What does it mean to philosophize?

To consider, propound and pontificate on this;

“the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, esp. when considered as an academic discipline.” dictionary.com

Opinion; “a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.” Standard definition.

philosophy is opinion, supremely convoluted opinion, but opinion nevertheless, because philosophy is crap pulled out of your arse.

This question/answer page is very representative of the kinds of things we face in exploring our own psyche.
There is the question posed, answers that are partially correct but not fully explored, and of course the complete waste of thought that must be discarded.
In the end, we find our own answers that will guide us, and we may reevaluate our choices later.

I have sent this to our resident philosopher.

For me it’s always meant, “Think about this (the subject) from many perspectives and choose when that best represents you, and then think about why another perspective may be more or less attracted to the said subject”

I feel it means to ponder and question lifes unanswered questions like how did we get here, is there a heaven, is there a god, what happens after we die, and etc.

I found taking a philosophy class very enlightening and very thought provoking. There were a lot of older theories that I truly enjoyed where others seemed very far fetched.

It can be a few different things, depending on which field of philosophy one practices and in what context – but by and large, most philosophy is done within academia. For me, and in most of the writings I’ve read by my fellow philosophy grad students, it mostly means reading other (mostly male and dead) philosophers and then writing about their ideas. I make greatest use of the compare/contrast—> synthesize/speculate method, which is (frustratingly, to many) heavily relied upon in Continental philosophy. The only field of philosophy I have explored that is unlike this is logic, which is refreshingly math-like.

So I guess that philosophizing can be thought of as having an opinion – and it certainly is, in some cases – but I’d say it’s more like having a hypothesis. The papers I write do sometimes end up contradicting that hypothesis, as in the course of writing them I often come to see things in a different way. It’s kind of like those science reports we all had to write back in high school – you make a guess, and if your results end up not bearing out the guess, that’s ok but you have to state it in your conclusion.

To ponder and digest information on a particular subject, roll it around in your brain and attempt to view it from all perspectives, putting together all pertinent information, expelling the parts that are obviously erroneous, adding a pinch of skepticism and then expressing the resultant solution in a form that is easily understandable to the masses.

My philosophy is to never go into debt.

My opinion is that debt is sometimes necessary.

The soundtrack here is the highest form of modern philosophy.

And Henri, le chat philosophe himself;

My view of philosophy is that it is all about asking questions. If you turn to philosophy for answers, you are going to be very disappointed. The questions though will expand your mind and widen your perspective. A wonderful relatively recent philosophical question is Newcomb’s Paradox.

Mental Masturbation.