the use of philosophy
this entry is partly for papertygre and partly because i want to concretize in my mind specific examples of the use of philosophy. so the question is: what is philosophy (and abstract thinking in general) useful for? i don't want unexampled statements like 'well, it moves history' which are overly abstract themselves. yes, it moves history, but what are some particular examples? here's a short list, off the top of my head:

1) philosophy is responsible for the formation of the two world superpowers of the 20th century: the american government was based on the philosophy of john locke (and other enlightenment thinkers), and the ussr was based on the philosophy of karl marx. so you have the two biggest forces the world has ever known being direct results of philosophizing. arguably, nazi germany was also the product of philosophy, the german idealists -- and perhaps that gov was so short-lived because the philosophy it based itself on was so irrational.

2) philosophy is responsible for the development (and maintenence) of the scientific method (including such things as resistence to pseudo-science and religion), which is in turn responsible for most of the technology in the world. aristotle didn't just create the syllogism, he created most scientific fields as well. i believe philosophy has been called 'the queen of science'? and mathematics the king? something like that. those are accurate in the sense that all the different scientific fields are the children of a marriage of philosophy (particularly epistemology) and mathematics.

3) all ethics are philosophical, and therefore when someone acts based on what they believe is right and what is wrong (rather than by unconscious habit, emotional whim, pragmatism/compromise, or some other way) philosophy influences those particular actions. it may not always be a good ethics, and the actions may not always have good results, but there's an undeniable relationship between a person's actions and what ethics he adheres to: mormons tend to act differently than marxists, who tend to act differently than existentialists, who tend to act differently than stoics -- there are of course many examples of people who believe one thing and act in the opposite way; there are promiscuous drug-crazed muslims, and hedonistic objectivists. but i'm talking general trends within a group here, not particular cases.

this is just a beginning of suggestions, please contribute more ideas.

interestingly, so far all of these things are kind of too wide to see in everyday life, but easy to see if you take a historical perspective, or the perspective of a person's actions over their lifetime, and their group's actions, rather than any particular action. so it's forgivable to think that philosophy has no use, its use only becomes apparent when you look to the very big scale.