When people can learn because they appreciate what they know, that it is good, and helps them to avoid the common evils of life, then they are philosophers...The same is true of math,

The same is true of philosophy, that we are all engaged in it more seriously or less so, but it is no less a human pursuit shared by all of humanity

What is true of math?



So, you would call me a mathematician for having added or subtracted before?

With your logic, every person must be an engineer, a politician, a mathematician, a geographer, a meteorologist, an astronomer, an accountant, a general, a logician, and a linguist. I'd wager the common person is engaged with these fields, or exudes qualities of people engaged in these fields, on some level, so that must make them these things.

Please refer to me as quantum physicist Zetherin from now on. Phew, I knew that one QM article I read was going to pay off, but I didn't know it would quite this well!

Let me put forward an alternative idea. A philosopher is a free thinker. We allow our mind to wander freely in the thinkspace inside our heads. A true philosopher does more than standing on the shoulders of giants, he develops original new thoughts and ideas.
Education is not about original thought. It is about learning things that are already known. Both the questions and the answers are given and those who have the ability to learn and reproduce given recipes usually do best on tests.

This is a fundamental difference. I even believe there may be neurological differences that distinguish original thinkers from the majority of the population.

I completely agree and I feel that this is not stressed enough.

Is there any doubt that all the old philosophers were true philosophers? People like Plato or Socrates but also the later great philosophers in my book definitely qualify as original thinkers. The concepts and ideas they coined were their own and presumably had not been thought before.
May I point out that what history remember best is not that which stays the same, but rather that which changes? Its not the scholarly philosopher who writes history but rather the one whose thoughts and ideas are original and not those of someone else.

True philosophers have extra true neurons.

Actually they have more or less the same number of neurons as everyone else and those are not very special either.
Its the neurotransmitters that may hold the key.

Just staying in keeping with the opening question of this thread which was to find an answer to the question why philosophers do bad at exams.

I have no clue about false philosophers though. What are those?

I guess they are the opposite of true philosophers. You seem to know that those are. (What exams do philosophers do badly at?).

Philosophers often get lost in the chase of truth, to do things the correct way, to know everything 100% ..and bla bla ..bla
It's often unproductive and thereby only serves for selfsatisfaction.

What you learn in school are mostly liniar things, with very little diviation, and thereby requires almost no philosophy.

There are too many branches of philosophy which are for naive, group thinkers. In short ..for the not so bright people, those who delude themselfs with empty rethoric. It becomes blatantly clear when they use pharses such as:
- good/bad/evil
- truth/lie

I think being a philosopher is more a state of mind rather than anything else. Unless you mean to equate 'philosopher' with 'well known philosopher' There must be fewer than a thousand of those throughout the entire history of mankind.

And those people who teach philosophy in universities, and are paid to do so, who write articles in philosophical journals, who write books on philosophical topics, and who attend philosophical conferences and meetings, but do not have "that state of mind" whatever that is, what are they? Chopped liver?

What makes you think that they would not have that state of mind? If so, it can not be distilled from anything I have said.
How can anyone possibly want to pursue a career in philosophy without their heart and mind being in it? At the very least there has to be a marked predisposition towards WANTING to follow that career path. Unless someone is a masochist off course.


My definition is more aimed at including people rather than at excluding them.