Kuznetzova wrote:How can the traditional discipline of philosophy continue to thrive in an age of Evolutionary Biology, Molecular Biochemistry, and neuroscience? Does it just become permanently relegated to a kind of "consciousness studies"?
"One thinks of French philosophy that it aspires to the condition of literature or the condition of art, and that English and American philosophy aspires to the condition of science. French philosophy [or continental philosophy movements in general], one thinks of as picking up an idea and running with it, possibly into a nearby brick wall or over a local cliff, or something like that." --Ted Honderich
That is, Anglophone philosophy has already largely demoted itself to being a pack of smitten puppies that follows the enterprise / output of natural methodology around. But scientists really have little use for such an orbiting entourage of groupies. It's not like physicists, biologists, etc, are rock star entertainers who would feed upon the admiration exhibited by philosophers trying to emulate them, or care a whit about the work of those latter contemporary thinkers.
Aside from a few brief moments in philosophy of mind, and public mediators still indolently referring to this or that philosophy of science tract when asked "What is science?", perhaps the last glittering era philosophers enjoyed a segment of scientists paying attention to them was:
"The disasterous impact of behaviorism, operationalism and pragmatism on 20th century social science came about, in large part, because some psychologists actually believed what philosophers told them about the 'scientific method'." --Jerry Fodor
Even Daniel Dennett is given slaps on the back because he's viewed as a kind of Benedict Arnold by the scientific establishment, not because they relish any of his ideas that are not rip-offs of their own.
"We are backing the philosophers into a corner and giving them less and less to talk about. In some sense, Dennett is cooperating with the enemy by helping us back the philosophers into a smaller and smaller corner, and I like that." --W. Daniel Hillis
The question thus arises of what you're even doing at a philosophy forum site instead of a science forum. Are you seriously advocating that philosophy modify itself fully into some kind of "para-science", as if "official science" could actually use / need its help? (ROTFLMAO) Or are you just dancing to dirge pipes around what you believe is the unoccupied grave of philosophy, trying to persuade a reluctant zombie that it's time to close down shop and hop into its final resting place? Either way or whatever your goal is, your efforts provide quite a hoot for some of us "woo-woo peddlers". [The latter sort of like Barack Obama being called a "white guy" in your bizarro way of construing people arse-backwards.]
"It is just that philosophical principles have not generally provided us with the right preconceptions. In our hunt for the final theory, physicists are more like hounds than hawks; we have become good at sniffing around on the ground for traces of the beauty we expect in the laws of nature, but we do not seem to be able to see the path to the truth from the heights of philosophy. Physicists do of course carry around with them a working philosophy. For most of us, it is a rough-and-ready realism, a belief in the objective reality of the ingredients of our scientific theories. But this has been learned through the experience of scientific research and rarely from the teachings of philosophers." --Steven Weinberg
Again, I hope you are just a sadistic foot-tapper and bell-jingler prancing around philosophy's grave instead of actually thinking that some "un-traditional" version of philosophy (whatever in hell that would be) demoting itself in an even further groveling stance to science could be a useful bedfellow to the above chaps. Maybe acquiring job security as what? Cheerleaders on the sidelines, an on-demand applauding audience in the background, or providing a roadie-crew of sycophants that also scoop up the canine poop of dog-owning physicists at CERN? Science
does not need help in its endeavors, and certainly doesn't need it from wandering disciples rooting around like lost talent scouts in philosophy forums (of all places!). Might as well spray paint a notice on your back that you got banned in all the online science groups, which wouldn't be the first time I saw the Mother Rabbit eat its own young because the latter picked up a stray, alien scent from the wrong side of the tracks.