system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I need some help defending philosophy as a legitimate profession

I love philosophy, but I can also understand how someone may misunderstand it and think it's bullshit or doesn't do anything. So for the sake of the topic I'm going to assume a devil's advocate position in the beginning and then at the end offer some refutations that I've been thinking about. I'd appreciate any more objections or refutations you have. So here goes: 

1.) Philosophy doesn't use evidence. It doesn't go out and use the Scientific Method to find evidence and create theories about the world. Without evidence, there is no way to actually know whether or not what you are thinking is actually "right". A thousand years of philosophical thought could be immediately thrown out the window by a single scientific observation.

2.) So much of philosophy is just semantics or word games, in the end.

3.) Do philosophers make up problems that didn't exist prior to them making them? Should we hate them for making them? (ironically enough I am doing philosophy here).

4.) How has philosophy actually been applied in real life? Science has been applied in terms of engineering and technology, as well as just general satiating our curiosity, but philosophy seems to just be philosophers conversing with other philosophers.

Alright, so those are the basic ideas I think someone who thinks philosophy is just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo would bring up. Here are my responses:

1.) I think Wittgenstein said it best; that science is all about discovery, but philosophy doesn't discover anything. Rather, it analyzes it, makes connections, and realizes the extent of the possibilities. In this way, science and philosophy are extremely compatible.

Furthermore, philosophy *can* make some progress, in that is can find out what is definitely *not* right (i.e. logical positivism). This narrows down the playing field, so the speak. Philosophers use logic and thought experiments to "test" their hypotheses, and the tests are all the other philosophers thinking about it.

2.) For the amateur, yes, the arguments may seem like splitting hairs. That's why they're professionals.

The average person may think an astronomer nit-picking over the radiation of a white dwarf is like splitting hairs (why does it matter?)

3.) Essentially someone who asks this is saying is ignorance bliss?

4.) Science used to be called natural philosophy. It technically is still a philosophy.

Ethics is a great example for the application of philosophy. How do we act, what are morals, do morals even exist? How can we possibly ask these questions using science (stfu sam harris, read some hume).

For every academic pursuit, there is almost always a philosophy behind it, for example, physics relies on metaphysics (even if physicists don't realize it). 

The application of philosophy may not be easily apparent, but it's most definitely there.

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Okay, so at least for now, I've put down what I think are the most common reasons why people think philosophy is bullshit, and my responses to them. I would like to see what you guys have to think and if you have anything to add. Thank you.
gpt
1. This is blatantly false. Philosophy obviously uses evidence. Often, it uses scientific evidence (empirical evidence often informs philosophical questions without entirely solving them). Further, it uses non-scientific evidence. True theories tend to be consistent, parsimonious, explanatory - if we show that some philosophical theory fails to meet these criteria, that is a mark against it. 

2. Definitions matter. One could say that "law is just semantics, because it's all about how we define certain crimes and punishments." But, that's misleading. We could say "medicine is just semantics, because it's all about how we define health and disease." But that's misleading. We could say "psychology is just semantics, because it's all about how we define mental states, emotions, and things like that." But, again, that's misleading. Conceptual clarity is a necessary condition of doing good research in any field, and what looks like "bickering over semantics" to an uninformed outsider is usually actually working on conceptual clarity, which is vastly important.

3. The problems already existed - people just weren't aware of them.

4. There are lots of posts already about different ways that philosophy has influenced the world, so you should be able to find them with some quick searching. Here are some obvious answers: Work in ethics has been tremendously influential, politically. Work in political philosophy has been (unsurprisingly) tremendously influential, politically. Work in philosophy of science and epistemology has influenced how scientists view their own projects, and this deeply influenced science.