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Comment by jfaucett | Hacker News Reader

> Do you also find things like art, literature and film pointless because they don't help you solve problems?

The point of philosophy is to discover answers to questions. Such as how does the mind work? Is there a mind? What is the right action in a given situation? How do we know we know something? etc. This is not even remotely related to the goals and reasons for art, literature, and film, which exist for aesthetic enjoyment. My point is that for answering most of the questions philosophy tries to answer the best method is the scientific method and its framework of approach.

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Serious question: Does science have an answer for what is the right action in a given situation? Is that something we can determine from a study or a calculation? That actually sounds like the perfect question for modern philosophy.

It can if you define desired goals or outcomes.

"I want to stop feeling bad about myself and the world around me" ...

A purely scientific approach to that would be a pair of electrodes inserted into the pleasure center of your brain.

Philosophy (or parts of it, anyway) studies why this isn't actually a desirable approach for most of us.

The scientific method tells you how to approach and reason through questions, but now how to ask questions in the first place. The latter is the "point" of philosophy, not the former.

So why do you know the scientific method is the best method or even a valid method? Any answer you give to this question will be a philosophical answer. You are doing philosophy whether you like it or not.

> This is not even remotely related to the goals and reasons for art, literature, and film, which exist for aesthetic enjoyment.

Aestehtics is decidedly NOT the goal and reason for art. At best it's the scheme by which art keeps getting funded, but art has always been inextricably linked with ethics, politics, and the human experience. Reducing all art to "things that are pretty" is... reductive.

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