What can philosophy accomplish?

If a meaningful question can be phrased that asks about the world around us then it is answered by science.

Let me rephrase, any meaningful question that can be answered can only be answered by science (or logic,math). Their are some meaningful questions that can't be answred by these, but in this case they can never be answered.

My point being that philosophers sometimes are trying to accomplish things they cant.

So what can they accomplish?

Im interested in knowing what philosophy can do and what it can't.

markgernot wrote:

So what can they accomplish?

They can explain why scientists and mathematicians continue to attempt to do things that cant be done.

Yes I agree I obviously was not too focused on this statement. Im concerned with what philosophy can accomplish. Your right of course.
There are historical questions as well and questions on how to hit a tennis ball. Im really more interested in what philosophy can accomplish, thats all. Thats what I was focusing on. My point being that philosophers sometimes are trying to accomplish things they cant. So what can they accomplish?

Scientists by doing Science know what can or can't be done.

I have a science and a philosophy degree. Never have I or any student I worked with require a philosopher for help. You must be joking? And don't give me any stuff about Popper etc. Scientists by doing Science know what can or can't be done. I'm tired of philosophers thinking they deserve any credit for the vastly more accomplished Sciences.

no one has been able to describe what the world must be like in order to have free will.

I know what philosophy is but if every philosopher on this planet dropped dead it would have no effect on science. Scientists can do their own conceptual analysis. Conceptual analysis within science belongs to the history of science. Numerous scientists with no philosophical training have done this.

"The latter question is absolutely unanswerable, in my opinion. But the former I believe I can answer. The vital clue to keep hold of is that people, and that includes all scientists, are only people after all: poor forked complicated creatures like yourself. Take Professor AB, our distinguished geneticist, member of the such-and-such, winner of the so-and-so: what a very clever man he must be! Well, so he is, in a way, but he is no glassy essence of genetic knowledge; he is lots of other things as well, and one of them is, that he happens to be a Methodist half-wit. Or take CD, a top physicist; but he also happens to take Yuri Geller seriously, or believes that the latest physics vindicates Berkeley's spiritualistic philosophy. Professor EF of pure mathematics, approaching retirement, begins to drive his busy colleagues wild by asking questions like "What the hell are numbers, anyway?" GH finished up as an economist but the mainspring of his life was a vision he picked up from some 19th century philosophers, of a paradise in which "the toiling masses" come into their own. (He hasn't noticed that, where he lives, they knocked off toiling long ago.) The Professor of History, IJ, cannot always silence his own perplexities about historical inevitability, and finds himself asking, as philosophers do, what the truth-conditions are of a statement like "Hitler would have won the war, if he had not attacked Russia". KL, the Professor of Medicine, is drawn by his own new technology, if by nothing else, into agonised deliberations about the duties of a doctor to his patients. And so on. In other words, intelligent people, left to themselves, will philosophise anyway, late or soon, whatever special field of intellectual work they are engaged in, or even if they are engaged in none. The impulse to philosophy is in fact so natural and so strong that nothing is known, short of totalitarian terror, which can absolutely repress it. In a non-totalitarian society, then, philosophy will be done, and the only remaining practical question is how, or by whom, this is likely to be done best. "

thanks for your reply. The freedom and determinism problem is actually my favourite problem. Im trying to come up with basic categories of philosophy. In my OP I suggested one end of philosophy is to phrase meaningful statements and questions. Although we know what we want from free will no one has been able to describe what the world must be like in order to have free will.
I mentioned one other major category and also one that overlaps I think. Any ideas on major philosophical categories regarding ends and methods? And examples for them.
I mentioned ethical systems as a n example of the philosopher trying to find an internally consisteny way of living, for example.

I know what philosophy is but if every philosopher on this planet dropped dead it would have no effect on science. Scientists can do their own conceptual analysis. Conceptual analysis within science belongs to the history of science. Numerous scientists with no philosophical training have done this.