About the first section: those responses all happened to me, including a guy literally turning this back and walking away without a word!

I've been asking the "what is philosophy" question my whole life and still haven't come up with a satisfying answer. I guess philosophy is what philosophers do?!

I think, if you study it historically, many things that are now called sciences were once the stuff philosophers did, and there were no separate departments for it. From politics to economics to psychology to logic...let me stop there for a moment: we had this logic professor at uni who wanted to have his own separate department, and kept fighting with the philosophers. Right then and there I kinda knew the day would come when they would wrestle even this from us. But it doesn't matter, we'll just invent the next new science. Philosophy is like a mother than never ceases birthing, and it gives open-handedly, even if she is rarely appreciated.

I often try to approach things more practically. If we made a society where we made all the smart people go to the sciences, and all the bad students we made to do philosophy, what would happen to philosophy? And when you had a deep question to ask, who would you ask?

I could elaborate, but I think the reason philosophy is the best discipline (yup!) is because it attracts the best people, and it attracts the best people because the best people are interested in everything, and only philosophy satisfies that Renaissance urge ("philosophy of x" "philosophy of y" etc.)

But I think the ultimate quest is the quest for truth, I wouldn't put philosophy in a (very) separate basket. Take for instance this:

How do we connect one concept to something that is built up by several things? How does it work, how does the human mind make this connection?

Isn't that a question neuroscience might one day answer? The only reason it's considered philosophy is that philosophy was there first. Philosophy at one time used to ask (and still does) "what is the best way for society to be organized?" Now this is politics and social planning. A philosopher is basically a person who gets there first, plants his flag, solves the issue, and then moves on to more interesting pasture, leaving the people who come later to argue over the finer points and maybe go to war with each other because they can't take the truth (for instance that god doesn't exist, or whatever).

Anyway, this is getting long, but I'll close by saying that I don't like the expression "philosophy is not a science", because in some people's minds that will invalidate philosophy. So I would add, "philosophy is not a science: it is the thing that creates sciences"! And I dare anyone to argue that historically this hasn't been the case!

Lastly, if you don't mind, go here and drop humanities-related posts in the deep-think-post-promotion room, I'll add you once I know your username there. You're officially a deepthink member! :)