The Importance of Philosophy Transcript: Speaker 2 To spot the many forms of learned error and well-trained ignorance that develop, even in science, so that we can get on with the work of actually understanding the world. The philosopher Bernard Williams once said that the problem with this approach to philosophy is that philosophy can’t do what science does, that is, produce new knowledge. So it gives the impression that philosophy is just what scientists sound like when they’re off-duty. And I understand this criticism as well. It’s a little hard to say what philosophy is, or should be, really. It’s been many things, historically. And I agree that as an academic discipline, there are many backwaters and dry patches that one need not explore, or exploring them, one shouldn’t get stuck there. Generally, my view of philosophy is that it’s not so much its own discipline at this point, as it is clarity of thought with the special purpose of making sense of our lives and of our knowledge Of the world. Its purpose isn’t to do the work of science, or of history, or of journalism, or of any other field in which we produce knowledge. Its purpose is to think clearly about what the discoveries in those (Time 0:01:41)