What passes for philosophical conversation these days is what I call (somewhat ironically) "Ismism". It typically goes like this: You start with some proposition, and the other party goes 'ah, so you're a ------ist.' Then they appeal to authority and regurgitate some standard retort of famous philosopher X against famous philosopher Y who allegedly held the same opinion as what they think you represent (or ought to represent). By reducing your position to the closest approximation they know, they also commit a straw-man fallacy and kill all nuance. If you attempt to nevertheless differentiate your position, they may resort to a dogmatic rant whereby they talk at you a about the fundamental propositions of whatever general general they subscribe to.

It's especially bad with continentals. Say anything that smells like Wittgenstein or Russell and you're in for a hostile lecture about why the subjective point of view is absolutely(!) correct.

This happens especially with philosophy students. I think it's a result of an education system where you're given way more material to read than you can deeply digest, which you're encouraged to understand and explain, meanwhile not contributing too much of your own thoughts except small refinements of existing ones. At some point in this process original thought gets killed, and is replaced with the ability to internalize dogma and to play the right language game. Understanding becomes conflated with knowing.

Someone like Wittgenstein did not spend years and years reading heavy tomes of existing philosophy before forming his own opinions. He started with original thought right from the beginning, and partly by sheer force of personality got others to take note. That's how it should be.

What we need in philosophical conversation is honesty, representing exactly what you believe, not merely arguing for the sake of argument. Philosophy is a process of clarification with the aim of unravelling confusion. Like medicine, it is there to make you better if you are ill. To learning philosophy from others is to take the antidote for someone else's poison. You are bound to get lost in other people's mental labyrinths if you do that too much.

There is also a pointless quarrel about who owns the word "philosophy", meaning arguments about what is and what is not philosophy. This is second-rate intellectual argument at best, merely asserting authority in a power-struggle over linguistic rights. We should discuss what we care to discuss, without needing to label our conversations.