Given the position of many philosophers that they're exempt from basic standards of evidence, I'm pretty done with those who call themselves philosophers. There's lots of very good philosophy being done right now, but the people doing it tend to call themselves scientists, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, etc.
If you disagree, consider the field of ethics. Most ethicists taught in an ethics class immediately fall apart when exposed to the real world. The categorical imperative for example: if everyone become a computer programmer, we'd have no farmers and we'd all starve to death, therefore becoming a programmer is unethical! I have no problem teaching Kant's ideas if it's in the context of "this is what people historically believed" but that's not how it's taught in philosophy classes. Instead, they teach it as one idea of a few different ethical philosophies which all are valid and might be true. Because, you know, looking at the real world is the domain of science. This is philosophy, we take Kant Very Seriously.
The predictable result of this is that self-described philosophers are the source of some truly abject nonsense. For example, consider the idea that free will could originate from quantum mechanics. Neuroscience has a pretty good idea of how decisions are made at the structural level, and the gaps are largely in the big picture of how the small pieces are coordinated, not how the small pieces (such as neurons) themselves, work. At the electrochemical level, the randomness or unpredictability of subatomic particles is probablistically eliminated for all practical purposes. As it turns out, the experimental conditions that allow us to demonstrate things like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle are hard to create, and don't occur in the human brain. This is obvious to quantum physicists, to the point that when I've asked quantum physicists about it, I've gotten the QP equivalent of "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." But that hasn't in any way stopped philosophers from taking this idea Very Seriously.
Mathematics doesn't need philosophy, at least not anything that has to be called philosophy. As the author notes, mathematics does have some implications for what the author calls "Big Picture questions", but inserting philosophers into the equation just confuses things. The author rightly notes that mathematicians are writing and talking about these questions, but what the author fails to note is that these questions are perfectly fine being part of the field of mathematics. Inserting the baseless opinions of philosophers with not expertise in math doesn't contribute anything--it actively detracts.
I'll respond to an obvious criticism of what I'm saying: the author notes that many philosophers also have advanced degrees in math. But that just means that those philosophers also might happen to be adept mathematicians and might be able to answer Big Questions that happen to be mathematical. It doesn't mean that all philosophers, including those with no expertise in math whatsoever, suddenly have cart blanche to have opinions on mathematics.
If you disagree, consider the field of ethics. Most ethicists taught in an ethics class immediately fall apart when exposed to the real world. The categorical imperative for example: if everyone become a computer programmer, we'd have no farmers and we'd all starve to death, therefore becoming a programmer is unethical! I have no problem teaching Kant's ideas if it's in the context of "this is what people historically believed" but that's not how it's taught in philosophy classes. Instead, they teach it as one idea of a few different ethical philosophies which all are valid and might be true. Because, you know, looking at the real world is the domain of science. This is philosophy, we take Kant Very Seriously.
The predictable result of this is that self-described philosophers are the source of some truly abject nonsense. For example, consider the idea that free will could originate from quantum mechanics. Neuroscience has a pretty good idea of how decisions are made at the structural level, and the gaps are largely in the big picture of how the small pieces are coordinated, not how the small pieces (such as neurons) themselves, work. At the electrochemical level, the randomness or unpredictability of subatomic particles is probablistically eliminated for all practical purposes. As it turns out, the experimental conditions that allow us to demonstrate things like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle are hard to create, and don't occur in the human brain. This is obvious to quantum physicists, to the point that when I've asked quantum physicists about it, I've gotten the QP equivalent of "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." But that hasn't in any way stopped philosophers from taking this idea Very Seriously.
Mathematics doesn't need philosophy, at least not anything that has to be called philosophy. As the author notes, mathematics does have some implications for what the author calls "Big Picture questions", but inserting philosophers into the equation just confuses things. The author rightly notes that mathematicians are writing and talking about these questions, but what the author fails to note is that these questions are perfectly fine being part of the field of mathematics. Inserting the baseless opinions of philosophers with not expertise in math doesn't contribute anything--it actively detracts.
I'll respond to an obvious criticism of what I'm saying: the author notes that many philosophers also have advanced degrees in math. But that just means that those philosophers also might happen to be adept mathematicians and might be able to answer Big Questions that happen to be mathematical. It doesn't mean that all philosophers, including those with no expertise in math whatsoever, suddenly have cart blanche to have opinions on mathematics.