Funny you should ask. It's grading season and I've spent a chunk of my day reading essays by freshmen. Some are pretty well-written; others not so much. I'm with your prof. If I sent a paper full of bad grammar to a philosophy journal, it would either be rejected or, if it was otherwise worth considering, would be sent back for revision. You can think of either of these as the professional equivalent of getting points knocked off. But aside from what happens in the profession, I don't see my role as narrowly as you think I should. Part of the point of my essay assignments is to improve their strictly philosophical skills. But I take it to be part of my job to help students learn to write better essays in general. I don't think that this falls only to the writing teachers in the English department; I don't have that sort of siloed view of a university education. I'd add: experience suggests that ungrammatical prose often goes with careless or even muddled thinking. And it makes it more likely that the...

I recommend that you don't think about it this way. Is mind-independent moral realism true? Geez. I don't know. (And, by the way, neither do you.) But here's some stuff I feel quite comfortable saying. I want my kids to be empathetic. I want them to give a damn about how their actions affect other people. I want them to take seriously the idea that if they wouldn't be willing to put up with being treated in some way or other, then they'd better have a very good reason, and not just a selfish one, for treating other people that way. I want my kids to treat others decently. I want them to be honest. I want them to be fair. I want them not to be jerks. Do I want all that because I'm convinced that mind independent moral realism is true? Nope. I want all that because I can't imagine not caring about such things. They seem right to me, and the fact that something called "mind independent moral realism" might not be true seems to me an awfully thin reason for turning my back on my considered judgment that...

There's not just one answer and others may add their own. But your question equates getting an education with acquiring information, and that's not a good way to think of it. I'll use philosophy as an example, but some version of what I'm about to say would apply to any discipline I can think of. A philosophy student may acquire a lot of information—for example, about who the Utilitarians were, and what compatibilism about free will is. But that's a small part of what she gets through her philosophical education. What she gets, if things works out, is the ability to think well philosophically. That comes from practice, from interacting with philosophers and, crucially, from getting feedback. It's hard to learn to do philosophy if all you have is a library of books that you read. In particular, it's hard to know whether you're learning to do it well. And—trust me on this—your own judgments about that may be way off the mark. There are exceptions, of course, but they're just that: exceptions. You may...

Some people hold the view that if we're doing what we really ought to, we'll give up to the point where giving more would decrease the overall good that our giving produces. The most obvious arguments for that sort of view come from utilitarianism, according to which the right thing to do is the action that maximizes overall utility (good). If I could give more and overall utility would rise on that account, giving more is what I should do. Other views are less demanding. A Kantian would say that our most important duty is avoid acting in ways that treat others as mere means to our own ends. Kantians also think we have a duty to do some positive good, but how much and in what way is left open. I'm not aware of any Kantians who think we're obliged to give up to the point where it would begin to hurt. Who's right? I do think there's real wisdom in the idea that a system of morality won't work well if it's so demanding that few people will be able to follow it, and so I'm not persuaded by the point of...

Let's start with a distinction. We may say that a situation is evil if it's sufficiently bad, whatever it was that brought the situation about—even if no one intended it. But we don't usually say that a person is evil unless they have evil intentions. Start with evil people. In the kind of case that comes most easily to mind, ignorance isn't the issue. Sadly, there are people who just don't care. If what they do hurts someone else, it doesn't matter to them. In fact, some people take pleasure in other people's pain. I'm not sure that this kind of indifference and evil intention has much to do with ignorance. It's possible to know that something is wrong and not care. Plato may have thought otherwise, but it's not obvious that he's right. It's pretty clear that the first kind of evil—objectively bad situations—can come about for all sorts of reasons, including sheer bad luck. Putting it down to ignorance is sometimes reasonable, but often isn't. And even when the bad situation comes about...

I'm going to read your question not as a psychological one (that as "What would cause someone to feel inadequate or unworthy or learning philosophy?") but rather as a question about whether there could be good reasons for feeling this way. Before we go on, an important preliminary: what I'll say is intended to be perfectly general and not to be a diagnosis of your particular case. Since I don't know anything about your case beyond the question I've asked, I couldn't possibly speak to its particulars. As for why someone might justifiably feel inadequate, one obvious answer is that they might lack the requisite talent. For example: if someone paid for me to do a PhD in mathematics, I would feel inadequate for the very simple reason that I don't have enough mathematical talent to be a serious part of the community of students in a PhD mathematics program. And if it turned out that my being part of the program meant I was taking the place of someone with real talent, that would reasonably make me...

Briefly, it depends on what sorts of philosophical issues you want to pursue. Most philosophers, including most good ones, don't have extensive scientific knowledge, and the questions they're interested in don't call for knowing lots of science. But philosophers who work on issues in physics, or biology, or psychology or other sciences need to be knowledgeable about the sciences they work on. In philosophy of physics, it's not unusual for a philosopher to have an advanced degree (Masters or even PhD) in physics. Even if s/he doesn't have a science degree, s/he will have to have acquired a lot of knowledge of the field - or relevant parts of it. By way of general recommendation, however, the single most useful thing you can do if you're interested in philosophical issues about science is to learn as much math as you can. That can give you a serious leg up on learning the more specific scientific ideas that may be relevant to your interests. So if you have the aptitude, at the very least take some...

Just a few further thoughts. Many philosophers of physics don't have the equivalent of a PhD in physics, though they do, of course, know a good deal about physics. And while these philosophers usually aren't doing experimental work in physics, what they do is sometimes published in physics journals and often in journals where physicists as well as philosophers publish. If you have your heart set on being a research scientist, employed by a science department or a scientific institution, then you'll almost certainly need a PhD in the relevant science. But if you want to do research that combines theoretical issues in science with your interest in philosophy, then it's quite possible to do that without a PhD in a science. In any case, I agree with my co-panelist's suggestion: study more science in your senior year if you have room for it in your schedule.

You've in effect made several good arguments yourself. But the idea that just because one was born into a certain social stratum, one shouldn't try to get out of it is an idea that has long since lost any plausibility it might have had. In fact, when you think about it, it's hard to see what could recommend that view. Even if we concede that there will always be low-skill jobs needing to be done, it hardly follows that one is obliged to be the one who does them just because of accidents of birth. If someone is truly content to remain uneducated, or work for low wages or perform unskilled labor, that's one thing. (And there are such people.) But if that's not what you want out of life, It's hard to think of any good reason why you should be expected simply to go along with a life-plan you didn't pick. A friend of mine who got his PhD when I did came from a working class family. There's nothing wrong with that, and nothing wrong with the work they did. (My family was only pne beneration removed from...

Please don't take this the wrong way. Though I wouldn't use words like "stupid", I'm on your parents' side. A man who would take a 17-year-old whom he has never met and with whom he has no real-life acquaintance on the sort of journey you describe against the wishes of the people who know him well is a man whose judgment I would not trust. And the fact that you don't see the worry gives me reason to think you aren't yet ready to make a decision like this yourself. You write "Clearly, though, young as I am, am ready to embark on a journey that will change my life." I ask: why is this clear? And to whom? Here's where we actually get to a philosophical point: the fact that you feel convinced and that it seems clear to you doesn't provide anyone - you nor anyone else - with a real reason to believe that it's true. There are too many unknowns here for gut instinct to be worth much. Might everything turn out well? It might. Or it might not. Can you become a well-educated person without...