but not complicated or meaningful.
It was just a fairly pointless thought experiment. The actual important bits are just called "mathematics".
It's like today's social science. It's an extension of moral and political philosophy. But moral and political philosophy are fairly pointless and get bogged down by fairly meaningless arguments about the meaning of "self" or "altruism", while social science attempts to make people's lives better.
You know, I studied 3 separate modules on formal logic. I did 36 hours worth of lectures, wrote various essays and read multiple expensive philosophy text books.
I learnt more about logic from a single 1 hour high school electronics lesson than I ever did from all that.
pg has a good essay about why he doesn't particularly rate philosophy: http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
For example one of my modules was philosophy of mathematics. It was sophisticated and difficult, but not complicated or meaningful.
It was just a fairly pointless thought experiment. The actual important bits are just called "mathematics".
It's like today's social science. It's an extension of moral and political philosophy. But moral and political philosophy are fairly pointless and get bogged down by fairly meaningless arguments about the meaning of "self" or "altruism", while social science attempts to make people's lives better.
You know, I studied 3 separate modules on formal logic. I did 36 hours worth of lectures, wrote various essays and read multiple expensive philosophy text books.
I learnt more about logic from a single 1 hour high school electronics lesson than I ever did from all that.
pg has a good essay about why he doesn't particularly rate philosophy: http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html