What's the point of philosophy any more?

[I_am_not_mafia]

Well, the 'feel' seems to be a combination of the information and the emotional response to that information. The emotional response is the 'flavor'. And it seems pretty clear why the flavor was added from an evolutionary viewpoint: in makes it easier to remember and recall. It also makes it easier to act on in emergencies.

Some working on creating artificial consciousness think that it isn't possible without also creating emotions. Marvin Minsky was of the opinion that emotions are a way of arbitrating between different competing needs when you only have one body. Models seem to suggest that this is at least one function of emotions. Others being as you have pointed out, adding salience to memories and narrowing the range of responses for particular situations such as emergencies when a fully cognitive response is too slow.

The example I like to use is a rabbit eating grass in the sunshine suddenly hearing something that could be a predator. It's happy, therefore it's continuing its current behaviour because its brain has settled into a very stable state. But the noise acts as a form of disturbance injecting energy into the system, driving it out of a stable state to seek a new one. Nor does it want to be distracted by more grass, it needs safety so its range of responses is narrowed until it runs into a burrow where it can feel safe and more settled again. The neuromodulators released upon hearing the predator have a long lasting effect so it does not need to continue hearing or seeing it in order to be motivated to continue running home.

Point is that both consciousness and emotions provide useful functionality but people don't generally think in these terms, they're just aware their brain acting the way it does and wonder about its nature without understanding that it is emergent phenomena.

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For example, we do great brain science by studying organic chemistry, using various electromagnetic frequencies to see what neurons are doing, etc.  But I will always slam on the brakes when someone insists that it's known that "the mind is only brain function," or even worse, "the mind is only information processing."

But you have never once given any evidence that there is anything more to the mind than the workings of the brain. All the evidence we have from neurodegenerative diseases, brain lesions and neuroscience suggest there is indeed nothing more.

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Philosophers ask important questions about justice and ethics. You have benefitted from this, whether you would admit it or not. Do you think we've solved all the problems of human justice? If not, then philosophers still have an important place in our society. Here is a link to a Wikipedia article on an important piece of philosophy. I dare you to call it speculation. Just remember that this particular work was controversial in its day, and needed to be argued for. People weren't sure of its validity. Do you think we've reached a point in human understanding where we no longer need to question our own assumptions? Hundreds of millions die of starvation in this world, yet other well-fed people elsewhere in the world are never educated their entire lives and do nothing but toil away in factories. Do you think we've figured out justice?

I don't think that anyone is denying that philosophy hasn't been useful in the past but it has been crowded out by experts in many other fields. There are plenty of people working on these problems that do not call themselves philosophers who also benefit from evidence and real-world experience. John Locke's essay was published in 1689. Times have moved on yet I am not sure that philosophy has. Are any of the problems you list above likely to be solved by philosophers, or by experts in the relevant fields?

I'm not saying that it isn't possible, but what would a philosopher have to do to solve these problems?