> I'd like to understand why you read and discuss philosophy,...
What sort of answers do you suppose that question can have, and how would you go about evaluating them?
Philosophy is the parent that gives birth to all other fields of study, nurturing them while they develop. Once they can stand alone, they split off to become physics, biology, chemistry, or whatever comes next. The reason philosophy sometimes sounds unproductive is that once those more mature fields have set out producing answers on their own, philosophers study the leftovers. Fields in which we're not even sure what the right questions are.
But the questions are still there. We want to know why we are the way we are, where we came from, where to go next. It is only by studying the hard questions that they eventually become easier. It is only by questioning every assumption that we verify or discredit them.
The world today would not have made the remarkable achievements it has without science; and science would never have existed at all without philosophers to create it.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC