> The pervasive modern belief is that philosophy is mostly meaningless word-games that can be dismissed, and science should be the basis of everything. But coll

> The pervasive modern belief is that philosophy is mostly meaningless word-games that can be dismissed, and science should be the basis of everything. But collecting more observations of reality does not help answer these questions. Furthermore, without knowledge of the implications of certain answers, you easily wind up advocating positions that don't actually hold up. (E.g., many people think neuroscience has disproved the existence of consciousness, when all it has proved is that consciousness is closely related to the brain). One thing I will add to your commentary on science and philosophy is that more recently (the last 30-50 years, especially), several sub-fields of evolutionary biology like evolutionary psychology and sociobiology have begun to fundamentally unlock new ideas about why humans behave in ways they do and why and how we created many aspects of our culture, philosophy, and sense of being (consciousness included). This overlaps significantly with what philosophers have been discussing for millennia, but now we have many more scientific tools to help understand some fundamental questions. These are complementary disciplines for understanding our existence.