There is also a lot of metaphysically-relevant work being done by philosophers (and others) on ontologies. Ontology, as philosophers classically have understood that term, is the study of what there is, or of being. Ontologies, as that term is used by researchers in artificial intelligence, refers to what might be called the "syntax" of the world: A structured catalog of what there is, what properties things have, what relations they stand in to each other, etc. Link to the websites of the National Center for Ontological Research and of AI Topics/Ontologies , as well as the website of my philosophy colleague Barry Smith , for more information.

Iagree with Peter that the older you are, and the more you have read andstudied, the more likely it is that you will get something out of astudy of philosophy. But I think that philosophy can usefully bestudied before college (at what is called in the US the "secondary"level of education, i.e., high school) and that philosophicaldiscussions can usefully be had even earlier, at the primary, orelementary, school level. The American philosopher Gareth Matthews haswritten several wonderful books detailing his work withelementary-school kids on philosophy and has a website devoted to it: " Philosophy for Kids ". And Montclair State University has a program on both elementary and secondary education level philosophy: the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children . Inaddition, the American Philosophical Association publishes a Newsletteron Teaching Philosophy , which often treats of what is sometimes called"pre-collegephilosophy" (which term you can "google" for...