Is philosophy useless?

Is philosophy useless?

Case 1:
Philosophy is useless, because there is no labor demand for philosophers( except of course academics). This view assumes that the value of a set of skills is more, or less determined by the labor market.

Case 2: Philosophy is useless, because people doing philosophy is useless.

Being adept at thinking is of no value? Is that sort of like pure or unapplied mathematics being useless -- the pursuit of mathematics for its own sake is useless -- but almost every damn engineering and science project under the sun requires it as a tool? Because someone also has a different job description, that means he had no background in philosophy, that his having better success at the job than the muddled-thinking idiot across from him owes no debt to having a philosophical background? Or are you just another passing urchin who actually believes that most internet forums devoted to the subject are an example of the practice?

I see philosophers getting paid to do circuit lectures, concoct new ideas, review media, write their own books, or straighten various issues out just like any other variety of critics, writers, and disambigulators. It might not pay as much as some cosmetically-augmented bimbo gurgling out lyrical nonsense on stage while performing inane patterns of body motion, but I seriously doubt the art of thinking would be detracting from the evolution of the species in a negative way any less than the former.

Nick Bostrum: The tasks of philosophy have changed over time. Physics and psychology were once part of philosophy but have since been outsourced as independent scientific disciplines. Likewise for logic, which has become a branch of mathematics. Yet, philosophy of physics, for example, is a flourishing specialization in philosophy, in which physicists and philosophers come together to address foundational matters in physical theories. Some traditional concerns remain central in philosophy - epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, and so forth. But new philosophical tasks also arise over time, sometimes as a result of scientific advances: bioethics and neuroethics are examples of specializations that have been added in recent decades thanks to scientific and technological advances.

Jerry Fodor: I think that philosophy consists mostly of criticism. What philosophers do is take more or less informal and unformulated systems of beliefs that are in use or that have been proposed, and try to make them articulate, to figure out whether they are consistent, and, in general, to help reduce the level of ambient confusion; which, in practice, is generally pretty high. (BTW, I think that doing that sort of thing is a main component of what philosophy has ALWAYS been about). On this view, philosophy is mostly a meta-level activity. Other people (typically, but by no means always, empirical scientists) try to say what's going on. Philosophers look over their shoulders and, when possible, try to figure out exactly what it is that they'e saying.

I guess that, from time to time, philosophers have actually helped advance the discussion in one or other of the empirical sciences; most recently in linguistics, psychology and some of the wilder parts of physics. This has been partly a matter of trying to figure out what the theories currently on offer actually amount to (see above); but it's also by way of characterizing empirical investigation as such, including such topics as the nature of confirmation, explanation, observation and the like. Much the same might be said about philosophical work in areas like ethics and the philosophy of law where there are, I suppose, problems of interpretation and reconstruction not disimilar to those that arise about science: What do the things people say and believe (about--as it might be--the relation between someone's intentions and the evaluation of his actions) fit together. Are these beliefs consistent? What general principles do they illustrate? And so forth. (I should also say philosophers have often enough contributed by muddying the waters. [Like] The disasterous impact of behaviorism, operationalism and pragmatism on 20th century social science...

Is their a standard definition of usefulness? No.

There are? In everyday use of the the word "useful", it is situational. What is useful for an accountant might not be useful for a pilot. There is no fixed definition, criterion for useful.

Why is philosophy useful, or useless. I will argue the latter.