8 ms·

When Philosophy Lost Its Way

83 points by yk 11y ago

nihils 11y ago
The author's conception of philosophy seems to be heavily biased towards Western analytic philosophy whose pretension towards logically underpinning sciences and reliance on formal methods means that is more of a theoretical computer science or physics. Plenty of Continental philosophy: post-structuralism, deconstruction, post-colonialism, and non-Western philosophy (such as decolonial thought) speaks to and about daily life.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  Maybe I'm just ignorant, but I don't see post-structuralism or deconstruction as having all that much to say about daily life. (Almost) nobody actually lives that way. That is, when you go out for a beer with your friends, you talk to them as if humans can actually communicate, and as if the message sent will be (approximately) the message received.
  - VLM 11y ago
    WRT post-structuralism, consider the stereotypical interdepartmental procedure coordination meeting, not beer with buddies.
  - steveklabnik 11y ago
    I go out for a beer with my friends and talk to them about post-structuralism. ;)
    - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
      Sure. But you probably don't deconstruct what they say during the conversation (except for example or for entertainment).
      - steveklabnik 11y ago
        That's true. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't have an _impact_ on daily life. In other words, descontruction, specifically, is an analysis technique. The outcome of doing said analysis is separate from doing the analysis.
  - nihils 11y ago
    This is a fair point, in the that conventional definition of post-structuralism as representation being bound to an interpretative context can be difficult see in daily life. However, such a view's application in Foucault's work I see manifest in my life all the time. For example, the concept of governmentality explains how we come to internalize the mandates of the state or capitalist power structure to say obey traffic laws (even when a cop is not there to observe and violating the law would not lead to harm). I should augment my list to say critical theory and Marxism as well. Such schools could explain a great deal about increasing income inequality, patent law, the insufficiency of 'nation' as a unit of analysis in a globalized economy...
- thescribe 11y ago
  I thought that continental philosophy was having the same if not a harder time staying relevant?
  - maldusiecle 11y ago
    It depends who you ask. Anglo-American philosophy departments tend to stay pretty far away from it, but it has a decent-sized popular audience--and literary studies, art criticism, and related disciplines often draw pretty heavily from it.
jseliger 11y ago
Paul Graham's essay "How to do philosophy" complements this piece well: http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html. This: The second event was the placing of philosophy as one more discipline alongside these sciences within the modern research university. A result was that philosophy, previously the queen of the disciplines, was displaced, as the natural and social sciences divided the world between them. may also be a problem because the healthier parts of philosophy, concerning "Why?" or "How?", got turned into science. The less healthy parts got turned into philosophy.
- jandrese 11y ago
  This is a big factor IMHO. Philosophy is trying to live somewhere between science and theology and there just isn't much room there anymore. Worse, a lot of that space is filled with dubious areas of study or rat holes (example: Bertrand Russel's Principia Mathematica) so philosophers find themselves hemmed in at both sides.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  Yet philosophy is at the base of how we do science. The principles of falsification or Kuhns Paradigms are quite important in how we understand "the body of knowledge" that science helps us build. In my world philosophizing is not the same as being a philosopher. You can be an excellent philosophizer without having any degree and you can be a horrible one with all the degrees in the world.
- throwupper247 11y ago
  It wasn't displaced, it delegated|dispatched|forked and is having a hell of a time piecing the puzzle and getting rid of the excess.
zenogais 11y ago
There's a broad strand of discourse within philosophy on exactly the topic of its incorporation into the academy. Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, et al come immediately to mind. Quite a lack of research on the author's part to come to such a conclusion.
paulpauper 11y ago
I actually thing we're in a philosophy boom, with recent developments in quantum mechanics and the synthesis between the two subjects. There is a lot of research in this area, about quantum mechanics, thought experiments (Chinese room), turing tests, complexity/computational theory of mind (Bostrom simulation argument, singularity) and connection to free will and other philosophical concepts. Philosophy becoming more STEM-like.
- Gibbon1 11y ago
  We're in a period of recovery after philosophy went down a nihilistic post modern rat hole in the early twentieth century. Actually doing better than some other fields.
- empath75 11y ago
  A lot of cutting-edge computer science and math is intimately connected with the more abstract reaches of philosophy (category theory, etc).
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    You classify category theory as philosophy rather than math? Can you explain why?
anateus 11y ago
So rather than working at the edges of social and natural sciences, looking at the unknown and feeding back (perhaps not as much as it could), as western analytic philosophy does now, they seek a return to a time when a philosopher was prized for obscurantism and bon mots rather than an increase in clarity? So... they haven't heard of people like Slavoj Žižek? Is that what they want all of philosophy to be like?
- gaius 11y ago
  Zizek is to Nietzsche as Dan Brown is to Shakespeare.
  - kossTKR 11y ago
    So you don't like Zizek. Thats fair. But comparing him to Nietche is not. He is a philosophy popularizer. He writes a lot about some of the greats, himself, like almost all other contempararies not being one himself. My impression is not that his academic writings are 'pop', in any way comparable to Dan Brown. I have only read a little but he has published. Some of it is essayistic in nature some of it quite heavy. I get your point. But just because your a not one of the absoulte greatest there ever was, it doesn't him instantly become a superficial literary con-artist the way dan brown has become to be regarded. Also he seems quite well read and a great analyzer. Not that i agree with all he says, but he is not trying to push agendas as other pop-philosophers are. A better example of some one being "Dan Brownish"would be sam harris. He is not respected in any way in the acedemia of philoshophy, he doesn't reference the history og the historiagrahy of the field, and simply doesnt seem on-level despite writing a lot of pop-philosophy and being regarded publicy as a true academic. Zizek is actually a respected academic.
  - steveklabnik 11y ago
    Zizek has published a large amount of works that are taken very seriously. I don't like a lot of the things he says either, but calling him Dan Brown would only be true if Dan Brown was accepted as a serious scholar.
- filoeleven 11y ago
stephenhess 11y ago
With the rise of scientific thinking, we're seeing a rapid increase in the number of folks who identify as agnostic or athiest [1]. This is natural given that the tenets of most major religions can't be tested or validated via experimental methods. The problem though is that absent these religious ideologies, we're left with a number of core questions that secular philosophy has been unable to answer convincingly. Namely: - Where does value stem from? What is good? What is bad? - What is the meaning or purpose of life? - Why is there something instead of nothing? What was the original cause? Was there one? - What happens after we die? This dovetails with a number of practical issues in today's world. (1) Lots of suicide and depression. There are 30 million prescriptions of Zoloft written in the United States. Many of these folks (I assume) aren't suffering some sort of pathological illness but find themselves looking at a world that appears to be devoid of meaning when these religious frameworks break down for them (i.e. nihilism) (2) Religious extremism that manifests in sectarian violence and war. Ultimately, secular thought (agnosticism and atheism included) is just an inferior product compared to religions. It doesn't provide out-of-the-box answers to these really hard questions and as a result can be a very scary and lonely ideology. Relevant point: I'd love to see academic philosophy working to shore up these areas and provide folks a better, clearer framework in which they can live meaningful, enjoyable lives that doesn't require a religious framework. http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/ http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religio...
- empath75 11y ago
  > Ultimately, secular thought (agnosticism and atheism included) is just an inferior product compared to religions. It doesn't provide out-of-the-box answers to these really hard questions and as a result can be a very scary and lonely ideology. I'm not sure that it's the job of philosophy to construct comforting fairy tales, if it actually is the case that life has no inherent meaning or purpose. At best, it can give you a guide to construct your own meaning.
  - hsitz 11y ago
    Yes. To the question of why is the world here religion answers, "Because God created it." But no religion deals with the obvious follow up question, "Then who created God?" That question is not allowed in the religious framework. Science does not allow for such questions, either, but doesn't purport to answer the final question of why the world exists. So do we go with religion, invent God, and take satisfaction in child-like explanation of why the world exists? Or do we go with science and merely acknowledge the mystery of what we humans are unable to fully understand (i.e., the world).
VeilEm 11y ago
Philosophy is simply irrelevant. Discoveries in physical sciences lead to new technology or just to a better understanding of how the world works and how we fit in it. Research in social sciences, when the political courage exists to pursue it, can lead to better policy, and better lives for everyone. Philosophy just seems to be a bunch of circle jerking around esoteric terms and concepts with no trickle down benefits. If Philosophy departments around the world simply shutdown over night, would anyone notice? Would anyone be the worse of? Even in the long term? Probably not. Well maybe would be philosophy students would pursue more employable fields for their undergraduate study, increasing the labor pool and competition for jobs.
- yarou 11y ago
  Philosophy is irrelevant? That's really quite a bizarre statement to make. Philosophy is quite useful in defining AI (philosophy of mind) and quantum physics (philosophy of physics) to name a few. Your comment is beyond narrow minded and ignorant; I should seriously hope you don't hold such views.
  - VeilEm 11y ago
    I most certainly do hold this as my view, and it's had zero negative impact. In fact only positive impact as I'm not spending time wasting on thinking for the sake of thinking. Philosophy is a mental trap that produces no value. One of my favorite books is Candide. The book ends with Candide tending to his garden. This is how I live my life. It works pretty well. How many modern philosophers use their knowledge to live good lives and improve the lives of others?
    - randomguyatwork 11y ago
      I would argue that philosophy isn't a choice, if ones mind works philosophically, one will think about philosophy. As an armchair philosopher, I'd say my ideas have helped my live my life in a more positive way, and has helped me to expose others to ideas that can be fun to think about and helpful for dealing with various life situations.
    - 11y ago
VLM 11y ago
WRT becoming smart as per the article rather than good, one point missed in the article is living in the university system means devotion and belief in the class pyramid at the predefined authoritarian apex angle and all that. You can be whatever you want when you're an individual, but when your identity as a philosopher is as a cog in the hierarchical machine, you and your ideas must be strictly limited to fit a cog shaped hole at a precise level, not too high so as to threaten those in positions above you, not too low as to be inadequate.
deleted 11y ago
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tyre 11y ago
As a philosophy major turned engineer turned CEO, I agree with the article about the fall of philosophy in academia. As my concentration advisor half-joked in one of our first courses, "you are majoring in mental mabation." However, I do not agree that philosophy has been entirely relegated to universities. Thought many of those who self-identify as philosophers reside in academia, not everyone who _behaves_ as a philosopher resides there. Philosophy literally translates from the Greek to lover of wisdom. Those who pursue knowledge and understanding, regardless of title, are philosophers. In fact, many of the non-technical articles on HN are philosophical. Asking how to build a company culture or what it means to be successful in the context of a startup are both philosophical inquiries. Balancing the tradeoff between competing interests (e.g. financial vs. mission-driven, personal gain versus organizational gain) come down to questions your values, questioning "what is good". There are few questions as emblematic of philosophy.
habitue 11y ago
> Before its migration to the university, philosophy had never had a central home. Philosophers could be found anywhere — serving as diplomats, living off pensions, grinding lenses, as well as within a university. I think we've come back to this. While philosophy in the academy might be navel-gazing and disconnected, blogs and regular people talk about philosophy all the time. Philosophy is something we engage in before we've fully wrapped our heads around a problem, or know how to test it or formalize it. It's all the gaps between formal logical reasoning and science, and there are a lot of those gaps. Read something like [1], written by someone who's a doctor by trade, and you can see the hands-dirty philosopher is still out there. [1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
ThomPete 11y ago
The purpose of philosophy is to ask questions not provide answers. And so as long as there are phenomena to observe there are questions to ask and thus philosophy apply. I think a lot of the confusion about the need for philosophy stems from academia thinking about philosophy the way it does. Here you usually will critique some existing philosophers to provide a more concise thesis. However life does not happen in academia and so a lot gets lost when it's confined to the university world There is a world of difference between studying philosophy and then philosophizing. Just because you know the ins and outs of Kant, Nietzsche doe not mean you are a good philosophical thinker. The best thing that can happen for philosophy is to remove it from academia and put it back into it's rightful context. To question, ponder, explore phenomena and provide perspective no matter the subject.
deleted 11y ago
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Outdoorsman 11y ago
The best available evidence we (humans) have suggests that we're finite beings...and we don't much like the idea of that... The angst that accompanies knowing that what you were conscious of before your birth likely approximates what you will be conscious of following your death has driven thinkers to posit myriad explanations...none are completely testable, but the scientific postulates are at least open to the rigors of the scientific method, most notably peer review... If either science or philosophy must be subsumed, I'd rather it be philosophy... Personally, I prefer a life containing both...
peterashford 11y ago
The article is rubbish. Philosophy has answered many questions. Natural Philosophy (science) has now taken over the position of prime means of inquisition into the truth. There is still space left for Philosophy just less of it than there used to be, and don't forget than many people in Physics, Artificial Intelligence, Neuroscience are effectively doing Philosophy inside their disciplines. This isn't "the death of philosophy", this is philosophy having succeeded brilliantly. The sciences are offspring that any parent should be eminently proud of.

83 points by yk 11y ago

The author's conception of philosophy seems to be heavily biased towards Western analytic philosophy whose pretension towards logically underpinning sciences and reliance on formal methods means that is more of a theoretical computer science or physics. Plenty of Continental philosophy: post-structuralism, deconstruction, post-colonialism, and non-Western philosophy (such as decolonial thought) speaks to and about daily life.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
Maybe I'm just ignorant, but I don't see post-structuralism or deconstruction as having all that much to say about daily life. (Almost) nobody actually lives that way. That is, when you go out for a beer with your friends, you talk to them as if humans can actually communicate, and as if the message sent will be (approximately) the message received.
- VLM 11y ago
  WRT post-structuralism, consider the stereotypical interdepartmental procedure coordination meeting, not beer with buddies.
- steveklabnik 11y ago
  I go out for a beer with my friends and talk to them about post-structuralism. ;)
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    Sure. But you probably don't deconstruct what they say during the conversation (except for example or for entertainment).
    - steveklabnik 11y ago
      That's true. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't have an _impact_ on daily life. In other words, descontruction, specifically, is an analysis technique. The outcome of doing said analysis is separate from doing the analysis.
- nihils 11y ago
  This is a fair point, in the that conventional definition of post-structuralism as representation being bound to an interpretative context can be difficult see in daily life. However, such a view's application in Foucault's work I see manifest in my life all the time. For example, the concept of governmentality explains how we come to internalize the mandates of the state or capitalist power structure to say obey traffic laws (even when a cop is not there to observe and violating the law would not lead to harm). I should augment my list to say critical theory and Marxism as well. Such schools could explain a great deal about increasing income inequality, patent law, the insufficiency of 'nation' as a unit of analysis in a globalized economy...
thescribe 11y ago
I thought that continental philosophy was having the same if not a harder time staying relevant?
- maldusiecle 11y ago
  It depends who you ask. Anglo-American philosophy departments tend to stay pretty far away from it, but it has a decent-sized popular audience--and literary studies, art criticism, and related disciplines often draw pretty heavily from it.

jseliger 11y ago

Paul Graham's essay "How to do philosophy" complements this piece well: http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html. This: The second event was the placing of philosophy as one more discipline alongside these sciences within the modern research university. A result was that philosophy, previously the queen of the disciplines, was displaced, as the natural and social sciences divided the world between them. may also be a problem because the healthier parts of philosophy, concerning "Why?" or "How?", got turned into science. The less healthy parts got turned into philosophy.

jandrese 11y ago
This is a big factor IMHO. Philosophy is trying to live somewhere between science and theology and there just isn't much room there anymore. Worse, a lot of that space is filled with dubious areas of study or rat holes (example: Bertrand Russel's Principia Mathematica) so philosophers find themselves hemmed in at both sides.
ThomPete 11y ago
Yet philosophy is at the base of how we do science. The principles of falsification or Kuhns Paradigms are quite important in how we understand "the body of knowledge" that science helps us build. In my world philosophizing is not the same as being a philosopher. You can be an excellent philosophizer without having any degree and you can be a horrible one with all the degrees in the world.
throwupper247 11y ago
It wasn't displaced, it delegated|dispatched|forked and is having a hell of a time piecing the puzzle and getting rid of the excess.

zenogais 11y ago

There's a broad strand of discourse within philosophy on exactly the topic of its incorporation into the academy. Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, et al come immediately to mind. Quite a lack of research on the author's part to come to such a conclusion.

paulpauper 11y ago

I actually thing we're in a philosophy boom, with recent developments in quantum mechanics and the synthesis between the two subjects. There is a lot of research in this area, about quantum mechanics, thought experiments (Chinese room), turing tests, complexity/computational theory of mind (Bostrom simulation argument, singularity) and connection to free will and other philosophical concepts. Philosophy becoming more STEM-like.

Gibbon1 11y ago
We're in a period of recovery after philosophy went down a nihilistic post modern rat hole in the early twentieth century. Actually doing better than some other fields.
empath75 11y ago
A lot of cutting-edge computer science and math is intimately connected with the more abstract reaches of philosophy (category theory, etc).
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  You classify category theory as philosophy rather than math? Can you explain why?

anateus 11y ago

So rather than working at the edges of social and natural sciences, looking at the unknown and feeding back (perhaps not as much as it could), as western analytic philosophy does now, they seek a return to a time when a philosopher was prized for obscurantism and bon mots rather than an increase in clarity? So... they haven't heard of people like Slavoj Žižek? Is that what they want all of philosophy to be like?

gaius 11y ago
Zizek is to Nietzsche as Dan Brown is to Shakespeare.
- kossTKR 11y ago
  So you don't like Zizek. Thats fair. But comparing him to Nietche is not. He is a philosophy popularizer. He writes a lot about some of the greats, himself, like almost all other contempararies not being one himself. My impression is not that his academic writings are 'pop', in any way comparable to Dan Brown. I have only read a little but he has published. Some of it is essayistic in nature some of it quite heavy. I get your point. But just because your a not one of the absoulte greatest there ever was, it doesn't him instantly become a superficial literary con-artist the way dan brown has become to be regarded. Also he seems quite well read and a great analyzer. Not that i agree with all he says, but he is not trying to push agendas as other pop-philosophers are. A better example of some one being "Dan Brownish"would be sam harris. He is not respected in any way in the acedemia of philoshophy, he doesn't reference the history og the historiagrahy of the field, and simply doesnt seem on-level despite writing a lot of pop-philosophy and being regarded publicy as a true academic. Zizek is actually a respected academic.
- steveklabnik 11y ago
  Zizek has published a large amount of works that are taken very seriously. I don't like a lot of the things he says either, but calling him Dan Brown would only be true if Dan Brown was accepted as a serious scholar.
filoeleven 11y ago

stephenhess 11y ago

With the rise of scientific thinking, we're seeing a rapid increase in the number of folks who identify as agnostic or athiest [1]. This is natural given that the tenets of most major religions can't be tested or validated via experimental methods. The problem though is that absent these religious ideologies, we're left with a number of core questions that secular philosophy has been unable to answer convincingly. Namely: - Where does value stem from? What is good? What is bad? - What is the meaning or purpose of life? - Why is there something instead of nothing? What was the original cause? Was there one? - What happens after we die? This dovetails with a number of practical issues in today's world. (1) Lots of suicide and depression. There are 30 million prescriptions of Zoloft written in the United States. Many of these folks (I assume) aren't suffering some sort of pathological illness but find themselves looking at a world that appears to be devoid of meaning when these religious frameworks break down for them (i.e. nihilism) (2) Religious extremism that manifests in sectarian violence and war. Ultimately, secular thought (agnosticism and atheism included) is just an inferior product compared to religions. It doesn't provide out-of-the-box answers to these really hard questions and as a result can be a very scary and lonely ideology. Relevant point: I'd love to see academic philosophy working to shore up these areas and provide folks a better, clearer framework in which they can live meaningful, enjoyable lives that doesn't require a religious framework. http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/ http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religio...

empath75 11y ago
> Ultimately, secular thought (agnosticism and atheism included) is just an inferior product compared to religions. It doesn't provide out-of-the-box answers to these really hard questions and as a result can be a very scary and lonely ideology. I'm not sure that it's the job of philosophy to construct comforting fairy tales, if it actually is the case that life has no inherent meaning or purpose. At best, it can give you a guide to construct your own meaning.
- hsitz 11y ago
  Yes. To the question of why is the world here religion answers, "Because God created it." But no religion deals with the obvious follow up question, "Then who created God?" That question is not allowed in the religious framework. Science does not allow for such questions, either, but doesn't purport to answer the final question of why the world exists. So do we go with religion, invent God, and take satisfaction in child-like explanation of why the world exists? Or do we go with science and merely acknowledge the mystery of what we humans are unable to fully understand (i.e., the world).

VeilEm 11y ago

Philosophy is simply irrelevant. Discoveries in physical sciences lead to new technology or just to a better understanding of how the world works and how we fit in it. Research in social sciences, when the political courage exists to pursue it, can lead to better policy, and better lives for everyone. Philosophy just seems to be a bunch of circle jerking around esoteric terms and concepts with no trickle down benefits. If Philosophy departments around the world simply shutdown over night, would anyone notice? Would anyone be the worse of? Even in the long term? Probably not. Well maybe would be philosophy students would pursue more employable fields for their undergraduate study, increasing the labor pool and competition for jobs.

yarou 11y ago
Philosophy is irrelevant? That's really quite a bizarre statement to make. Philosophy is quite useful in defining AI (philosophy of mind) and quantum physics (philosophy of physics) to name a few. Your comment is beyond narrow minded and ignorant; I should seriously hope you don't hold such views.
- VeilEm 11y ago
  I most certainly do hold this as my view, and it's had zero negative impact. In fact only positive impact as I'm not spending time wasting on thinking for the sake of thinking. Philosophy is a mental trap that produces no value. One of my favorite books is Candide. The book ends with Candide tending to his garden. This is how I live my life. It works pretty well. How many modern philosophers use their knowledge to live good lives and improve the lives of others?
  - randomguyatwork 11y ago
    I would argue that philosophy isn't a choice, if ones mind works philosophically, one will think about philosophy. As an armchair philosopher, I'd say my ideas have helped my live my life in a more positive way, and has helped me to expose others to ideas that can be fun to think about and helpful for dealing with various life situations.
  - 11y ago

VLM 11y ago

WRT becoming smart as per the article rather than good, one point missed in the article is living in the university system means devotion and belief in the class pyramid at the predefined authoritarian apex angle and all that. You can be whatever you want when you're an individual, but when your identity as a philosopher is as a cog in the hierarchical machine, you and your ideas must be strictly limited to fit a cog shaped hole at a precise level, not too high so as to threaten those in positions above you, not too low as to be inadequate.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tyre 11y ago

As a philosophy major turned engineer turned CEO, I agree with the article about the fall of philosophy in academia. As my concentration advisor half-joked in one of our first courses, "you are majoring in mental mabation." However, I do not agree that philosophy has been entirely relegated to universities. Thought many of those who self-identify as philosophers reside in academia, not everyone who _behaves_ as a philosopher resides there. Philosophy literally translates from the Greek to lover of wisdom. Those who pursue knowledge and understanding, regardless of title, are philosophers. In fact, many of the non-technical articles on HN are philosophical. Asking how to build a company culture or what it means to be successful in the context of a startup are both philosophical inquiries. Balancing the tradeoff between competing interests (e.g. financial vs. mission-driven, personal gain versus organizational gain) come down to questions your values, questioning "what is good". There are few questions as emblematic of philosophy.

habitue 11y ago

> Before its migration to the university, philosophy had never had a central home. Philosophers could be found anywhere — serving as diplomats, living off pensions, grinding lenses, as well as within a university. I think we've come back to this. While philosophy in the academy might be navel-gazing and disconnected, blogs and regular people talk about philosophy all the time. Philosophy is something we engage in before we've fully wrapped our heads around a problem, or know how to test it or formalize it. It's all the gaps between formal logical reasoning and science, and there are a lot of those gaps. Read something like [1], written by someone who's a doctor by trade, and you can see the hands-dirty philosopher is still out there. [1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

ThomPete 11y ago

The purpose of philosophy is to ask questions not provide answers. And so as long as there are phenomena to observe there are questions to ask and thus philosophy apply. I think a lot of the confusion about the need for philosophy stems from academia thinking about philosophy the way it does. Here you usually will critique some existing philosophers to provide a more concise thesis. However life does not happen in academia and so a lot gets lost when it's confined to the university world There is a world of difference between studying philosophy and then philosophizing. Just because you know the ins and outs of Kant, Nietzsche doe not mean you are a good philosophical thinker. The best thing that can happen for philosophy is to remove it from academia and put it back into it's rightful context. To question, ponder, explore phenomena and provide perspective no matter the subject.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Outdoorsman 11y ago

The best available evidence we (humans) have suggests that we're finite beings...and we don't much like the idea of that... The angst that accompanies knowing that what you were conscious of before your birth likely approximates what you will be conscious of following your death has driven thinkers to posit myriad explanations...none are completely testable, but the scientific postulates are at least open to the rigors of the scientific method, most notably peer review... If either science or philosophy must be subsumed, I'd rather it be philosophy... Personally, I prefer a life containing both...

peterashford 11y ago

The article is rubbish. Philosophy has answered many questions. Natural Philosophy (science) has now taken over the position of prime means of inquisition into the truth. There is still space left for Philosophy just less of it than there used to be, and don't forget than many people in Physics, Artificial Intelligence, Neuroscience are effectively doing Philosophy inside their disciplines. This isn't "the death of philosophy", this is philosophy having succeeded brilliantly. The sciences are offspring that any parent should be eminently proud of.