Is philosophy dead?

[Mechaghostman2]

Has science killed the usefulness of philosophy, or is science itself a philosophy? 

People like Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and even Richard Dawkins tend to think the former, where as philosophers gravitate towards the latter. Philosophy doesn't make progress, this is why Sam Harris went into neuroscience after philosophy, because he got tired of philosophers waiting for the scientists to learn about the human brain. One could even try to use science to create ethics as Harris is trying to do, though some could argue that doing such is philosophy.

[robvalue]

Personally, I see philosophy as the map and science as the tool to find the most efficient path once you've decided where you want to go. Science can only tell you what is, it can't tell you what ought to be. I know Sam Harris hates that (from what I remember) but it doesn't stop it being the case. I don't find his arguments persuasive on this matter. He just appears to shoe-horn in a load of prepacked philosophy and then not call it philosophy.

So no, I think philosophy is alive and well. If you call the kind of thing I'm thinking about philosophy.

[Alex K]

It's not a decision between philosophy or science. I dare you to make an interesting scientific statement without making philosophical assumptions at the same time.

[robvalue]

Right.

Informally, I think of science as dealing with the real, and philosophy dealing with the abstract. We necessarily use abstract concepts all the time when modelling reality, so that builds philosophy right into it.

Of course, philosophy is often thought of as just discussing the "meaning" of things and so on. I don't know if it's a really-well defined term or not.

And like Alex says, you're making philosophical assumptions all the time, like "there is an external reality" and "logic works a certain way" and so on, before you even get into "killing is bad".

[Faith No More]

When those scientists talk about philosophy being dead, I don't think they mean that philosophy itself is useless. Like Quantum said, science requires philosophical assumptions, and any scientist worth a grain of salt knows that. What they mean when they say philosophy is dead is that philosophers fail to keep up with the latest scientific findings and adjust their theories accordingly. When was the last time you heard someone pontificating about a soul reference the latest neuroscientific findings?

So, it's not really that philosophy is dead. It's that philosophers themselves have left it dying.

[LastPoet]

What happens when people like WLC calls themselves "philosophers" only to gain credibility to the already gullible masses? Philosophy spawned a daughter, much like her, but better, called science. Yet, Philosophy has been made an unwilling whore by another daughter, called religion.

So there is the distinction, shall we find out more about the reality, or pretend that there is a conforting blanket anywhere?

[The Valkyrie]

Dead? No.

Seriouslyinjured and in need of a long rest and recuperation.

[Marsellus Wallace]

For practical people in a practical world, yes.

[Alex K]

When those scientists talk about philosophy being dead, I don't think they mean that philosophy itself is useless. Like Quantum said, science requires philosophical assumptions, and any scientist worth a grain of salt knows that. What they mean when they say philosophy is dead is that philosophers fail to keep up with the latest scientific findings and adjust their theories accordingly. When was the last time you heard someone pontificating about a soul reference the latest neuroscientific findings?

So, it's not really that philosophy is dead. It's that philosophers themselves have left it dying.

I've said it before. Often when I hear philosophers of science talk about my specialty of quantum field theory and particles, I want to throw things. Many of them don't understand the theory properly (it is damn hard!) and that leads to embarrassing results.

[bennyboy]

I think when scientists talk about philosophy being dead, it means they don't want to bother with philosophical challenges to science which are outside their domain. Or, to be blunt, they do not want to accept that anything IS outside the domain of science, though many things very clearly are.

There are, to them, three kinds of questions: those which are scientific in nature, those which through redefinition of terms can be pretended to be scientific in nature, and those which are stupid questions not worth asking or answering. You know-- things like why there is existence rather than a lack of it, or what beauty is, or goodness, or even life. Things like how we should best live out our short lives. Useless shit like that.