Anti-Philosophy
In college I was forced by my degree to take an ethics class. At the beginning of the semester my professor admitted that in the thousands of years humans have been practicing philosophy the entire field had about 10 good ideas. I will admit now that I hold the field of philosophy in pretty poor regard. I’ve never really seen the use and many modern philosophers seem content to pump out overly complex word salads.
Philosophy of Existence
The philosophy of existence is at best pointless thought experiments and at worst the off beat thoughts of stoners taken to beyond the logical extreme. The idea that we need some higher proof of existence is mind boggling and at this point.
You have Kant’s “Scandal” of philosophy. The idea that proof of existence is philosophically “impossible.” Maybe I’m just a small, smooth brained glue eater, too dumb to understand the fine minutia of philosophy, but if someone can create an experiment proving something, then send the procedure to a complete stranger on the other side of the globe, where the results can be replicated doesn’t that prove existence?
If it is a dream perpetuating itself then how could philosophy possibly solve that? Philosophers would still probably continue to publish overly wordy pretentious volumes about how reality doesn’t actually exist and we all are experiencing a hallucination or some similar garbage.
Ethics
Ethics is the futile attempt at describing the deeply complicated world of right and wrong using the limited vocabulary of time and language. When Plato and Aristotle were being wrong and coming up with their ideas were there trolleys? No, when the enlightenment was tearing through Europe was there AI? No, there was not.
Ethical philosophers are attempting to systemize the complexity of human experience, right and wrong, and personal opinion. If John Smith wakes up tomorrow and puts together a comprehensive system of right and wrong in todays world it is a guarantee that the progression of human society would throw something at his system of ethics that it simply could not handle or account for.
Even systems of their times have troubling holes. Utilitarianism for example has its sheriff scenario.
Individual people can subscribe to an ethical philosophy, but getting the wider populace to accept a system is much more difficult. You can’t write or describe the ethics that people use on a regular basis because much of it is gut feelings and general ick.
The state of Massachusetts recently created a law that would allow for a prisoner to shorten their sentence by “selling” body parts like bone marrow. This is bad, not because some French fart huffer in the 1800s created a system that says so. It’s bad because Americans know the state of the American justice system and that taking advantage of people for extra body parts is wrong.
(Side note: a lot of dystopian fiction centers around organ donation and organ harvesting. Something to ponder.)
A large part this next section is me being deeply cynical about higher education and the role that some degrees take.
Philosophy is one of the “pyramid scheme” degrees at universities. The bachelors degree is nigh useless. It has some research and writing skills attached, so where do you go? You get a graduate degree, write a paper and teach philosophy or write philosophy and have a small chance of making money from that.
In my World Religions class in college my professor told us a story about how when he graduated from university with a doctorate there were 12 jobs teaching it in the English speaking world. The fact degrees in it are even offered is almost predatory.
A while ago I thought to myself that philosophy is historically similar to alchemy. The precursor to actual science and results. Philosophy is unquestionably more useful than medieval men trying to make gold from anything they could get their hands on. But eventually the field is bound to be replaced or ditched all together.
There are more questions posed by philosophy, consciousness, the best life for a person, and what would a good society look like. I don’t however think it’ll be philosophers to answer those questions.