Philosophy as a Secondary Skill

Philosophy can be pursued as a primary field (an end in itself) or secondarily, as a tool that supports some other goal. CF holds that the rationality-related parts of philosophy — epistemology, critical thinking, debate, and learning methods — improve performance on essentially any topic, because every field involves problem solving and learning. In this sense philosophy is a high-leverage prerequisite to other fields: physics, plumbing, and everything else are downstream of how well you think.

Temple identifies a problem specific to our culture rather than to philosophy itself. Mainstream “expert” philosophy is mostly broken, so a secondary learner cannot safely defer to authorities and absorb their conclusions — there is little cultural reinforcement for good ideas. He uses cooking as the contrast: mainstream cooking knowledge is mostly sound, so cooking works well as a secondary skill. Philosophy does not, because the background ideas you would inherit are wrong.

The practical consequence is paradoxical. To use philosophy competently as a mere support skill, you must become unusually good at it — better than most credentialed experts — which is a large investment for a secondary interest. Given that and philosophy’s outsized potential impact, CF suggests that someone who reaches that level might reasonably make philosophy primary instead. This connects to CF’s emphasis on mastery: shallow, cargo-culted philosophy is unreliable, so genuine competence, not borrowed conclusions, is what makes philosophy usable elsewhere. Not studying philosophy at all is treated as dangerous, since everyone uses philosophical ideas whether or not they examine them.