What I have an issue with is the idea that philosophers today are contributing anything of substantial value to the pursuit of science. *Scientists* are; not philosophers.

I think this statement commits two errors, which I already have explained (with examples and analysis proving the point) in my talk “Is Philosophy Stupid?“. In short…

(1) A lot of what scientists claim is science, is actually philosophy (in fact all of science is philosophy, just philosophy with better data, as I also explain in that same talk, but I assume you are bracketing the “better data” part as a separate thing and mean by “philosophy” the rest of what we do to get answers to things). Case in point: Superstring Theory is philosophy (it is speculative, not scientifically proven, entirely conceptual but constrained by empirical data, and operating on ontological and metaphysical premises to reach ontological and metaphysical conclusions–that’s philosophy). So unless you think all scientific speculation (like work on Superstring Theory) “contributes nothing of substantial value” to science, your claim that philosophy doesn’t do that is false. (This becomes all the more obvious when we realize all of mathematics is philosophy, being purely conceptual analysis that is found to have applications in understanding the world; now think of how much advances in mathematics have radically transformed science, e.g. Game Theory. Which is philosophy.)

(2) Science is absolutely dependent on philosophy and is continually transformed by it and takes premises from it. Not just in the obvious ways (epistemology: science would not even exist and could never improve in its reliability and methodology in the complete absence of any philosophy of science; ethics: scientific research is governed and constrained by conclusions in moral philosophy; politics: scientific funding and laws governing it derive ultimately from conclusions people make in political philosophy; metaphysics: science operates on metaphysical assumptions that themselves have not been scientifically proven in any peer reviewed journal, e.g. methodological naturalism and the prioritization of hypotheses consistent with physicalism). But in numerous other ways. Most recently, in cognitive science (conceptual analysis of free will and qualia governs, guides, inspires, and constrains scientific research in neuroscience). In my talk I give the example of how recent philosophy of causality has actually and significantly transformed several sciences, and then show how that fits into the context of a number of advances in philosophy that now govern all of science, but which we simply take for granted–forgetting they actually came from philosophy, not science per se.

So I say let the claim that philosophy does not contribute anything of substantial value to science never be uttered again.

What I have an issue with is the idea that philosophers today are contributing anything of substantial value to the pursuit of science. *Scientists* are; not philosophers.

Let me quickly admit that I’ve been annoyed to no end by Christian philosophers like Craig who bring pop philosophical common sense (“Something can’t come from nothing, y’know!” or “Everything that has a beginning has a cause! :-)”) to the study of actual problems in cosmology, for example. Maybe there’s actually some value there but it’s been shouted down by the blatherings of these Christian philosophers.

Your thoughts?