Does philosophical research matter?
Thousands of people are employed to work in the social sciences and the arts.
Full disclosure: I’m one of them. I work in Philosophy.
We do a lot of research.
But does it matter? Does the research we do make a difference? Does my work in Philosophy matter?
The research doesn’t matter?
In a comment on one of my earlier bits of writing here on Medium,
made me reflect on this question again. As a part of her comment she noted:
“Unfortunately, social research is often too simplistic to offer any meaningful takeaways.”
For what it’s worth, I absolutely do think it’s an important point that Julia raises. I think it does matter whether research is often too simplistic to offer meaningful takeaways. Julia is definitely asking something important.
Conversely, I also worry sometimes that some of the research is too complex for us to be able to do much with it!
But, if we’re going to carry on doing research in philosophy, we should be clear that philosophical research gives us meaningful takeaways and that it can make a difference outside of education.