Wei_Dai comments on Metaphilosophical Mysteries - Less Wrong

35 Post author: Wei_Dai 27 July 2010 12:55AM

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Comment author: Wei_Dai 27 July 2010 08:00:45AM 11 points [-]

One "interesting" thing about philosophy seems to be that as soon as a philosophical issue gets a definitive answer, it ceases to be part of philosophy and instead becomes either mathematics or science.

Agreed, and I think that accounts for the reputation philosophy has for not being productive. People see the confusion and slow progress in the fields that are still thought of as philosophy, and forget that philosophical progress is what allowed many fields to become mathematics or science.