Neil deGrasse Tyson and the Value of Philosophy

here's one i read today combining two topics of interest to me, NdT and philosophy. and yes that rhymes. it is written by a philosopher/biologist named Massimo Pigliucci in defense of philosophy after NdT 'dismissed philosophy as a useless enterprise and actually advised bright students to stay away from it.'

i'll withhold my own comments til later.

Neil deGrasse Tyson and the Value of Philosophy

It seems as though he is only considering metaphysics and dismissing all other types of philosophy based on that one fragments apparent lack of progress.

There is far more to philosophy than simply metaphysics, I for one have been studying political philosophy and ethical philosophy, which have made tremendous changes over time. Things such as equal rights, crime and punishment, and more recently animal rights are all major areas where philosophy has provided a great deal of insight and wider change in the public eye.

America's constitution was very heavily influenced on the ideas of the philosopher John Locke for example, and more recent than that has been Marxism, socialiam, libertarianism etc...

Philosophy as a conceptual science... sounds like math!? Math has rules though, so if there are no rules or bound's to that conceptual space being explored in philosophy then I might side with NdT, but when its 'applied' I think it becomes useful, but just as a part of professionalism.

Funny thing is that philosophy was the parent of math,sciences, and religion...now they're trying to put it under their umbrellas....

here is a youtube bit from a forum dr tyson did with richard dawkins, that dr tyson personally feels represents his thoughts on the topic more accurately than some points on a comedic podcast that were apparently taken poorly. in it, he ' speak(s) of the continued and emergent value of Philosophy in fields outside of the physical sciences.'

now, on to the actual points in the original post. i think philosophy still holds a place in modern society, or i certainly wouldnt be here. it helps us in many ways that i wont enumerate, as i would be preaching to the choir. but dr tyson does have an oblique point: there is much navel gazing, thought for the sake of thought, self aggrandizing within philosophy as a profession or discipline. and thought without corresponding action, at least in my mind, is nearly meaningless to all except perhaps the thinker.

to use a 'starship troopers' analogy again, the protagonist jonny rico attends a class during OCS called history and moral philosophy, the same title as a pass fail class he took in high school. only there, it is not pass fail. it is an exact science, graded very harshly, and mr rico is asked the simple question 'why does the mobile infantry (his outfit) fight?' to which one of the young gentlemen answers 'because we are MI', and gets assigned 30 pages on why he is wrong. at a later point, the instructor goes on to explain that 'the pursuit of science (especially military science) is not itself a social virtue'.

in war and in science, philosophy, the study of morality, of right and wrong, of justice and honor and virtue, helps inform our decisions. without it, with only the almighty dollar as a decision making tool, or kill count, or number of widgets created at the expense of the environment, our long term decisions will almost inevitably trend down a path that we as a society will soon regret. i think we are seeing it here in the states now, as we lose more and more personal freedoms, as the pursuit of profit trumps all and widening inequality gets more egregious and obvious every day.

It's short sighted to take the whole of life and expect science to have the only meaning. While science has the microscope focused or the brain scanner running, the philosopher is asking the questions that science can't or won't because the results aren't measurable. Philosophy provides possible answers to the 'if....' questions regarding humans as a society rather than a species. NDT's comments make him look a little foolish.