I think it is fair game to offer the answer 'no' to a question when someone asks it. The fact that Pfhorrest did not like the answer and refused discussion when it was given, wondering why anyone would ever answer in this way, shows that he was not serious in asking.

I started discussing Snakes answer and then he didn’t like the way I was discussing it, so I decided not to proceed further since apparently anything but agreement with him would just get shut down without consideration. I’m not interested in talking to someone arguing in bad faith.

I think it is fair game to offer the answer 'no' to a question when someone asks it. The fact that Pfhorrest did not like the answer and refused discussion when it was given, wondering why anyone would ever answer in this way, shows that he was not serious in asking. — Snakes Alive

I'm inclined to agree. There's a certain degree of defensiveness around philosophy which seeks to shut off certain avenues of meta-analysis using exactly this kind of rhetorical trick. One has to understand philosophy to reject it, and the very act of rejection proves one does not understand it because anyone who did wouldn't reject it that way. QED.

The other is "Ah! But you're doing philosophy by constructing an argument to reject it" Like all thought is somehow philosophy.

apparently anything but agreement with him would just get shut down without consideration. — Pfhorrest

I don't think arguments have been shut down without consideration have they. Perhaps review the line of argument?

“Doesn't philosophy mean 'wisdom of love'?” Personally I would turn that around I believe that love of wisdom equates philosophy.

Philosophy is like the sail for a boat. Without the set of the sail or philosophy of life, we would just be floating around.

I don't think arguments have been shut down without consideration have they. Perhaps review the line of argument? — Isaac

I suggested that the reason he and I disagree about whether philosophy makes progress is that we disagree about what philosophy even is and what it’s trying to do. He defines philosophy in a way that it’s clearly impossible to do what he thinks it’s trying to do; I define it differently (right in the OP) and see progress at that goal as not only possible but evident. Then he replied:

“I don't care. You're just going to keep moving the goalposts. The problem is, on no reasonable moving of the goalpost will philosophy have made any progress anyway. So move them wherever you want.“

Seems pretty straightforwardly shutting down to me.

I agree that the thing he thinks philosophy is trying to do (answer big questions about the world just by talking about them) is not possible and so of course no progress can be made at that. I just disagree that that is an accurate characterization of what philosophy, either historical or contemporary, is trying to do. Historical philosophy (back when that included natural philosophy) didn’t constrain itself to just talking, and contemporary philosophy isn’t usually trying to directly answer questions about the world (but rather about how to answer such questions).

The simplest form of achieving happiness is to not argue with fools :)

Gosh! You guys are so wordy. Personally, I don’t care.You guys can argue semantics all you want. But physics and math are true

Alright, here's the deal. You can't really define philosophy any way you want, since it's a historical discipline that has had actual content and concerns in the past. To that extent, defining it as not concerned with answering first-order questions about reality is not something I'd allow, since it flies in the face of what philosophers have always actually done, and what they've understood themselves as doing.

Second, even if you define it as only about second-order questions about how methodologically to answer first-order ones, then even to the extent philosophers have done this, they also have made no progress in this domain.

I just disagree that that is an accurate characterization of what philosophy, either historical or contemporary, is trying to do. — Pfhorrest

The first is an empirical question then, for historians, yes? It's an interesting one, but not outside of philology. Did people, in general, use "philosophy" to describe their empirical investigations? That seems like a very specific question answerable only by reference to surviving texts of the period.

The second question I take it you'd like to answer with...

contemporary philosophy isn’t usually trying to directly answer questions about the world (but rather about how to answer such questions). — Pfhorrest

...and the progress you think is made in this respect is the broad outline of what you're calling the 'scientific method'.

So firstly, but perhaps most trivially, it's hard to fit about 99% of modern philosophy into the category of texts answering the question 'how should we best answer questions about the world'. Treatise on ethics, political theory, semantics, concepts, reference... These don't seem to me in any way directing themselves to the question of how to answer the 'big questions'. They seem concerned primarily with definitions, or framing some idea (which often boils down to definitions anyway). You might need to spell out, perhaps with examples, how you see these works as addressing the question as you phrased it.

But secondly, the point of my mentioning the six month old is that it can hardly be considered progress to simply establish that we should carry on doing as we had done since we were toddlers. Do we have a whole discipline dedicated to checking if we should still eat by placing food in our mouths?

I realise it might seem, superficially, as if there's some choice of method to be made, but it's not philosophy which determines that choice.

Hard really to say that philosophy has made any real progress, since in the current phield of quantum mechanics, there are all these bunch of interpretations that mirror all the various philosophies that have been proposed at various times, since antiquity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics

The sheer fact that there exist so many interpretations, is an embarrassment to philosophy, and most probably to physics, ie both. But philosophers just sing their tune, as usual, unperturbed. It's a shame really, not so for philosophy, since we are used to philosophy being shameless, but for physics, to degenerate to a kind of theology, where there are lots of interpretations, like there are lots of religions, heresies and cults.

I mean seriously, where is the progress here, are we kidding ourselves? Is philosophy just a way to make ourselves seem smart and wise and *deep*, where we are most definitely not?