Thank you for your message. I don't fully agree that Buddhist philosophy is consistently ignored by contemporary Western philosophers. While Buddhist philosophy is not a topic in the main stream of philosophical discussion in Western, English speaking countries, it does garner some attention. For instance, the philosopher Jonathan Stoltz at the University of St. Thomas has published articles such as the following: "Buddhist Epistemology: The Study of Pramana," Religion Compass 3 (2009), 537-548 "Concepts, Intention, and Identity in Tibetan Philosophy of Language," Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 29 (2008), 383-400 "Gettier and Factivity in Indo-Tibetan Epistemology," The Philosophical Quarterly 57 (2007), 394-415 "Sakya Pandita and the Status of Concepts," Philosophy East & West 56 (2006), 567-582 So too, Mark Siderits (now teaching in Hong Kong, I believe) has written excellent book, _Buddhism as Philosophy_, that covers many themes...

I'd like to add that there is a small but growing movement in support of secondary-level philosophical education in the U.S. I myself have started the High-Phi Project (www.high-phi.org) and we work in conjunction with such organizations as PLATO (http://plato-apa.org/), and the Squire Family Foundation (http://squirefoundation.org/). Many of us involved in these organizations share your view that secondary education in the U.S. would be enhanced with more philosophy. However, Professor Greenberg is right to point out that as of now, many schools lack an incentive to add this subject to their curricula because there is little incentive to do so. In addition, many teachers lack formal training in philosophy. We are also trying to rectify that with such things as an upcoming NEH-funded Summer Institute for high school teachers: http://high-phi.org/neh-seminar/. Mitch Green

Games have a variety of roles in philosophy that I won't be able to discuss adequately in a brief answer. However, I'll try to give you some useful examples. Lewis Carroll, who was a logician as well as being the inventor of _Alice in Wonderland_, used chess pieces as characters in his fiction. Just as famously, Wittgenstein drew an analogy between language use and the playing of a game. This analogy was aimed in part at resisting the ancient tradition of thinking of language as primarily a vehicle for describing the world. Instead, Wittgenstein was in effect urging, language is primarily a social activity, and describing the world is just one of many of the games in which that social activity partakes. (I wish I knew of a case in which the game Go made a serious appearance in philosophy, but alas I do not.) Also, the *theory* of games, that is, the field of mathematics known as game theory, has been influential in fields such as ethics, the philosophy of language and more recently the...

What a nice question! You're right that we typically think of academic disciplines as adding knowledge rather than taking anything away. The operative phrase always seems to be "creating new knowledge." However, it doesn't go without saying that this is the only valuable thing an academic discipline can do, and Philosophy is sometimes "subtractive", to use your term. The reason is that part of the role of Philosophy is to relieve people of certain kinds of perplexity, and sometimes a good way to do this is not to answer a question that is puzzling them, but rather to show that the question is itself dubious in some way. So suppose for instance someone is trying to find the meaning of life. Philosophers will often be inclined *not* to try to answer the question directly, but rather to get the person to think harder about what sort of answer could possibly satisfy them. Again, the phrase 'the meaning of life' presupposes that there is exactly one thing that is life's meaning, whereas for all we know...

The question whether philosophy will ever end is not quite the same as the question whether we'll ever find what you refer to as the unchallengeable truth. I'll just focus on the former question. Of course, philosophy might end because our species or something else destroys life as we know it. That ending for philosophy would be sad but not very interesting. Your question instead seems to suggest that you're wondering whether, even if we had world enough and time (and let's add determination, also), we could answer all philosophical questions. Some philosophers have taken a stand on this issue. For instance, Colin McGinn has argued that the "mind/body problem" cannot in principle be solved. Such a position might take either of two forms: (a) one holds that there's a definite question that needs answering, but that for some deep reason we are barred from being able to find the answer, or (b) the question is itself confused or ill-posed. Either of these positions might support the...

Thank you for your interesting question. I can't speak very generally here, since I've never systematically surveyed my colleagues on this issue. I do know plenty of philosophers who don't do anything special to protect their mental health. On the other hand, many of us do try some warmup and cooldown techniques. For instance, before hunkering down to hard work I like to spend a little time reading the news as recently ingested coffee starts to take its effects. Usually within fifteen minutes or half an hour I'm ready for the heavy lifting. Similarly, metaphysics is not good bedtime reading! That is, philosophy is not the best thing for getting to sleep, not just because it's challenging, but also because it can give one some pretty bizarre dreams. Many of the outlandish thought experiments that philosophers love to dream of can make for crazy dreams later on. I know a handful of colleagues who follow this practice of taking in only l0w-key bedtime reading, and of warming up in the way I...

Thank you for your question. First of all, it is not true that philosophy is a product of Greco-Christian culture. There are Buddhist, Chinese and Islamic philosophies (among others) that are not products of Grec0-Roman culture. (Granted, Islamic philosopies were influenced by, for instance, Aristotle, but it's an overstatement to describe them as *products* of Greek culture.) While these philosophies are not as well known in the West as the traditions that trace back to Greek thought, they are complex, innovative and fascinating traditions in their own right. (For a treatment of just one, see Siderits' _Buddhism as Philosophy, published by Hackett_.) But second, and more important, it is hard to see why being a product of a culture would circumscribe a field's conclusions. For instance, it would not be terribly convincing to argue that since Pythagoras was Greek, his Theorem only applies to a certain culture or tradition. Instead, it seems a lot more plausible that his Theorem applies to...

Thank you for your question. In the broadest terms, ethics is a branch of philosophy. Alongside this branch are others such as epistemology, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and logic. Unlike these other fields, however, ethics is now extending its reach beyond the confines of traditional departments of philosophy. For instance it is not hard to find departments concerned with one or another area of "applied ethics" in such places as medical schools, law schools or business schools. Bioethicists are often found in schools of medicine, and scholars of business ethics are often found in business schools. Analogous things can be said for law schools, and engineering schools often have faculty concerned with environmental ethics. Less administratively and more substantively, ethicists share with other philosophers a desire to make progress on urgent questions in spite of the fact that at least right now we in general do now know how to answer them by means either of empirical demonstration or...

As with any other academic discipline, limited resources (salary pools, tenure, endowed professorships and the like) make for competition. I doubt that philosophy as a field is more competitive than many others that are current. Further, when in the past philosophy was practiced outside of universities, competition could also be discerned just as was the case, at that time, in mathematics, astronomy, and other emerging fields. (Just think of how much European jealousy Ben Franklin provoked with his advances in the study of electricity.) However, I don't see that any of this justifies Schopenhauerian pessimism. Rather, the pervasive endeavor to improve on the work of others is, at least in some cases, motivated by the drive to get better answers to enduring questions. I don't see anything inappropriate about that. Of course it is possible to get caught up in the chase, and to get obsessed with what, in at least one translation, Plato refers to as "outdoing". On the other hand, a nagging...