Lots of good articulations of the 'purpose' of philosophy.

I came to TPF as a lay philosopher, rediscovering interests I had set aside due to no longer teaching a high school intro to philosophy class.

When I taught said class, I needed to connect to a discipline I had little experience with. So I read a lot - including back issues of "Philosophy Now". Some of it was beyond me, but I found myself drawn to discussions of AI. Fifteen years later, I find so much of that reading validated by what is happening with AI, and how those readings help me understand the issues today.

Which leads me to ask - what questions of an urgent / topical nature today can be best addressed, or perhaps just effectively addressed, with philosophy? Are there discussions on subjects now that will seem just as urgent in 15 years as discussions of AI have proven to be? I would love to hear some predictions, or be pointed towards urgent current topics in philosophy.

Canadian philosopher Joseph Heath noted on his substack that many of his colleagues seem to be 'sitting out' many fraught contemporary subjects. I imagine a lot of TPFers are closer to Heath than myself in terms of contact with this academic world - is he correct about this?

So much of what we know and do is unstated and unconscious. For instance, we use language fluidly, and so clearly we all 'know' the rules of grammar, but when asked to explain them we are often at a loss. Words too: we 'know' what they mean, as we use them with ease, but we grope for definitions. The same goes for concepts, purposes, ideologies, worldviews.

And so goes the majority of our lives, acting without knowing why, doing without quite knowing what we do. This is the unexamined life. Philosophy remedies this: it can make the implicit explicit, the unconscious conscious.

As we bring the unconscious to light, more often then not, we realize that these implicit beliefs we've carried with us don't really make sense. Then we have the opportunity to replace the unconscious and irrational with the conscious and rational. This is growth, the transition to true adulthood that so many make all too late, or never at all. The conscious cultivation of a worldview which is consonant with the world, rather than an artifact of upbringing.

This is the purpose of philosophy. — hypericin

:100: :fire:

Which leads me to ask - what questions of an urgent / topical nature today can be best addressed, or perhaps just effectively addressed, with philosophy? Are there discussions on subjects now that will seem just as urgent in 15 years as discussions of AI have proven to be? I would love to hear some predictions, or be pointed towards urgent current topics in philosophy. — Jeremy Murray

I don’t think any question requires philosophy, and certainly not if it’s to be settled by an educative political process. Seems to me all matters are settled by the ongoing conversations societies have with each other. These are, of course, based on philosophically derived notions, but not in a systematic or deliberate way. And our values will change as the older folk die off and the younger, more progressive types dominate (they in turn will be the conservative fogies of tomorrow).

I have to confess to not caring about AI. There’s a lot of alarmist verbiage written about it. My view is that any reading or tentative understandings of the matter will do nothing to manage or deal with any changes coming.

Canadian philosopher Joseph Heath noted on his substack that many of his colleagues seem to be 'sitting out' many fraught contemporary subjects — Jeremy Murray

I'm a big fan of sitting out controversies and pseudo problems. Many either go away or are integrated into culture as the old folk and their values die out.