this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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Showerthoughts
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Except that a key difference is that no one gives out PhDs for martial arts. Yes you can get a black belt, signalling that you are as skilled as the top tier martial artists (I assume, I don't do martial arts), but you cannot write a peer reviewed paper and get a PhD on karate because that would require learning something new about it and publishing it.
Philosophy in how the common person relates to it may just be as a mental kata that helps to improve their cognition and emotional regulation, but philosophy as a profession and academic discipline is still very much concerned with trying to answer questions and find ways of constraining the infinite to relevant possible answers.
Yes, that's the "new stuff" part that I mentioned. You don't want to stagnate in a world where things are constantly changing as time flows. And you can always continue to refine methods, ask new questions, ask questions in new ways, and yes, even sometimes constrain or find an answer.
Martial arts continues to change as well. New schools appear, new styles appear, etc. I'm not sure what point you're ultimately trying to make.
The point I'm making is that philosophers are trying to answer questions and if they weren't they wouldn't be getting PhDs, since a PhD is not given for just knowing a lot about Philosophy, but for discovering something new in the field.