Philosophy as a practice is the ordering of thoughts. As a building is constructed, frameworks of thoughts provide a basic way to order philosophical space, giving a background for other thoughts (some of which may be frameworks in themselves). To understand philosophical thought, one must understand the frameworks in which the terms used reside, and to make use of it, one must be able to understand the meaning of those ideas within one's own framework. Philosophers operate on a number of topics, from the foundations of society to the meaning of methods in science. The pursuits which are the most clearly philosophy are those that are concerned with the overall framework -- the practice of science does not require a position on the meaning of discovery, as acceptance of a given set of rules and style of judgement for intellectual integrity and discovery is sufficient. In practice, philosophy is not perscriptive -- acceptance of rules from outside without one's own judgement is destructive to the practice.

Discussing philosophy leads to a different use of language than is used in everyday life. In that dialogue, one aims to be precise, saying what one means in ways that have most of their meaning evident to the reader without unnecessary emotion or demands on the reader. To be precise may take a good understanding of the frameworks involved, but defined terms used should bear at least a resemblance to their common usage.

In my writing, I generally recommend that people not take the ordinary connotations of used terms too seriously. I often use terms purely for their definitional meaning if they're a best fit, ignoring inconvenient connotations.

• Basic Perspective
• Philosophy and Action