Philosophy is of greater value than science to students.

Pro seems to have taken up the hilarious strategy of trying to label each and every one of the refutations I made as being some form of logical fallacy. All I need to do to re-negate the resolution, then, is show that each of his accusations are false. 1. Versatility a. Pro dismisses my assessment of his biased source, claiming that it is 'baseless'. This is quite ironic because 'baseless' exactly describes Pros dismissal, here. I gave clear, logically-supported reasons to believe that his source is biased: as a university philosophy department's homepage, the writers would have had a vested interest in persuading students to major in that field; furthermore, I cited a more objective source with no such vested interests (i.e. Forbes) that contradicted the assertions in Pro's source. There is nothing even vaguely resembling "misrepresentation" in my analysis of Pro's source. This contention remains refuted, as I have successfully shown that the source upon which its factual accuracy rests is biased/unreliable. b. Pro attacks my Forbes source by two routes. He first objects that it lacks a date, but this is simply based in a failure to look deeper into the source; if we look at the article from which the linked slide show comes from [1], we can clearly see a date printed on the top: 10/11/2012. This is sufficiently recent for the source to still be considered reliable, as job market trends do not typically fluctuate on a large scale from year to year. Pro's second objection is an attempt at misleading us by taking the fact that philosophy is grouped in with 'religious studies' and claiming that the source is probably talking about theology, rather than philosophy in general. However, there is absolutely no reason to believe this; philosophy is grouped with 'religious studies' simply because they often deal with similar subjects (e.g. morality, the nature of reality, etc.). Both of Pro's objections fail. Forbes can safely be considered an objective, reliable source. c. Pro does not contest my argument that science as a general field provides an enormous amount of occupational versatility to the point that *even* if Pro's claims hold true (which they don't), studying science would *still* allow for more versatility than studying philosophy. This point alone fully refutes this contention, yet Pro does not even bother to mention it. 2. Applicability a. Pro accuses me of false equivocation based on a misunderstanding of my argument. My rebuttal is *not* based on any alleged claim of philosophy courses increasing physiological/genetic intelligence. I am fully aware that Pro was using the term 'intelligence' to refer specifically to the ability to think and reason critically, and that is what my rebuttal is based on: since significant increases in critical thinking skills (i.e. intelligence) generally do not occur after the brain has fully matured, it is much more likely that already-intelligent people are attracted to studying philosophy, rather than studying philosophy causing high intelligence. My refutation of this contention holds. b. In response to my statistic showing that Physics majors actually score higher on standardized tests and IQ tests than Physics majors, Pro calls strawman, saying that IQ only deals with physiological intelligence and is thus irrelevant. First of all, IQ tests can be used as an accurate gauge of critical thinking skills [2], so those scores are still plenty relevant to Pro's contention. And secondly, my source shows that Physics majors score higher on other standardized tests, too-- the same exact tests that Pro was using as intelligence indicators. This point still serves as a turn on Pro's contention. c. Pro, just like in 1c, fails to address the argument I used to turn this contention in science's favor: science courses regularly exercise our critical thinking/reasoning faculties just much as philosophy courses do, so if we buy Pro's claims about studying philosophy increasing critical thinking ability, we must *also* buy that studying science has the same effect. This negates the resolution since it specifically claims that philosophy has *more* value than science. 3. Practicality a. Pro claims that my dismissal of his anecdote about philosophy's academic rigor is baseless. However, I am not really sure how to substantiate my claim any further... there is a clear logical gap between descriptions of the competitiveness within scholarly philosophy circles (what he provided) and the practical usages of philosophy (what he was trying to prove). It is PRO's job to bridge this gap. Since he has not done so, whatever point he was trying to make will get appropriately dismissed. b. Frankly, I am flabbergasted at Pro's response to my point about the bare assertions in his case... he essentially just denies their existence and asks me to point them out to him... this entire paragraph IS a bare assertion: "Philosophy is not just the art of sitting in a circle and making things up. Philosophy is Life. Philosophy is what grants many meanings to many things, from Ethics to Law, from Medicine to Business Magnate, these are the cores of the system that cannot be ignored. A person who does not have a backing in philosophy is simply worse off; they do not do as well on tests, they limit themselves to a very specific and ever shrinking instead of ever expanding discipline, and they can only take one route when they take on a science, for instance biological sciences will not yield aerodynamic results however philosophy can take you down many, many roads as cited above." Allow me to parody this... "Science is not just the art of standing around in a lab and staring into microscopes. Science is Life. Science is what grants us knowledge of the world around us, from Organic Chemistry to General Relativity, from Kinematics to Cellular Respiration, these are the cores of the system that cannot be ignored. A person who does not have a backing in Science is simply worse off; they do not do as well on tests, they limit themselves to a very superficial and ever static instead of ever expanding discipline, and they can't achieve anything when they take on philosophy, for instance debating the existence of meta-ethical truths will not yield any sort of useful material goods. however Science can take you down many, many roads." By Pro's standard of necessary substantiation, I have just fully mitigated his argument. c. Just like in 1c and 2c, Pro doesn't respond to my positive argument! He has not even attempted to contest my points showing the immense practical outputs yielded by scientific research, which, probably more than any other contention, negates the resolution. Pro has not shown that Philosophy yields anything even *close* to that in terms of practical value. ==================================== There isn't much of a conclusion to make... Pro abjectly fails at countering my refutations of his opening argument, and makes no effort at addressing my positive arguments in favor of science over philosophy. The resolution is negated a thousand times over. [1] http://www.forbes.com... [2] http://www.criticalthinking.com...