That might very well be true -- and of course you can (and plenty do) argue that academic CS isn't worthwhile either -- but in both cases it isn't obvious the nuance is useful/justified until you dive into the weeds yourself.
I'm in no place to defend the whole field, but I do think it takes a special kind of cynicism to claim that one of the (if not, the) longest running academic projects on Earth "could be summarized on one page with little information loss."
(Posting under a different username because I got "you're posting too fast" error.)
That said, in philosophy I often have the feeling that some "common sense" view I hold is more accurate than the rigorous, less clear views that I'm studying. Almost always, there turn out to be problems with my common sense view that weren't obvious to me at the outset, and necessitate the extra rigor and abstraction.
The unfortunate bit is that if you don't "study" (as you put it), you'll never notice these little flaws, and go on thinking that people are intentionally overcomplicating things. (Made worse by the fact that certain people actually are overcomplicating things -- but that's not evidence against the fact that many things are, in fact, complicated)
Obviously, you are still in the first stage of competence https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Four_stages_of_competence and you don't know what you don't know.
Of course philosophy has value but I too am quite disappointed how easily it enables very basic flawed assumptions to exist over eons even in what would be considered high academic levels. To me it feels like the equivalent of physicists today being divided on whether the earth revolves around the sun or vice versa.
Personally I think both Searle and Dennet are essentially dualists (though they'd both vehemently deny it), but each practicing a different form of dualism: Searle promoting some mysterious consciousness as some ghost in the machine, and Dennet protecting physicalism which in my book negates any subject from existing, in complete contradiction to the reality that any object (physical or otherwise) will always be just a model in someone's experience. I see Dennet as trying to squash dualism by giving the model more validity than the very real experience from which it arises, where the better path to eliminate dualism would be to try and get to the source of this division.
And inevitably the theory will be reduced to a paragraph or less anyhow when it is cited as existing work by future scholars.
If I were being cynical I would say that this verbosity creates a maze in which one can hide from criticism.
I definitely saw some very interesting ideas while learning about philosophy, but I agree with you 100%. I think they’re holding themselves back through constant re-elaboration; you can’t build a tower out of dry sand.
You might not be inclined to explore philosophy, but David Hume pretty much took the field to its logical conclusion, so it's worth studying him. His philosophy was pure and rooted in first principles. Most of philosophy after Hume is tainted by the assumption of premises not derived from first principles.
I could ask you to answer 'the big questions', to tell us what life means or what the teleological truth about our creators or why we seem to all broadly agree on quality of artwork but can't seem to write down the rules of agreement. But you only have those answers for yourself. Further, if the answers which make sense to you can fit on a single page, they likely don't make sense to anybody else.
While you're not a solopsist, you haven't really advanced the state of the discussion.
That's really just a biology / neuroscience / psychology question.
Please think hard on this. Take as much time as you need. When you're ready, first write down your answer in as much detail as you like, to your own confidence. Then, pop open Pirsig's Zen and the Art, starting on p228, and read his thoughts and see what you think.
I think academic philosphy aims to be more rigourous, so while such a summary might capture the broad points, it will miss the nuance.
A comparison could be made with a game of Chess. On the surface, you could describe a game in terms of the moves played, but to understand why those moves were played, you need to know about the potential moves that weren't played.
I can understand why some people criticise academic philosophy for exploring seemingly pointless details extensively, but such exploration always gives someone a richer understanding, and sometimes uncovers flaws in things that previously seemed unquestionable. I think this is what people don't appreciate: understanding the moves played doesn't mean you understand why those moves were played, the ocean of possiblities underneath. No one page summary will do that, for Chess or philosophy.
What's a philosophical problem or question (understandable by someone who hasn't studied philosophy) I would need a philosophy book to answer?
Oh, most philosophers even? So you have taken a good look at the field and have a grasp of the philosophical community and their methods of inquiry and communication?
> vagueness
If there is one thing I have learned because I switched from studying physics to studying contemporary art, is that when I consider something "vague", it often boils down to my own assumptions and premises. By the standard of what is considered the right way to acquire knowledge in physics, most art is "vague". But the problem is me insisting on judging it by those terms.
> poor thinking
To elaborate on my previous point: you cannot apply the lines of thinking of one field to the other and judge it by that without also putting in the effort of understanding the lines of thinking of that other field. I have my doubts as to whether you are not mistaken an unfamiliar way of thinking for poor thinking.
> little value
Well given the two before it, there is indeed little value for you. Then again, I don't read or speak Chinese, so even the most beautiful poetry bundle written in simplified Chinese would hold little value for me too.
The core of philosophy is basically understanding consciousnes, not too much else to it. But I guess one page was an exaggeration, let's say five.
There is no "core of philosophy", and it's certainly not confined to "understanding consciousness". I'd have to agree with others here who have tried to admonish you that you're arguing from ignorance and being unserious, even if a great deal of what passes for philosophy is a waste of time. What about logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, ...?
Asking what is good or bad is like asking what is the definition of these words. Well, the definition is whatever we agree on. IMost people call "bad" the behavior, that triggers specific emotion of "wrongness".
I think that consciousness and closely related topics is the hard part, other things such as ethics or aesthetics have quite mundane explanations. Philosophy of mathematics nad language is somewhere in between.
And why are you not aware of all this?
The problem with philosophy is that science has crowded out most of the good stuff. Who cares about a philosophy of chemical reactions when we have chemistry? Philosophy is useful around issues which don’t admit to empirical study, or for which study yields inconclusive results. In the words of Feynman, “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.”
Unfortunately instead of sticking to ethics, morality, and other hazy constructs, too often philosophers think they have something useful to say about everything. The result is a lot of bloviation and self-satisfaction with very little substance.
Hence the “boil it down to a single page” issue.
Edit: My biggest problem with philosophy is that I can imagine a sufficiently advanced civilization which has testable answers to the questions posed by philosophy. I distrust a field of study which proposes to produce something which amounts to a placeholder until scientists do the real, hard work. To go back to my initial example, the philosophy of chemistry became a pointless endeavor with the death of alchemy, and the birth of chemistry.
They do have something useful to say about people who, due to not having studied philosophy of science, think science has something useful to say about everything. Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape is one notable recent example.
As for science, it’s a method, and it can be applied to anything. What it says may often be, “don’t know” which imo is better than 100 pages saying “don’t know, but I’ll give it a go anyway, because no one can prove me wrong yet.”
I'm saying that understanding things like what the scientific method can and can't do is useful to a scientist because, if they don't understand the distinction, they might try to use the scientific method to prove something it cannot.
> As for science, it’s a method, and it can be applied to anything. What it says may often be, “don’t know” which imo is better than 100 pages saying “don’t know, but I’ll give it a go anyway, because no one can prove me wrong yet.”
While you might try to apply the scientific method to anything, that doesn't mean it is useful for everything. For example, if something isn't replicable, then the scientific method cannot help you. You cannot scientifically prove what effect the Battle of Hastings had on Britain.
I don't think the philosophical questions are functions of our present limitations either. Imagine knowing everything about all people, and complete God-like power. Do you maximize utility? Do you equalize utility? Do you maximin? Do you ignore utility entirely, and move on some other criteria? You might have all the "is", but the "ought" is still an important question (and, importantly, not a relative one! Despite not being empirical) [1]
I'd agree that there are sections of the philsophic community that rely on that immunity. But other parts of the philosophy community perform an important role of teaching the philosophic foundations on which things like the scientific method are built. This is an important fight on which the effective practice of science itself depends.
Corporations and governments increasingly try to manipulate the scientific community for their own ends, giving rise to scientism. Consider stories like this: http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4737
Furthermore, philosophy teaches people how to think critically and how to express themselves accurately and unambiguously, to challenge the prevailing beliefs around them. I think philosophy is far from a pointless old field that needs to shut up shop. In fact, I think societies would benefit if more people studied philosophy and at a younger age.
> I distrust a field of study which proposes to produce something which amounts to a placeholder until scientists do the real, hard work.
This is one of the more common criticisms, motivated (as far as I can tell) by some idea that philosophers are stubborn in the face of empirical evidence. This has not been my experience -- almost all working philosophers understand well the scope of their arguments, and most limit themselves along the lines of: "if the evidence bears out X, then Y...". They don't attempt to claim what is true while we wait for the evidence to prove it, but rather to point out what things cannot be true (due to logical inconsistency), and to clarify what concepts are the most useful to talk about in the meantime (in terms of expressive power).
To me, it's a bit like pure math: you can build some interesting structure and prove some facts about it, and while that structure may not be useful in explaining anything about the natural world, the facts you proved about the structure itself are still true regardless. Likewise, the evidence may not bear out, say, Libertarian conceptions of free will -- but if they should, Robert Kane has done some good work determining what else is necessarily true, and what implications this might have for some of the "other hazy constructs". (He's proven some facts about that structure)