Help! Philosophy skill as magic? I need ideas 🙏

Burning Wheel Modifications, Hacks and Expansions
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A player at our table decided to have the Philosophy skill, and we were faced with many questions: When and how to use it organically?

The manual says:

"Philosophy is the pursuit and discussion of wisdom, discussing the nature of truth, logic, reason, good, evil and the divine (…). Obstacles: Divining the original meaning of symbols originating from a particular school of thought, Ob 3 (Note: this is not very similar to the possibilities of the Symbology skill?). Recalling the allegorical and instructive purpose of the demon or angel you ate about to summon, Ob ​​5. Estimating the mistery that is the divine, Ob 6. (this option seems so broad to me that it does not say much). etc.

I think that the rarity and specificity of the skill sometimes makes it relegated to Forks or, directly, other alternatives are chosen. But I think that the history of philosophy is diverse and gives many possibilities

It occurs to me, in tune with the book “The doors of perception” by Aldous Huxley, to think of Philosophy as Burning Wheel thinks of Astrology.

Ob 5 - Glimpsing through the door of perception, your character observes invisible entities and the Astral plane. But he cannot interact with it. Ob 6 - Your character can cross through the doors of perception, leaves the material plane and crosses to the astral plane, although he is unable to communicate verbally, he can interact. Ob 7 - The person crosses the doors of perception and can dialogue with entities of the astral plane and see invisible entities.

I think this option could give the character the “Second Sight” trait in the future.
It may be a little crazy. But the idea that philosophy allows one to see through the veil of reality and limit the skill to perception of the astral plane (not projection) is not so strange.

A second alternative, in line with the “Touch of Ages” trait, is to double the difficulty of this trait when you want to use it with philosophy until, after several uses (successful or failed), it becomes a character trait. I’m not convinced by this but it seems like an organic way to introduce this trait that I love.

What do you think about this?

Can you think of other “crazy” options that are consistent with the philosophical tradition? Marx, Nietzsche, Thomas Aquinas ? I want to use the philosophy skill more

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Burning Wheel skills do overlap quite a lot; you can lean into it, creating a universe where there are many careers/experiences that make someone competent at achieving a particular sort of goal; or strip out some of the overlapping skills, creating a universe where certain careers/experiences don’t exist.

To focus on the specific overlap you mention, both Archaeologists and Philosophers of Language study the art of other cultures but Archaeologists are more likely to be using Symbology and Philosophers using Philosophy.

Whereas a world that has Symbology but not Philosophy could, for example, have demonologists who know how to determine the hierarchy of a particular demonic court from the name-sigils of members but no organised tradition of thinking about why things are the way they are.

It’s a cool idea to have as part of the core of you game’s universe, leading to lots of chunky fun setting stuff about how a society might function when anyone who thinks deeply enough might see past the veneer of the mundane.

I’m less sure it will get to show all the shininess if it’s something added later to make a skill seem more useful.

The first question for me if this isn’t a game centred on “The Secular Order of Grand Perceivers of Truth” would be “why did the player take Philosophy?” If they can’t see ways it will be immensely useful but want the challenge of making it useful (which can be great fun) then adding magic to it weakens that struggle. If they can’t see ways to make it useful and don’t want to play a game about their character being good at something that isn’t immediately practical, then perhaps don’t put build points into the skill.

That said, I don’t find Philosophy an especially tricky skill to make useful: moral philosophy could easily be offered for some legal and theological challenges; you’ve already highlighted it overlaps with symbology so could be offered for some linguistic or codebreaking challenges. Instead of looking at the Obs as a list of what the skill must be used for, you could start from whether philosophy could apply to a challenge and then set Obs/consequences based on how applicable it is and how using complex logical tools on that problem could go wrong.