Simple question: Why do you think philosophy is valuable and important?

This question is primarily aimed at philosophers, but I'd love to hear responses from everyone. I'm going to give a few examples of what I think will be the kinds of answers people will give. You can respond by agreeing or disagreeing or criticising these. I'd love to hear reasoning and arguments for or against these. Let me first caveat that I don't think all philosophers believe all these things. I'm just giving examples of common kinds of answers that I've seen or heard. I'm under the impression that this is what philosophers think, so show me if I'm wrong.<br><br>I'm asking because I've been getting more and more over the value of philosophy and am looking to understand if there's anything that I'm missing.<br><br>**1. Philosophers improve our everyday thinking by encouraging us to slow down and logically work through problems in a more careful and organic way.** This is one of the most common arguments I've heard for why philosophy is valuable and important. Philosophers are supposed to be experts at thinking about thinking and so they can teach us about all the fallacies we're committing. We're smart, logical, rational people, but we're oversocialized by modern society.<br><br>This is why the most popular philosophers on r/philosophy have 15 billion comments. It's because their over socialised audiences are being challenged to think for themselves and critique. That's why we love philosophers like Dinesh D'Souza; he's encouraging us to think for ourselves and think critically. Because we're lazy and spoiled and don't think logically.<br><br>I think this view is at odds with reality. Many people *are* thinking carefully and logically and use philosophy. But philosophers want to own the idea and have philosophers recognised as the experts because their over socialised pupils want to think for themselves. What's over socialising? Well, that's really anything other than philosophy. We're so distracted by modern life, we don't have time to think for ourselves, we just want to be spoonfed the answers and we don't have the capacity to want to learn or think. We defend our preconceptions and we don't question our assumptions. Reminds me of the phrase: "The uneducated masses". <br><br>What magnifies this issue is that philosophers have created technical jargon that only they understand, and they use that as a way to gatekeep people. "I'm the expert in thinking and logic. I've studied philosophy for decades, and I have a PhD in it. You need me to tell you how to think properly. Just think about it." There are whole fields of philosophy dedicated to jargon and technical tools and technical concepts and methods that don't help anyone outside of academia. I think people are pretty good at thinking and most people can think logically. We're advanced cognitive beings, so we have reasonably developed tools for cognition. We don't need philosophers to show us how to think.<br><br>Most of the time that you hear philosophers talk about improving our thinking, it's about challenging people's preconceptions. People are too indoctrinated by society and they have preconceived notions that they're not critically examining. Well, the only people I know that philosophers are challenging are people without college degrees. Everyone who's gone to college has had their opinions challenged. Most people don't need philosophers to tell them to critically examine their assumptions. Why do we need philosophers to do this for us?<br><br>The truth is, most people are just fine. We don't need philosophy. We don't even know what philosophy is. Most people don't even want to think about this stuff, and that's okay. There's a reason why philosophy is unpopular. For most people, philosophy is obscure and irrelevant and made up problems. We have too much to deal with in our everyday lives to worry about whether or not the external world exists or not. We have better things to do.<br><br>If you think philosophy can improve our everyday thinking, then what's the evidence for that? What specific, concrete examples can you point to where philosophy has helped our everyday thinking? Because I just haven't seen it. Philosophers will say that most people have unreflective worldviews and that we need philosophy to reflect on our worldviews. But don't you need to have an opinion about the world to have a worldview? And isn't that what we call politics?<br><br>**2. Philosophers will invent the next tool that society needs to progress.** The truth is, it's not philosophers. We're smart, logical, rational, and we're reasoning and dealing with the issues that society faces. We don't need philosophers.<br><br>**3. Philosophers will save humanity.** The problem is that philosophy is fundamentally pessimistic. Philosophers don't have any solutions. They're just raising more questions that they can't answer, and there's no end in sight. I don't think anyone will ever defend philosophy more than the philosophers. They have their hands deep in the cookie jar and they're worried that their career is meaningless and will be taken away.<br><br>Philosophy is like religion for secularists. They're aware that they have no solutions, but they want to think that there might be a solution. I think that's why people are so obsessed with philosophy. We're afraid to die, and our brains need something to hold onto.<br><br>Philosophy does inspire other smarter and more capable people. But isn't that what art does? That's what education does. That's what science does. That's what history does. Philosophy inspires people, but it's not the only thing. There are other forms of human knowledge and inquiry that are far more inspiring and far more important than philosophy.<br><br>**4. Philosophers can tell us about what's most fundamental to reality. We need philosophy to understand the core questions of existence.** Everyone cares about the core questions of existence, but that doesn't mean that philosophers are the best people to go to. These are very profound questions, but we don't need philosophers to think about them. If you care about truth, ethics, justice, existence, then you don't need to read Kant to figure that out. We're smart, logical, rational and we can make well rounded decisions without philosophy.<br><br>I think people are being overly simplistic by saying philosophers are the experts at answering these questions. Philosophers don't have access to any information that the common people don't have access to. What makes philosophers so special? That's a rhetorical question. Philosophers are not special. We're all experts on our own experiences.<br><br>Philosophers don't have access to any kind of information that we don't have access to, but they like to pretend that they do. Philosophers will make these wild claims and we'll just believe them because they're authority figures. Philosophers have created the illusion that they're the experts in rational thinking and critical thinking and so we should just trust them when they make claims about the core questions of existence. Philosophers have their own preconceptions. Philosophers have their own cognitive biases.<br><br>What makes philosophers so special? Why should we trust them? Why should we listen to them? I don't think we should. I trust my instincts. I trust my own reasoning. I trust my own experiences. I trust the collective knowledge of humanity.<br><br>**5. Philosophy can help us learn about all these other fields of human knowledge and inquiry.** Why don't we just go learn those fields directly? Why do we need philosophers to defend them? Why do we need philosophers to explain them to us? Why do we need philosophy to tell us what to think?<br><br>Philosophers aren't experts in these other fields. Philosophers don't know what they're talking about. Why should we care what philosophers think about other fields? Why don't we just go learn the fields themselves? We don't need philosophers to tell us how to think about history or how to think about science or how to think about art. That's what every field does. We don't need philosophers to tell us that reasoning and inquiry are important. We already know that.<br><br>**6. Philosophy is important because it helps us critically examine other fields of human knowledge and inquiry.** But don't other fields already do that? Every field is critically examining itself and society. Every field has people thinking about the problems and issues and the dangers and the misuses of that field. We don't need philosophy to tell us that other fields are problematic.<br><br>Philosophers are just saying that philosophy is important because other philosophers say philosophy is important. It's a circular argument. Philosophers want to think that they're the only experts in rational thinking and critical thinking. They want to have sole ownership of those concepts. That's a lie. Every field is critically thinking and reasoning about itself and society and the world. Why do we need philosophers? We already have the experts in the field.<br><br>It's not like philosophers are saying anything that we don't already know. Philosophers are not telling us anything new. We already know that other fields are problematic. We already know that other fields have issues. We already know that other fields need to be criticised. We don't need philosophers to tell us this.<br><br>**7. Philosophy is important outside of academia. Many non western cultures and societies still put a very high value on philosophy.** Are you kidding? All societies and cultures think philosophers are obscure and irrelevant. Philosophers are a niche minority. Philosophers are unpopular. Philosophers are not important. That's the truth. Philosophers are wasting their time. We don't need philosophers.<br><br>**8. Philosophy is important because it shows that we can have open-minded thinking and discussion. Philosophers are the experts at having respectful discussions.** I think this is one of the worst arguments for why philosophy is valuable and important. Philosophers are the most close-minded people on Earth. Philosophers are dogmatic. Philosophers are just as biased as everyone else. Philosophers are not experts at open-minded thinking and discussion. We're all experts at open-minded thinking and discussion