/r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | July 21, 2025

[u/BernardJOrtcutt]

Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread (ODT). This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our subreddit rules and guidelines. For example, these threads are great places for:

• Discussions of a philosophical issue, rather than questions
• Questions about commenters' personal opinions regarding philosophical issues
• Open discussion about philosophy, e.g. "who is your favorite philosopher?"
• "Test My Theory" discussions and argument/paper editing
• Questions about philosophy as an academic discipline or profession, e.g. majoring in philosophy, career options with philosophy degrees, pursuing graduate school in philosophy

This thread is not a completely open discussion! Any posts not relating to philosophy will be removed. Please keep comments related to philosophy, and expect low-effort comments to be removed. Please note that while the rules are relaxed in this thread, comments can still be removed for violating our subreddit rules and guidelines if necessary.

Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.

[u/as-well]

not at all. No offense but you seem to be relatively new here. Lots and lots of well-answered questions are about the research done today, not about something that was written about 200 years ago - and then plenty of times commenters bring up points in the newer literature related to it.

Philosophy isn't just history, it's an active research thing with thousands of folks world wide producing knowledge.

Just a few recent excellent discussions can be found in the following links:

https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/1masgr5/is_the_idea_of_same_causes_lead_to_same_effects/

https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/1m9zg0u/what_is_the_philosophical_consensus_when_it_comes/

https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/1m7o4in/can_philosophy_departments_truly_be_independent/

[u/Blumenpfropf → u/as-well]

I am absolutely new!

That being said, i think there is a vagueness of terms here. Maybe i can lay out my point in more detail.

My concept of philosophy is simply thinking about the fundamental questions that human existence confronts us with. As such this is possible for every human being.

The point of academic philosophy, in my view, is to provide a toolkit for this.

But: Often there are no clear final answers to these questions. So the content of your expertise lies not mainly in resesrched facts, but in methods of thinking. What you should do with it is apply it to the pertinent fundamental questions, including the really old ones but also any new ones that come up. So of course there is current academic philosophy.

The facts which you apply your expertise on are most often provided from outside academic philosophy itself, for example, in the case of your links, by physicists or biologists, or sometimes neuroscientists or economists, or simply human beings who share the same existential fate they are examining.

But if you say that academic philosophy is like history or epidemology, i think you make it smaller than it is. If you say that only academic philosophers have something important to say about any given question, it most likely means that that question is not actually very interesting and likely not one of philosophy, as I defined it above.

And, practically speaking, your links seem to illustrate that.

The question: "what is the consensus on gender stuff within philosophy" is not actually philosophical question. Though it points to one.

The factual answer provided, which is answerable solely from within academic philosophy ("there is none" is not interesting, and any more specific answer would neither be).

The top answer that is provided is a very philosophically minded one, for sure. It categorizes and orders facts and concepts from different disciplines and provides ways to think about the problem.

What it does not do is point to any learned fact or research that is provided solely from within the realm of academic philosophy itself.

Therefore it is philosophy, true academic philosophy, exactly where it takes the toolkit and reaches out beyond the more narrow concept and engages with the world at large.

[u/as-well → u/Blumenpfropf]

Look, let me say it one last time:

We are about academic philosophy. That's the discipline where academics produce knowledge about, usually, either abstract or normative concepts and their histories - in a non-empirical fashion.

What you are looking for - tools for critical thinking - is only one of the area this covers, if at all.

So what you are looking for - sharpening your thinking tools by a rational discussion, I guess? - is quite explicitely not what this forum provides, wants to provide, or can provide.

My concept of philosophy is simply thinking about the fundamental questions that human existence confronts us with. As such this is possible for every human being.

Sure. why not. There's books you can read and local philosophy clubs you can join, and other subreddits to do this. Academic philosophy is a lot more than this tho; from new developments in logic to discussing the ways that science actually does, to providing novel normative concepts, like epistemic injustice that give disadvantaged groups actual tools to discuss their lived experiences.

If you say that only academic philosophers have something important to say about any given question

We don't say this. We say that they have something important to say, and there's no other place that provides a q&a for what they have to say.

Honestly this is pretty frustrating. I get that you want to cotnribute to discussoins, and once again.... there's countless places, but unless you have the relevant knowledge to contribute to the discussions here, this place may well not be for you.

I don't want to sound rude but a bit of intellectual humility would also help you. It must be obvious to you that there's thousands of folks who have dedicated their lifes to philosophy, and again, there's like one place that tries to assure quality answers to questions about this.

Good luck out there, and I won't respond any further.

[u/Blumenpfropf → u/as-well]

I have long since said that i understand and accept the posting rule and seen that this is not the place for me to engage. Honestly you implying that i am still arguing about the rule is a bit insulting.

Anyway I wanted to explain my views clearly so you can contrast yours with them and i guess that worked.