Speaking as one of those -- by temperament, training, and experience -- perhaps you should note that philosophers attentive to developments in modern science are acutely aware of the "ontological reductionism" implied by the doctrine of scientific materialism, a/k/a metaphysical naturalism. For the thinkers I named (a partial list indeed, two of whom are Nobel laureates no less), we are no longer speaking of a scientific method -- i.e., methodological naturalism -- but of a full-scale worldview, or cosmology, that holds the entire universe reduces to one single principle, the material.
What exactly is it that philosophers do? I managed to avoid all philosophy classes for a dozen years of college, but from what I see on these threads I can't figure out what they actually do.
A year or so ago there was a poster on a crevo thread who did something like "A = B, and something about C," and concluded that evolution couldn't possibly have happened (I don't remember for exact formula, but it was about like that).
Why should we take anything like this seriously? It seems to me like a bunch of thought experiments, with no necessary connection to the real world.
When you study evolution you can hold the skulls in your hand and examine them, you can line them up on the desk and study the changing morphology, through time, of a variety of traits. They tend to sort themselves out pretty well on their own.
But when you start talking about "ontological reductionism" and the like I get a little dizzy. I'm just a simple archaeologist; you have not convinced me that those terms actually mean anything in the real world.
When you start mixing in theology I can't help but thinking of the old Heinlein quote:
Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.
Robert A. Heinlein, JOB: A Comedy of Justice, 1984
Q: if you are what you do, and you don't do anything, what are you?
A: a philosopher.
What a lovely essay/post, Coyoteman!
Of course we must have people who can "hold the skulls in their hands" and examine them, so to study the changing morphology of living beings through time. Philosophers don't do this sort of thing; but science is an indispensable human endeavor whose pursuit has served the human race to its immense benefit in uncountable ways throughout evolutionary (or historical) time.
Yet science is not geared to dealing with other vitally indispensable aspects of human life that are necessary to the "good order" of the person, and the "good order" of human societies.
By good order I mean the optimal state of existence for human beings -- This is the province of philosophy. If I might boil it all down to its essence, the problem that philosophy engages -- at least the non-school, non-academic brand of philosophy that flourished in classical Greece -- is essentially the fundamental problems of human existence. Plato (and Aristotle) would perhaps say that true philosophy deals with the right order, and right orientation, of the soul.
To the extent that certain influential branches of modern science regard the soul as a fiction, obviously philosophy would lose its millennial appeal to the human mind. But that does not signify that human souls, and human problems, are obviated by this "closure" to the human condition. Human problems -- the problems of existence, of birth and death, of the universal sense that humans participate in both time and timelessness, of justice and injustice, of good and evil, in war and peace, in suffering and joy, in health and decrepitude, as actors, creators in their own right, and "patients" of adversity, etc., etc. -- cannot be a problem for science at all. It has no method to deal with such issues.
But just because science cannot engage such problems given its methodology (which is perfectly well-suited to the investigation of the phenomena of the natural world), does not mean that such human problems "go away." Thoughful men down the millennia have insisted on an understanding of their place in the natural order. And here's a millennial theme that has engaged the human mind through all of recorded history: Man wants to know to what extent human life has a supernatural extension. Which of course I am convinced it does, as did some of the greatest thinkers of mankind down the ages, from both sides of the "epistemic divide" that separates science and philosophy.
So philosophy is radically different than science. I think both are absolutely necessary for the full expression of human genius. I think they are "complementarities" in Niels Bohr's sense of the term: Though seemingly mutually exclusive, it requires both to give a complete description of what it means to be human.
In short, man has an "exterior life" in his relations to his natural environment; he also has an interior life -- also in relation to his environment, but one that is "more than natural."
I won't say "supernatural"; I suspect you might find that word "off-putting." But think of it: even such concepts as "nation" or "society" (even such constructs as phyla and species) refer to something that is "supernatural" in the sense I intend in the present writing.
FWIW Coyoteman. Thank you so much for writing!
You say you can't take philosophers seriously, yet you cite a Twentieth Century philosopher (Heinlein) in support of your point that you can't take philosophers seriously. It's true, you won't find Heinlein in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (you won't find Ayn Rand either), yet his writings are often cited on FR (as are Rand's), and it's clear the intent of the quotes is that they are meant to direct our affections and inform our values (something this writer humbly proposes to be the task of a philosopher).
I don't know if Heinlein is on boop's short list of recommended reading, but, whether or no, he serves well as an example of what she meant when she wrote to you:
"By good order I mean the optimal state of existence for human beings -- This is the province of philosophy. If I might boil it all down to its essence, the problem that philosophy engages -- at least the non-school, non-academic brand of philosophy that flourished in classical Greece -- is essentially the fundamental problems of human existence. Plato (and Aristotle) would perhaps say that true philosophy deals with the right order, and right orientation, of the soul." And her conclusion: "But just because science cannot engage such problems given its methodology (which is perfectly well-suited to the investigation of the phenomena of the natural world), does not mean that such human problems 'go away.'" (message #1445)
Here's a fellow who is on my short list of recommended reading:
"State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules. In this branch, therefore, read good books, because they will encourage, as well as direct your feelings."
. . . . . Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787. (The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ME, Vol 5, pg 257)
No way of knowing, of course, but my inclination is that Jefferson would have found Heinlein very enjoyable.