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There's an article in The New Yorker this week (Feb. 12) about two philosophers-turned-scientists who, in the course of their studies, developed a strong distaste for the philosophical way of things (one of them bashes Thomas Nagel's bat thought-experiment as an incompetent way to approach the mind-body problem).

Is it true, as the article asserts, that philosophy is continually ceding its territory to the sciences (philosophy of the mind may be rendered obsolete by neuroscience), so that less and less is left to philosophers over time? Could science make philosophy obsolete?

February 10, 2007

Response from Oliver Leaman on February 15, 2007
I don't think so, although this is often claimed. The links between philosophy and science are complex and easy to get wrong. Philosophers are not looking for answers to problems in the same way that scientists are, although the difference is quite subtle. With the mind-body problem, whatever scientific developments on this occur, the issue of how to best characterize the relationship remains a conceptual problem, and no scientific discovery would force the philosopher's hand to come down on one approach or another.

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