I heard of people having majors in philosophy, and frankly, it's laughable that someone would waste time on this pseudo-science that has yet to contribute ANYTHING to society.
Before people started calling them 'natural science', the same subjects were called 'natural philosophy'. Spawning the sciences is something. Mathematics, logic, aesthetics, ethics, historiography... it all grew out of philosophy and it's all something.
Philosophy is a calling, Duke. Philosophizing is something that certain people are just naturally drawn to do, something that those people can't really avoid doing. It's an expression of fundamental intelligence, I think, a manifestation of basic curiosity.
Most people just kind of stumble though life blindly and unthinkingly. If they are interested in anything, it's probably popular song lyrics or something equally inane.
But a few exceptional people can perceive the mysteries that surround them on every side. They don't just assume that they already know everything, understand the big picture and have everything figured out.
What's time? How should we understand the present and what kind of reality do the past and future have? What is meaning and how do words acquire it? How do words refer and stand for things different than themselves? What is truth and falsity? What is knowledge and how should we best proceed in acquiring it? How should possibility and necessity be understood? What is logic and where does its peculiar force over reality come from? What is substance and how does it relate to perceptible qualities? What are the mind and human consciousness? What are colors and other phenomenal qualia? What are numbers and mathematical relationships? What's the proper analysis of causality? What are good and evil? What's beauty? Is there any purpose to history and to our personal lives? Is there a good life for human beings to live? Is what we perceive around us all of reality, or are there unperceived heights and depths that are unimagined by us? And on and on.... forever. It's probably an endless quest.
There's no end of questions to ask when people are perceptive enough, curious enough and, yes, smart enough to feel their presence and their mystery.
As I said Duke, it's a calling. If somebody doesn't feel it deeply and viscerally, then they probably aren't the kind of person who would make a good philosopher. Perhaps that person should be doing something else that's more suited to their abilities.
