Stay in any field long enough and you’ll also start to ask questions about the state of that field. As a philosopher I’m in luck, since asking questions about philosophy is (sometimes at least) also considered doing philosophy. Here are some questions I have discussed in writing:
Is academic philosophy societally relevant enough? Many philosophers – myself included – intend to do work that is societally relevant. In fact, I believe we ought to do so given that most academic research is publicly funded. But to what extent do we succeed? I think the answer is: not nearly enough, and it’s the academic incentive structure that is to blame. In an interdisciplinary paper (with Stijn Conix and Pei-Shan Chi), we provided some data that support this view and discussed some possible solutions.
A second interesting meta-philosophical question to consider is what level of ideological diversity would be desirable in both philosophy and academia more broadly. Not all ideological viewpoints are currently equally well represented in academia, with recent discussions focusing on liberal/conservative diversity and bias in psychology, sociology, and the political sciences. Together with Andreas De Block, I have written about the epistemic impact that a lack of ideological viewpoint diversity can have on both academia and philosophy specifically.