ATAR Notes: Forum

Uni Stuff => Faculties => Arts => Topic started by: pk-607 on August 10, 2012, 02:33:53 pm

Title: Psychology and Philosophy
Post by: pk-607 on August 10, 2012, 02:33:53 pm
Hi all, so my question is, will philosophy study overlap psych? Because my interest will lean more to psych.
PS: I'm going to take psych as major and philosophy as minor.
Title: Re: Psychology and Philosophy
Post by: binders on August 10, 2012, 02:56:27 pm
it will to some extent. obviously moreso if you take philosophy subjects that deal more with cognition than say metaphysics.
Title: Re: Psychology and Philosophy
Post by: pk-607 on August 10, 2012, 03:20:21 pm
Which one do you think is good for studying alongside with psych? Don't take workload into account
Title: Re: Psychology and Philosophy
Post by: binders on August 10, 2012, 07:03:47 pm
I'm not a student of psychology or philosophy, so I can't give you a good answer there. Hopefully someone with more experience in those areas will respond.
But just looking at, for instance, Monash's philosophy offerings, http://www.monash.edu.au/pubs/2012handbooks/aos/philosophy/ug-arts-philosophy.html,
a few subjects look promising. for example, ATS2875, ATS2867 - for a view on methodologies, or ATS3876.
Why not stop in at the philosophy offices at the university you're looking at, and ask them?
Title: Re: Psychology and Philosophy
Post by: Eriny on August 10, 2012, 09:54:56 pm
They aren't *that* similar. There are overlaps, but not significant ones. Philosophy of science and that kind of thing would be relevant to psych, along with cognition, as mentioned earlier.
Title: Re: Psychology and Philosophy
Post by: EvangelionZeta on August 11, 2012, 01:10:45 am
They're quite different, unless you do philosophy of science basically.
Title: Re: Psychology and Philosophy
Post by: binders on August 11, 2012, 08:13:52 am
i like to think all branches of knowledge are related ;)
and even when they don't seem to fit together, thought in one can usefully contrast thought in another. philosophy, psych, lit, linguistics, history, economics, biology - all just branches of 'human studies' :D
Title: Re: Psychology and Philosophy
Post by: Tomw2 on August 11, 2012, 10:38:37 am
Having completed an accredited major in psychology and first year philosophy I can say, as per EvangelionZeta & Eriny, there's is little similarity or overlap.

The accredited psych major is a scientist-practitioner discipline, more scientific method than anything, and the closest it gets to philosophy is the aspects relating to ethics, consciousness and cognition. But the similarly/overlap there is marginal.

Psychology has good synergy with a number of other fields. A philosophy minor would likely enhance your analytical and academic writing skills.
Title: Re: Psychology and Philosophy
Post by: pk-607 on August 11, 2012, 07:42:00 pm
Thanks for everyone's replies! I'm still wondering though, because I didn't do any philosophy in vce.
Title: Re: Psychology and Philosophy
Post by: Tomw2 on August 12, 2012, 09:22:58 am
I'm still wondering though, because I didn't do any philosophy in vce.

They don't assume you have done philosophy before and IMO there is no major advantage/disadvantage in this regard. In my 1st year phil class I found that those who were stronger in written expression tended to perform better overall due to the written tasks required. The students who did VCE phil could name-drop more philosophers and philosophical concept labels, but were no more sophisticated in their analyses than people who hadn't done it before.

If philosophy interests you, do it for that reason. Look up the subject outline in the uni handbooks to get a better idea.