Honest question: are there examples of philosophical problems that were solved in the last 50 years? And I mean solved by doing philosophy not by doing mostly unrelated experiments (like this one). I imagine that even if some philosophers felt they answered a question, other would dispute it. More importantly, the solution would likely be difficult to understand and hence it would be of limited value. I’m not sure I’m right here.
After a bit more googling I found this which maybe shows that there have been philosophical problems solved recently. I haven’t read about that specific problem though. It’s difficult to imagine a short paper solving the hard problem of consciousnesses though.
I’ll be interested in having someone with a history of philosophy background weigh in on the Gettier question specifically. I thought Gettier problems were really interesting when I first heard about them, but I’ve also heard that “knowledge as justified true belief” wasn’t actually all that dominant a position before Gettier came along.
Honest question: are there examples of philosophical problems that were solved in the last 50 years? And I mean solved by doing philosophy not by doing mostly unrelated experiments (like this one). I imagine that even if some philosophers felt they answered a question, other would dispute it. More importantly, the solution would likely be difficult to understand and hence it would be of limited value. I’m not sure I’m right here.
After a bit more googling I found this which maybe shows that there have been philosophical problems solved recently. I haven’t read about that specific problem though. It’s difficult to imagine a short paper solving the hard problem of consciousnesses though.
I enjoyed this list of philosophy’s successes, but none of them happened in the last 50 years.
You might be interested in the following posts on the subject from Daily Nous, an excellent philosophy blog:
“Why Progress Is Slower In Philosophy Than In Science”
“How Philosophy Makes Progress (guest post by Daniel Stoljar)”
“How Philosophy Makes Progress (guest post by Agnes Callard)”
“Whether Philosophical Questions Can Be Answered”
“Convergence as Progress in Philosophy”
I’ll be interested in having someone with a history of philosophy background weigh in on the Gettier question specifically. I thought Gettier problems were really interesting when I first heard about them, but I’ve also heard that “knowledge as justified true belief” wasn’t actually all that dominant a position before Gettier came along.