Folk Philosophy

Coming home from an undergrad philosophy conference once, I stopped to get gas. The gas station attendant was a nice, talkative guy, about my age.
"Where are you headed?"
"Home."
"Where were you visiting?"
"I was in Madison, at a philosophy conference, actually."
"Oh, philosophy, huh? What is the meaning of life?"

I get this kind of thing every now and then, mostly when making small talk with strangers. By 'this kind of thing', what I mean is that I get the idea that people don't really know what academic philosophy is. And I understand it, and I can't blame them, because when you have (as most of the population does) taken either an Intro to Philosophy class or no formal philosophy introduction, your idea of philosophy is probably much different than mine. What philosophy means to most people is a bunch of pretentious assholes smoking pot and using language in a convoluted manner as to seem intelligent. (Think modern day Chinese proverbs) Well, in some ways, I guess it is like that--but we don't say things like "What is the meaning of life?" and "Can God cook a burrito so hot that even He/She could not eat it?"
Things like this I like to call "Folk Philosophy". Folk Philosophy is the type of thing that all people engage in, myself included. I like Folk Philosophy. Its actually what got me into Academic Philosophy--my Intoduction to Philosophy class was largely a class on Folk Philosophy. Plato could in many respects called a Folk Philosopher.
My point here is that the Philosophy practiced in upper level undergraduate courses (and I presume beyond) is a different kind of thing. The biggest difference is that we ask completely different questions. This Philosophy is probably strongly influenced by Folk Philosophy, but instead of just playing around with words (as I think people believe we do), we formalize arguments into logical forms. We attempt to define things in ways which don't allow them to be manipulated.

This all seems pretty useless, as I am not explaining myself well. But my point, and you'll have to take my word for it, is that Academic Philosophy is important, and is dealing with real questions, not just questions of language (contrary to what Wittgenstein may have you believe). I am happy to talk Folk Philosophy with anyone at any time, but it really upsets me when I hear people say that all philosophers do is get really good at bull-shitting. Because an Academic Philosopher is that last person you want to try bull-shitting. A philosophy professor is going to see every fallacy and error in reasoning you use, and if he/she wants can tear you apart for it.