Good question. It seems that academic philosophy does, to an extent, achieve this.
With some of my engagements with academic philosophers in mind I have at times been tempted to lament that that ‘extent’ wasn’t rather a lot greater. Of course, that may be ‘the glass is half empty’ thinking. I intuit that there is potential for a larger body of contributers to have even more of a correcting influence of the kind that you mention than what we see in practice!
Philosophy has made some pretty significant progress in many areas. However, sometimes disciplines of that form can get “stuck” in an inescapable pit of nonsense, e.g. postmodernism or theology. In a sense, the philosophy community is trying to re-do what the theologians have failed at: answering questions such as “how should I live”, etc.
With some of my engagements with academic philosophers in mind I have at times been tempted to lament that that ‘extent’ wasn’t rather a lot greater. Of course, that may be ‘the glass is half empty’ thinking. I intuit that there is potential for a larger body of contributers to have even more of a correcting influence of the kind that you mention than what we see in practice!
Philosophy has made some pretty significant progress in many areas. However, sometimes disciplines of that form can get “stuck” in an inescapable pit of nonsense, e.g. postmodernism or theology. In a sense, the philosophy community is trying to re-do what the theologians have failed at: answering questions such as “how should I live”, etc.