Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result. Can this be applied to philosophy? It seems pretty stupid in itself to even ask if philosophy could be stupid (stupidity is anathema to philosophy) - but can this be applied to the goal of philosophy? (of course this is a philosophical question, but more of a pragmatic one regarding the choice to continue the philosophical enterprise). If something doesn't work, and it continues to not work after countless attempts, should we consider giving up?

A cursory look at the history of philosophy (which is more of a history of loosely-related thinkers and groups of thinkers instead of some kind of perennial tradition) will show that it has a rather poor record of producing true statements, when truth is the goal. Countless philosophers have used the same general methods to try to come to true statements, but we never seem to be able to agree on any of them. At least from a superficial point of view, Einstein's quote would seem to apply: philosophers from all eras keep trying to answer the same damn questions and every time they fall short. The shortness of one's life means that each new generation is presented with the same arguments - they seem new to them, but they're really thousands of years old.

Now, Einstein's quote was probably meant more as a joke and would apply to things in which there are alternative methods of acquiring the goal. Typing incompatible code into a Python processor will not give you everything you wanted, and continuing to use the incompatible code instead of trying something new like Python will not do anything and is just stupid.

If we continue to slip up and fail to produce true statements, does that mean we ought to stop trying? Are we being foolish by expecting truth? Out of all of the previous attempts at truth, how likely is it that your attempt is going to be true? The ongoing cultural trend in (modern) philosophy has less to do with inquiring about the nature of the world and more about winning an argument, or releasing "weird" philosophy. It's more of a game than anything. The same could be said about many other academic fields (including mainstream science), but philosophy kind of stands out from what I can tell.

We can keep trying to beat the computer AI at chess on Master level - but we'll never be able to beat it. We can try to make a perpetual mechanical motion machine, but we'll never manage it. We can try to make a utopian society that will last forever - but we'll never reach that point without hurting others and it'll eventually get fucked anyway by entropy.

It does seem rather hopeless at times.

A couple of my thoughts on this:

• Philosophy actually has produced truth in some sense, or, at the very least, constrained the possibilities within a more manageable range. It has a great track record of identifying problems. I think there are two types of philosophical questions: the interpretive and the constructive. The interpretive questions are the ones that are more likely to lead to agreement and are mostly reflective problems (pace Wittgenstein), the ones that can be revealed after an honest look at the everyday experiences of a person without bias or apprehension. They are questions whose answers don't usually stray far away from experience itself, and are the questions whose answer typically result in the feeling of "enlightenment". The constructive questions are those that start to get into the real theoretical aspects of philosophy, such as metaphysics, epistemology, etc, things that can't be immediately experienced but must be modeled. The constructive questions, like any architectural structure, will inevitably fall or be revised. Out of both of these types, the questions that are more pressing and thus require more pragmatic answers are going to result in more agreement (and collective agreement is the closest we'll ever get to real truth).
• Philosophy is largely innocuous. That is to say, it is usually ethically innocent. Nobody usually gets seriously hurt by philosophical inquiry alone (the fallout is another issue...). If there's any reason to stop doing philosophy, ethical issues isn't one of them. Ethics is, fundamentally, a philosophical field anyway.
• It's fun.
• It's therapeutic (a symptom of a larger problem)
• The biggest thing, though, is that philosophy is largely a natural thing for any person to do. We can't stop thinking philosophically. It's what we, as minded individuals, do. We think, just like we breathe and eat and shit and sleep. We might as well try to think right, or at least better.
• If nothing more, irrational thinking has a tendency to harm other people and yourself. If you're concerned about not being an idiot and hurting other people, then philosophy, particularly the pragmatic questions, is going to be needed.

And maybe we shouldn't always see the philosophical method as a streamlined route to truth. Perhaps it's sometimes like analyzing a strange structure; everyone's poking, prodding, nodding, murmuring, measuring, changing perspectives on, and theorizing about the structure in front of them. We'll probably never quite know what the structure is, but for some reason we're drawn to it, unable to ignore it.

In conclusion, my view on philosophy is that, when it's not ethics or politics (the more pragmatic-oriented), or an interpretive question, we're never going to really come to truth or professional agreement. I don't share the optimism of the graduate student who thinks their new idea will be the-next-big-thing and will lead to a century of understanding, finally solving everything.

Most of us claim to be against subjectivism and relativism - and yet we're content with believing we hold the truth in spite of history.

-----

This is especially pertinent to someone as pessimistic as myself. I've made my pessimistic views known before. My love of philosophy seems almost like the "black sheep" of my worldview - humanity is doomed, we really shouldn't reproduce, politicians inevitably become corrupt, life in general is malignantly useless, whoever made the universe was either incompetent or morally questionable, but hey! philosophy! hooray! (never mind that pessimism is philosophy...)

The thing about philosophy is that you can't half-ass it and still consider it philosophy. If you didn't try your very best, then it's probably bullshit. Even if you try your very best, it's almost certainly bullshit.

At the same time, however, to try your best requires that you have a desired end-goal in mind: in this case, it's truth.

But look at the history of philosophy. We haven't really gotten close to any constructive truth, it seems. Philosophers hold a position either because they naively think they have found the truth, or because they feel that by holding a belief, they are helping the dialectic.

And that is why it's at least prima facie difficult to "justify" constructive philosophy as a pessimist. If I don't have faith in humanity, why should I have faith in philosophy? If I don't really care whether or not humanity dies out, why should I care about finding the truths of reality, something that kinda needs a temporally-extended intelligent species?

At least for myself, philosophy have several uses:

• Contrary to the established belief that metaphysics is first philosophy, I think that it is ethics that is first philosophy (pace Levinas), or an ethics-based metaphysics. You have to be alive in order to do anything else, and so we have to ask ourselves how we ought to live, or if we should live in the first place.
• Philosophy is largely therapeutic for me, not so different from the philosophical works entitled "Meditations" by various authors like Descartes or Husserl. It's something to dissolve issues with, and to most importantly pass the time. It's something to think about on the train, or at work, or while you're falling asleep.
• As said before, philosophy is largely ethically innocent. So the drive for truth is not that problematic in the way the reproduction of the species is. Now, the transcendent drive for truth is partly dependent upon the continuation of a species that can do this drive. In which case, something like philosophy is not a justification for the continuation of the species, but merely a result of it. However, what is justified is a personal drive for truth. I can do whatever the hell I want so long as I don't seriously impact anyone negatively. In a sort of twisted manner, I can "leech" off of the surrounding insanity without condoning it. I can be a part of society without approving of it. I can watch Game of Thrones, take a walk in a public park, and read philosophy without explicitly approving of the underlying structure, just like someone can enjoy a monastery while being an atheist, or enjoy the fireworks of a national holiday even if they don't explicitly approve of the country.
• I like philosophy as a challenge more than I like it out of a wish to come to truth. Coming to truth is more of a byproduct of my enjoyment of it as a challenge, just like a rock climber may just enjoy rock climbing in general and not necessarily or solely the final push to the top.

What do you think? What is the purpose of philosophy? What is its methodology and where is it going?