Short dialogue on philosophy

Así que me encontré un comentario interesante a un artículo (más interesante) en Internet y decidí contestar algo. Reproduzco el pequeño diálogo y dejo el link del artículo.  http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/bryan-magee-profundity-obscurity-bad-writing/#.Up1h8tLuIrU

Mr. Math: My academic background is in maths and science, rather than philosophy, so I’ll admit that I’m speaking about an area I don’t know much about, but I don’t see why the fact that a philosopher is a bad writer should cause many problems with the understanding/popularisation of their work.

When science students are learning their subject they almost never read things written by the actual scientists who made the discoveries they are learning about: they read textbooks that in theory are written in a way that makes the topic easier to learn. Similarly, when non-scientist members of the public want to learn about an area of science that interests them, they don’t read papers published in the journals, they read books and articles written by people who are especially skilled at explaining science to the masses. There’s a good reason for this: there’s no reason to assume that someone who is a good scientist will also be a good writer.

Assuming that what matters in philosophy is the ideas that philosophers come up with, why does the same not apply?

Mr. Phil: I like your comment.

I think the problem with the understanding and popularisation of difficult philosophical work is the motivation one may have to take the time and effort to understand it.

Philosophy, historically speaking,  seems to be a really long debate about really difficult questions that has taken place for a really long time in human history; with really no definitive answers. We usually obtain more questions than answers from philosophy. Normally, when someone is curious about some philosophical question he might just think about it for a while, talk about it with some friends and maybe read some book on the subject (an easy one) and that will be the end of it. Only those with some kind of philosophical vocation will take a step further and attempt to read some major philosopher or to achieve a degree on philosophy in order to understand more profoundly.

In science there is also this kind of vocation for understanding deeply, but there is in addition a practical use of scientific knowledge which philosophy lacks and, more importantly, science enjoys a better reputation than philosophy in achieving truths and giving us information about the world. A non-philosopher will normally not see the point of studying 4 years long just in order to be able to understand difficult questions and plausible answers with no further objetive than the pleasure that such an activity may provide.

I think the idea that one is REALLY knowing something NEW and TRUE about the world makes the effort worth it in the minds of people reading about science. In their minds, since philosophy won't give them such things as right and true answers, then it better be at least enjoyable while it's being read; if it's not, why bother?

In my opinion, such naive opinions dissappear the moment one experiencies in own flesh the power of philosophical questions, remarks and puzzles. Not every intellectual activity needs to give inmediatly radically new explanations about the world in order to be intellectually valuable. Philosophy and mathematics seem to me good examples of such activities.

Sorry, english is not my mother language, so please try to ignore my grammatical and ortographic mistakes (I hope they're not too bad).