Question The question I have arises from a number of phenomena I have noticed of late. One is that a number of reasonably respected philosophers have publicly made asses of themselves by demonstrating serious ignorance of the empirical data available in the recent evolution/ID 'controvercy'; a second is that there have been a lot of suggestions that unsupported pseudo-scientific hypotheses (such as 'irreducible complexity') should be assigned to the philosophy classroom (as a kind of dumping-ground for ill-thought-out ideas); and the third is that a lot of the most promising philiosophy seems to be coming from 'thinking scientists' (in neuroscience, physics, and so on) rather than from professional thinkers. So, is there a crisis in philosophy? Science - at least in principle - is grounded in the systematic study of verifiable phenomena; a scientist whose knowledge outside of science is weak and who has little philosophy may not be satisfying as a person but as a scientist can still produce work with real meaning. In contrast, deep scientific knowledge can directly inform philosophy. A philosopher of the mind (for exampple) who is unaware of the latest discoveries in neurobiology is more likely to develop flawed hypotheses than one who is and who thus has access to a better dataset. If the above is true, whither philosophy? Should philosophers become scientists? If not, should they limit themselves to the non-empirical? Is there still room for philosophy as a discrete discipline? (Please don't dismiss this as an attack on philosophy - it's an appeal from a non-scientist who has recently been finding the armchair increasingly uncomfortable!)

Accepted:

November 10, 2005