What is Philosophy?

While I would love to dive right in and just start asking all kinds of questions that no man can answer, I feel as though I have to start somewhere and and I think that the best place is to get a broad definition of Philosophy and what it is.
Soo...Just what is Philosophy?
"Philosophy" itself as a word is of course a Greek word meaning Love-Philo and Wisdom-Sophy or "love of wisdom". I think on the surface this is great definition. But in order to understand what it is we are playing with when we get into the actual act of philosophizing we need to understand rational thought. The word rational comes from the Greek word ratio which means reason and computation.
What is it to be rational?
Rational thought is the ability to come to a conclusion or solve a problem through the means of that which is known to us to be true. So rational thought is the logical process through which we come to conclusions and solve problems. It is how we decide to believe or not believe that something is true. If we follow the process of logical thought and it leads to reasonable conclusion we can more or less assume this to be true at least until more logical evidence in another direction is shown. It means essintialy it is reasonable to think or act on a certain concept or piece of information. for example if you are sitting at your desk in your office and the window is open and your papers are blowing every where. Your sense of logic tells you that you need to close the window to keep the papers from blowing away. This is a rational thought. "My papers are blowing everywhere. How do I stop it? I'll close the window." This is a conclusion you came to through rational logical thought. Congratulations you are now an "armchair philospher"8).
We make rational decisions all day long everyday, but then why do we run into trouble? Why do we sometimes realize that we closed the window but the papers are still blowing about? This is a matter of validity and soundness.
logical thoughts are funny because something can be logicaly valid and not be logicaly sound. For example lets say we close the window to your office and the papers, as mentioned above are still blowing around the room, why is this? You know your thought to close the window was reasonable. you could feel the wind blowing in through the open window. Your thought was valid. But was it sound? The Fan on your desk which is set on high seems to undermine the thought of closing the window. This is when you realize that the thought "let me close the window." was completely valid but it was not quite sound. it made perfect sense but it did not solve the problem. you were left to form a more sound thought in order to solve the problem.This is on a very basic level the ideas of logical validity and soundness of logic. I think it is important to understand the difference between the two as we move ahead.
So lets take Philosophy as such for the sake of our purposes in this blog to be a search for wisdom that is justifiable on the sound basis of reason.
This attitude towards logic and reason is the very basis for what we call the scientific method. Scientists use logic and reason in order to form, test, and prove a hypothesis. Of course as time has gone on and science has became more rigid we understand that science is contained within a certain domain of logic. These are Laws of science and are so sound that they will more than likely remain unchanged forever; e.g. Newton's Law of Gravity. Philosophy,on the other hand, though being based on logic and reason is also subject to perspective. This is where we run into objectivity and subjectivity.
When we talk of truth and things that are concrete...things we know, such as...Grass is green. The sky is blue....Jim is tall.....I am short. we are relying on an objective truth that everyone can understand...You know what it is to be tall so when I say "Jim is tall." You know exactly what I mean... This is an objective truth of Jim. I can point to Jim and say "tall" and you understand what I mean. You know that objectively, Jim is tall.
Subjectivity is a tougher concept to grasp. It is a matter of individual perception. Each of us are subjective in our own lives. We are all subjective in every aspect of our own awareness. For example. I can tell you that grass is green and you would agree,But, You can not describe to me what it is that you see that you call green. Subjectively speaking you could be seeing my blue and we would never know the difference. Because your perception of green is subjective.
I think I am going to wrap up here because I think we have a very basic and broad overview of the types of things I will be discussing. We can narrow it down to a finer point as we go. We have Philosophy as a search for wisdom that is justifiable on the sound basis of reason.
We understand that thoughts and arguments can be valid and yet lack in soundness.
And we understand that unlike science, philosophy involves an understanding of objective and subjective perception.
If you have any comments or questions let me know. I am highly interested.