I looked at it. Randomly opened a couple of links, none of which really support the idea of NDT thinking humanities are worthless. All I see are a lot of overinterpreting and misrepresentations for the sake of using popular guys as a jumping-off point for one's own defensive screed. If you have a specific citation that you feel best represents the case against NDT or Hawking, I'm happy to consider it.
That post is really a case-in-point of overinterpreting and using a popular commentator as a jumping-off point for one's own screed. Pigliucci's response doesn't really engage with a charitable interpretation of what NDT actually said about philosophy, but extrapolates the actual claims to a broad derision which motivates Pigliucci's much wider defense. The two substantive claims NDT makes is that it's hard to move forward when you're endlessly debating the meaning of terms and that philosophy that purports to describe the natural world is obsolete. He concedes other humanistic areas like religion, politics and so on are fruitful philosophical areas.
What NDT is guilty of in the minds of so many of the commentators is not having what they consider due reverence and deference to philosophy. What none of the responses do is justify the supposed reverence scientists and popular culture more broadly should have. The points about philosophy being dead in the context of describing the physical world appear to be true. The point about philosophy not making progress (understood in the way that science makes progress) appears to be true. If the only claim to value one can make is for activity that happened centuries ago (being the forebearer to science), then philosophy truly is dead. While Pigliucci's points in defense of philosophy are true, they still don't tell us why anyone outside of philosophy should care about philosophy.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a philosophy hater. I quite enjoy philosophy, I read an awful lot of it. But this is because I like puzzles and I like navigating conceptual spaces and gaining deep understanding. But this isn't all that relevant to most people's lives. You want people to care about philosophy, you need to be relevant to them. Philosophy is failing at being relevant.
I don't see how any of that negates the effect of one of science's pre-eminent public advocates bad mouthing philosophy and the humanities. People hear this and take it at face value. It informs their opinions. It shapes their lives. And it's his purpose to shape people lives. He is partially responsible for the proliferation of similar views throughout the intellectual ecosystem. On this point, he is being irresponsible and ignorant. He ought to have and communicate more nuanced views of the world.
I am having a lot of trouble understanding how their is anything but a tortured defense of his behavior on this front.
Man, if philosophy can't take (an admittedly popular) guy saying rather milquetoast things about philosophy (whether right or wrong), the discipline is in worse shape than I thought. Philosophy should be capable of defending itself, it shouldn't need to rely on deferential treatment and a widespread presumption of value.
Philosophy doesn't deserve deference or respect simply because it's an academic discipline. We've been far too deferential to questionable disciplines and their practitioners, and the academy is in bad shape because of it. Disciplines should be constantly challenged and expected to offer full throated defenses of their merits. If philosophy wants to be valued, it needs to actively demonstrate it's value. if the only thing it can do is get defensive when someone says something negative publicly about it, we might as well just shut it all down now because there's truly nothing left.
"Man, if philosophy can't take (an admittedly popular) guy saying rather milquetoast things about philosophy (whether right or wrong), the discipline is in worse shape than I thought."
Not what this discussions is about at all.
That is some straw man rhetoric.
That actual point was "Hey STEM people, you are talking in circles yourselves, and re-inventing the wheel, maybe checkout what some other fields have already studied"
The issue of NDT and Hawking dismissing philosophy is a mostly separate issue from the original topic and ryanklee turned this branch into that narrow issue. My reply is specifically addressing that subtopic.
