[protonfish]

The paper is specifically about how space is represented in the human brain. Data representing space can be encoded in many different, but functionally equivalent, ways. Showing how it could be encoded by neurons in the hippocampus is valuable to understand our brain, but philosophically not significant.

[ithkuil]

How can understanding how the world works not be philosophically significant?

How did we come to the point where we relegated philosophy to be the study of only the things not connected with reality?

I'm fine with thinking about philosophy as a field that also explores ideas that are not connected with reality, but it's not only about those things.

[mbivert]

> How did we come to the point where we relegated philosophy to be the study of only the things not connected with reality?

If it deals with reality, then it's in the realm of science; science being the superior form to tackle such things, there's simply no reasons to involve "philosophy". The only room left for philosophy is thus wherever science doesn't operate.

Not that I think it's a good thing: the dogmatic, rigid, mindset advocated by contemporary institutionalized science feels detrimental to a "lighter" approach to life: it's as if people don't have the right to ponder about existence on their own anymore; it's child's play if it's not done in such and such a way.

[ithkuil]

A lot of good science can be done without much philosophy.

But you can't have good philosophy if you intentionally avoid science.

I regained respect in philosophy by reading the work of philosophers like Dan Dennet who break that unfortunate cliché where philosophy has been stuck to only ponder at the left-overs of science and instead embrace science and apply sound philosophical thinking to navigate the consequences of what we discovered about reality.

[mbivert]

> A lot of good science can be done without much philosophy.

> But you can't have good philosophy if you intentionally avoid science.

As always, it all depends on the definition of "philosophy" and "science". If it's the "love of wisdom" and "knowledge" respectively, then I doubt hardly anything of value can be produced without both philosophy and science; and philosophy should be of greater value (e.g. Socrates' "I know that I know nothing").

[meroes]

They got sick of philosophers asking tough questions probably.