Does pondering about philosophy actually accomplish anything?

[CleanShavenJesus]

Does pondering about philosophy actually accomplish anything?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I love asking big questions, but so often the big questions in philosophy are impossible to actually answer and don't seem to lead to much. And regardless of the answer, does it actually change anything? Has breakthroughs in philosophy done anything for the world, or is it just for ourselves and ourselves alone?

[LastPoet]

Philosophy is a tool to obtain knowledge, but its not knowledge itself. The dogmatic tend to forget that.

[Whateverist]

Does pondering about philosophy actually accomplish anything?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I love asking big questions, but so often the big questions in philosophy are impossible to actually answer and don't seem to lead to much. And regardless of the answer, does it actually change anything? Has breakthroughs in philosophy done anything for the world, or is it just for ourselves and ourselves alone?

In one sense every science is a spin-off of philosophy. When a set of questions is poorly understood and no sure pathway to an answer is known, then it is in the domain of philosophy. Once the body of knowledge and an accepted set of procedures established for answering such questions has been settled on, it becomes its own field of study.

So philosophy is for those who like being in on the ground floor of hard questions. Of course some of those questions will strike some as much ado about nothing, and sometimes they will be right.

[Angrboda]

Answer: Karl Popper and falsifiability.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

[jstrodel]

I think it is a tool for clarifying language, which makes a big difference but actually doesn't really yield a lot of certain conclusions.

Certainty is only required in very small parts of life though to make adequate decisions.