Wednesday, August 03, 2011

It depends ..

... Does Philosophy Matter? - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

... the conclusions reached in philosophical disquisitions do not travel. They do not travel into contexts that are not explicitly philosophical (as seminars, academic journals, and conferences are), and they do not even make their way into the non-philosophical lives of those who hold them. The fact that you might give one set of answers rather than another to standard philosophical questions will say nothing about how you will behave when something other than a point of philosophy is in dispute.

True, I suppose, if you define philosophy strictly as an academic discipline. But, as I've said before, a professor of philosophy and a philosopher are not necessarily the same.

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