What is Philosophy?

We asked a range of Philosophy Bites interviewees the simple question 'What is Philosophy?'...Here are some of their answers: 

Listen to What is Philosophy?

The Philosophy Bites podcast is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.

Comments

[Paul So]

I thought the best answer to that question was laughter, the laughter of wisdom that acknowledges ignorance.

[Jonathan]

Alban Low produced a charming piece of art from my Tweeted definition of Philosophy http://t.co/XgOJ8dco

[Www]

I was surprised at how cumbersome the answers were from those attempting to teach it to children. My answer that even children would understand (and that all other meanings of philosophy naturally spring from) is:

Q: What is [western] Philosophy?

A: Being able to answer the question, Why do you think what you think? Why do you believe what you believe?

And while you want to be able to answer to someone else's satisfaction, you foremost want to be able to answer to your own satisfaction because you want to know the truth. (BTW, the western bit is "we believe humans are capable of doing this ourselves")

[Ankush Arora]

Meaning of life is very impractical to give because it changes every moment in different ways for different people, So its answer should be different for different people.
Many external forces try to bring unanimity to the meaning of life but how the fuck this could happen when we are so efficient even at the DNA level to be different from each other.