Nevertheless, science and math are offshoots of philosophy? Only if you count them because philosophy was absolutely worthless in providing real answers, and something else was needed. Both of those are empirical, which is one of those few things the various definitions of philosophy specifically exclude.

As for the others, you call them philosophy – I call them imperfect attempts to understand the motivations of human beings, something we hew closer to every day. Ethics is actually fairly simple, as is social criticism – the problem isn’t understanding them, it’s that we think there’s something higher than the individual human being, and all of their personal traits, as the prime motivator. In other words, we’ve been hung up on understanding them precisely because we try to approach them philosophically. Freud, with all of his errors, came closer to answering those fundamental questions than the centuries of philosophers beforehand. We’ve seen several new studies this year alone that show that various other species, including non-primates, have some form of group-benefit and empathic behavior. Only we then have trouble calling it “ethics,” because that’s our species’ domain. Get rid of the labels and assumptions, and we start to see how such they can evolve as beneficial (and yes, physical) traits.

More recently it’s spun off theology, which in itself is not useful but has at least finally been put into a box where it’s relatively harmless.

Now – so far as I can tell – the principal activities of philosophers are social criticism (yup, we still need that), the study of ethics (well, of course you & I have that down, but we could sure name a few other people who might benefit…), and epistemology (huh? big word… and how many Weird Things™ would you have left to write about if the populace were a bit more sophisticated in that regard?).

If those three items can be established as independent fields (the 1st is already there), the Philo Depts will be up the ol’ creek in that well-known wire mesh canoe without another budding breakthrough. Since these things so far have taken centuries of R&D, they’d better get crackin’!

Now where did I put my cosmic consciousness?