Is philosophy still relevant?

But whatever conclusion you come to regarding whether or not you are the same person doesnt affect whether or not you actually are the same person.
You know the truth though, right? And surely knowing the truth influences the decisions we make!

If we can observe something that defines our same-personness then the question is no longer metaphysical
What do you mean by "observe" something? If you mean empirically prove "same-personness" then that will never be possible.

From common usage it is clear that when a person says "I" they are not just referring to themselves at the exact moment they pronounce the word (which would still be an infinite number of themselves). In this thread you yourself have said "I couldn't understand your previous post about axioms, either" referring to yourself in the past tense. It is clear that in common usage the words people use to refer to themselves also refer to past and future versions of themselves.
Ok, that sounds good. But I went a lot further than just saying past and future self:

and not "will the person occupying this body be around and want the money I saved up for myself?"
It's as different as saying, for example, that you and Hitler are different people. They only would share the same body.

Whether we should love older versions of people we loved when they were younger is a question for psychology.
You're making a very basic philosophical mistake here--you even used the word should! "Should" means what you ought to do, and that's an ethical question. It's the job of philosophers to do this.

Ignoring free will argument because free will doesnt exist. Draw whatever conclusions you please.
This is a horrible argument. It's like saying "ignoring the argument for the existence of God because God doesn't exist. Draw whatever conclusions you please."
 

Crux

Banned deucer.
Chiki you are the "philosophy fan" that billymills spoke of and embody all of the problems that he outlined and actively contribute to the irrelevance of philosophy to everyday life.
 
Chiki you are the "philosophy fan" that billymills spoke of and embody all of the problems that he outlined and actively contribute to the irrelevance of philosophy to everyday life.
Lol. That's okay, as long as I know that no one here can actually address any of the points I bring up. I know the problem is not with me.
 

Hipmonlee

Have a nice day
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What do you mean by "observe" something? If you mean empirically prove "same-personness" then that will never be possible.
Hence the rubbishness of metaphysics.

It's as different as saying, for example, that you and Hitler are different people. They only would share the same body.
No future Hipmonlee or past Hipmonlee will ever be as different from current me as Hitler is. Probably.

The point is its quite clear to me to what extent I am the same person I used to be and will be. It is also quite clear to me to what extent I am the same person as Hitler. Whatever you or some other philosopher decides about whether or not future mes are me will not affect that. It might affect the language I have to use to explain my position, but that is more of a nuisance than anything else.

And the same goes for everyone else in the world.

You're making a very basic philosophical mistake here--you even used the word should! "Should" means what you ought to do, and that's an ethical question. It's the job of philosophers to do this.
Let me clarify. You asked "Should his parents cherish him the same--is he the same person?"
My position is: philosophers are no more qualified to answer this than butlers. I personally would prefer this to be the job of butlers because they could also polish my silverware while thinking about it, which would be a practical outcome. Cause I am not going to pay any heed to the decisions of either.

The people who have professional insight into the mechanisms of who we cherish and who we dont and the outcomes of doing so are psychologists. So if I am tossing up whether or not to cherish some guy, I can either get useful, relevant information from psychologists, shiny silverware from a butler, or hot air from a philosopher.

And regarding my point about free will: I also ignore arguments about whether cats exist because cats obviously exist. Free will obviously doesnt.
 

Crux

Banned deucer.
The point is more that there is no need to address any of the points that you've brought up because they are totally irrelevant to decisions that people actually make given their individual experiences and the value that they place on those individual experiences. You are taking for your premises in literally every post you make ideas that are being questioned and that is what makes your arguments irrelevant, and your unwillingness to justify or change your premises just makes you obnoxious to engage in discussion with. That was always independent of the fact that your responses to other people in this thread were superficial at best and nonsensical at worst.

Let me illustrate the objection that is being made for you. Reality and truth only matter to the extent that we experience them, if reality and truth differ from our experiences then those differences are always irrelevant and superficial. Colour doesn't exist, it is merely a construct of our mind, language and culture. That doesn't stop people from drawing value or pleasure from those systems and even if it were possible to destroy those systems it is probably a worse outcome to do so. Thus, the objection that colour doesn't exist is an irrelevant one.

Moreover, free will does not exist. Philosophers have answered the question of its existence for us. This doesn't change the fact that the lives that people lead sufficiently resemble free will (and in cases where they don't, they attribute the experiences they have as results of free will) and people value the fact that they think that they have free will. Given that people exist within a system based on certain premises and value those premises, whether or not those premises (free will and the continuing self in this instance) are actually true, because it is sufficient for people to believe that they are true. This is separate from a Nozickian experience machine because, to the best of our knowledge, there is no way to opt out or ever leave this reality even with the knowledge that the premises that we value are false (also Nozick's reasons for not entering the experience machine are pretty shitty and one of the major problems with his work).
 
Hence the rubbishness of metaphysics.
Lol, so according to you, everything that isn't empirically observable is meaningless? This was a famous philosophical view back in the day called logical positivism. It ran into many problems, for example this one: my lost umbrella isn't empirically observable, so its existence must be rubbish! It's also not clear if the statement "anything that is not empirically observable is meaningless" is itself empirically verifiable. It's self-contradictory.

The people who have professional insight into the mechanisms of who we cherish and who we dont and the outcomes of doing so are psychologists. So if I am tossing up whether or not to cherish some guy,
Sounds good. But should /=/ some physical process. From a dictionary:

must; ought(used to indicate duty, propriety, or expediency)
All psychology can give us is the physical process by which we like people, and how likely certain kinds of people will cherish certain kinds of people. That tells us nothing about what we should cherish. Psychology can't tell us anything about right and wrong. Psychologists can tell us as much about duty as Kant can tell us about silverware.

Free will obviously doesnt.
The point is more that there is no need to address any of the points that you've brought up because they are totally irrelevant to decisions that people actually make given their individual experiences and the value that they place on those individual experiences. You are taking for your premises in literally every post you make ideas that are being questioned and that is what makes your arguments irrelevant, and your unwillingness to justify or change your premises just makes you obnoxious to engage in discussion with. That was always independent of the fact that your responses to other people in this thread were superficial at best and nonsensical at worst.
Let me illustrate the objection that is being made for you. Reality and truth only matter to the extent that we experience them, if reality and truth differ from our experiences then those differences are always irrelevant and superficial. Colour doesn't exist, it is merely a construct of our mind, language and culture. That doesn't stop people from drawing value or pleasure from those systems and even if it were possible to destroy those systems it is probably a worse outcome to do so. Thus, the objection that colour doesn't exist is an irrelevant one.

Moreover, free will does not exist. Philosophers have answered the question of its existence for us. This doesn't change the fact that the lives that people lead sufficiently resemble free will (and in cases where they don't, they attribute the experiences they have as results of free will) and people value the fact that they think that they have free will. Given that people exist within a system based on certain premises and value those premises, whether or not those premises (free will and the continuing self in this instance) are actually true, because it is sufficient for people to believe that they are true. This is separate from a Nozickian experience machine because, to the best of our knowledge, there is no way to opt out or ever leave this reality even with the knowledge that the premises that we value are false (also Nozick's reasons for not entering the experience machine are pretty shitty and one of the major problems with his work).
This post is confusing and doesn't make any sense. Next time, you might want to list your premises in as clear as possible language and show how you reason from them. I'll reply then.

Every educated, reasonable person knows how central these questions are to everyday life. I think the reason why people look down on philosophy in the first place is due to ignorance. Since you guys like scientists so much, here's some examples from contemporary scientists, first from a neuroscientist named Sam Harris. Sam Harris agrees that we should change how we treat criminals:

Seeing through the illusion of free will has lessened my feelings of hatred for bad people.
On the contrary, much would be gained. We could forget about retribution and concentrate entirely on mitigating harm. (And if punishing people proved important for either deterrence or rehabilitation, we could make prison as unpleasant as required.)
Surprise surprise, all I did was repeat his views. So even famous scientists who also think free will is an illusion think this is a very important practical question. I can only conclude here that the people who look down on philosophy are just ignorant and clueless--even if you guys have issues with free will and personal identity, not one of you replied to my previous examples about how philosophers influence linguistics and neuroscience and politics. It's plain here what the problem really is: ignorant and clueless people who have no idea on what they're talking about.
 
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All psychology can give us is the physical process by which we like people, and how likely certain kinds of people will cherish certain kinds of people. That tells us nothing about what we should cherish. Psychology can't tell us anything about right and wrong. Psychologists can tell us as much about duty as Kant can tell us about silverware.
That is up entirely to the parents of the son. They have to decide whether or not they still love their son after 10 years if he has indeed changed in personality to the point that he is nearly a different person. Psychologist's can actually help here because they can help the parents make informed decisions on whether or not to keep loving their son despite the fact that he changed so much. You can't say that philosophers can accurately say what we should cherish because they cannot answer that question. This is because there are an innumerable amount of ways and reasons people will react to said scenario, and you cannot prove that any of them are right or wrong except for the fact that some may violate some intrinsic values that you have. Unless you can find a definition of right and wrong that doesn't involve the violation of subjective values, then you cannot say that the parents treatment of their son is objectively bad or wrong.
 
I am arguing from a pragmatist sense:
If statement has no practical application, it is not worth discussing.
Positions are evaluated in terms of how practical they are for me (or any other individual following the same process) at the present time.
Each individual has their own arbitrary evaluation of each position, which may or may not be similar to my own.
(Note these are not axioms, these are selected conclusions. I have not yet tried to make this position rigorous.)

From this position, most standard concepts can be constructed. (e.g.: Society, societal morals, cultural values, etc. are the result of nested feedback cycles among the individuals of a certain group.)

However, the concepts of 'personal identity' and 'free will' are not practical. They could potentially be used in determining the evaluations of positions, but since the evaluation itself is completely arbitrary the inputs are irrelevant. It would be analogous to a random number generator that accepts two integers as inputs. It generates a random input integer, adds the two inputs, and then outputs the result. However, if each random input integer is equally likely, then this machine is equivalent to a machine that outputs a random number with no inputs. No matter how personal identity and free will are defined, they are irrelevant in the larger evaluation function.

A significant portion of philosophy, encompassing most of metaphysics, most of ethics, and perhaps aesthetics routinely tries to determine the inputs into the evaluation function. Many philosophers mistakenly believe there is only one such function. I will not argue any of those areas are useless. They are useless in terms of finding 'truth,' but are highly applicable in the field of politics. Metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics are the most useful tools of political persuasion.

I have not argued against large portions of your arguments because I find them extremely stale and I tried to forestall them with my first post, quoted above. I will not deny that philosophers have created huge advances most fields of knowledge, and I think most PhDs would agree with me. But philosophy is not a field of idol worship. Do not treat it as such. Philosophy is based on arguments and discourse. It is irrelevant who made an argument, even if they are famous scientists. It matters how you support an argument.
 
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Cumquat

Banned deucer.
However, the concepts of 'personal identity' and 'free will' are not practical.
A laughable proposition. It's quite incredible how you dismiss the arguments of others as not worthy of your divine refutation and - gosh darn - "stale", while making such a schoolboy's point in the very same post. You're quick to disclaim that your axioms aren't really axioms but one axiom you forgot to disclaim was your misguided notion of practicality. In true STEM fashion, you've gone and generalized all of philosophy to the two very pop-philosophy problems of personal identity and free will, and then pitched them against your mis-applied yardstick of "practicality". Care to define what you mean by practical? Else your argument hinges entirely on an undeclared and irrelevant assumption. You're "moving the goalposts" as is the colloquialism.
 
I outlined exactly why personal identity and free will are not practical. They exist only as inputs to a function which dismisses them.

I listed three statements that would be indicative of my position. I'll agree that the statement of practicality might be an axiom. More importantly, it didn't really apply anywhere in my post. The removal of that statement would not affect the remainder of the post.

If you want, the axiomatic practicality would be along the lines of Crux' statement above:
"Reality and truth only matter to the extent that we experience them, if reality and truth differ from our experiences then those differences are always irrelevant and superficial."
For something to be practical, I mean it must be possible to experience in some way. The concept must be necessary in shaping a decision.
In essence, I used 'practicality' in the same sense that others use value or utility. For the purposes of the post, it simply acts as a metric by which positions are evaluated. The important features are that it is unique to each individual, and that is arbitrary. The opening 'axiom', that something that has no practical application is not worth discussing, is perhaps a simple observation or aside. Discussion of an object X, when for all positions including X, the identical position with the exception of X is evaluated to be exactly equal, is superficial.

I would say the best objection to my post is the claim that the evaluation function is arbitrary. This point is crucial in claiming that personal identity and free will have no effect on evaluation, and I have offered no support for it.

I'm not sure I understand how I reduced philosophy to those two problems. I was targeting those two "pop-philosophy problems" explicitly because I view them as gimmicks. I explained, in the context of the black box random number generator, how I see them as irrelevant. I believe there are many elements of philosophy, metaphysics included, that are practical.
 
That is up entirely to the parents of the son. They have to decide whether or not they still love their son after 10 years if he has indeed changed in personality to the point that he is nearly a different person. Psychologist's can actually help here because they can help the parents make informed decisions on whether or not to keep loving their son despite the fact that he changed so much. You can't say that philosophers can accurately say what we should cherish because they cannot answer that question. This is because there are an innumerable amount of ways and reasons people will react to said scenario, and you cannot prove that any of them are right or wrong except for the fact that some may violate some intrinsic values that you have. Unless you can find a definition of right and wrong that doesn't involve the violation of subjective values, then you cannot say that the parents treatment of their son is objectively bad or wrong.
I'd appreciate if you could explain how psychologists can decide questions such as "should I love my son?"

Replacing induction with empiricism and Socrates with Sam Harris, I'm amazed how well this post holds up. In this context, I don't think any of your arguments hold water.


I am arguing from a pragmatist sense:
If statement has no practical application, it is not worth discussing.
Positions are evaluated in terms of how practical they are for me (or any other individual following the same process) at the present time.
Each individual has their own arbitrary evaluation of each position, which may or may not be similar to my own.
(Note these are not axioms, these are selected conclusions. I have not yet tried to make this position rigorous.)

From this position, most standard concepts can be constructed. (e.g.: Society, societal morals, cultural values, etc. are the result of nested feedback cycles among the individuals of a certain group.)

However, the concepts of 'personal identity' and 'free will' are not practical. They could potentially be used in determining the evaluations of positions, but since the evaluation itself is completely arbitrary the inputs are irrelevant. It would be analogous to a random number generator that accepts two integers as inputs. It generates a random input integer, adds the two inputs, and then outputs the result. However, if each random input integer is equally likely, then this machine is equivalent to a machine that outputs a random number with no inputs. No matter how personal identity and free will are defined, they are irrelevant in the larger evaluation function.

A significant portion of philosophy, encompassing most of metaphysics, most of ethics, and perhaps aesthetics routinely tries to determine the inputs into the evaluation function. Many philosophers mistakenly believe there is only one such function. I will not argue any of those areas are useless. They are useless in terms of finding 'truth,' but are highly applicable in the field of politics. Metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics are the most useful tools of political persuasion.

I have not argued against large portions of your arguments because I find them extremely stale and I tried to forestall them with my first post, quoted above. I will not deny that philosophers have created huge advances most fields of knowledge, and I think most PhDs would agree with me. But philosophy is not a field of idol worship. Do not treat it as such. Philosophy is based on arguments and discourse. It is irrelevant who made an argument, even if they are famous scientists. It matters how you support an argument.
Lol, this is one of the dumbest posts I've ever read in my life. I won't bother using reason to convince the regulars on this forum that they're plain wrong and ignorant anymore.
 

KM

slayification
is a Community Contributoris a Tiering Contributor
as someone who has very little prior knowledge about philosophy yet has recently become interested with it, this thread decidedly discourages me from pursuing it all too far. to clarify, it's not every post in the thread, or even the thread as the whole, it's the pro-philosophy-at-all-costs people who seem to be far more occupied with being right than they are with being reasonable.

i don't know what philosophy class told you that calling everyone who disagrees with you and is clearly intelligent a stupid, ignorant being who is just "plain wrong" is conducive to healthy discussion or even remotely polite.

tl;dr if you actually like philosophy and think it's useful/relevant don't portray the people who think so as complete assholes, because that's exactly what you're doing rn
 

Myzozoa

to find better ways to say what nobody says
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People only disagree with 'the experience machine arguments' for hedonism because they are aware of a choice. In the absence of knowledge of a choice between virtual reality or reality reality there is no meaningful difference in experience and no knowledge of inauthenticity and hence dis-satisfaction with 'virtual life' (words we pair as though it doesn't end in a paradox). This type of word confusion (the paradox of the conjunction of these words: 'virtual life experience') is precisely why ppl have been skeptical of metaphysical inquiry. Besides, any other way of figuring these things in relation to ethical responsibility would be to introduce worries about what is or is not in our power, a fallacy. what is good has no relationship with what is, including what is in our power:

"We wish (pray) for the end (the supposed good) and deliberate (reason) about the things that would promote that end, but what we wish for is not always in our power. What we reason about at least appears to be in our power, as no one but the insane (irrational) would deliberate about that which is impossible. Thus, our ethical obligations will relate to the actions and circumstances that are in our power, and as such the morality of actions will be evaluated in relation to the particular (trivial) features of the circumstances of each action."-

As to the so called 'free will': "fated to steal, fated to be flogged".

It is evident that there is no free will in the sense that no individual chooses what happens to themselves. Rather there are a set of conditions of possibilities that we operate within. In this matrix of actions we face vectors of constraint from many directions so it is appropriate to call the will 'constrained' rather than 'free'. This is really simple from a theoretical stand point, and it will not affect too many ppl imo unless the political regimes are misinformed about this and start getting the idea that it's like poor ppl's fault that theyre poor and rich ppl's fault that theyre rich and such suppositions like these, where, due to superficial understandings of agency, people are deluded into ignoring how huge a factor luck is in determining their situation. It has never been untrue that having a noble birth will greatly aide in the acquisition of virtues (whether they be natural or artificial).


As for self-hood and temporality: do you really think no one has formulated an account of self that includes temporal continuity? I could probably do it just by introducing the notion of an internal (mental) causal chain linking 'moments of self-hood' and then I call it memory in order to tie it to an individual body. This is not a good (read insightful) account, perhaps not even a valid account, but is sufficient to superficially explain the narrative illusion of continuous self-hood.




Anyway:
Philosophers aren't trying to deal with personal philosophies, though. They're trying to find objective answers--in the same way that 1+1=2 is objective and personal opinion is irrelevant.
Absolutely not. Philosophy is explanatory, it does not reveal the truth, but rather it is an inquiry into the (validity of) methods by which truth is arrived at, including how so-called 'objective' truth claims are justified. Opinion is hugely relevant, didn't you just call someone out by saying 'most ppl disagree with your argument.' Everyone in the shitty (imo) parts of moral philosophy is always trying to account for the idiotic opinions that are called 'our intuitions' as though anyone actually has these intuitions until theyre faced with a moral dilemma (this practice of 'intuition surveys' is partly based on a (mis)interpretation of Hume's concept of 'the general point of view', imo), as though morality must somehow accord with a survey of Western peoples' instincts.


Idk I understand philosophy as method and method analysis. for example in one of your last posts you used Aldaron's request for a definition of 'relevant' as a chance to play word games and justify your claim that philosophy bears on important matters by claiming some connection between free will and moral responsibility which you will never prove, partly because free will doesn't exist in any concrete way and partly because moral responsibility doesn't exist in a concrete way (and note that you didn't define either, so in essence you passed the ambiguity of the word 'relevant' onto a presumed connection between agency and moral responsibility which is based on many unlikely assumptions ). Of course philosophy can impact practical matters, just not the metaphysical questions (as these are meaningful enough illusions). See the ramblings for more on the supposed relationship between metaphysical accounts of agency and how we evaluate the moral validity of an action.
 
A fallacy is a common mistake in an argument due to poor reasoning. The argument has to actually not be sound, i.e. it must be based on false premises or on invalid reasoning for there to be a fallacy. I don't see any mistakes in the reasoning of the article.
Challenge accepted.

Go ahead, listen for yourself, beginning at 20:19 — and behold the spectacle of an otherwise intelligent man and gifted teacher sounding every bit as anti-intellectual as a corporate middle manager or used-car salesman. He proudly proclaims his irritation with "asking deep questions" that lead to a "pointless delay in your progress" in tackling "this whole big world of unknowns out there." When a scientist encounters someone inclined to think philosophically, his response should be to say, "I'm moving on, I'm leaving you behind, and you can't even cross the street because you're distracted by deep questions you've asked of yourself. I don't have time for that."
"I don't have time for that."

With these words, Tyson shows he's very much a 21st-century American, living in a perpetual state of irritated impatience and anxious agitation. Don't waste your time with philosophy! (And, one presumes, literature, history, the arts, or religion.) Only science will get you where you want to go! It gets results! Go for it! Hurry up! Don't be left behind! Progress awaits!
Even before directly responding to the argument, Sir Linker has constructed a tiresome straw man, the sort that I have come to expect out of political ideologues and religious apologists - and judging by some of his other articles, he seems to like defending theism. Apparently, we are to be appalled that a scientist would discourage us from asking questions... except that interpretation flies in the face of everything else he's ever said. People should certainly ask questions, but that's not some kind of a priori duty, but a means to an end. A greater understanding of the reality we face is beneficial to our long-term survival and development as a species, and asking questions is the main driver of that undertaking. However, some questions serve to terminate thought rather than further it.

The free will debate is a classic example of a thought-terminating question. It's a concept that's ill-defined but inspires lots of emotional investment into one conclusion or another. Many people appeal to some kind of intuition that tells them that they ought to have free will. Some may even go as far as to suggest that science can't explain X or Y, all to make room for some naive definition of free will that isn't rigorous but nonetheless does the job of making them feel better. Some others, however, oh, they've gotten some philosophical training, you see, so they're a little bit smarter than the average bear. They'll just come up with a rigorous definition that seems correct to them, in essence forcing free will to exist or not by definition. And now they can brag to their friends (or academic peers) about how their definition has solved the free will problem, and anyone who hasn't heard of this brilliant solution by definition will be called a philistine, ignorant and clueless. Oh, but some people are even smarter still, and refuse to play that game. They declare that it's pointless to make yourself right by definition. Who's to say that we should all agree with one definition or another? Congratulations, you've successfully trounced all the definition-gamers and made them look like fools. Philosophy cred +1!

Some people may notice that nowhere in that paragraph is an answer that can be applied to anything. And like I said before, application is an extremely low standard that can include, y'know, finding more questions to ask! We haven't answered whether to punish people, or how to punish them. We haven't determined what moral responsibility is. We haven't determined what the meaning of life is. I thought this kind of thing was what the free will debate was supposed to be for!

This kind of thing is why people like Neil DeGrasse Tyson is irritated by "deep questions". He's been in government meetings, proposing more funding for basic science research. But politicians are masters in philosophical word manipulation, and thus what seems like a modest proposal to increase 0.5% to 1% becomes embroiled in some ideological battle or another about how evil/incompetent the state is or something or other. These "deep questions" turn out to be anything but, ironically missing the forest for the trees.

If what you crave is answers, the study of philosophy in this sense can be hugely frustrating and unsatisfying. But if you want to understand yourself as well as the world around you — including why you're so impatient for answers, and progress, in the first place — then there's nothing more thrilling and gratifying than training in philosophy and engaging with its tumultuous, indeterminate history.
I don't know if there's a name for this, but he's basically proposed two different consequences for the same conditional: craving answers. To even make sense of the notion of understanding yourself, you have to ask a question. And in order to come to an understanding of that question, you need to give an answer. Though, you don't need to give a direct answer to the question. That's the trap that the free will debaters have fallen into. To try to understand anything, you need to ask questions that can be answered clearly, so that the answers bring up more questions, so that you can try to answer those questions, and so on. Also notice that Sir Linker has committed the exact same crime he accused Sir Tyson of committing. Only philosophy will get you where you (really) want to go! It gets you understanding! Go for it! Meaning awaits!

And now Neil deGrasse Tyson has added another — one specially aimed at persuading scientifically minded young people to reject self-examination and the self-knowledge that goes along with it.
Another straw man, one that couldn't be more transparent.

And with that I turn to some of your statements.

It's thanks to philosophy that we have ways of dealing with this serious problem, which would make scientific endeavors pointless.

This is akin to saying it's okay to live under an illusion. But I don't think many people would be pleased about that at all.

You know the truth though, right? And surely knowing the truth influences the decisions we make!
What is "truth"? How can one be "certain" of whether or not something is "true"? What do such statements even mean? Some people try to escape this by stating a priori assumptions along the lines of "I exist" and "reality as perceived by my senses exists in some consistent form". But then what does it mean for something to "exist"?

Philosophers can keep trying to answer such questions, encounter more questions, discuss nuances, and so on. But then it occurs to you: What does any of this have to do with anything? What changes if the universe we experience is just some jerk's computer simulation? And where in this whole debate is the clause that's supposed to give meaning to everything I do (including scientific endeavours), where otherwise there is none?

I hate it when people point out a problem and don't bother to propose an alternative, or worse, admit that there is no alternative. This is the ivory tower I keep talking about. I would never advocate that only people who can build cars should be considered good drivers. But that's essentially what you're trying to pull here. Because obviously, if you've never taken a philosophy course, your life has no meaning.

I'd appreciate if you could explain how psychologists can decide questions such as "should I love my son?"
I suspect you're alluding to Hume's is-ought problem. Hume argued that there's no intrinsic function mapping "is" statements to "ought" statements. What a lot of people seem to miss (including some of the supposed philosophically literate), however, is that Hume's objection was not to any attempt whatsoever to map "is" to "ought", but specifically to moral arguments based on unstated a priori assumptions, i.e. rules constituting some kind of intrinsic/objective morality. Morality is ultimately based on preferences that we have due to our biology and our interactions with the world. There's nothing that tells us that pain = bad or death = bad, other than the fact that the vast majority of humans (I'd say "animals" but I'm not confident enough in my biological knowledge to claim such a thing) are psychologically biased against pain or death inflicted on the self - and onto others.

So I'm honestly not sure of what you're trying to demonstrate here, because as far as I know, Sam Harris basically agrees with all this and uses it for his "moral landscape" concept. Moral statements come from our psychological preferences, and our goal is to determine what those preferences are and how to satisfy them as much as possible. In other words, he advocates utilitarianism, or at least consequentialism. He talks about "free will" and how it doesn't exist in the sense that most people think of it, but he could just as easily have talked about his opinions without bringing up "free will" at all. He only brought it up to make a statement about determinism, not to contribute to the debate on which definition of free will is the best.

The efforts of people like Sam Harris have been to demonstrate that scientific disciplines can answer questions about morality. Although technically some amount of philosophy is required, philosophy on its own - rationalism, in other words - has too often served to muddy the waters, rather than clear them up, for nefarious political purposes.

I can only conclude here that the people who look down on philosophy are just ignorant and clueless--even if you guys have issues with free will and personal identity, not one of you replied to my previous examples about how philosophers influence linguistics and neuroscience and politics. It's plain here what the problem really is: ignorant and clueless people who have no idea on what they're talking about.
I can only conclude here that the only thing you care about with respect to this thread is to defend metaphysics. It's the most reasonable explanation that you'd assume anyone has a problem with your statements about philosophers influencing linguistics, neuroscience and politics. I pointed out the influence of philosophy myself in the OP! It's plain here what the problem really is: your treatment of this debate as a false dichotomy of two sides. Supposedly if I oppose one of your arguments, I oppose all of them.
 
This whole thread isn't even the right question. Philosophy is objective. It's relevant to you if you care about it, and it isn't if you don't. If you care about the why, the how, etc then yeah, philosophy probably matters a great deal. If you just care about the possibility, then no it probably doesn't.

"Thinkers think, and doers do." Rochefoucauld
 

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