> Your comment would have more value if you provided a specific example.

The entire thread is an example of a topic where I think philosophy has been overtaken by scientific developments, the entirety of philosophy of mind. I will certainly go into more detail, however, that won't make my opinion any less of an extreme outlier's position.

Let me instead illustrate the problem:

> I'd rather say the science of mind is in crisis, since we still have no good scientific explanation of intelligence, consciousness, or how a brain works in general.

I'm not saying this to insult you but to show the depth of the conceptual distance, to my ear this sounds like the equivalent of a creationist asserting that we still have no good scientific explanation for the development of organisms.

To start off with, the answer to unknown variables is not to just make them up, and that includes getting rid of the postulate that they're fundamentally unknowable, too. Next, we do have an increasingly good understanding of the basic machinery that drives biological information processing. I know, because I worked there. There is no justifiable corner in neuroscience reserved for proclamations of "and this is where magic happens". Instead, what we see every day is consistent with the fact that there is just biology at work, no need for quantum consciousness or dualism or any of those quackeries. The biochemical mechanisms are complex and involved, as is expected after billions of years of appending spaghetti code, but it's not fundamentally unknown or unknowable. And finally, consciousness - no matter how brilliant of a scientist Daniel Dennett may be otherwise - consciousness as it's being used in theory of mind is not a scientific concept. Anesthesiologists sometimes use the word as a synonym for being awake, but that's the extent of it.

I want to pick one other comment you made in this thread which I think underscores the magnitude of the conceptual rift between our positions:

> There are deep questions that science can't answer.

This, if anything, is a position that refuses to consider scientific evidence. People who talk about "deep questions" usually allude things such as 'the meaning of life', 'the purpose of the universe', and 'the nature of consciousness' - all of which are not scientific concepts to begin with. They are personal at best, if not even religious. I hope I'm not mis-characterizing your position here, if so, please correct me.

To me, this sentence starts off with the implied postulate that there are questions which are inaccessible to science by definition, which is certainly a correct statement. It's much more debatable whether it's a meaningful statement though. Constructing questions that can't be answered is very easy, and if you're good at it you may even attach some subjective deepness to them. Carl Sagan's invisible dragon is a good and poignant example of such a construction.

> The only "clearly dominating opinion" about them is "we don't know". To some, thinking about those questions is "beating dead horses", others become philosophers.

It's not very important whether the horse is dead or not, but does matter if it's real or imaginary. Even then, beating imaginary horses is still fine as long as you're aware of the fact, but it becomes a problem when you try to pass off a non-measurable horse as a real object.

"We don't know, so let's find out" is a valuable statement, because it prompts investigations which further our knowledge. "We don't know, because it can't be known" is the intellectual equivalent of salting the earth, and it's usually the precursor to "We can never know, so I made something up, which by designating it a 'philosophical framework' I then recursively define as deep knowledge".

In closing I'd like to re-iterate that despite your invitation this elaboration most likely did nothing to increase the perceived value of my position - not necessarily because I'm inarticulate or generally insufferable, although both of these may still be true - but because we all came into this discussion with our world view thoroughly in place.