At some stage, most philosophers find themselves facing questions (either from others, or from themselves) about whether and to what extent what they do is worthwhile. When the question at issue is (construed generally) whether philosophy is worthwhile, there are usually two kinds of responses given, call them the instrumental and final value responses. The instrumentalist vindicates the value of doing philosophy by pointing to certain practical ends and pointing out how philosophy (either philosophical research itself or the development of philosophical skills) is instrumental to attaining that practical end. This sort of response embraces thinking along the lines of: "Well, even if you don't think that philosophy is valuable in its own right, surely you think that X is valuable, and (here, let me show you how) philosophy is X-valuable because it is instrumental in bringing about X." Contrast this sort of response with the final value response, which is much less concessionary. On the final value response, an instrumentalist explanation isn't needed to vindicate the value of philosophy. Philosophy is argued to be valuable for its own sake, and independent of whether philosophy is valuable as a means to some practical goals. The instrumentalist and final value replies to the question "Why is philosophy worthwhile" have notable figureheads within philosophy: Karl Marx and Plato, respectively. Marx thought philosophy is useless without corresponding action, and Plato thought man's highest aim is pure contemplation of the forms, for its own sake. I'm inclined to think that the instrumental response sells philosophy too short, while the Platonic response, even if correct, is not the sort of response that is going to convince anyone who doesn't already have some reservations about the instrumentalist reply. I'm going to try to sketch out an alternative sort of reply, one that can explain the value of purely theoretical philosophy without having to appeal to brow-beating about such philosophy having final value (brow beating that is likely to be'dialectically ineffective' in a way Moore's Proof might be when offered to someone who previously doubted the external world.) The sort of defence I want to sketch is motivated in part by a paper by Jon Kvanvig on pointless truths. Consider (as Kvanvig does) the distinction between basic and applied research in science. Applied research in physics, for example, has obvious practical value. Basic research in physics, e.g. theoretical physics, does not. There are (to use Kvanvig's term) 'crass pragmatists' who would lobby for eliminating basic research in physics altogether. But this would be absurd. After all, if our only science was applied science, our applied science would suffer for it. The same is the case for applied maths, where basic reserach (e.g. analytic number theory) lacks obvious practical value. It goes without saying that, if only applied maths were ever funded, we would be able to do a lot less practically speaking with math. (Consider, for example, the indispensibility of using imaginary and complex numbers in various practical applications--imaginary numbers that arose in part from Euler's studying numbers for their own sake.) In philosophy, we can distinguish between applied and theoretical philosophy. It isn't applied philosophy for which we typically find individuals asking for a defence of their value; it's not medical ethicists, but meta-ethicists who get asked why what they do is worthwhile. Here, I think that the value of theoretical philosophy can be seen as valuable for many of the same reasons that basic research in other branches of study are valuable. Just as we can't do applied math well if the only math we do is applied math, and we can't do applied physics well if all research in physics is limited to applied physics, we can't do applied philosophy well if we limit philosophy to applied philosophy. This argument of course takes as a premise that applied philosophy is valuable. I'm not going to try to defend that, as I think it's obvious, and moreover, it isn't applied philosophy that most people question the value of (when questioning the value of philosophy).
One might point out that what I sketched here is a sort of 'crass instrumentalist' account of the value of philosophy--one that 'sells philosophy short' by explaining its value in terms of the value of something else. This objection is only partly fair. It's an instrumentalist account that takes theoretical philosophy to be valuable by way of its connection to practical philosophy, rather than (directly) by its connection to something outside of philosophy. To the extent that practical philosophy is only valuable by way of its connection to practical ends, the argument is ultimately instrumentalist. It however, is a better (less crass) instrumentalist view than one that would suppose (for instance) that metaphysics or metaethics are valuable (if at all) only if they have direct, immediate implications on day to day life (which they don't clearly have).
Also, it is a type of instrumentalist that (for those who accept it) have no principled reason to doubt the value of theoretical philosophy while not also (by parity of reasoning) doubting the value of basic research in math and science. That is a good result, because people do give philosophers a harder time than those doing basic math or basic science. Equal footing would be a good thing.
To see why the proposed instrumentalism places philosophy on the same footing as basic math and science, consider an analogy: if applied math is valuable because meeting our practical ends is valuable, and basic math is valuable because of it is indispensible to doing applied math well (and making progress in applied math), then basic research in math is instrumentally valuable relative to this sort of connection with our practical ends. If philosophy is tarred with this same brush, then it seems to be in decent company. No one is shutting down math programs. And the 'crassness' of the instrumentalism makes it no crasser than what we have to say about basic math research--research that no one expects to have immediate practical implications.
At the end of the day, my more salient reasons for thinking philosophy is valuable align not with an instrumentalist approach but with something like a final value approach. But since non-philosophers can't be bothered taking that seriously, it's good to have some alternative explanation that doesn't sell philosophy too short. The kind of instrumentalism I sketched here might be such an explanation. [Warning: not all basic research in fact facilitates any practical applications, even if some basic research does so substantially. A philosophical problem with the sort of instrumentalism I sketched is that some basic research in philosophy, and other fields, might only have 'some possibility' of facilitating practical research in the corresponding fields. So ultimately, a fuller account would be needed that deals with this problem.]
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