I think that in philosophy, unlike other fields, one can get very far with little studying, possibly closer to truth than someone who did a lot of it.

(Posting under a different username because I got "you're posting too fast" error.)

Comparing fields this way is a bit apples to oranges (getting "very far" in CS is quite different than in English Lit, which is quite different than Philosophy, etc.) -- these fields all have very different goals.

That said, in philosophy I often have the feeling that some "common sense" view I hold is more accurate than the rigorous, less clear views that I'm studying. Almost always, there turn out to be problems with my common sense view that weren't obvious to me at the outset, and necessitate the extra rigor and abstraction.

The unfortunate bit is that if you don't "study" (as you put it), you'll never notice these little flaws, and go on thinking that people are intentionally overcomplicating things. (Made worse by the fact that certain people actually are overcomplicating things -- but that's not evidence against the fact that many things are, in fact, complicated)

Honestly, I doubt that, the philosophy course I took convinced me that the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty bad. I've developed my philosophical view mostly independently and have always been able to defend it. I hoped I would get some hard philosophy questions here but nevermind :)

But you took one course. A phil phd is going to read hundreds of books, likely just for quals. How can you possibly expect to have a grasp of the field after a few hours of work?