Tyler Cowen's post is a short read, little more than a coattail-riding list of "breakthroughs in our philosophic understanding of the world" (and an idiosyncrat

Tyler Cowen's post is a short read, little more than a coattail-riding list of "breakthroughs in our philosophic understanding of the world" (and an idiosyncratic one at that: "12. Singapore..."?), with their attribution to philosophy justified with the platitude that anyone doing anything in these fields is doing philosophy. One question this approach raises, but does not answer, is whether the continued existence of academic philosophy as an independent discipline is justified, and that is the question Callard is attempting to address. In attempting to distance herself from Cowen's justification-by-significant-exports, Callard stresses internal measures of progress in philosophy, that inadvertently give the impression that the field is somewhat self-referential. Callard does better, I think, when she proposes an alternative "export" to those in Cowen's list: the habit of critical and disciplined thinking about real-world issues that are never going to be settled once and for all - predominantly in the realm of moral philosophy, I assume (I hope this is not a misrepresentation or trivialization of Callard's point.) The ancients' relevance is that they got the ball rolling, and each generation could do a lot worse than beginning its debate over these issues by following in their footsteps.