Eise

Well, at least the kind of answers people give on such questions reveal if they think only in terms of consequences, or also of allowed actions in itself. A lot of more questions arise when only this first aspect of moral thinking is handled. How does one compare consequences (an old woman is worth 10 points, y young one 30?). Do human lives have intrinsic value? Animals? etc etc. No, philosophy cannot solve these questions. But it can clarify our way of thinking, and this might influence how we think about such cases in the future. I would say, it can increase the quality of the decisions, not their contents. As you say: that is not useless.

Agree, partially. Depends a little on what you mean with 'wider implications'. But by asking this question, I have already gone full into ethics. Do you mean consequences for our acting, based on out moral thoughts. Or do you mean on how we think about similar choices based on our actual thinking? To give an example of the second idea: we can reason completely in terms of the good and/or bad consequences of our actions (consequentialism); or we can have at least some moral norms that we apply whatever the consequences (deontology). But if we are consequentialists, one can still think about the wider implications: say the consequences on the long term, involving everybody who is influenced by the action in question, or only the direct implications.

It should be clear that philosophy does not solve any scientific problem. If it did, then it would be part of a science. If it solves any problem, then it could be called an intelligibility problem. That means that philosophical problems can arise everywhere where people think. Obviously, normally thinking is no problem. Science was already progressing before philosophy tried to find out how, and why science progresses. But philosophy can clarify this by trying to find out when e.g. in science a statement or theory is accepted. And that is not the sociological question (when does a group of scientists accept a theory) but the methodological question: when is it justified to accept a theory. Such questions become important when people, or society in general, ask themselves what they should accept as truth. Methodologically philosophy is hardly important for the scientists themselves. It partly explains the disdain scientists have for philosophy. They think that philosophy thinks that it says to scientists how they should do their work. Occasionally some philosophers also really do this, which is mostly distorting for philosophy's reputation. Also in morality people know very well what to think. But to find out how they think might again be a task for philosophers. Again, not the sociological question, but the question which kind of thinking leads to a justified morality. This job is of course for ethics: to find and reflect on the criteria we use, or should use, in our moral thinking if we want to be consistent. There is also a class of problems that arise from our daily thinking. One example is the problem of free will. Where nearly all people experience they have free will, it seems that science, based on the idea that laws of nature are in general deterministic, denies that we have free will. It is a task for philosophers to show how the daily use of the concept of free will differs from the concept that scientists use, and show that there is in fact no such free will problem at all. It is all based on some wrong pre-concepts that confuse the discussion. So if there is some positive result from philosophy, it is intellectual clarity. If a problem disappears under this intellectual clarity, then it could be called 'solved'. But intellectual clarity definitely doesn't solve empirical or in general scientific problems. That is just a false expectation.