If someone believes in a magic soul, because philosophy, yeah they will make up whatever arguments they want to support it. Yes, that is my point. People started off with their conclusion, which is that they believe in magic, or they believe in some moral statement, and then they want to say that the universe proves them right, even though it has zero connection to the real world.
> Philosophy isn't in the business of making testable predictions
Exactly, they just want to make obfuscatory arguments that then allows them to make whatever claim that they want about anything.
And then when people try to actually test their claims, they then say that by definition their arguments can't be tested.
> You assume that philosophy is like religion.
It effectively is. Just make up a self referential, presumption that god exists, and it is basically the same as the philosophers who believe in dualism.
> just as logic or history isn't in the business of making testable predictions.
The big difference between mathmaticians, and philosophers, is that even though one could argue that some obscure mathematical theory that is never going to come up in the real world, is as equally "not real" as philosophy, is that mathematicians don't use their self referential axioms (in a situation which does not connect to the real world) to then say "And this is why the world should be switch to socialism" or "this is why you should be a vegan".
If I say that a math theory is not real because it has no connection to the real world, a mathmatician isn't going to say that they are, by definition, the experts on truth and morals, and therefore I should do what they say anyway.
If you want to say that philosophy helps a little bit with some reasoning skills, or as a way to think about things, sure whatever, fine.
But the problem is that philosophers, when they talk about meta-ethics or meta-truth, or whatever, then try to use their circular arguments to then claim that they are the experts on literally everything, because well "truth" and "ethics", by definition are everything.
I am going to say no on that. Just because you came up with some circular argument, that relates to truth, or ethics, or whatever, it does not mean that people have to listen to philosophers on basically anything.