In this case, philosophy clearly is an art. Creating artistic sculptures, imagining a long-term future, playing with the notion of time, inducing debates… all of this is relevant of arts. From my experience, this is not specific to this philosopher: modern philosophy is the art of playing with words and concepts.
Philosophy is indeed a public service, even if it's rather a niche one. People have a large access to many kind of arts and activities. Some will enjoy reading etiology books or discussing ethical themes, some will visit museums, some will watch Scorcese's movies, many will watch Avenger entertainments. We all need some kind of artistic culture around us. So philosophy is a public service because some part of the public enjoys it to the point that it is important in their life.
This "public service" status is not restricted to arts and entertainment. For instance, the science on the human evolution has no practical goal — extending knowledge has no direct impact on us. Just like philosophy, it will not really influence the way we live. Yet many people want to know more about human origins, which is a excellent reason for continuing research.
Everything is an art. Science is an art. Even "pure mathematics" can be artful and beautiful. There is beauty in all the miracle of the application of human creation, thought, and skill. There is beauty in process, in discovery, of discovery, etc.
And this is all so beautifully meta as well, because this too, is a philosophical statement.
Yes it's beautifully meta. This happens because everything that exists and doesn't exist including philosophy itself falls under the purview of philosophy. It's the ultimate definition given to a word.
Now imagine this brain twisting concept: The Philosophy of "The Philosophy of philosophy." Yes discussions about philosophy are in itself philosophy and that by induction causes an infinite chain to form where you can talk about the the philosophy of philosophy of philosophy ...
Let's get even more meta. What do we call discussions and debates about this infinite long chain of philosophy? Imagine a higher order description, a word that describes the nature of the infinite chain but is in itself above it.
Some people call this word "philosophy" as well but that will simply create another infinite long chain of meta definitions that never ends. Yes you can do this, and you can keep doing this, but let's again go a level higher above it all. What is the word that describes every possible usage of philosophy, every possible infinite chain of meta descriptions that could exist?
Believe it or not a word for it does exist that sits above all possible usages of philosophy, but the word and concept itself is so mind blowing that I can only give you the acronym for it and leave it up to you to deduce what it stands for.
The acronym is B. S.
Think on that.
Side note: If you have trouble figuring it out: I have found that some of my most novel ideas pop out when I'm sitting on the toilet. It's a quiet and safe area and thus a good place to think and find the answer.
Not sure what happened in the 2nd half of your post, it kind of went off the rails. But the in the 1st half, you're basically getting at the ordinal numbers. Now just drop the "philosophy" from it (which is just a placeholder, since you could replace it with anything else whatsoever and still get the same chains) and focus on the underlying structure---infinite chains of infinite chains, etc.---and you're actually standing on the threshold of some very interesting material. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_number
I think philosophical conjectures are ultimately useless. You can talk about abstract concepts all you want but you don't get anywhere unless you have rigor or formalism. This is why philosophy can do things like talk about logic and ethics and science and religion.
The post is ultimately a trap. I introduce a bit of a simplistic but semi-mind-bending concept but then when you get to the end you realize my true thoughts about philosophy. It's for all the philosophers out there who always tell me that even though I don't know it I'm actually talking about philosophy. Well it's kind of hard not to talk about it given the fact that the word is defined to encompass everything.
I think your post hits the nail on the head. If you want to learn about these concepts formal math is the way to go. The layman description I wrote is really not that deep though, it's all pedantic.
Everything seems useless if you don't understand it. Open a giant page of mathematical number crunching (with integrals and infinite series and everything) and it'll seem totally useless if you don't have the prerequisites for it.
The difference in philosophy is there are no pages full of integrals and infinite series, it's all just words, many of which look familiar to you, so you don't even realize that you don't have the prerequisites for it.
I have the prerequisites. Philosophy is an art and therefore inexact and open to bias. It's more similar to literature than it is to number theory.
I'm not a chemist so if I open an advanced chemistry book, all the symbols are magic. But I do know that there's a hard science and logic behind chemistry and therefore I don't view it the same way I view the humanities. Philosophy is a humanity... an art.
If you haven't figured it out yet. B.S. stands for bachelors degree. Basically if you want to know you need a B.S. degree in philosophy. That's what it takes to know this stuff.
Philosophy is indeed a public service, even if it's rather a niche one. People have a large access to many kind of arts and activities. Some will enjoy reading etiology books or discussing ethical themes, some will visit museums, some will watch Scorcese's movies, many will watch Avenger entertainments. We all need some kind of artistic culture around us. So philosophy is a public service because some part of the public enjoys it to the point that it is important in their life.
This "public service" status is not restricted to arts and entertainment. For instance, the science on the human evolution has no practical goal — extending knowledge has no direct impact on us. Just like philosophy, it will not really influence the way we live. Yet many people want to know more about human origins, which is a excellent reason for continuing research.