But I also think the objection to engaging with such problems can be largely diffused by pointing out that it doesn't necessarily matter whether the problems themselves are resolvable so long as engaging with them at least provides other benefits. — Postmodern Beatnik

I agree.

I think it might depend on how we come to this conclusion. If the problem is one that we think must have an answer, but not one we can find, there is bound to be a certain residual dissatisfaction with stopping there. — Postmodern Beatnik

Yes, I agree. But even that could be broken down further into whether we just cannot presently find an answer the way that we've been seeking one, or whether we cannot find an answer indefinitely - regardless of the way in which one is sought. In the former case, progress is still possible, at least in the sense that we've mentioned of ruling out and moving on; and in the latter, progress of that sort would've been made in having reached that conclusion, and the problem would've been dissolved.

I didn't say philosophy cannot have any practical applications. The suggestion was merely that it does not have anything like the very obvious practical applications that science does.

In any case you would need to provide an argument to support the contention that "living well" should be counted as a practical matter, even if it were accepted that philosophy inevitably helps with that.

...in the latter, progress of that sort would've been made in having reached that conclusion, and the problem would've been dissolved. — Sapientia

I'm pretty sure we're in agreement here, but I would like to clarify. I take it you are saying that even in these unsatisfying cases (when we think the question must have an answer but is indefinitely unanswerable for us), we must still admit that some progress has been made. This I agree with. I don't think that progress will entirely mitigate the dissatisfaction, however, insofar as we still think the question must have an answer (just not one we can obtain, even if we can still rule out a few). I also don't think that this counts as resolving the problem. Though I suppose it would tell us how much of a resolution is possible, which would at least be enough to let us (as you say) move on to other problems. So it's a resolution of sorts to the inquiry, insofar as the inquiry might end (though not a resolution in the sense that it is completed).

I didn't say philosophy cannot have any practical applications. — John

And I neither said nor implied that you did.

The suggestion was merely that it does not have anything like the very obvious practical applications that science does. — John

And that was what I was disagreeing with. Ethics strikes me as an extremely obvious practical application of philosophy—and, indeed, one of the oldest practical applications thereof. That philosophy is linked to ethics and living well goes back further than even ancient Greece.

In any case you would need to provide an argument to support the contention that "living well" should be counted as a practical matter, even if it were accepted that philosophy inevitably helps with that. — John

It would seem to be a practical matter by definition. Living well has to do with what we actually do in our everyday lives. One cannot live well merely in theory because living is something we do in the world. Thus one must put wisdom into practice in order to live well. Indeed, the technical use of the word "practical" within philosophy was invented precisely for this sort of pursuit. To deny that living well is a practical matter is to misunderstand the very words one is using.

And that was what I was disagreeing with. Ethics strikes me as an extremely obvious practical application of philosophy—and, indeed, one of the oldest practical applications thereof. That philosophy is linked to ethics and living well goes back further than even ancient Greece. — Postmodern Beatnik

Well, for a start, Ethics is just one part of philosophy. Epistemology and Metaphysics are arguably a much greater part of modern philosophy, and there don't seem to be any obvious practical applications of those. The fact that it "strikes you as extremely obvious" means little. Can you present any actual data from any studies that show that philosophers have generally tended to live better lives than other humans? Because that is what you would need to show that philosophy actually does have practical applications.

Again, note that I have not claimed it has no practical applications; just that it has no obvious practical applications.

It would seem to be a practical matter by definition. Living well has to do with what we actual do in our everyday lives. One cannot live well merely in theory because living is something we do in the world. Thus one must put wisdom into practice in order to live well. Indeed, the technical use of the word "practical" within philosophy was invented precisely for this sort of pursuit. To deny that living well is a practical matter is to misunderstand the very words one is using. — Postmodern Beatnik

It is a trivial truism that living is practice as opposed to theory, or merely thinking about it. I think it is arguable that very many philosophers have spent more time on the latter than the former; more time, that is, thinking about living than engaging in practical pursuits.

Also, the attribute of being "practical" is generally applied to ideas which facilitate the achievement of a very specific purpose. "Living well" is too nebulous a concept - impossible to quantify, or even to precisely qualify, to count as a specific purpose. Farming well, sailing well, and playing tennis well, are all practical matters. What constitutes doing those well is easily determinable, but what constitutes "living well" cannot be determined at all, and remains a matter of speculation and opinion. What contributes to farming well, sailing well, and playing tennis well (that is, what, in these ambits, has practical application) is also easily determinable. Such is not the case with living well, so I would say that what you have claimed is well off the mark.

Well, for a start, Ethics is just one part of philosophy. — John

And according to some ways of thinking, the main part—and the part towards which all others are aimed. But we can leave such claims to the side. Ethics is part of philosophy; therefore, any obvious practical application of ethics is an obvious practical application of philosophy.

Epistemology and Metaphysics are arguably a much greater part of modern philosophy — John

By what measure? Specialists? Faculty positions? Dedicated journals? Publications? Word count? Metaphysics and epistemology wins out in some of these, and it loses in others. But even when it constitutes a greater proportion in one of these areas, it never constitutes a much greater proportion. In terms of people claiming a specialty in an M&E field versus in an ethics field, for instance, the ratio is 4:3 in favor of M&E (so greater, but not much greater).

and there don't seem to be any obvious practical applications of those. — John

The obvious practical application of epistemology is the scientific method (since scientists got it from philosophy), so any practical application of science is dependent upon this practical application of philosophy.

The fact that it "strikes you as extremely obvious" means little. — John

I see. If you are going to play games with such picayune matters of language, then I will state my meaning more plainly: ethics is an extremely obvious application of philosophy, and any competent thinker who considers it honestly for more than five seconds ought to recognize it as such. Is that more to your liking?

Can you present any actual data from any studies that show that philosophers have generally tended to live better lives than other humans? Because that is what you would need to show that philosophy actually does have practical applications. — John

This is an absurd straw man. One need not be a professional philosopher—or even much of a philosopher at all—in order to benefit from the products of philosophy (some examples of which are science, morality, and democracy).

Again, note that I have not claimed it has no practical applications; just that it has no obvious practical applications. — John

I have already noted this twice. I note it again a third time. I also disagree with it yet again. Your denial does not tell me that the practical applications of philosophy are not obvious. It only tells me that you are oblivious to them.

I think it is arguable that very many philosophers have spent more time on the latter than the former; more time, that is, thinking about living than engaging in practical pursuits. — John

Which arguably makes them bad philosophers in an important respect (though we may be better off overall if some philosophers dedicate themselves to theory, so perhaps they are not bad philosophers after all). Regardless, nothing follows from this about the products of their work or the practical applications thereof.

Also, the attribute of being "practical" is generally applied to ideas which facilitate the achievement of a very specific purpose. — John

False. "Practical" is opposed to "theoretical." Indeed, one of the oldest philosophical uses of the word (in cognate form, of course) comes from Aristotle's discussion of practical wisdom, which is an ability with broad applications. We could sum up those applications, but the term we would use to do so just causes further problems for your argument because the specific purpose at which practical wisdom aims in Aristotle is living well (aka eudaimonia). So again, it looks like you do not understand the words you are using (or at least, how they are used in a philosophical context—this being a philosophy forum, after all).

"Living well" is too nebulous a concept - impossible to quantify, or even to precisely qualify, to count as a specific purpose. — John

This seems to beg the question against any number of philosophers (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes of Sinope, Epicurus, Zeno of Citium, Pyrrho, and Aristippus of Cyrene being the most obvious, but also just about all medieval philosophers, the vast majority of early modern philosophers, and a growing number of contemporary philosophers). Granted, there are many accounts of what it takes to live well, but it does not follow from this that it is impossible to give a precise account of it.

Farming well, sailing well, and playing tennis well, are all practical matters. What constitutes doing those well is easily determinable [...] What contributes to farming well, sailing well, and playing tennis well (that is, what, in these ambits, has practical application) is also easily determinable. — John

And yet these are all still the subjects of debate (see the ongoing debates regarding the merits of organic agriculture, factory farms, and the treatment of farm animals, or the variations in technique among professional sailors and tennis coaches). So disagreement must not be a reliable guide to what is determinable.

To take just one example, I believe that the so-called 'problem of perception' was actually definitively resolved over two thousand years ago in ancient Greece. The reason it persists is not because it remains mysterious, but because people are not very good at arguing. — The Great Whatever

So that means all the professional philosophers since then who disagreed were not very good at argument. I doubt that.

But you can read their stuff and see they aren't. Kek!

Found an interesting interview of Peter Unger, who thinks philosophy is a bunch of empty ideas:

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/06/philosophy-is-a-bunch-of-empty-ideas-interview-with-peter-unger.html

But you can read their stuff and see they aren't. Kek! — The Great Whatever

I'm not convinced either, and I'm not going to go and studiously read through all that material just to put it to the test. It'd be more efficient to put your supposed resolution to the test. You could create a new discussion in which to do so.

Yes an interesting interview and many here agree with him. But doesn't it change things if we consider everyone a philosopher? That anyone with a world view is making philosophical decisions every day and participating whether they think about it or not. I think Gramsci and others have said this. If all humans are philosophers then the realization that we are running on a hamster wheel is hardly surprising. We philosophize because it's an activity that informs our operating system to make decisions. And decisions are necessary.

I agree with you that philosophy is something that is inevitable. However since there is no way to actually verify that our thoughts are correct, as in, they are an accurate representation of reality, then ultimately the entire enterprise of thought is nihilistic.

Which, incidentally, also means that the previous statement is also unverifiable. We cannot trust our senses, nor can we trust our rationality. I see no reason why our rationality alone would allow us to concoct grand metaphysical theories. It is very anthropocentric and narrow minded, but then again this argument is also an appeal to rationality, so it cannot be entirely trusted, which also cannot be trusted.

That it can't be trusted or verified would seem to be a condition of the fact (?) that we are metrical and the world is non-metrical. We project a unitized overlay on the world, count the units in pro and con, and make a decision. How we identify and count those units is prone to error and ignorance but it earns the badge of rationality anyway. But trying to keep up with science is trying to keep up with the Jones's. I find it depressing.

I'm not going to go and studiously read through all that material — Sapientia

I know you're not. Kek!

And you're not going to put your money where your mouth is by putting your supposed resolution to the test. Or are you?

Kek to you too!

A delayed response; I have been away.

Ethics is part of philosophy; therefore, any obvious practical application of ethics is an obvious practical application of philosophy. — Postmodern Beatnik

Give me an example of an "obvious practical application" of ethics.

Epistemology and Metaphysics are arguably a much greater part of modern philosophy — John

By what measure?

Just look at the number of posts in Metaphysics and Epistemology compared to Ethics on your typical philosophy forum to get an indication of what exercises the average amateur philosophical interest.

In any case, apart from ethics, metaphysics and epistemology, we have aesthetics, phenomenology, hermeneutics, deconstruction, semantics, semiology, philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and so on.

The obvious practical application of epistemology is the scientific method (since scientists got it from philosophy), so any practical application of science is dependent upon this practical application of philosophy.

This is nonsense; one can just as well practice the scientific method without ever having given any thought to epistemology. As to the historical relationship between epistemology and scientific practice it is arguable that the latter is prior to what is merely thinking about the implications of what we already do.

The fact that it "strikes you as extremely obvious" means little. — John

I see. If you are going to play games with such picayune matters of language, then I will state my meaning more plainly: ethics is an extremely obvious application of philosophy, and any competent thinker who considers it honestly for more than five seconds ought to recognize it as such. Is that more to your liking?

This is funny! Rather than offer a cogent argument for why I should agree with you, you suggest that anyone that doesn't agree with you could not be counted as a "competent thinker"!
And so now, ethics itself is the practical application, rather than being a discipline of thought which merely may have practical applications?

This is an absurd straw man. One need not be a professional philosopher—or even much of a philosopher at all—in order to benefit from the products of philosophy (some examples of which are science, morality, and democracy).

Science is only itself practically applied as technology, and is not dependent on most of philosophy; in fact it just was previously natural philosophy (as distinct from philosophy's other ambits). Morality exists independently of philosophy (or else all culture without a philosophical tradition are amoral). Democracy? A "practical application" of philosophy?? Really???

Again, note that I have not claimed it has no practical applications; just that it has no obvious practical applications. — John

I have already noted this twice. I note it again a third time. I also disagree with it yet again. Your denial does not tell me that the practical applications of philosophy are not obvious. It only tells me that you are oblivious to them.

No, it should tell you that I disagree with you that they are as obvious as the practical applications of science, a disagreement which you have given no cogent reason to relinquish.

I think it is arguable that very many philosophers have spent more time on the latter than the former; more time, that is, thinking about living than engaging in practical pursuits. — John

Which arguably makes them bad philosophers in an important respect (though we may be better off overall if some philosophers dedicate themselves to theory, so perhaps they are not bad philosophers after all). Regardless, nothing follows from this about the products of their work or the practical applications thereof.

As I understood it, the argument was over whether doing philosophy is very obviously helpful when it comes to practical matters; that is, over whether philosophical thought leads directly (very obviously) to very clear practical applications.

False. "Practical" is opposed to "theoretical." Indeed, one of the oldest philosophical uses of the word (in cognate form, of course) comes from Aristotle's discussion of practical wisdom, which is an ability with broad applications.

Again, nonsense, as I see it. Theorizing is "opposed" to doing. But much of 'doing' is not practical in the sense of "practical application". For example, things that are done for fun are not normally thought to be done for practical purposes.

Farming well, sailing well, and playing tennis well, are all practical matters. What constitutes doing those well is easily determinable [...] What contributes to farming well, sailing well, and playing tennis well (that is, what, in these ambits, has practical application) is also easily determinable. — John

And yet these are all still the subjects of debate (see the ongoing debates regarding the merits of organic agriculture, factory farms, and the treatment of farm animals, or the variations in technique among professional sailors and tennis coaches). So disagreement must not be a reliable guide to what is determinable.

You are misinterpreting my meaning here. All I intended to convey was the fact that the measure of farming well, leaving aside other ethical questions (for example, sustainability is a further consideration), is the measure of efficient food production. Similarly, the measure of playing tennis well is winning tournaments (which is, similarly, to leave aside questions such as the long term effects on the player's physical well-being, and so on).

Science's progress is divergent and human progress is convergent.

Converging on what?

Converging on what?

Answering that question.

I'm sorry, but I wasn't sure which comment or question you were responding to. Human progress converges on the resolution of...? Or true knowledge of....?

Hi Monitor, just teasing a little. I think science is expanding with new disciplines all the time, new areas of study. We seem driven to want to know, more and more. This same desire to know, makes us want to know 'who/what/why' we are, pushing us towards resolving problems related to our own reality/actuality as beings in the world. This is what I meant by convergent.

But you can read their stuff and see they aren't. — The Great Whatever

Only if you happen to agree that there is no world.

No, they're just not good at it. Bad argument always fails on its own terms, not due to outside influence.

human progress is convergent. — Cavacava

I thought there may be a Hegelian in our midst. I thought it my duty to announce my suspicions.

If there is a world, then there is a problem of perception. Get rid of the world and you can dispense with the problem of perception. Problem with that is most people consider it insane to get rid of the world. So you end up with drastically different starting grounds to argue from.

Give me an example of an "obvious practical application" of ethics. — John

Ethics is about how to live (with some people focusing more on what makes a life good, others focusing on what counts as living rightly, and still others focusing on fitting the two concerns together). Everyone makes decisions about how they should live—even those who conclude that they should stop living, or that they should live selfishly, or that they should not let the ethical principles of others interfere with their decision making—so everyone does ethics (though many do it sloppily and/or badly). When someone decides that they ought to live a particular way (or that they ought not to live some particular way), they imply some sort of ethical commitment and base their decision on some sort of ethical principle (even if that principle is vague or nihilistic, since ethics is not any particular conclusion). So I would say (as I have before) that ethics itself is an example (when properly understood). We do ethics not just when thinking about ethical issues, after all, but when making ethical decisions. Ethics, like philosophy itself, is as much an activity as it is an area of inquiry. And the inquiry is of great practical benefit when applied to the activity.

But if you want a more specific example, I have again given one already: living well. This goes beyond just making individual decisions about how one should live (which may be made moment to moment, invoking different principles each time), but trying to make one's life cohere into something worth living (and not just minimally worth living, but as maximally worthwhile as we can manage). Perhaps not everyone actually engages in an attempt to live well, but it ought to be clear why it is in everyone's interest to do so. So while not everyone in fact applies ethics in this way (just as not everyone avails themselves of the applications of science), it is nevertheless an available application—and an obvious one, I would say. I realize that you consider this to be too broad to count as practical, but notice that living well is ultimately a combination of many specific decisions. Even decisions about what career to pursue can have significant effects on one's eudaimonia in terms of one's relationship with both the good and the right. And note that this connection has also long been recognized by ethical traditions outside of the West. Buddhist ethics, for instance, makes choosing the right career one of the primary concerns described by the Eightfold Path.

These examples should suffice. But if one construes ethics broadly so as to include both moral and political philosophy, then I have already given at least one more: democracy (which has been developed over the long course of time by philosophers both within and without the Western philosophical tradition). Particularly as instituted today, our political system has been profoundly influenced by philosophy (both in terms of the general structure and specific policy issues, though I do not take the connections between philosophy and specific policies to be obvious). Philosophy has also been important in creating the conditions for democracy to take hold, such as in the early modern period when a sustained critique of the divine right of kings and the concurrent refinement of social contract theory led to a significant change in popular notions of political legitimacy. If we do not want to construe ethics broadly and instead wish to treat political philosophy as a separate area, then we can leave that as an obvious practical application of philosophy (and specifically political philosophy, but not ethics).

Indeed, ethics is the part of philosophy that everyone rushes to point to when asking for an application of philosophy, and we rush to it because its applications are so apparent. Not everyone realizes that ethicists are concerned with such a broad array of issues. Ethical philosophy is often presented to beginners as if it were just deontologists and consequentialists hashing out the metaphysics of ethics despite agreeing in the vast majority of cases regarding what specific actions were right. If that is one's familiarity with the subject, then one can be forgiven for misunderstanding the scope of the discipline. But when one gets to know the range of ethical concerns, the applications of ethics to life should be much clearer.

Just look at the number of posts in Metaphysics and Epistemology compared to Ethics on your typical philosophy forum to get an indication of what exercises the average amateur philosophical interest. — John

First, that depends on which forum one visits. There are plenty that cater to audiences more interested in ethics, and there are even independent forums dedicated to moral and political philosophy. Looking at TPF and PF, both have a greater number of posts in M&E—but both sites also have a greater number of topics (aka "threads," aka "discussions") in ethics. In any case, it doesn't make sense to ground pronouncements about the whole of philosophy on the activity of amateurs alone (nor on the activity of academics alone, for that matter).

In any case, apart from ethics, metaphysics and epistemology, we have aesthetics, phenomenology, hermeneutics, deconstruction, semantics, semiology, philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and so on. — John

Indeed we do, but this seems irrelevant. Your claim involved a direct comparison between ethics on the one hand and metaphysics and epistemology on the other. Every area of philosophy is small compared to the whole, particularly the finer we cut it up. But that says nothing about the relative sizes of any two areas of philosophy, nor to the question of whether there are any practical applications of philosophy (since a universal generalization is disproved just as well by one counterexample as it is by a thousand).

This is nonsense; one can just as well practice the scientific method without ever having given any thought to epistemology. — John

Whether or not one has to give epistemology a thought has nothing to do with whether or not one is applying it or its products. As my claim was only that the scientific method is an application of epistemology, it matters not at all that some people do not realize what they are doing when they use the scientific method—just as modern computer engineers do not have to understand how their science came about in order to apply its results, and I do not have to understand computer engineering to occasionally make use of various markup language tags (technology, of course, being your own example).

As to the historical relationship between epistemology and scientific practice it is arguable that the latter is prior to what is merely thinking about the implications of what we already do. — John

Not really. Aristotle's early version of the method started with reflections on common practice (as did all of his ideas), but it was also the product of a conscious effort to standardize and improve upon those methods. Alhazen relied heavily on Aristotle, but found it necessary to diverge from the received methods (leading him to develop the foundations of experimental methodology). And the Baconian method—which is generally seen as the beginning of the modern scientific method, particularly when synthesized with the efforts of his contemporaries Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler—was a conscious effort to replace Aristotelianism. Later refinements by Descartes and Mill were also concerted philosophical efforts aimed at expanding and improving current practices rather than just describing and reflecting on them, as were the important contributions of the American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Then, of course, there are the well-known efforts of Karl Popper to overcome the problem of induction by reframing science in terms of falsifiability. All of these were conscious philosophical attempts to ground science on sound epistemological principles.

This is funny! Rather than offer a cogent argument for why I should agree with you, you suggest that anyone that doesn't agree with you could not be counted as a "competent thinker"! — John

No. I replied to your word games with a qualification of my meaning. And if you read carefully, you'll notice that what I said offers multiple possible explanations for your failure to recognize my examples. You've just chosen to focus on a particular one.

In any case, your request for an argument is confused. One cannot prove obviousness. One can only point to examples and expect others to see the obviousness. If they do not, there really isn't much to say. I could just as easily dig in my heels and refuse to acknowledge that science has any obvious practical applications. And if I did so, you would not be able to offer any sort of proof. All you'd be able to do is offer examples of your own and tell me to educate myself if I did not understand them (as a lack of familiarity is often the problem here). It is generally taken as obvious that 1 + 1 = 2, for instance, but try getting a one-year-old child to see that. A certain level of familiarity with the subject matter is required before one can see even such "obvious" facts as this, after all.

This leaves us with a question about treating obviousness as any sort of interesting or relevant measure. You say philosophy has no obvious practical applications. I say it has several (and of course, I only need one to disprove the generalization). So my question now is why you think it matters. It clearly matters to you, and so I have endeavored to offer you examples. Ultimately, however, I wonder what you think turns on the issue.

And so now, ethics itself is the practical application, rather than being a discipline of thought which merely may have practical applications? — John

Ethics was one of my original examples, so I'm not sure why you are treating it here as a new suggestion. In any case, ethics is both a discipline of thought and a practice informed by that discipline of thought. I have already discussed this above, but here is yet another example. Devoutly religious people often act without needing to think very much about what to do. This is because they are influenced by the ethical thinkers of their faith's past and the systems of ethical practice those thinkers left behind. They are influenced in this way regardless of whether they have thought deeply about these issues themselves or not. This is still an application of that thought, however. Indeed, inherited ethical systems are another obvious practical application of ethics—for better or worse—and thus of philosophy.

As I understood it, the argument was over whether doing philosophy is very obviously helpful when it comes to practical matters; that is, over whether philosophical thought leads directly (very obviously) to very clear practical applications. — John

Then you have misunderstood. The question under discussion is whether philosophy has any practical applications. This is confirmed by the wording found in both of our posts at the outset of this disagreement, during which we both spoke in terms of philosophy itself and neither of us spoke in terms of doing philosophy. When it comes to doing philosophy, a lot depends on the philosopher. Plenty of people philosophize without ever applying it to their life. Others think hard about the connection between what they think and what they do. As such, I would not say that doing philosophy obviously will be helpful when it comes to practical matters (even if it can be helpful). The same is true of science, however. I know academic physicists who can hardly walk straight despite voluminous knowledge about mechanics (both classical and quantum).

Again, nonsense, as I see it. — John

How interesting that you think the way something strikes me means little, but I am expected to find it relevant how something is as you see it. In any case, you again seem to be unaware of what the words you are using mean. Particularly in a philosophical context, the theoretical is indeed contrasted with the practical. But this is not merely a linguistic convention of philosophers. The phrase "it works in theory, but not in practice" is commonplace in English (enough so for the reverse—"it works in practice, but not in theory"—to be a frequent joke in fields where techniques have far outpaced explanations).

Theorizing is "opposed" to doing. But much of 'doing' is not practical in the sense of "practical application". For example, things that are done for fun are not normally thought to be done for practical purposes. — John

But even if we were to accept this, the example of living well would still stand. And in any case, living well is a quintessentially practical enterprise given how that word is used in philosophy (that being the relevant sense of the word in a philosophical discussion on a philosophy forum).

All I intended to convey was the fact that the measure of farming well, leaving aside other ethical questions (for example, sustainability is a further consideration), is the measure of efficient food production. — John

But that is not the measure of farming well; it is the measure of farming efficiently. To do something well is not necessarily, and not necessarily just, doing it efficiently. Perhaps it would be in a case where there were no other concerns, but it is not the case here.

Similarly, the measure of playing tennis well is winning tournaments (which is, similarly, to leave aside questions such as the long term effects on the player's physical well-being, and so on). — John

Again, though, this is not the measure of playing well. One can win by cheating, for instance.

There are a lot of words here PB and I believe you are speaking in good faith. So, in good faith I must say that I am still not convinced that I should think that philosophy, either for those doing it or for society in general, has the kind of obvious practical applications that science does.

I don't have the time, energy or desire to respond to all your points, particularly since I don't think the issue we are apparently arguing over is of much import, anyway, so I will just make one last point of my own, and leave it at that.

If you are taking 'doing philosophy' or the 'existence of philosophy' to refer to the fact that people obviously think about what they do, then I would say that it is trivially true that it has practical applications, but I also think that such a definition of philosophy would be too broad. For sure, any thought may feed into the practical, but to say that is not the same as to say that it has direct and obvious practical applications, the way chemistry, physics, geology or genetics, for example, do.

I must say that I am still not convinced that I should think that philosophy, either for those doing it or for society in general, has the kind of obvious practical applications that science does. — John

Well, of course you're not. At this point, you are too invested in saying that there aren't any to suddenly see them. And as I've already noted, there's no argument that can be given. All I can tell you to do is to better familiarize yourself with the discipline. That's the only way you'll come to understand.

(But since you seem to think an argument ought to be forthcoming, I wonder what your argument is for the claim that science has any obvious practical applications. We've had technology longer than we've had formal science, after all, so it can't just be that.)

If you are taking 'doing philosophy' or the 'existence of philosophy' to refer to the fact that people obviously think about what they do, then I would say that it is trivially true that it has practical applications, but I also think that such a definition of philosophy would be too broad. — John

That's not what I've said, though. I do think that we ought to define "philosophy" broadly (after all, academic philosophy grows out of a less formal type of philosophical thinking), but I would not define it so broadly as to refer to any thinking we do about things. Regardless, the main point can be made even if we limit ourselves to formal philosophical thinking: we are all stuck making decisions of the sort with which ethics is concerned, so it is obviously to our advantage if we can think well about these decisions rather than thinking poorly about them; but philosophy is fundamentally about improving the way we think, and ethics is fundamentally about improving the way we think about a particular set of questions; therefore, philosophy (and thinking philosophically) can help us make these decisions.

On the actual topic of this discussion, Simon Blackburn recently published an essay on the value of studying philosophy. In it, he makes some comments about progress in philosophy—and about the sort of progress that philosophy can be expected to make:

Do the practices of philosophy change, and do they improve? One of the most potent causes of mistrust of philosophy is that it provides no answers, only questions, so that to many it does not seem to have progressed since its very beginnings in Plato, or even in pre-Socratic Greece (or China or India). Of course, one might similarly ask whether other human pursuits, such as music, literature, drama, architecture, painting or politics, have 'improved' (and by what measure this judgement is supposed to be made), and if the answer is at best indeterminate we might query whether this reflects badly on those practices, or whether perhaps it indicates a problem with the question. It may be enough that their practitioners improve as they get their musical, literary and other educations, and that, having improved, they can help to keep some of humanity’s most important flames alive.

Nevertheless there is another answer, which is that philosophy has indeed both changed and improved. It has always changed, because the social and historical matrix in which it is practised changes, and it is that matrix that throws up the questions that seem most urgent at particular times. And it has improved first because there is a constant input of improved scientific knowledge that feeds it, and second because sometimes improved moral and political sensibilities filter into it. An example of the latter is the way that the improving status of women, and their increased representation in the philosophy classroom, has both thrown up new and interesting issues and generally altered for the better the way discussions are conducted. Examples of the former influence are legion: from Copernicus through Newton to Darwin, Einstein and today’s neurophysiologists, philosophers have absorbed and then tried to interpret advances in scientific knowledge. Nineteenth-century advances in mathematics helped to propel logic to its enormous 20th-century leaps forward (and that in turn helped the computer age to get started). In recent years, there has been much valuable collaboration between philosophy and learning theory, neurophysiology, economics and cognitive science. — Simon Blackburn

And, of course, there is always the possibility that philosophers have made great progress without it being recognized as such. But I suppose that's more of an epistemological question.

You are jumping to unwarranted and tendentious conclusions about "what I am invested in" and the degree of my familiarity with "the discipline". On this account I can't see how any further response on my part will be fruitful.