Philosophy Major

Real Intelligence for an Age of Artificial Intelligence

The tidal wave of AI and other technologies is making specific skills obsolete. This new world will need flexible people with a general ability to learn, teach, judge, persuade, comprehend, adapt, and communicate. There has never been a better time to learn to think like a philosopher.

And while you are learning these skills you will delve into the deepest issues facing human beings across the globe and across time from timeless questions to today’s controversies. Discover classical ideas from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Investigate the nature of gender and sex. Find out why Descartes claimed “I think, therefore I am”. Confront the challenges of ethical dilemmas. Work through metaphysical paradoxes. Finetune your deductive skills in formal and informal reasoning. Discuss indigenous knowledge practices. Ask what kind of things conscious minds are. Debate the purpose of government.

Explore questions such as:

Will AI ever be conscious?
Does God exist?
What makes a person good?
How do we know anything?
Does language determine the way we experience the world?
How can we work together if we have different cultural practices?

Philosophy at Michigan State explores those traditional questions through our practice of “Philosophy Engaged”, which applies philosophy to concrete issues and works together with communities, scientists, governmental institutions and NGOs, and researchers from many other disciplines. We do work on food ethics, legal issues, practical persuasion and argumentation strategies, agricultural practices, international rights, medical and health controversies, the ethics of technologies, and other pressing matters. We draw on sources from around the world and throughout history, including Caribbean philosophy, indigenous philosophy, African philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, European philosophy, and American philosophy. To focus on some of the Engaged issues, you can choose either of our two specialized majors, “Philosophy and Law” and “Philosophy and the Sciences”, but as a traditional “Philosophy” major you will be able to tailor your program to include these Engaged approaches alongside study of traditional history of philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, logic, and epistemology.

Why Philosophy?

Philosophy provides skills that can be used in many professions. Learning how to think, write, analyze, debate, and discuss complex issues helps you to keep up with all the changes facing society. Philosophy majors can quickly adapt to new techniques and procedures.

A recent analysis from 1990–2019 collected by the Higher Education Research Institute and Cooperative Institutional Research Program found that “on average, philosophy majors score higher than all other majors on the GRE Verbal and LSAT, as well as a self-report measure designed to assess good habits of mind” (Prinzing and Vazquez 2025).

Philosophy students have the highest starting salary of any humanities major as well as the highest percentage increase between starting and mid-career salary. Philosophy majors tend to earn more over their lifetime than degree-holders in any other humanities field.

Majoring in Philosophy

Students usually begin by taking any of several introductory or survey courses. Courses in philosophical traditions, reasoning, and other survey courses provide the foundation for higher-level work in history of philosophy, value theory, theoretical areas such as metaphysics and philosophy of science. The final semester includes a capstone course that pulls together these strands with an intense look at a particular issue. Flexibility in this major allows student to complete it in as little as two years.

Requirements:

36 hours of Philosophy courses, including:

Two courses covering historical and global philosophical traditions

One course in logic and reasoning

Courses in ethics and political philosophy and theoretical philosophy

Capstone course, with experiential learning module

College of Arts and Letters requirements (foreign language, cognate)

Careers for Philosophy Majors

Law
Ethics officer
Government and NGOs

Administration
Entrepreneur
Non profit

Professor
Artist
Journalist

Join These Famous People Who Studied Philosophy

Mary Higgins Clark, novelist

Stephen Colbert, late-night host

Wes Anderson, film director

Susan Sontag, critic and essayist

Alex Trebek, host of Jeopardy!

Henry Shevlin, philosopher at Google DeepMind

“In the industrial age, careers were linear. You trained for a job and then you did that job, often for decades. But in today’s world—and especially in the booming AI-driven world—career paths are nonlinear. . . . Being narrowly trained for a single task is a liability. Being broadly trained to think, learn, and adapt is an advantage. That’s what a liberal arts education delivers.”

“It was by far the best major I could have taken in college. It allowed me to do anything that I wanted to do. Philosophy is a great major because it allows me to ask questions, and that is what I do every day.”

“It seems to me that in retrospect philosophy is among the very most practically useful fields of study one can undertake.”

“If you were ever bored in high school and had a lot of questions that weren’t being asked in your classes, then philosophy is for you. If you want to learn how to solve complex problems, think on your feet, and become an innovative thinker, then philosophy is for you. If you want to be ready for an uncertain job market by developing future-proof skills sought by employers in a wide range of careers, then philosophy is for you. If you want to leave college a different person than when you started, then philosophy is for you.”