RE: Is philosophy a science? - With an example involving a bear (what more could you want?!)
True, there's definitely a distinction between the anglo-american tradition and so-called continental philosophy, which I can't claim to articulate as I unfortunately never studied continental philosophy, but from what I gather it does come down to method.
Dennett is pretty mainstream I guess, or at least is not considered on the fringe of philosophy in terms of his method even if his ideas are not fully accepted. And he's a good example to back up your case :) he definitely did/does a lot of work at the intersection of neuroscience and philosophy. Again, though, I see it as philosophy, and not science. He doesn’t do neuroscience experiments, but questions the assumptions that neuroscientists make. So, for example, on free will. He holds that we have free will, in the sense that we can be held morally responsible for our actions. Experiments in neuroscience have shown we do not have free will. Dennett denies their conclusions by questioning the assumptions made, in this case the way that the scientists have defined free will. He is willing to accept the findings of the experiments in terms of their definition of free will but says that they do not affect the existence of free will as he defines it. In his analysis of the concept of free will I see him as clearly doing philosophy and not science, and for me it fits with what you say about philosophy framing the frame?
I don’t know his work well at all, and I don’t deny that maybe he does more ‘scientific’ stuff, and as I say the experimental philosophy scene does do actual science experiments to try and inform their philosophical theories.
For me, allowing philosophical theory to be impacted by ‘reality’ is not strange, but I guess that reflects my particular background in philosophy!
Anyway, I left academic philosophy behind quite a few years ago now, but I do miss it! Nice to have someone on here to discuss ideas with and I look forward to reading your next post!
I love quite a lot about Dennett, but there are two things I think are ridiculous: his idea that consciousness is an illusion, and his idea that free will exists (he's a compatibilist).
The idea of free will, in most people's minds, is very simple: it's the ability to have done otherwise if everything were exactly the same. This Dennett admits is impossible, but still proceeds to redefine what it means. He basically redefines until he gets his conclusion through. I don't know why some people are so enamored with certain ideas they were taught as kids.
This also harms philosophy, since it creates this idea that philosophers have been debating the same issues for thousands of years without making any progress or solving anything. This is patently false: we've solved more issues than I can count. But no, philosophers must re-invent the free will vs determinism debate as a compatibilist vs incompatibilist debate, lest they file the issue under 'solved', cos then who knows maybe the universe will collapse or something.
Thanks a lot for giving more insight on Dennett than I could! I studied him once in a phil mind course as an undergrad but moved towards moral and political philosophy for the PhD. What you say about some philosophers re-inventing debates - yes that's something that did frustrate me and one of the reasons why I eventually chose to leave the field. Great comment!