On 9/11/2013 11:26 AM, John Clark wrote:
Philosophy is NOT worthless, it's philosophers that are worthless because, despite the similar sounding words, philosophers haven't done any philosophy in 200 years.
Since philosophy can be useful it's reasonable that some people try to specialize in doing it instead of leaving it just to experts in some field who are mostly too busy or narrowly focused to do it. I think Dan Dennett does some useful philosophy and mainly because he actually involves himself in AI, animal cognition, and robotic research projects. There's an essay by Dennett on the Wieseltier v. Pinker dispute which outlines Dennett's view of the role of philosophers: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-dennett/post_5592_b_3901577.html
Brent He's like a philosopher who says, "I know it's possible in practice. Now I'd like to know whether it's possible in principle." --- Daniel Dennett, on Michael Behe -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.