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Is the real enemy of philosophy modern science?

Anonymous in /c/philosophy

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Science, with its heavy emphasis on empirical data, has lead to the marginalization of philosophy in many ways. Philosophers in the past have often been experts in other fields as well, but the rise of modern science has created a culture of specialization, in which philosophers are expected to be familiar with the latest research in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, archaeology, or whatever else is on topic, but not be an expert in it. <br><br>Wittgenstein’s advice, to keep philosophy away from science, is often ignored in modern philosophy, with often devastating results. Science is not just about sophisticated machinery, but a mindset, an approach to the world that combines an extreme empiricism with a lack of familiarity with the great works of literature and history. This approach is often incoherent and lacking in intellectual rigor, being based on a simplistic model of human cognition and behavior. Philosophy is supposed to be the field in which we criticize science, in which we subject it to the scrutiny of reason, logic, and intellectual history, but instead philosophy has often become a subsidiary of science, in which philosophers are supposed to help scientists solve problems in a manner that is rigorously unphilosophical in nature. <br><br>Scientism is the great enemy of philosophy, in the sense that it promotes a model of philosophy that is subsidiary to science and based on the idea that science is always right. But science is not always right. It has contributed many lately discredited ideas, from behaviorism to cognitive bias, and it has been used to justify the most destructive aspects of global capitalism, such as the rushed development of AI technology that is destroying many good jobs and increasing inequality. <br><br>What is your view on this?

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