The incentives in academic philosophy aren't really around finding truth, but rather getting published so you can keep your tenure. There are a lot of academic philosophers that have crawled so far up their own asses they don't even know the way out any more. But they don't represent all of philosophy, even if they get a lot of attention.

Philosophy broadly defined is as vital and important as ever, though. I can't imagine a world in which trying to understand it is no longer important. Not everything there is to know about the world has been systematized enough to be considered a science, and any time you have a knowledge domain where the boundaries are fuzzy and poorly understood, there is going to be a place for philosophers to try and bring some order to it, even if it takes a few thousand years.

What strikes me most about philosophy is in how core it is to everything we do — and this is something I didn’t realize for the longest time. The foundations of the economic, social, and political systems we live in are based upon philosophy; on theories of the nature of man laid down by thinkers such as Rousseau, Kant, and Smith. It turns out that “self evident truths” might actually be philosophical assertions. Philosophy is the first principle upon which many ideas we may initially take for granted rest upon, and I wonder if a general lack of explicit attention and examination on the subject is partially what enables some of the "post truth" attitudes we are seeing today. The more I learn, the more I can relate to "all I know is I know nothing."

"What strikes me most about philosophy is in how core it is to everything we do — and this is something I didn’t realize for the longest time."

Same. I used to take strong exception to the idea that philosophy was worth any amount of time to study... but then I realized any argument to reject it or degrade its utility is necessarily philosophical and changed my tune.

This has been exactly my experience as well. I've been truly blown away at seeing the Genesis of many of the science and economics that so fascinates me as being born of philosophy.

Makes sense. The ugly and skeptical philosophy of Socrates was very controversial compared to the beautiful words of the Sophists, but now we all consider the disciples of Socrates to be the best philosophers. Maybe we should start having more respect for the controversial outcasts.

Maybe so indeed. Ideally I think the work should be judged on its merits rather than the acceptability of the source. That's obviously easy to say, less easy to do.

I'm not so sure. Sometimes people are misunderstood geniuses. And sometimes people are outcasts because they really are kooks.

>The incentives in academic philosophy aren't really around finding truth, but rather getting published so you can keep your tenure.

Does that distinguish philosophy from the sciences or other areas of academia?

Other areas of sciences tend to have some "customer" outside themselves, where the sciences are applied. This also tends to be emphasized in the criteria for grant proposals in many domains nowadays.

IMHO the appropriate position of philosophy in modern academia would be as "metascience", i.e., their writings should be clearly useful to scientists across other sciences, they should be informative and relevant for people doing their own science outside of pure philosophy. IMHO it currently mostly isn't.

> IMHO the appropriate position of philosophy in modern academia would be as "metascience"

I don't think we should draw too many boundaries over what's 'appropriate' philosophy -- there's a lot of stuff to think about and a lot of people around to think it. I just hope that people don't think that obscure philosophy from academic journals is the only 'real' philosophy.

Other areas of academia have to face the real world or some kind of formalism sooner or later. That keeps them grounded to some (varying) level.

> There are a lot of academic philosophers that have crawled so far up their own asses they don't even know the way out any more

Which ones?

And yet the same article says:

> To complicate matters, often fiction writers (think Dostoyevsky, Huxley, or Borges) turn out to be particularly insightful philosophers, and so do filmmakers — such as Bergman, Kurosawa, and Tarkovsky — who philosophize just as insightfully on screen. All these entanglements and contaminations mark philosophy profoundly — indeed, they make it what it is.

These two quotes are compatible only if the author thinks that modern fiction writers and modern directors are no longer insightful philosophers.

Mmm, I see. The quote you referenced was in the context "mainstream philosophy", which the author implies is synonymous with academic philosophy. (Even though more people have watched Bergman films and read Borges than have ever read an academic philosophy paper.)

Still, I think the author shifts the definition of philosophy too much, and in such a way that it bends to fit the thesis, rather than the other way around.

The author makes the point that these are philosophers, but our current pure, strict definition of that makes them just writers and filmmakers. Like you said, more people have seen one of their films, or read one of their books, than read an academic philosophy paper

Well, yes. My complaint is really about the idea of "our current pure, strict definition". Who gets to make that definition, and when was it ever different?

When Randy Cohen ran "The Ethicist" column in the NYT, and a similar program for NPR ... didn't most non-academics consider it philosophy?

When people talk about "The Trolly Problem" ... isn't that also philosophy?

So it seems to me that many more people are engaged in philosophy - "not only our cognition, but also our imagination, emotions, artistic sensibility, religious impulses" - than the author acknowledges.