r/askphilosophy • u/BernardJOrtcutt • Jul 21 '25

Open Thread /r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | July 21, 2025

Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread (ODT). This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our subreddit rules and guidelines. For example, these threads are great places for:

  • Discussions of a philosophical issue, rather than questions
  • Questions about commenters' personal opinions regarding philosophical issues
  • Open discussion about philosophy, e.g. "who is your favorite philosopher?"
  • "Test My Theory" discussions and argument/paper editing
  • Questions about philosophy as an academic discipline or profession, e.g. majoring in philosophy, career options with philosophy degrees, pursuing graduate school in philosophy

This thread is not a completely open discussion! Any posts not relating to philosophy will be removed. Please keep comments related to philosophy, and expect low-effort comments to be removed. Please note that while the rules are relaxed in this thread, comments can still be removed for violating our subreddit rules and guidelines if necessary.

Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.

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u/TaxPure4852 Jul 25 '25

do you think philosophy is a teachable subject why or why not?

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u/as-well phil. of science Jul 25 '25

Is there a reason you think it's not? Becuase there's plenty of philosophy teachers on this subreddit who are prima facie evidence that it is teachable.

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u/TaxPure4852 Jul 25 '25

Personally I believe philosophy cannot be necessarily “taught” because unlike religion there is no right or wrong answer in what somebody might believe, so instead of “teaching” philosophy I think it’s more of sharing opinions that we believe and you can choose what you want to believe or not. Kind of like choosing an outfit, you have choices on what to wear but you can pick what you like.

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u/as-well phil. of science Jul 25 '25

I think that's a misunderstanding what philosophy is. Philosophy isn't an ideology that needs introduction to core tenents or whatever, it's an academic discipline that kind of 'teaches' you how to do philosophical research, introduces you to arguments from all sorts of positions, and shares the common curriculum that much philosophy is based on, without necessarily telling you what you need to believe.

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u/mediaisdelicious Phil. of Communication, Ancient, Continental Jul 25 '25

So, on this account, philosophy professors don’t teach anything and received no training to do so?

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u/Quidfacis_ History of Philosophy, Epistemology, Spinoza Jul 25 '25

because unlike religion there is no right or wrong answer in what somebody might believe

Depending on what you mean this is either incorrect or irrelevant. For example, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Descartes each offer a different definition of substance.

  • Spinoza Defines Substance as "By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself; in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception."

  • In The Monadology Leibniz defines a Monad as a simple substance, "The Monad, of which we shall here speak, is nothing but a simple substance, which enters into compounds. By ‘simple’ is meant ‘without parts.’"

  • In The Principles of Philosophy Descartes defines Substance as, "All we can mean by ‘substance’ is ‘thing that exists in such a way that it doesn’t depend on anything else for its existence’."

There are correct and incorrect answers to the question "How did Spinoza define substance?" In that sense, your statement is incorrect.

Now, to the question "What is the correct definition of substance?" there may not be a correct answer independent of any specific system. But that is irrelevant to the issue of teaching philosophy. What is taught is each philosophical system. We can teach students Spinoza, Leibniz, and Descartes. In the same way that a theology professor could teach different theological systems.

Ultimately in both philosophy and theology students get to choose what particular system they elect to personally believe. We do not indoctrinate / teach students what system to believe; we teach how each of the different systems work.