Why Philosophy is Useless

Philosophy is Useless

In this video, Jack Lawrence argues that philosophy is useful.

The video is shallow. The question is what is philosophy. I think philosophy is the theology of Plato's beliefs. Specifically, I see philosophy as a pursuit of correspondence truth that is entirely rationalistic and not at all empirical, and that is useless. 

In my view, the proper way to develop a belief system is to start by clearly stating one's axioms. Then consider statements based on those axioms and empirical evidence to see if they should be added to your belief system. From my experience, the statements made by philosophers almost invariably fail, while statements from religious texts that have stood the test of time usually succeed.

Questions:

  1. Math is entirely rationalistic, so is it useless? The answer is no. Math is useful. Unlike philosophy, math doesn't use rationalism to make assumptions about reality. It merely reasons about a preconceived reality. The only useful assumptions about reality are empirical ones, but it can be useful to deductively reason about reality based on inductive assumptions. Philosophy doesn't do that.
  2. What about pragmatism, is that useful? First of all, Jack Lawrence is wrong about what pragmatism means. It does not mean the view that something is only valuable if it is useful. Rather, it is the view that truth is defined by practical outcomes. This is a little more useful than philosophy since defining truth as practical outcomes is tantamount to an inductive assumption about reality. Indeed, I personally find that pragmatism can be useful for identifying what other things are useful or useless. For example, I am working to improve my chess skills and pragmatism taught me that solving puzzles is a more useful form of training than studying openings since the outcome of my chess games are usually decided by the kind of tactical ideas that puzzles teach me to look for. That said, I did write a blog about my preference of practicalism over pragmatism.

Verdict: Philosophy is useless, pragmatism has specific use cases, and practicalism is useful.

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