The problem with philosophy is that science has crowded out most of the good stuff. Who cares about a philosophy of chemical reactions when we have chemistry? Philosophy is useful around issues which don’t admit to empirical study, or for which study yields inconclusive results. In the words of Feynman, “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.”
Unfortunately instead of sticking to ethics, morality, and other hazy constructs, too often philosophers think they have something useful to say about everything. The result is a lot of bloviation and self-satisfaction with very little substance.
Hence the “boil it down to a single page” issue.
Edit: My biggest problem with philosophy is that I can imagine a sufficiently advanced civilization which has testable answers to the questions posed by philosophy. I distrust a field of study which proposes to produce something which amounts to a placeholder until scientists do the real, hard work. To go back to my initial example, the philosophy of chemistry became a pointless endeavor with the death of alchemy, and the birth of chemistry.
I've always been curious how philosophy ended up with such a bad rap here. My pet theory is that a lot of the "philosophy" that comes onto the popular radar is terrible (and imo barely philosophy at all -- but that may be a No True Scotsman).
> I distrust a field of study which proposes to produce something which amounts to a placeholder until scientists do the real, hard work.
This is one of the more common criticisms, motivated (as far as I can tell) by some idea that philosophers are stubborn in the face of empirical evidence. This has not been my experience -- almost all working philosophers understand well the scope of their arguments, and most limit themselves along the lines of: "if the evidence bears out X, then Y...". They don't attempt to claim what is true while we wait for the evidence to prove it, but rather to point out what things cannot be true (due to logical inconsistency), and to clarify what concepts are the most useful to talk about in the meantime (in terms of expressive power).
To me, it's a bit like pure math: you can build some interesting structure and prove some facts about it, and while that structure may not be useful in explaining anything about the natural world, the facts you proved about the structure itself are still true regardless. Likewise, the evidence may not bear out, say, Libertarian conceptions of free will -- but if they should, Robert Kane has done some good work determining what else is necessarily true, and what implications this might have for some of the "other hazy constructs". (He's proven some facts about that structure)
> Unfortunately instead of sticking to ethics, morality, and other hazy constructs, too often philosophers think they have something useful to say about everything.
They do have something useful to say about people who, due to not having studied philosophy of science, think science has something useful to say about everything. Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape is one notable recent example.
Are you saying that you believe Richard Feynman didn’t have a working grasp of the issues at hand? Or are you saying that “philosophers of science” don’t know anything about the science they philosophize about? I’d guess that Feynman was more familiar with the philosophy of science, than the philosophers were with path integral formulations.
As for science, it’s a method, and it can be applied to anything. What it says may often be, “don’t know” which imo is better than 100 pages saying “don’t know, but I’ll give it a go anyway, because no one can prove me wrong yet.”
> Are you saying that you believe Richard Feynman didn’t have a working grasp of the issues at hand? Or are you saying that “philosophers of science” don’t know anything about the science they philosophize about?
I'm saying that understanding things like what the scientific method can and can't do is useful to a scientist because, if they don't understand the distinction, they might try to use the scientific method to prove something it cannot.
> As for science, it’s a method, and it can be applied to anything. What it says may often be, “don’t know” which imo is better than 100 pages saying “don’t know, but I’ll give it a go anyway, because no one can prove me wrong yet.”
While you might try to apply the scientific method to anything, that doesn't mean it is useful for everything. For example, if something isn't replicable, then the scientific method cannot help you. You cannot scientifically prove what effect the Battle of Hastings had on Britain.
I can’t prove that, but could a sufficiently powerful AI prove it? Probably. The open questions for philosophy are a function of our present limitations, and as those limitations are overcome, the space for philosophy shrinks. I don’t think it says much that’s good about a field of study for which the major criteria is untestability and immunity from definitive critique.
I don't think that's a very accurate view of the field. If modern analytical philosophy values anything, it's logic (especially the formal variety), and I can think of at least a few dominant views in the last few decades that were felled by someone pointing out a bug in the underlying logic.
I don't think the philosophical questions are functions of our present limitations either. Imagine knowing everything about all people, and complete God-like power. Do you maximize utility? Do you equalize utility? Do you maximin? Do you ignore utility entirely, and move on some other criteria? You might have all the "is", but the "ought" is still an important question (and, importantly, not a relative one! Despite not being empirical) [1]
> The open questions for philosophy are a function of our present limitations, and as those limitations are overcome, the space for philosophy shrinks. I don’t think it says much that’s good about a field of study for which the major criteria is untestability and immunity from definitive critique.
I'd agree that there are sections of the philsophic community that rely on that immunity. But other parts of the philosophy community perform an important role of teaching the philosophic foundations on which things like the scientific method are built. This is an important fight on which the effective practice of science itself depends.
Corporations and governments increasingly try to manipulate the scientific community for their own ends, giving rise to scientism. Consider stories like this: http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4737
Furthermore, philosophy teaches people how to think critically and how to express themselves accurately and unambiguously, to challenge the prevailing beliefs around them. I think philosophy is far from a pointless old field that needs to shut up shop. In fact, I think societies would benefit if more people studied philosophy and at a younger age.
The problem with philosophy is that science has crowded out most of the good stuff. Who cares about a philosophy of chemical reactions when we have chemistry? Philosophy is useful around issues which don’t admit to empirical study, or for which study yields inconclusive results. In the words of Feynman, “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.”
Unfortunately instead of sticking to ethics, morality, and other hazy constructs, too often philosophers think they have something useful to say about everything. The result is a lot of bloviation and self-satisfaction with very little substance.
Hence the “boil it down to a single page” issue.
Edit: My biggest problem with philosophy is that I can imagine a sufficiently advanced civilization which has testable answers to the questions posed by philosophy. I distrust a field of study which proposes to produce something which amounts to a placeholder until scientists do the real, hard work. To go back to my initial example, the philosophy of chemistry became a pointless endeavor with the death of alchemy, and the birth of chemistry.