(March 20, 2018 at 7:01 am)Mathilda Wrote: So can or should philosophy continue to exist as a field in its own right or should it be restricted to be part of the scientific process? What's the practical use of pure philosophy when it is not part of the scientific process? Other than, that is, it's use as a form of mental exercise.
I think you are making a straw man, drastically oversimplifying and misrepresenting philosophy as a whole. For one, philosophy is divided into many various fields, each of which has specific goals. It also has direct relevance in a number of other important fields. Second, the questions posed by philosophy are typically well-conceived and directly relevant to our understanding of truth itself. Third, the main "practical use" of philosophy lies in its rigid, systematic use of the self-evident rules of logical inference, without which it would be impossible to think correctly or even make sense of reality. Yes, scientists are quite capable of reasoning logically and applying logic to their findings, but in my personal experience, people with training in philosophy proper are somewhat better at identifying critical problems with fundamental assumptions and logical impossibilities in other fields. Fourth, many scientific sub-fields (i.e. theoretical physics) are not particularly "practical," but we value them because we ultimately value knowledge. It seems reasonable to value philosophy for its own strengths and ability to inform us of certain things that perhaps empiricism cannot.
