In the spirit of Popper and Deutsch, I’d argue that philosophy makes progress in the same way all branches of knowledge do: filtering out bad ideas. The Popper

In the spirit of Popper and Deutsch, I’d argue that philosophy makes progress in the same way all branches of knowledge do: filtering out bad ideas. The Popperian notion of scientific progress as an evolutionary process of conjectures and refutations applies just as well to philosophy. Philosophy gives us the tools to stamp out bad ideas and let the better ones rise to the surface. (Better ~= survive refutation longer). Without being able to run an experiment on a philosophical conjecture in most cases, however, it is much more difficult to refute a purely philosophical conjecture than a scientific one. But many old philosophical ideas have been refuted on the basis of logical inconsistency or bad premises. So I’d expect the kinds of philosophical ideas we debate today have a higher proportion of truth than what was debated 500+ years ago.