A good, if depressing, argument can be made for defining philosophy as "that which happens in academic philosophy departments." Ideas have a quorum of people th

A good, if depressing, argument can be made for defining philosophy as "that which happens in academic philosophy departments." Ideas have a quorum of people that you have to convince in order to be taken seriously, when your thoughts aspire to the philosophical, then that quorum exists solely in the academy and related organizations grounded in the academy. Any attempts to get outside of this mean expanding the quorum to "anyone, really." Which means the standard publishing cycle where your idea's merits are judged by sales figures. Which means that every single book out there is a philosophy treatise. Any marketplace of ideas has to have its gatekeepers. Otherwise we all drown in a deluge of shit. Traditional literature, art, architecture, really any serious creative endeavor has an industry of people that serves as the gatekeepers that determine both the current status and the zeitgeist of the art. Outsiders must build their own audiences and fight their way in, rather than be able to tap the extant audience that the gatekeepers are the guardians of. It's difficult to see how it could happen any other way. Otherwise you get legions of wannabes proffering crap. Philosophy is no different.