[knightoffaith]

Philosophers make arguments for/against claims, I don't see why that doesn't count as doing something. I mean, maybe you're complaining that they're not building rockets or feeding the poor, but philosophers are far from the only ones who don't do these things.

[CuriouslyC]

Making arguments for/against claims can be a noble pursuit, and mathematicians have done it to great benefit for humanity. I suspect the sum total of the benefit from philosophers' claims is much lower.

[knightoffaith]

Maybe so, but I don't see why every discipline needs to be evaluated purely on "benefit for humanity" in the sense of scientific or technological progress, if that's what you're implying. There's more to humanity than just scientific/technological progress.

[CuriouslyC]

I mean, people love musicians for making interesting "what if" statements to music, and I'm not shitting on that. The difference is that music makes people happy and makes the time go faster, while most philosophy makes people confused for no good reason, is boring and even when "understood" doesn't provide any tangible benefit to people's lives.

Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of good "philosophy" out there, but it absolutely doesn't need to be its own academic discipline, it could just be a genre of nonfiction - "fun thought experiments taht will blow your mind"

[knightoffaith]

>philosophy makes people confused for no good reason, is boring and even when "understood" doesn't provide any tangible benefit to people's lives.

I mean, maybe this is true for some people, but there are a lot of people who don't get confused and who find it interesting and enjoyable.

>Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of good "philosophy" out there, but it absolutely doesn't need to be its own academic discipline, it could just be a genre of nonfiction - "fun thought experiments taht will blow your mind"

Philosophers are particularly interested in reasoning about whether certain claims are true or false though, not just saying "what if". I mean, if you want the literature and philosophy departments to nominally merge together and for philosophers to continue doing what they're doing, that's fine I suppose, though there are institutional reasons why that's probably not going to happen.

[CuriouslyC]

Except that there are practically journals just for arguing about what one particular german guy who has been dead for 150 years meant when he said a thing. That is not a sign of clear writing.

[knightoffaith]

I'm not sure how that contradicts what I've said or why this means we should abolish philosophy departments. And for what it's worth, philosophy today tends to be clearer (to us at least), e.g. Dennett's work.