Robin James at its her factory has an interesting post on contemporary philosophy and its relation to the digital humanities and science.

Some quotes:

Philosophy’s value isn’t in what it is currently, but in the transformations it will help bring about. So, attempting to conserve a hypostasized snapshot of the discipline impedes it from participating in the very transformations that give it value. Or, preventing it from changing undercuts the most important contributions philosophy can make to ongoing intellectual life.

If philosophy wants to be continually relevant and adequate to contemporary life and its problems, then it needs to transform itself, to work in and with the media in which our societies most readily represent, express, record, and communicate themselves.

In order to practice philosophy in the way I think it must be practiced–not conservatively, but progressively, pushed to new media, new experiences, new phenomena, new problems–I must actively engage intellectuals from all over the academy and, importantly, from beyond it. I need to be in conversation with people whose training and research “inputs” are different than mine. At the same time, I still have something distinctively philosophical to offer, based on both my training and research “inputs,” but also on my “outputs”.

These are important insights given that philosophy majors and departments are being eliminated and the Abbott Coalition government is on record decrying the uselessness of philosophy. Philosophy’s unique contribution to intellectual life will help transform intellectual life, and it won’t be recognizable as “philosophy” in and by today’s disciplinary standards.