What is philosophy today?

We know that Philosophy lived a 'crisis' in the 19th century, when intellettuals did not have their prominent place in society anymore. At the time, there were other 'urgencies', so that people could not spend any time in this kind of speeches (aristocrates excluded).
I was wondering what is the situation like today, in a society in which any of us and our families must work but we have to recognise that we have our free time. But we (in general) do not dedicate it to speculative speeches, nor we even wonder about them.
Anyway, I still think philosophy is part of our every day life. We just have to find out its different shape in each century. What is it in ours?

I suspect people wonder about a lot of things and with the internet are able to express their wonder and research it more easily today. I don't think trends depend on a time frame like a century. Social mood changes and it drives philosophy in new directions.

Welcome, Elisa!

Speculative thinking addressing the moral, political, cognitive and existential crises of mankind needs no particular setting. The social setting does, however, determine which of these areas will receive vigorous attention, and the particular slant of view which emerges.

This speculative thinking we engage in is the highest form of consciousness I know of for certain. There is no indication that any other species has this level of cosmic awareness. I feel almost certain mosquitoes do not, but I am less certain about dolphins and dogs. Who knows where the line is, or whether there is one? To us at our stage, consciousness is still a definition (or the lack of a proper one), so we could make a line anywhere we chose. On the other hand, without doubt, for mankind to achieve the construction of an artificial intelligence with a level of consciousness (approximately?) equal to a mosquito's, would likely be our most profound achievement to date. Yet I cannot even prove that some military smart apps do not already have consciousness equal to the mosquito. The dog and the dolphin, I am sure we have not reached yet.

I think it does not matter a whit if we ever achieve consciousness which we judge to be equal or better than our own. We only have to equal the consciousness of very low organisms at first, and proceed up the chain from there. As we asymptotically approach our own level, drawing nearer and nearer, our artificially conscious "machines," will leave other known species behind but may never pass all the tests to finally reach our own level.

Since we do not know what consciousness is, it is impossible to define when a machine has become conscious. We can give definitions all right, but which may fail to capture the most important aspects of the phenomenon, unknown to us from our "locality." As with gravity, we view only the results of consciousness and not consciousness itself. As there is a graviton (as yet still unseen, I believe) there may also be a consciousness particle. To ever find such a thing might mean machines have no chance of ever truly becoming conscious. But as I already said, it would not matter, since our artificial efforts would still be approaching consciousness of some level or the other asymptotically. How does one know the difference between pi and pi to the octillionth place? For all practical purposes, the difference does not matter.

I wouldn't say the many ever truly had access to philosophy, maybe "opinion" or "belief", but not philosophy. Now, with the availability of Amazon and the internet, if one desires too, one can read or write any text to say anything that they would like. Finding readers or thinkers interested in the same life may be hard to find.

I just wanted to correct something I said earlier about time-frames. There may be something to them, but marking them off in centuries is arbitrary. If there is an evolutionary spiral going on (which I think there is) then one should be able to find time patterns as well.

Intellectuals always have their place in society, however, Plato and Marcus Aurelius would probably have argued that any society that is not founded on or led by the example of a philosopher doesn't have much of a lifespan. I think mistaking an "intellectual" for a "philosopher" or one having wisdom is the great error of contemporary Western societies. The result? Cults, ideology(which could be the same as a cult), and anarchy with their own demands ripping at the threads of society, which we have in America today.

I agree that "intellectual" and "philosopher" do not go together.

One of the things I learned from reading Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind" is that we are not "rational", but we "rationalize". That is we are motivated reasoners, unlike Spock on Star Trek or some idealized "scientist", those of us who are not psychopaths make choices and then use reason to justify those choices. I can see that is how I reason. This is a good thing because we get where we want to go faster because we have some place we want to go.

What I learned from socionomics (Robert Prechter's Elliott Wave view of society) is that those choices are influenced by "social mood" which we have to be careful to take into account when we choose one thing over another.

YesNo,

I'll definitely look into Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind". This is another reason why I am for "public forums" as homesteads for Philosophy: recommendations and things to consider.

Alvin Peplar

One of the things that I learned from Haidt is his view that a period of "rationalism" started with Hume's failure to convince people of an intuitionism-empiricism in the 18th century. This period is ending according to Haidt and I would agree. The period corresponds to what Robert Prechter views as wave III of grand supercycle degree based on Elliott Wave analysis of markets that is also supposed to be ending. A decades long correction would follow (Wave IV) and then a continuation into Wave V perhaps after 2050. So there are time-frames that are worth considering.