Only programmers that enjoy philosophy. Personally I feel the whole field is obsolete with the invention of neuroethology and similar.
Back in the 17th century there was an argument between Descartes and Spinoza about how knowledge was formed. Descartes said that we heard a proposition, judged it on the evidence, and then either believed or rejected it depending on its merits. Spinoza said that, instead, our tendancy was to at first believe anything we heard and then only later reject it after some reflection. Over the centuries most people agreed with Descartes, but recently neuroscience has shown pretty conclusively that Spinoza was right. [1][2] So be very careful in assuming that science will never swallow any particular part of philosophy.
[1] http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/Gilbert%20et%20al%20%28UNBEL... [2] http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/Gilbert%20et%20al%20(EVERYTH...
There are two great mistakes you can make in philosophy. One is deciding there is no ultimate answer. The other is deciding you've found it.
Edit: I don't know why araneae's comments are being downvoted (despite my upvotes). His points are constructive and on topic...
You've already answered it with your neurons example. Someone else has pointed out that neuroethology will not touch on normative facts (although will presumably uncover empirical facts that have normative significance).
People have been predicting the death of philosophy for hundreds of years. It hasn't happened yet, and it is unlikely to, as there are always fundamental questions to ask (even though progress on them is difficult, if possible - but that's another question).
We normally think that the belief that neurons exist is justified. Philosophy will ask what that amounts to. It may turn out that the belief is unjustified - but most philosophers will reject this. They will argue over different accounts of what that justification consists in.
EDIT: Maybe I'm going overboard here in attributing to philosophy in general what is only true of epistemology, my favorite branch of it. In that case, I should have been referring to "epidemiological justification".
There has been a strand of 20 cent philosophy that has regarded justification as that which together with truth and belief yields knowledge - if you do that, you're individuating justification in terms of a particular epistemic role, and that so it's a theoretical notion. That might be what you're getting at.
But most philosophers nowadays use the notion of 'warrant' for that. So for them, the notion of justification doesn't have that particular theoretical role.
Generally, why be interested in a theoretical notion? The fundamental questions in Epistemology are questions like:
* What is knowledge? * What is justification? * Which beliefs are justified? * What do we know, and how do we know it? etc etc
Those are the starting points, and they are phrased in English. They use ordinary notions. Given that, no answer to them which first redefines the terms to yield distinct questions is going to suffice as an adequate answer.
Philosophers use a lot of technical jargon, and are interested in technical questions. But generally, those questions have pretty clear connections to our ordinary ways of thinking about the world.
Sometimes you can go too far in questioning everything to get any practical result.
That's the thing, philosophy doesn't have to be practical, it stands by itself above everything else, with maybe only Maths as a worthy companion. You can either make fun of this, like Aristophanes already did 2,500 years ago in The Clouds, or you can take it as it is.
Philosophy has only been displaced if physics can account for all of reality, but whether it can or cannot is a philosophical problem. So, since you can't appeal to physics to determine whether physics is a comprehensive answer, it isn't.
Sure it can. Take north western Europe, notoriously secular (when compared to the US) yes quite socialist with an extensive social safety net. Economics, sociology, etc, all help you identify what you need to do to reach what ever goals you are aiming for.
And ethics and fairness have been studied and are well known in other social species, like the great apes. They are not uniquely human.
Morality is just the formalization of a whole set of instinctive emotional desires for fairness. Most often it is enforced by using another emotional foundation, the respect for alpha leaders, as in it is God's law you do this and that.
There is no domain which will eternally be out of the reach of reason and science, not morality, not love, not spirituality, nothing. I find this wonderful!
However, this is not something that science can prove, at least without adding the claim that the only facts there are are physical facts. You're basically suggesting that we open up people's heads, look around, go "Nope, no norms here!" and take that to be evidence that they don't exist. This is problematic at best, since were they to exist, normative facts would seem to have properties quite at odds with physical facts, and your assertion starts to look question-begging.
Metaethics is not my area, so I'm afraid all of this is rather rough and ready, but the SEP article [1] is a pretty decent starting point.
My point was that there is nothing science won't be able to prove; and that there is only physical reality, and facts, and that once we crack the 'code' (as in 'security code', not 'programming code', although in another discussion I'd posit that it's both) we will learn about the fundamental nature of morality - as humans perceive it; it's exactly this realization (that moral issues stem from interpretation by man) that will show that most things we consider 'moral issues' really aren't.
(the above may make it seem that I'm a moral relativist but I'm not - au contraire, once we peel away the human-induced layers of morality we will find the fundamental nature of it at the core)
Please read the book 'I of the Vortex' before answering this comment.