This is a question that's been asked me in terms of my academic study, in talking to others, and in posting on this forum. It's a question I feel called to answer, given that it's come up repeatedly especially on this forum in my dealings with Theaetetus, RD (You know who you are), Holliday (sp?), Didymos Thomas, and others...and, so far as I can see, it's a question I feel qualified to answer.

I can't help but laugh when people say on this particular forum (as well as in other places) "this isn't philosophy" or "this is philosophy," or "these people are philosophers" or "those people aren't," or "this isn't philosophically relevent." Well...I can't help but laugh when people say this to me. I am a philosophy major in college. I'll be a senior this fall. I've taken plenty of philosophy classes. I should know what is philosophy and what is not, what is philosophically relevent and what is not, etc.

In case you are wondering, this is what I've taken so far:

Freshman level Intro to Philosophy
Freshman level Intro to Logic
Sophomore level Symbolic Logic
Sophomore level History of Philosophy (Ancients/Mideivals)
Sophomore level History of Philosophy (Moderns)
Sophomore level Ethics
Junior level (German) Existentialism
Junior level Moral Responsibility
Senior level Presocratics
Senior level Philosophy of Law
Senior level Rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz)

Clearly, then, I should know what is philosophy and what is not philosophy. Are we agreed? So we are...and just as Kierkegaard felt obligated to tell the vast majority of "Christians" that they are not, in fact, Christians, I feel obligated to tell the vast majority of people on this forum who think they are doing "philosophy" that you, in fact, are not doing philosophy...but you could be!

What is philosophy? Philosophy is the science whereby we discover the grounds upon which our intuitions, our common sense values/beliefs are based.

"But," you'll say, "of course that's what we're trying to figure out! I have tons of ideas about these things!"

Having beliefs/ideas about these intuitions isn't enough. You could have all the right answers (evne if the right answer is that there are none) about these things, but you could still fail to do philosophy. You could be an avid skeptic (in the sense that you think that there is no truth, or if there is truth, we can't know it), or you could be an avid empiricist (in the sense that you believe all knowledge is based on the senses), and you still wouldn't be a philosopher if that something else is missing.

What is that something else? Reason. Arguments. This is the stuff of philosophy. And how do we know what to reason about and make arguments for? By asking the right questions. How do you know what questions to ask? By studying the history of philosophy. Where's the best place to do that? College!

There's absolutely no philosophical merit, it's completely worthless, if you have an opinion about epistemology, but in forming your opinion, you have no idea what is at stake. I'll give you an example:

Let's say you are an avid empiricist, not in that you are doing philosophy in the manner of the empiricists, but rather in the sense that you are mindlessly accepting their beliefs without critically analyzing them. So you believe that we gain knowledge through the senses.

But whoah! It never occurs to you to ask, as Plato would have, this crucial question: "What is knowledge, and whatever faculty knowledge is, are sense particulars its rightful object, or is there some property that all sense particulars have alike which exclude them from being the proper object of this faculty?"

Or again, suppose you have this belief that science is able to answer all of the questions that we can possibly ask, and instead of doing armchair philosophy, we should "naturalize" the science (of philosophy) by referring the various philosophical fields (epistemology, ethics, etc.) to the relevent field of study in the natural science (psychology, biology, chemistry, sociology, &c)...but it never occurs to you to ask this very, very important question: "What is natural science, upon which faculty is it based, and what are its necessary limitations?" Your belief, even if right (and it isn't), is completely worthless to you philosophically.

For one to do philosophy, these things have to be in effect:

1. It must be a problem underlying common sense values. One cannot use philosophy to figure out the human genome.

2. One must understand and be looking to answer the appropriate questions. Philosophy isn't blind. The driving force of philosophy is the paradox. My favorite is Parmenides': "By 'change' I understand the process whereby that which is ceases to be, or whereby that which is not comes into being. But if nothing comes from nothing, and that which is already is, how is change possible?"

Last but not least:

3. Your answers must be guided by an appropriate method, especially the laws of non-contradiction. As the ancient Stoics insisted, "logic is the propaedeutic of philosophy." Even if you know and are trying to answer the right questions, and even if the subject matter is appropriate, if you are not guided by some method whereby your answers are assured, your pursuit isn't philosophical. For this, we must use logic and thought experiments.

So be honest with me, PhilosophyForum: are you really doing philosophy?

Oh! And one last thing...and you know who you are whom I am addressing: Is metal philosophy? No. Heavy metal is art. The better question, though, is this one: is heavy metal philosophically relevent? The answer is an unequivocable "yes." Parmenides wrote in verse. The Stoics and others looked to the poets. In our modern day, we have philosophy of literature, of film, etc. The role of the artist is not to do philosophy. The role of the artist is to reveal the human condition, and to gain insight into our intuitions...and that is philosophically relevent. Not to mention, of course, that heavy metal presents us with harmony and beauty, and puts us in the appropriate mindset for doing philosophy. Where the artist leaves off, the philosopher takes up.