I got a bit of a beef with philosophy as a subject. Let's see if I can articulate it properly.

There are infinite possible ideas and problems. The universe is infinite; if not in expanse, at least in intricacy. Our ways of understanding the universe involve simplifying it into rules and categories, so that we can make some sort of prediction of what will happen under specific conditions.

For instance, when we say "human", what we mean is an animal from Earth with genetic code that varies by less than a certain small amount from other animals we call humans - though many humans can be quite different from each other but still come under this category. You search the universe and you won't find an elementary particle that's called "human"; humans are defined by parameters which we have invented ourselves. That's just one of the ways we simplify things for our understanding.

There are hundreds of religions all of which could be true, and very few of which could be simultaneously true, although none of them are likely to be true (even if you believe in one of them, you'll agree with me that most of them are likely to be wrong). There are infinite possible religions; try making one up on the spot - the Flying Spaghetti Monster parody (www.venganza.org) is an example of this.

So there's infinite possible ideas. When there is no limit to the things which can be expressed and might concievably make sense, you have to make a choice about what ideas matter to you; what information to take in and what to ignore. That's the problem with philosophy: most philosophical ideas might make sense, but they don't explain anything or solve any problems. Like, Plato's definition of knowledge: "a true justified belief". Sounds good, but it's pointless. It's just a combination of words, none of which have any special power. How about defining true, justified and belief, if you're gonna go there? You could go on and on.

I'm not against philosophy as such. In fact, I could say that philosophy is one of my favourite disciplines, according to my own style. But philosophy, if it is to be valuable, must mean something. By my definition, then, philosophy could be the study of those things outside the realm of science: how to live life, how to think. But then, philosophy's just a word. That's how I use that word. Other people can use it differently.

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