There doesn’t seem to be a consensus on what philosophy does or even what it is. One view of philosophy is that it is useless, or actively unhelpful, for alignment (at least of the ‘literally-don’t-kill-everyone’ variety, particularly if one’s timelines are short): it isn’t quantifiable, involves interminable debates, and talks about fuzzy-bordered concepts sometimes using mismatched taxonomies, ontologies, or fundamental assumptions
IMO it’s accurate to say that philosophy (or at least the kind of philosophy that I find thought-worthy) is a category that includes high-level theoretical thinking that either (1) doesn’t fit neatly into any of the existing disciplines (at least not yet) or (2) is strongly tied to one or some of them but engages in high-level theorizing/conceptual engineering/clarification/reflection to the extent that is not typical of that discipline (“philosophy of [biology/physics/mind/...]”).
(1) is also contiguous with the history of the concept. At some point, all of science (perhaps except mathematics) was “(natural) philosophy”. Then various (proto-)sciences started crystallizing and what was not seen as deserving of its own department, remained in the philosophy bucket.
IMO it’s accurate to say that philosophy (or at least the kind of philosophy that I find thought-worthy) is a category that includes high-level theoretical thinking that either (1) doesn’t fit neatly into any of the existing disciplines (at least not yet) or (2) is strongly tied to one or some of them but engages in high-level theorizing/conceptual engineering/clarification/reflection to the extent that is not typical of that discipline (“philosophy of [biology/physics/mind/...]”).
(1) is also contiguous with the history of the concept. At some point, all of science (perhaps except mathematics) was “(natural) philosophy”. Then various (proto-)sciences started crystallizing and what was not seen as deserving of its own department, remained in the philosophy bucket.