Gaining a degree in philosophy is rarely viewed as an educational qualification that will score you a big salary or equip you with practical life skills.
But, it turns out, there is reason to believe that studying philosophy can make you better at one very important skill indeed: Thinking.
What thirty years' worth of surveys say about studying philosophy
In a recent study titled simply "Studying Philosophy Does Make People Better Thinkers", researchers supported that conclusion after looking at test data from more than 600,000 college students.
Michael Prinzing and Michael Vazquez, the authors of the study, did not create their own dataset. Instead, they accessed data that had been gathered between the years of 1990 and 2019 on surveys given to students by the Higher Education Research Institute and the Cooperative Institutional Research Program.
On those surveys, students were asked to report any standardized test scores they had received (on tests like the SAT), but were also asked to rate themselves on "lifelong learning" skills and habits, as well as descriptors like "open-mindedness."
One thing that made Prinzing's and Vazquez's new study stand out from earlier ones was that they sought to use data collected at different points of students' college experiences.
First, the authors compared the test scores and student-reported learning attitudes at the beginning of their college careers, before any of the students had chosen specific fields of interest. Then they looked at the same students' scores, across all majors, as they were graduating from college.
Earlier studies had focused solely on who studied philosophy and why, and had found that people who chose that subject often had higher verbal test scores before beginning their college careers.
Therefore, there was some ambiguity about whether students with higher verbal scores simply chose to study philosophy more often than students with lower verbal and other test scores, or whether the study of philosophy itself actually made you better at verbal abilities and thinking.
The study by Prinzing and Vazquez, however, has helped show that, accounting for all differences between students when they started college, the study of philosophy itself does appear to help students learn more, score better on a variety of tests, and become more curious and open-minded about learning in general.
Learning to think about…thinking
The results of all those hundreds of thousands of surveys were fascinating. But what I found even more interesting was the authors' explanation for why people who major in or study philosophy at college might become better "thinkers" (as measured at least partially by their ability to do well on standardized tests).
According to Prinzing and Vazquez, what might make philosophy a unique field to specialize in is that it is not so much a body of knowledge as it is "an activity — a form of inquiry."
Philosophy students do, of course, learn about the historical development of different schools of thinkers, theorists, and philosophers. But more importantly, according to Prinzing and Vazquez, those who study philosophy actively try to "answer fundamental questions about humanity and the world we live in."
In trying to answer those questions, philosophy students are taught to construct "logical arguments," draw subtle distinctions, and follow "ideas to their ultimate — often surprising — conclusions."
Logic is connected to reason is connected to knowledge (and understanding)
Before we can understand why learning how to construct logical arguments is good for your "thinking muscles," it might be a good idea to describe what logic actually is.
One definition of logic states that it is the "study of correct reasoning, especially as it involves the drawing of inferences."
Well, that's dry. Before you feel like you might need to enroll in a philosophy course just to understand that sentence, let me describe it for you in another way: When you look at a situation and try to understand what is happening, and you form some conclusions based on what you see and what other facts you learn about it, you are using logic.
Logic does not mean you come up with the one "right answer." It does not mean you only solve problems using absolutely cut-and-dried math. It simply means that you infer (or deduce or conclude) what makes sense, based on the information and facts that you have.
If you learn about something, and think about it, you can then learn facts about it, and start to draw some conclusions from all those thoughts and facts. Even if those conclusions turn out to be surprising ones that you might not have expected.
Neat, huh?
Thinking will always be important to the human race
None of this changes the fact that a higher education degree in philosophy still may not make you rich, or set you on a clear career path.
But this new study should make everyone view philosophy and the study of it with more respect.
Whatever problems we humans face together as we move further into the twenty-first century, it might be very helpful if at least some of us are trained in a field that encourages us to think and makes us better at it.
Some of the most exciting and beneficial developments in our history have been the ones that came when somebody used their thoughts and observations to form different (even surprising) conclusions than everyone else.
Just think what we could accomplish if more people studied this subject that makes them better at thinking and more open to doing so!