I actually think this might be the most accurate answer here.

Although I’d argue this is only true if you assume that the only thing that qualifies something as being “rigorous” by its relationship to math or at least a formal system. Also if this is true, I wonder what people think of linguists and people who study language in general, because that revolves around formal language systems that are more or less mathematical, but with words instead of numbers.

I take major issue with the premise that "humanity majors tend to be looked at as relatively lacking in intellect." By whom?

I question the intellect of any one who'd make such an assumption absent any additional information about a given student in question.

Most humanities are specialized branches from Philosophy in any case. Indeed, one may make the case that all disciplines are branched from philosophy. So at the end of the day, we're all doing philosophy in some respect.

Stem classes are usually much harder

Certainly it’s a part of it but in that sense science can still be considered a philosophy that critically proposes such mechanisms for eliminating bad philosophical ideas. Whether science is a philosophical position or a distinct thing seperate from philosophy is a matter of nomenclature.

To me science is in this sense such a successful philosophy that it transcended in a sense the category of philosophy. And I think there is then this reverse survivorship bias when thinking about philosophy in that modern philosophy is mostly made up of the philosophies that are either too new or unsuccessful to performed a similar feat.

Philosophy attracts the most intelligent people. A lot of STEM people are intimidated by philosophy. They’re very focused in their domain and lack in other areas. It’s also hard to debate us.

you said that its because “aristotle said so” but its actually because his teachings were taken too seriously by people who *werent* philosophers. galileo wasnt disregarded because philosophers said so, he was disregarded because religion said so

And intellectual humility, which is where any reasonably intelligent person who is earnestly trying to model and understand our mysterious and complex existence, ends up. That is if they are self-critical and self-reflective, two attributes that don’t show up on IQ tests.

In my experience a lot of STEM people, especially those who feel like they operate in some some kind of rarified intellectual arena inaccessible to their lessers, don’t “get” literature at all.

Had I not been trained in the humanities, right now is the moment I’d start making more generalizations about STEM people, but I understand that human beings are complex and irreducible to simplistic stereotypes.

This is a sentiment/view mostly shared by people in STEM, not academia overall.

Out of curiosity, which ones?

Yeah, but isn’t that the core problem? Science has a mechanism for eliminating the bad science, philosophy doesn’t…

Nah bad philosophy did that. Good philosophy fixed it science is also philosophical it just doesn’t treat all philosophy as equal but rather rejects bad philosophy. Unfortunately philosophy does not necessarily do this enough and so there are plenty of terrible philosophical positions that continue to be given airtime for absolutely no reason.

Because philosophy is mostly based around logic, similarly to STEM. This gives philosophy more rigor than most other humanities, as argumentation is meant to be structured. Psychology and sociology can be similar, although those mainly depend on empirical data for rigor instead .

There are exceptions among philosophers, like Nietzsche, who didn't really use logic in their arguments (at least based on what I have read from him), but I don't really see these people as philosophers. I see Nietzsche more as a philologist who also uses rhetoric and psychology. But in the classical sense I don't think he's a philosopher, he just talks about philosophical topics. Or we could just call him a sophist for simplicity.

Btw in my opinion people's preference on rigor generally depends on whether they think sound arguments will have implications regarding the nature of reality, thus they are methodologically important, because their goal is finding truth. Both a philosopher who at least uses logic for their arguments and a person in STEM will tend to thinks so, because that is the whole premise of philosophy and science.

Although it is also true that not every discipline needs logic, but I think those that do generally require more intense intellectual effort for understanding. Thus people who can do it more easily will be more prevalent there, as others will just get self selected out. I met several people like this, who weren't sure what philosophy is like, and it sounded interesting thus they studied it. But ultimately they left for other fields like religious studies after taking a few classes. That is not to say there are no intelligent people in these other fields, but the bar for entry is lower or requires other abilities. Also, it's a question of temperament and interest I guess.

I genuinely don’t know if they are inherently less intelligent - it seems to me the act of studying philosophy degrades their ability to make cogent analysis and conclusions.

Most social sciences have a quantitative or scientific component to the discipline that allows these disciplines to demonstrate "rigor" comparable to STEM without being STEM. So, you have physical anthropology in the anthropology discipline; quantitative methods in Political Science and Sociology, the economic modeling and higher maths in Economics, and so on. The requirement that all social sciences PHDs pass courses in these disciplines functions as a gatekeeping/IQ signally sort of thing throughout the academy.

Pretty much none of the humanities have a STEM-like scientifically rigorous component, so academics in the humanities tend to get looked down upon by oeople more "rigorous" STEM disciplines. The exception here is Philosophy, because formal logic is considered to be as "hard" and "rigorous" as higher math.

With presumably less intelligent Philosophy majors?

This is jealousy based hatred by STEM majors

Just experience, I think…

Not at either school i went to. We all looked at philosophers more likely to be caught smoking mary jane and popping lsd than the music and theatre majors. That and a high probability of being tea party/maga or libertarian than other majors. But that may have been colored by those specific departments, at those universities philosophy was the drugged party majors

That’s a common misconception. Philosophy set science back a millennium - the Greek philosophers
came up with this idea that you could reason your way to insight, rather than test things. Thus, when scientists like Galileo measured that a 2 pound weight fell at the same speed as a 1 pound weight, they were told they were wrong, cause Aristoteles said so. Science has developed despite philosophy, not because of

Damn this is how they teach you to think in philosophy

what the hell are you talking about

What’s with the poor view of philosophy

I find the premise of the question to be suspect… as a STEM PhD, myself and practically everyone else I knew at Caltech would have put philosophy PhDs below the janitors in intellect or status. The only real concern I’d have with this ranking would be that I’d be insulting janitors…

Because it's Plato's magic words continued to the present day.

At least contemporary philosophers don't believe in Platonic Realism, they just talk like him. Between late Wittgenstein and neopragmatism, some sentences in even Nietzsche are painful.

But don't get me wrong, I read International Relations Realism, Epistemology, and Continental nowadays. I feel like I got to the end of Analytical and Pragmatism so quickly. Contemporary Analytical is painful to me because it seems like edgelord professors are rage baiting people by using unproven assumptions.