If I am very interested in philosophy to the point where I would one day like to write a philosophical treatise or take part in the global exchange of philosophical ideas, but have little or no interest in teaching, would seeking a Ph.D in philosophy be unneccesary? This is putting aside the need for the discipline of setting one's mind to undertaking a thesis as I would likely obtain graduate education in a different, yet supplementary field?

But isn't there an odd tension between saying that you would like to write and take part in the exchange of philosophical ideas and saying that you have no interest in teaching? Isn't teaching In a university (the kind of teaching for which a PhD is required) one sort of exchange of ideas? And isn't it a particularly valuable one for the teachers who are thereby forced to make their ideas as clear and accessible as they can and to respond to the challenges of their students who in turn can teach them so much? How many philosophers can do good work without the constant challenges thrown up in their teaching?

Why do so many Anglo-American philosophy departments still prefer to teach ideas that depend on symbolic logic? Or in another light, why is so much contemporary philosophy in America still dedicated to analysis and ideals of "clarity" that depend on "higher order" languages?

I'm not sure what is meant by "prefer to teach ideas that depend on symbolic logic". Most departments teach e.g. aesthetics, political philosophy, the history of early modern philosophy, the philosophy of mind, and so on and so forth -- and symbolic logic features little if at all in those courses. (When did you last see a quantifier when discussing how it is that we can apply emotion terms to music, or discussing whether we can justify more than a minimal state, etc., etc.?) And a concern for clarity has little to do with symbolic logic (and nothing at all to do with 'higher order' languages). Clarity matters because we want to seek the truth co-operating with other enquirers. And we can't co-operate with other enquirers by together subjecting our conjectures to stern test and criticism and proposing revisions if we can't manage to make ourselves very plainly understood to each other. Of course there are always intellectual pseuds who get off on talking to themselves with willful obscurity ...

I have been reading discussions on this site about the Principia and about Godel's incompleteness theorem. I would really like to understand what you guys are talking about; it seems endlessly fascinating. I was an English/history major, though, and avoided math whenever I could. Consequently I have never even taken a semester of calculus. The good news (from my perspective) is that I have nothing to do for the rest of my life except for working toward the fulfillment of this one goal I have: to plow through the literature of the Frankfurt School and make sense of it all. Understanding the methods and arguments of logicians would seem to provide a strong context for the worldview that inspired Horkheimer, Fromm, et al. So yeah, where should I start? Do I need to get a book on the fundamentals of arithmetic? Algebra? Geometry? Or do books on elementary logic do a good job explaining the mathematics necessary for understanding the material? As I said, I'm not looking for a quick solution. I...

1. I don't think there is any reason to suppose that learning about mathematical logic from Principia to Gödel will be any help at all in understanding what is going on with the Frankfurt School. (The only tenuous connection I can think of is that the logical positivists were influenced by developments in logic, and the Frankfurt School were concerned inter alia to give a critique of positivism. But since neither the authors of Principia nor Gödel were positivists, it would be better to read some of the positivists themselves if you want to know what the Frankfurt School were reacting against). 2. Of course, I think finding out a bit about mathematical logic is fun for its own sake: but it is mathematics and to really understand I'm afraid there is not much for it other than working through some increasingly tough books called the likes of "An Introduction to Logic" followed by "Intermediate Logic" and then "Mathematical Logic". Still, you can get a distant impression of what's going on...

I aced a basic logic class in college that covered both sentential and predicate logic. I am interested in furthering my skills in symbolic logic, but I don't know how. My school doesn't offer any upper-level logic courses. I'm thinking I would like to buy a simple textbook for a more in-depth study of the more advanced concepts (I've heard the term "modal logic" thrown around, but I don't know what that is). Can you suggest a good text or author I should investigate?

Shame on your school! :-)After a basic logic you can either go deeper (more of the same, but pursued to greater depth), or go wider (look at logics that deal with more than do sentential and predicate logic -- modal logic, for example, which has primitive operators for "necessarily" and "possibly" -- and also look at rivals to classical logic. Going a bit deeper: try David Bostock Intermediate Logic , OUP ; Ian Chiswell & Wilfrid Hodges, Mathematical Logic, OUP (not as advanced as its title might suggest). Going a bit wider: try Rod Girle, Modal Logics and Philosophy , Acumen; Graham Priest, An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic (2nd edn: CUP ). Some of each: John Bell, David DeVidi, Graham Solomon, Logical Options (Broadview Press).

How does one perform a professional-caliber literature search in philosophy?

You ask a grad student ... Well, I semi-jest, but a good way of making a start on some new topic is indeed to ask someone what the two or three recent "must read" items are. And reading these will firstly tell you whether you are going to find the topic fun/profitable to pursue, and no doubt the bibliographies at the end of the papers or books will give you lots of pointers for where to go next if your decide you want more. If you haven't someone on hand to advise (or someone suitable at the end of an email, or among your facebook/twitter friends), I'd start with the relevant Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article, if there is one yet. They vary from good to stunningly good, and usually have amazingly good bibliographies too. And to fill the gap between bibliographies (necessarily backwards looking, and usually a few years out of date) and the current state of play, you can look at the Philosopher's Index (a bibliographical database any university library should have access to), and ...

Does worthwhile Philosophy start with good questions or can it start with the proper mood? I am an International Relations major and have decided on writing my honors thesis on a question of political philosophy, not because I have a burning question, but rather because it was the subject I enjoyed the most and because I want to understand whether or not it is something I'd like pursuing in the future in the form of a postgraduate degree. I often find myself in what I - and some friends- call a "Philosophical mood" -though the friends are not without irony when the employ the term- i.e. in the mood for thinking and discussing dispassionately about what I am passionate about. I think Heidegger privileged moods as a way to knowing. I've decided researching the nature of power and the use of this concept in twentieth-Century political thought because I want to satisfy my mood, not because it seems like a burning question. Can real philosophy come from this? Is it (I know it is unscientific) silly to pursue...

Isn't that simply a false dichotomy? You need the good questions and the right spirit of enquiry. If you've no clear, well-formulated, questions then you'll just produce an ill-directed ramble. If you aren't driven by curiosity actually to explore the good questions, if you lack the desire to follow the argument wherever it leads, then nothing will come of having raised the questions! But I'd just add that there is nothing at all special about philosophy here. It's the same whether cosmology or molecular biology, history or the study of ancient Athens are your thing. Enquiry needs to be guided by good questions and driven on by the right spirit of 'wonder'. Or at least that's the ideal! Of course, there's lots of routine hack work in science and history, mechanically grinding away in a low grade way. And equally --- though don't spread the word too enthusiastically! -- there's lots of routine hack work in philosophy (regrettable, maybe, but people do need publications for tenure, and...

I recently graduated with my Specialized Honours BA in philosophy and I would like to pursue graduate studies. But until then, what extra-curricular activities relating to philosophy can I do to render my application more competitive and to demonstrate my passion for philosophy?

When it comes to moving from the BA to beginning graduate studies, the only thing (in my experience) that grad schools really care about is just how smart you are at philosophy. So they will take note of how well you did in the BA, of what your referees write about you, and (probably most importantly) they'll make their own independent assessment of the quality of the samples of written work that they ask for. Extra-curricular activities and declarations of passion count for little!

I'm a first year student of philosophy at UCLA, and I am interested primarily in philosophy of religion. I've just taken an introductory logic course which covered symbolization, sentential logic, and quantification. There are numerous other logic courses offered through the department, including metalogic, modal logic, etc, and I was wondering if AskPhilosophers could recommend a logic course to take? More specifically, I want to take a logic course that is related or will aid me in my studies in philosophy of religion. Maybe modal logic, since it deals with necessity and possibility? Thanks.

The short answer is: yes, you are right, a course on modal logic would be the one that probably will relate a little to a philosophy of religion course (it will help you understand e.g. modal ontological arguments). But I think it is worth saying a bit more. I'd be a little worried if one of my first-year students said "I'm primarily interested in the philosophy of X " for any X . After all, philosophy is a subject where topics don't compartmentalize easily but connect up in deep and unexpected ways. Beginners should be exploring widely, and leaving themselves open to being gripped by all kinds of problems -- what I like at this stage is a student who says "the philosophy of Y is really exciting: that's what I want to do " one week, and then comes back three weeks later and says "wow, this philosophy of Z course is amazing". And I'd be particularly worried if someone focussed too hard too early on a small area of applied philosophy like the philosophy of religion. This is a...

Are there page to page commentaries on difficult philosophical works that explain more simply what's being said so that the average person at least has a fighting chance of knowing what the work says. Where does a person obtain those sorts of commentaries?

Indeed, there are all kinds of commentaries written on the works of the Great Dead Philosophers, at various levels of sophistication. But it isn't clear to me why "the average person" would particularly want to read the works of the Great Dead Philosophers -- unless gripped by the idea that those works are somehow full of timeless pearls of wisdom. But that's not a happy idea. Those old works are, of course, very much creatures of their times, responding to intellectual concerns of their times (concerns which might overlap with ours, but which are also very different in subtle and complex ways), and typically bringing to bear all kinds of hidden assumptions of their times. That's why the Great Dead Philosophers can often be so baffling: they can seem to talking about issues that we half-recognize, but often in ways that initially make little sense. And that's why we need the commentaries, to help us see where our predecessors were coming from. (Think for example just how much philosophy over the...

Hi, I just started grad school in philosophy, and I've found that nothing I've done in undergrad has truly prepared me for this; specifically, I had a lot of guidance when writing my papers. I was given specific questions that helped me to give the Prof. what he wanted. My philosophy 101 class was taught by a grad student (in the midst of defending his own dissertation) who gave us more material than we could reasonably digest while in our early 20s. When left largely to my own devices, I focused more on the application of the philosophy in politics rather than the semantics, and for the most part, I did well and was happy about it. Now I'm trying to write a paper with the instructions that I discuss the concept of being for 25 pages from Plato's Sophist. I'm not allowed to use outside sources or reference outside of the context of the text or the class. Everyone else in my program seems to know what they're doing. I've talked to my professor and some of my peers at some length (though I was too...

It is rather difficult to believe that you have correctly describe your assigned task -- is it really to write at length about the notion of being in the Sophist without consulting any commentaries or interpretative essays? Well, not to beat about the bush, that project strikes me as simply ludicrous . You need all the help you can get if you are to work your way into a text some two and half thousand years old (in fact, I take it you are relying on a translation which has already made some interpretative moves that themselves raise issues): it is just absurd to pretend otherwise. Unless, I suppose, the point is to reveal to you the impossibility of the enterprise and make you appreciate that relative beginners need the commentators and the philosophical interpreters -- but then that is a pretty dumb way of getting you to see what is already an obvious truth.

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