[Serious] Generally speaking, is philosophy a worthwhile subject of study?

[vulcanlogician]

But even aside from being food for the mind, I think philosophy has knowledge value. Let's say an ethicist is examining arguments for Divine Command Theory, and comes to realize none of the arguments she's seen is satisfactory. Well, maybe there is some argument "out there" that really makes a case for DCT, unknown to the ethicist -- and so, arguably, no knowledge was gained in her analysis. But yet, I think the ethicist has gained some knowledge by plotting out the negative space and ruling certain things out. Can't we say that a person who has investigated something and ruled out a few possibilities has gained knowledge of a sort?

I would not call this knowledge. It is a refinement of her opinion.

Why not?

Isn't eliminating the false what leads to genuine progress in science? Isn't that why we want falsifiable hypotheses? Because, if we falsify it, we will have learned something? We will have gained knowledge... A lot of what Galileo did was disprove the old theory. And in doing so, he increased our knowledge. Doesn't disproving a widely accepted theory get you a Nobel Prize? THAT'S eliminating something.

I know that the case for divine command theory is weak. Before I read Euthyphro, I thought, sure, maybe without God, there can be no actual morality. After having read it, I'm convinced that God's existence or nonexistence simply cannot have anything to do with objective morality. Have I not learned something in seeing that DCT can be ruled out? Don't I now know something that I didn't know before? Sure, I haven't solved all ethics, but by knowing that A isn't true, now I can say "It's either B,C,D or E."

So the question is whether myth and literature (and, for that matter art and music) give *knowledge*. I don't think that they do. They help us refine our opinions. But because they cannot truly be tested, there is no real way to eliminate falsehoods. And that means there are no actual truth values and hence no actual knowledge.

This does NOT mean that the discussion isn't valuable. Art, music, literature, and philosophy are good subjects of discussion and are part of a meaningful education. But they are not knowledge-based subjects.

This is its own thread.