(March 27, 2018 at 10:33 am)Khemikal Wrote: Seems legit. What's an example of the set being compared against her example, though? Let's posit she's in a set with others we'll call "the good ones™". Who's in the other set?
It's more that I'd put her in her in the set of "useful ones". Philosophy is not alone in this. Say after developing his theory of special relativity that Einstein did not bother to publish because he enjoyed being a patent clerk in Switzerland and only did the science for his own pleasure in the same way that others solve crossword puzzles. Then as far as the rest of us would be concerned he might as well might not have bothered. Scientists stand on the shoulders of giants and the work that we all do must be relevant to the literature and must be published so others can decide if they want to act on it. Otherwise why bother? It becomes a wasted effort. That is how science progresses and this is why it is focused on results.
The same applies to non-scientific fields as well in their own way. No matter how blue sky or abstract the intellectual endeavour, it ultimately needs the potential to be useful. And for this to be the case it needs to stay relevant to the problems that everyone else is working on. And for that to happen it needs to be performed alongside the other pursuits. There is still a need for philosophy, but it's now the specialists who are doing it and making it part of their process to the extent that even the word 'philosophy' has become a mere byword for taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture of what is currently happening in your field, where it should go and whether we can draw any conclusions from it.
As far as I can see, the majority of philosophy is no longer being carried out by dedicated philosophers.
