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.