“Yes, well, that’s a philosophical question, isn’t it.” So, what, the question’s unimportant? Because it can’t be answered with quantitative certainty? But philosophical questions can be answered with more or less strength, more or less adequacy.
Also, since there’s no absolutely right or wrong answer to most philosophical questions, the consensus seems to be that anyone can ‘do’ philosophy. In one sense, that’s true. Anyone can do philosophy. Anyone can do physics too. It’s just that incompetence, inadequacy, will be more apparent in the latter case. Because there are right and wrong answers. Most of the time. At least at the lower levels.
But that’s true of much philosophy too. It’s just that we haven’t trained people to see mistakes in reasoning as much as we’ve trained them to see mistakes in arithmetic. (Which is, partly, why people mistakenly think all opinions are equally valid.)
Not only are philosophical questions dismissed, philosophers too are dismissed. After all, they’re no better than the rest of us. Their opinions are no more valid. I’m starting to see the dismissal of scientists in the same way: it occurs when the person doesn’t understand science – after all, if you don’t understand the scientific process of hypothesis formulation and testing, if you don’t understand how scientists arrive at their opinions, you won’t consider scientific opinions any more valid. Similarly with philosophers: if you don’t understand the relationship of premise and conclusion, the necessity of relevance…
