Philosophy finds application as cover for religious apologetics to make it seem more intellectually respectable than it otherwise might. I don't see many other areas where philosophy has an impact outside academia.
It finds application for atheists making arguments against religion as well. It finds application in defenses of free will. Scientists seem to subscribe to a Popperian falsifiability. Logic, part of philosophy, has found widespread use, as I'm sure you know.
What are you expecting exactly? Most people aren't going to have a massive effect on the world, whether in philosophy or not. Philosophy is far from the only academic discipline in which most practitioners don't have a significant impact on the world.
I don't know -- something. And it's not about the individuals, it's about the field as a whole. Classical music is not something I particularly enjoy, but I get that some people do, and so the efforts of all the composers and conductors and musicians who produce it have value for that audience. I can appreciate that even if I don't particularly care for the music myself. Likewise for Domino's pizza. Nascar. Cricket. Truck pulls. Rodeos. I don't get it, but I get that some people do.
Philosophy seems to have no audience beyond its own practitioners. That puts it on a par with things like yoga and homeopathy, and does not justify having entire departments at universities studying it.
God help us, it turns out that you can actually get a Ph.D. in both fields:
Wait, I'm sorry - philosophy has no audience beyond its own practitioners? Just look at all the people interested in philosophy in this thread. I'm willing to bet a large sum of money that the majority of people who have implicitly expressed interest in philosophy here are not practicing philosophers. I'm quite surprised by your reference to music; music is something I usually bring up when people tell me that philosophy is useless.
You yourself like Dennett's work, don't you? I know you think that most philosophers haven't produced anything that interesting to you, but I think it's often the case that impact is Pareto-distributed across practitioners of a discipline, certainly not unique to philosophy. Like, I imagine a lot of people are only interested in a select few musicians/bands.
> Wait, I'm sorry - philosophy has no audience beyond its own practitioners? Just look at all the people interested in philosophy in this thread. I'm willing to bet a large sum of money that the majority of people who have implicitly expressed interest in philosophy here are not practicing philosophers.
That depends on how you define "practicing philosophers". The vast majority of people who do yoga are not yoga masters. But no one gets value from watching yoga. The only value in yoga is doing it. This is not true for e.g. music. You can get value from passively listening to someone else play an instrument. It's not necessary for you to to it yourself.
I would claim that the vast majority of people participating in this thread fancy themselves armchair philosophers. It is indeed fun to argue about this stuff. But that doesn't justify paying anyone to do it as a profession.
> You yourself like Dennett's work, don't you?
I've already said that Dennett is a notable exception, and one of the things that sets him apart is that he bases his work in science more than what is traditionally called "philosophy". He's more like a massage therapist than a yoga instructor.
I mean, there are plenty of people who read philosophy and enjoy it but don't publish papers in philosophy conferences or journals, discuss topics with academic philosophers, etc. Reading a work of philosophy without writing a work of philosophy is something that a lot of people do and enjoy.
I'm sure there are some people who do. But books for popular audiences like Consciousness Explained are taken seriously by philosophers too. I don't see why there's any relevant difference between philosophy and music here.
Fine, I'll just pick some random books: Feyerabend's Against Method, Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Nietzsche's The Antichrist, Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, Descartes's Meditations, Spinoza's Ethics, Plato's dialogues, I could go on and on. Maybe you don't like all of these, but there are plenty of people who read these for fun, and all of them are taken seriously by philosophers.
> there are plenty of people who read these for fun
I really doubt that. I think you'd find it quite challenging to find people who have read these books who do not also enjoy engaging in philosophical debates.
But given the effort it would take to test this I think we should just agree to disagree.
>who do not also enjoy engaging in philosophical debates.
Philosophical debates as in talking with other random people about philosophy? Sure, I'm sure most people who have read these books enjoy that. But that's not doing philosophy---such conversations are usually going to be riddled with errors and just not up to par for academic philosophical discussion.
I think we've gone so far down the rabbit hole about why the discipline of philosophy isn't justified that I've nearly forgotten why this current discussion is that relevant. Plenty of people enjoy philosophy, and it's something that humans have been discussing in a rigorous way for thousands of years. Somehow this isn't good enough? I really just don't see why music somehow meets the bar as being enjoyable enough for enough people, but philosophy doesn't. You don't have to be a musician to enjoy musician, and you don't have to be a philosopher to enjoy philosophy. "Oh, well, the people who do enjoy philosophy probably enjoy philosophical debates, so they're basically philosophers!" I mean, isn't this like me saying, "The people who enjoy music probably enjoy humming or singing tunes, so they're basically musicians!" The distinction seems to be getting continually more and more contrived.
> something that humans have been discussing in a rigorous way for thousands of years
That's my point: most philosophy is not rigorous. It might have a veneer of rigor but most of it is nonsense because it starts with false premises. Garbage in, garbage out.
I don't think it's silly to study either one. What I think is silly is the idea that philosophy is an intellectually rigorous field, that its practitioners generally deserve to be held in high regard, that it makes sense to have departments of philosophy in universities. This was not always true, I think it has become true gradually over the course of the last 100 years or so. I think that science has subsumed philosophy in exactly the same way that chemistry subsumed alchemy and astronomy subsumed astrology.
We were originally talking about how many people who weren't philosophers enjoyed philosophy---what happened to that?
But whatever, we can set that aside if you'd like, I'm kind of curious to hear - what do you think was lost in the last 100 years ago? I'm a bit surprised to hear that, I would have thought you would say that we got more rather than less rigorous post-Frege. What do you think of philosophers today who specialize in studying the history of philosophy today, or philosophers who specialize in specific periods of pre-20th century philosophy (ancient philosophy, medieval philosophy, etc.)? Or specific pre-20th century philosophy?
And I have to ask, since you're a big fan of Popper---what do you think about Kuhn and Feyerabend? Quine (particularly the Duhem-Quine thesis)? Post-Popperian philosophy of science in general? All just nonsense?
(You don't have to address every question if you'd rather not take the time.)
> how many people who weren't philosophers enjoyed philosophy
No, we were talking about (or at least I was talking about) how many people get value out of philosophy who don't practice it, at least as amateurs. Is philosophy like music or is it like yoga? I'm on team yoga.
> what do you think was lost in the last 100 years ago?
It's not what was lost, it's what was gained. And what was gained is major breakthroughs in areas of science that allows science to answer questions that were traditionally the purview of philosophy. These include evolution, molecular biology, the theory of computation, quantum mechanics, and neuroscience.
> what do you think about Kuhn and Feyerabend?
I don't know much about Kuhn. I read "Against Method" a long time ago and it seemed like total nonsense to me at the time, one of the things that convinced me that philosophy as an area of intellectual inquiry was bankrupt.
> Duhem-Quine thesis
Yes, I think this is pretty self-evidently true. A finite amount of data, which is all we can ever have, will always be consistent with an infinite number of theories.
> (You don't have to address every question if you'd rather not take the time.)
I'm actually finding our exchange very interesting and worthwhile. You're keeping me on my toes.
>No, we were talking about (or at least I was talking about) how many people get value out of philosophy who don't practice it, at least as amateurs. Is philosophy like music or is it like yoga? I'm on team yoga.
Well, I've said that there are plenty of people who don't practice philosophy who enjoy books of philosophy taken seriously by philosophers. You responded that these people enjoy discussing philosophy, the implication being that these people are practicing philosophy. And I responded in turn that these people are no more practicing philosophers than people humming tunes are practicing musicians---so it's not clear what the relevant distinction between music and philosophy is supposed to be with respect to its enjoyability beyond practitioners of the discipline.
>It's not what was lost, it's what was gained. And what was gained is major breakthroughs in areas of science that allows science to answer questions that were traditionally the purview of philosophy. These include evolution, molecular biology, the theory of computation, quantum mechanics, and neuroscience.
How much of Plato's dialogues do you think were about these things? I don't deny that what used to be called natural philosophy is now just science, but it's rather extreme to say that the sciences have conquered everything philosophers were in the business of doing. And Plato isn't just some random exceptional example; I'm sure you're familiar with Whitehead's "footnotes to Plato" quote.
>I read "Against Method" a long time ago and it seemed like total nonsense to me at the time, one of the things that convinced me that philosophy as an area of intellectual inquiry was bankrupt.
Feyerabend is rather extreme, but I'm curious why you think it was totally nonsense.
>Yes, I think this is pretty self-evidently true.
And do you see the problem this poses for Popperian falsificationism? More generally, philosophy of science, beyond just Popper, is a good example of meaningful work done in philosophy.
