> It's when they go beyond interpreting and assisting to actually predicting is when things go wrong.
It seems like another way of stating that is that philosophy is useful up until it gets into the realm of falsifiable and then is falsified.
It makes me question, then, a lot of the usefulness of modern philosophy.
I'd say philosophy that is useful must show some provable improvement into a way of life - that could be a model that can make a person more happy/productive/whatever but the explanatory power of modern philosophy is bunk.
Physics takes what we know and extrapolates to what we don't. Logical conclusions based upon what we know, and what we assume must be the case.
The best philosophy seeks to do the same thing, and present logical arguments proving or disproving something. Each argument is ideally falsifiable, and like physics, any unknown knowledge is recognized.
And much of physics which though must have been the case has been proved wrong too. I'm looking at you, "Luminiferous Ether".
Particularly fascinating to me was the arguments of AI, and whether consciousness can really be achieved by a computer.
I would start with Searle's Chinese Room: https://www.iep.utm.edu/chineser/
The idea would be to grapple with the question, not just accept someone's answer, even if you agree with it in the end.
Scott Aaronson has what is in my opinion so far the definitive take on the subject in https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf , section 4. It's not just a homunculus, it's an exponentially large one that can't fit into the universe as we know it. While that doesn't necessarily completely destroy the thought experiment, it does, I think, rather color the discussion, vs. the mental image of some small space we'd normally call a "room".
The parent isn't criticizing philosophy as a whole, just most philosophy, especially continental philosophy.
It's also worth mentioning that if you assume P and then prove not P, you've proven not P. It's not a contradiction, it's proof by contradiction. If P is "philosophy leads to the right answers" and then you engage in philosophy, concluding "philosophy does not lead to the right answers," you have disproven the original statement by contradiction. It's kind of like how anyone who says they are a liar is a liar.
>It makes me question, then, a lot of the usefulness of modern philosophy.
A lot of it is bunk, but given it sometimes creates things like the groundwork for automated computation, which now means we can question the utility of philosophy on a globalised computer network, I cut it some slack.
It seems like another way of stating that is that philosophy is useful up until it gets into the realm of falsifiable and then is falsified.
It makes me question, then, a lot of the usefulness of modern philosophy.
I'd say philosophy that is useful must show some provable improvement into a way of life - that could be a model that can make a person more happy/productive/whatever but the explanatory power of modern philosophy is bunk.