"There was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently"

Quite true... but as I'm sure Michael would agree, that has little to do with his 'philospher-ness'.

...and to Ed, in reply to "...there would be little discussion on many aspects of life, possibly yourself included, (humourous, or otherwise), or on Mudcat, if everyone was asked to adhere to that rule you just made up."

Methinks you miss my point... I never suggested one could not 'disagree' with philosophical arguments: philosophers disagree on subjects and construct new ideas all the time. What I was concerned with was the seeming trivializing of, as I said, "serious philosophy" as a useful pursuit.
And THAT means that there is a real and important difference between "serious philosophy" and generally intelligent 'speculating on stuff' from a layman's viewpoint, which is perfectly ok and what is done in 99+% of the discussions here. The point is, IN a layman's attempts, it is quite possible for him to make errors **of logical reasoning**, usually described by one of the informal fallacies. It does NOT automatically mean he is 'wrong', but merely that his reasoning is suspect...which 'may' cast doubt on his conclusion.

Thus, some of the objection to Kent and his YEC beliefs boil down to suggestions that he has resorted to some of the fallacies noted here, such as:

Begging the Question
Appeal to Tradition
Appeal to Authority
Appeal to Belief

and at the bottom of that page is the "Fallacy of Equivocation", which speaks to why I bother to challenge your remark about philosophy. It just seems to me that you are using a 'simplifed' definition of philosophy, and equivocating about what the word really means...and thus doing what I said and 'marginalizing' serious philosophy by making fun of the 'common notion' of what it does.


So...you see how much work it is to explicate & clarify a point when attempting to use 'formal' language? I do NOT expect all of us here to talk that way in casual debate, but it can become relevant when entire arguments are getting muddy because one group simply means something different from another group when using certain words. (such as 'stupid' when 'ignorant' is meant.) At such points, philosophy can be useful...even if the formal terms of it are not used. One can just say, "Hey... I thing we are talking about different things here...what do YOU mean by 'X'?"

Now,I have no idea if you or anyone else bothers to read long posts like this, but hey... there it is...just in case it helps someone at some time.