What's the point of philosophy any more?

[The Grand Nudger]

The religious don't know why they believe silly shit..a philosopher can at least explain why he believes silly shit. 

[I_am_not_mafia]

So Vulcanlogic, your view is philosophy is a form of blue sky research that might well eventually be applied and be useful even if we don't yet see a need for it yet. I'm not disagreeing, and it's great if true. I will have to take your word for that though as I don't genuinely know enough about what pure  philosophers get up to. I fully appreciate the potential usefulness of blue sky research though. I do it myself. But I also know that I am doing it so that eventually I will come up with something useful (still waiting for that to happen). I also appreciate that often you can't go straight for creating a new technology without increasing your understanding first. It's like Queen Victoria telling her best scientists to invent television. They wouldn't know that they needed to research electro-magnetism first. I suppose I'm just slightly cynical that what pure Philosophers get up to (especially after a few ) really could ever be applied in the same way that John Locke's work could be.

I remember many years ago listening to a PhD student argue that vegetarians should not play video games. Everybody in the audience was sort of dumbfounded and you could see that they weren't convinced in the slightest. I eventually stuck my hand up and said that video game sprites did not have the capacity to suffer and the philosophy student couldn't really answer that. But despite that I think it was actually a worthwhile thing to investigate. There are so many different areas that would need to be drawn together in order to answer the question that no single scientist is likely to ever concern themselves with the question. For example, neuroscience, psychology, sociology, anthropology, AI, computer science, politics etc. If the field of philosophy worked in this way then I would be a great fan. I certainly appreciate reading a paper written by someone with a philosophical bent that does properly understand the fields that the issue touches upon.

When I refer to science, I actually mean any body of knowledge about the nature of reality and the world that we live in gleaned through empirical study and the scientific method, rather than just the traditional natural sciences. So when I suggest that philosophy should be relevant in this way, I'm actually suggesting that it should be grounded in reality.

Searching for current hot topics in philosophy I come across Top Ten philosophical issues of the 21st Century. These look worthwhile investigating. I can see how it can be useful, although admittedly I'm struggling to see how the mind-body problem is interesting. But is it really ever going to be useful discussing Abstract objects for example? So much of the time I see philosophical issues stem from the underlying choice of definition and people arguing about what does and does not fit the definition. Definitions are generally context dependent.

My perception has often been of philosophers arguing amongst themselves and never coming to a conclusion because whatever anyone decides can't be verified. If the issue doesn't originally stem from what we learn from reality then how are we ever going to apply our reasoning back to it?

[notimportant1234]

The first thing that comes to mind in wich philosophy plays an important role it's politics , there isn't much that science can do to improve it at the moment. You could say that historians can do a proper analysis of the past in order to see were we did wrong and go for there but you will still need a philosopher to draw conclusions and maybe think of a better system .

It can be argued that psychology can be used to improve politics wich is recognized as a science( but is it ?).Psychology may have parted away from philosophy but that doesn't mean it is a well established field, more like 50 - 50 , maybe more for philosophy , even if you take into account neuroscience the lines are stil blury. The field isn't unified, it is hard to draw conclusions from the results of a research, it does research like "10 things that might make you a dick-slaper" when it hasn't even covered the basics.

Mainly when it comes to the human mind( brain) and human interaction philosophy still plays a very important part.
Edit: It is so unstable that Robert Epstein wich has a PhD in psychology after some research sayed that we may all be bisexual ,a thing that Freud sayed that 100 years ago and it was refuted ,may come in to play again.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I have often ranted about philosophy in the past, more so about people who think that they are doing philosophy because they string along some arbitrary premises to reach a specific conclusion without ever applying it to the real world.

What makes something 'real'?

[polymath257]

I see philosophy, best, as providing an investigation into different possibilities and ideas that may not have been considered or are not currently testable. It can be a refined consideration of what we mean by various concepts and an attempt to makes sense of the varied uses of words. By presenting thought experiments, it helps us to hone our intuitions and our ideas.

But, at worst, philosophy becomes dogmatic and insists that a particular viewpoint is the *only* viewpoint. In almost every case where that has happened, philosophy has been wrong. For example, Kant considered Euclidean geometry to be a priori. We know that is nowhere close to being the case.

[Silver]

One could say that philosophy is the illusion of knowledge.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's the ground floor in the funhouse...at least, and everything contained therein may not be entirely true but you'll have no way of telling up from down once you're in it....lol. 

[Brian37]

I think philosophy was useful in antiquity, and it is still important to know as far as history, but scientific method has surpassed it.

[polymath257]

I think philosophy was useful in antiquity, and it is still important to know as far as history, but scientific method has surpassed it.

Not completely true. For example, ethics is a subject that is still primarily philosophical. And it is a useful and important subject.

[Brian37]

I think philosophy was useful in antiquity, and it is still important to know as far as history, but scientific method has surpassed it.

Not completely true. For example, ethics is a subject that is still primarily philosophical. And it is a useful and important subject.

In what context? As far as social interaction outside a lab sure, but as far as finding answers to scientific fact, observation, data collecting, control groups and peer review are still the top tool.

Psychology, psychiatry and neurology are the best way to study how humans behave.