Because the stakes are so low

Two interesting and diametrically opposing viewpoints which even have contrasting headlines. Let's start with the first essay, "philosophy is politics" :

I used to wonder why questions in philosophy never get resolved. For example, take the question of whether we have free will or not. Thousands of years have passed by since the first time this question was asked and people are still debating on it.

I can't say I've ever wondered much about that. I don't think  the nature of free will is something we can can ever fundamentally know - any more than you could "know" if if there's a invisible immeasurable giant wombat that's permanently hiding from you with 100% efficacy. So my answer is a straightforward, "these problems are either really hard or in some cases actually impossible to answer". People have been speculating about the size of the Universe for thousands of year too, and we still don't have a definitive answer today. Even so, this very nice essay presents a fascinating alternative (not necessarily a mutually exclusive one).

The reason there’s no agreement on questions of morality, liberty, free will, etc. is because these topics explore how a human ought to live. So everyone has a pet-theory for these philosophical questions, some are sophisticated, others are naive but none is ‘objectively’ true. The victory of your theory over another is a matter of convincing others that your version is better. And that’s a necessarily political act. 

It really doesn’t matter whether you can experimentally falsify the God-theory. It’s because you have to first get believers to agree that experiment is a way to answer this question. They interpret the word ‘God’ in a religious context, one where scientific context doesn’t apply...Whatever mode of engagement you use with believers – ignoring or discussion – it’s a necessarily political process. They either come out convinced from your argument or they don’t.

 Words are understood in the context of their usage... In law, courts know what exactly the defendant means what she says she didn’t sign the papers out of her free will. Similarly, believers know they’ll go to heaven or hell after they die depending on their freely willed actions on Earth. No ambiguity there. Philosophical problems arise when we use words freely – without any context or giving contexts that make no sense. 

Consider the question: ‘What is the productivity of an orange? 

Obviously, the question is cringe-worthy because it’s nonsense. But we don’t feel similar cringe when we ask: ‘what’s the meaning of life?’ or ‘are machines conscious?’ or ‘why is there something rather than nothing’? Throughout my life, I’ve gone round and round on these questions without any satisfying answers. That should be a hint to me that perhaps these are nonsense questions. 

What matters isn’t whether there’s free will or not, the real question should be how differently would I live my life if I knew the answer. If the answer was that there’s no free will, will I stop functioning? If the answer is that there is free will, will I start murdering people? As you can guess, the answer has very little impact on my future actions.

I don't think anyone could doubt that there's a political element to all acts of persuasion. But I'm not ready to sign off on the idea that "what is free will ?" is as silly a question as "how productive is an orange ?". I agree that because the question can be phrased in a way that sounds sensible it doesn't necessarily follow that it actually is, and I further agree that the context is important to the question. Free will in the sense of "you did it deliberately", i.e. the legal sense, is different to the philosophical context of whether you did something as a result of atoms bashing about or something more ineffable. On the latter, my guess is that our understanding of the nature of reality is insufficient for us to properly distinguish between determinism and alternatives. I have a sort of pseudo-faith that eventually we'll make the conceptual breakthrough necessary to get a more sensible answer, but I'm buggered if I have any clues as to how.


On to the second article, "philosophy is not ideology" :

Philosophers attempt the intellectually rigorous study of perennial questions that seem to defy empirical resolution. Is there a god — or perhaps more than one — or an afterlife? Do we possess free will? How can we know about the external world? Are moral rules objectively binding on us? What is a good life for a human being, and what is the nature of a just society? Philosophers also tackle moral and political questions that are more specific, such as whether abortion is ethically acceptable and/or whether it should be legally permitted.

And it needs to be stated that the examination of the questions and the consideration of different answers is sometimes much, much more important than having a definitive answer at all.

Provided that intellectually careful arguments are offered in their favor, no conclusions are ruled out in advance. In formulating their arguments, philosophers often rely upon claims made by other academic disciplines, but those same claims can also be challenged. Often, philosophers will contest them when they are not supported by compelling evidence—when, for example, certain claims appear to be made more for the sake of methodological convenience, political expediency, or conformity to intellectual fashion, than because their truth has been objectively established.

Disputes run into problems of ambiguous, conflicting, and incomplete evidence, conceptual confusion, and a diversity of bedrock assumptions, intuitions, and values. It is therefore typical, rather than unusual, for philosophers to maintain opposed ideas even after honest and strenuous efforts to find common ground. 

Right, BUT, individual philosophers certainly have ideological beliefs - it's only the discipline as a whole that shouldn't. The act of investigating a philosophical question is not in and of itself a political act, but the way in which any individual proceeds does have a political aspect to it. So "philosophy is politics" in the sense that everyone has their own biases, but, "philosophy is not ideology" in that no idea should be forbidden from philosophical discussions at all. It does not necessarily follow that any and all ideas must be permitted at all times throughout society, but a philosophy arena which restricts ideas is not much use to anyone.

Philosophy is politics - Inverted Passion

I used to wonder why questions in philosophy never get resolved. For example, take the question of whether we have free will or not. From Socrates to Kant and to modern day philosophers (such as Daniel Dennett), everyone seems to have an opinion on free will.