In fact, what is most disconcerting is not that we can never know the result of pursuing our objectives, because once you've embraced this fact, it's really quite liberating, and offers tools for avoiding self-inflicted confundity. The fact that we still pursue our objectives, for the most part, as if we knew what we wanted, or what achieving them would look/feel like, is the truly disconcerting part. It undermines our (admittedly naive) senses of agency and autonomy, and poses questions about what greater patterns and tendencies are really driving the unfolding of actions and events. This too is eventually just fascinating once one acclimates to it, though it may make decisions at the lunch table a bit more ponderous. Regarding philosophy lagging, I think that's probably an unfair assessment except for in all those cases in which it's fair. (How's your stomach for tautology these days?;) What I mean is mainly that philosophy is as broad a field as all those individual minds pursuing it can afford, and even if the discipline did have it's own Pope (a hilarious idea, now that I'm typing it), there would still be as wide a range of practice and leaning as there is the Catholic church, which is pretty epic. In other words, in massive (dis)organizations, nearly every type of thing can be found, and when humans comprise those entities, silliness, ilogic, or ignorance will surely abound. I won't really launch into a full-on reconciliation of physics and philosophy just yet, but I would like to point out that some of the important conflicts between the two disciplines result merely from a difference in which question we begin with, and what kind of evidences/answers can be deemed compelling/meaningful. To anyone with a hard-line stance on epistemology, for example, many of the methods of science, let alone findings, are laughably weak when considered as tools for securing hard knowledge. The follies of philosophy are certainly many. If you'd like a long giggle, just revisit Leibniz's work on "monads," or Malebranche's theory of mind-body interaction. However, if I'm not mistaken, it was Nietzsche who first challenged the notion of a self-contained and individual, autonomous "I" -- in the western world, at least. (I could probably dig it up in some dark-age mystic, like Meister Eckhart, perhaps if I looked hard enough). In short, I think there's a lot that philo could do for physics, and vice versa, if they could only just play nicely together -- but I'm not sure that's been possible on a large scale since ... Hegel? "To the extent that you want a cheeseburger, only those that can verify that you've eaten one, have a compelling answer, I think. :)" And we've arrived home in the safe harbor of existentialism! I'm officially hungry. Thanks for the stimulating thoughts!
Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't put the Physics Department a floor above the Philosophy Department. However, they both have to ascend the stairs to visit the Mathematics Department. :) That said, I do find it terribly frustrating that we have had piles of evidence sitting around for about a century now from Special Relativity and Quantum mechanics that get swept under the rug at the outset of some philosophical inquiries. It's as if we discovered bluebirds, and then several decades later, question whether or not it were possible that a small bird could be blue. We have this fantastic hard-won evidence that shows us that no matter can occupy one space or one time. In fact, if it did, it would be a completely new type of matter that would turn our current understanding of the world upside down. And yet, we continue endlessly explore the conundrums of a self that resides some where at some time, when we know full well that it is an impossible initial condition. IMHO if we are to move onward, we have to be willing to get uncomfortable, and start trying to build new language to talk about new concepts in new terms. We must abandon the accepted notion of self. It's no longer enough to poke and prod at it and see how silly it is. We know it is silly. Now we need to try to build a less silly definition that better withstands our current poking and prodding. Thankfully, IMHO artificial intelligence is going to force our hand in this respect. :)