Maybe I should have taken more philosophy in school...

'cause this essay made perfect sense to me...as do these comments from Mark

Philosophy is all about conversation, especially (in the last few hundred years) written conversation. One philosopher comes up with an idea and writes it down and publishes it. Other philosophers pick it apart, look for hidden assumptions, look for leaps in logic, deny axioms, argue conclusions, split hairs, go every which way with it. This is logically polite. It adds to the conversation, the ongoing argument. The arguments run deep, and in ten thousand years they have not been resolved, nor will they be resolved in the next ten thousand years. That is irrelevant. The essence of philosophy is not the conclusion but the conversation.

-- source

While we're at it, the weblog manifesto is an interesting read.