Are philosophers generally less religious than the general population? I'm not talking about the old-school ones, just the ones that are still alive.

This is a straightforwardly empirical question which needs an empirical, data-based, answer (not an arm-chair, philosophical one!). It would be interesting, then, if some panelist knows about any relevant research. I conjecture, though, the answer goes something like this: If by "philosopher" you mean something like "university teacher of philosophy", then yes, as a group they are less religious than the general population. But that isn't especially because they are philosophers, but because there tends to be less religious belief among people educated to PhD level in general. But that is a conjecture, and I await refutation!

What makes one an official philosopher?

Having an office? But really, this is the wrong question. There's no such thing as an "official philosopher". There are just people now writing on philosophical issues whose work is taken more or less seriously and is respected by other people seriously working on philosophical issues. True, nearly all of these people are employed professionally as teachers and/or researchers by universities, and hence have offices! -- so I suppose they might be said to be "official" in an uninteresting sense . There are not many these days who are like Bertrand Russell with a private income. But of course it isn't that sort of professional status that matters about a philosopher, but whether they are any good. So what makes it the case that this writer's work is taken more or less seriously and respected, and that writer's work isn't valued so much? I think I can recognize good philosophy, and hence a good philosopher (I have to say that, having edited one of the philosophy journals for a long time). But...

How could experience ever justify us in revising a putatively analytic statement like 'all bachelors are unmarried men'? I imagine Quine is entertaining the possibility that we may stumble across some married or female bachelors. But how could this ever happen? No one can ever be a counter-example to our statement because to do this they would need to be married or female and would then fail to be a bachelor, that is, a married man. Despite the attention it has received, I find it hard to see the plausibility of Quine's position.

Start with a different case. Take the sentence "Whales are a kind of fish". Once upon a long time ago, that would have been taken to be a truism. And someone who then denied "Whales are a kind of fish" would probably have been suspected of not understanding "whale" (or "fish") -- whales are "by definition" a particular big kind of fish, it would probably have been said, just as bachelors are a particular kind of unmarried man. Philosophers of the time might even have said it was "true by definition", the kind of thing that is true just in virtue of the meanings of the words involved (" analytic " as some later philosophers would put it). Yet nowadays we do routinely deny "Whales are a kind of fish". So if it really was once true just in virtue of the meanings of the words, and now it isn't true, we'd have to conclude that the meaning of the words has changed. But is that right? Have we definitely come to change what we mean by the words "whale" or "fish"? Or is it perhaps that we have...

According to Socrates "An unexamined life is not worth living." How do you examine your life? (I have examined some of my strongly held opinions and tried to make arguments for the opposite opinion and have had a modicum of success but I feel that there must be something more to the process of examining my life.)

Not surprisingly, philosophers have always had a tendency to wildly overrate philosophizing. Let me strike a cheerfully skeptical note! Just before the "unexamined life" remark, Socrates says "this is the greatest good for a man, to talk every day about virtue and the other things you hear me converse about examining both myself and others". Which is, frankly, absurd. Sure, a few people have a taste for philosophical discussion about virtue (and no doubt it is a good thing that some people are given to think about such things). But it is just daft to suggest that if philosophizing isn't your scene, then you are missing out on "the greatest good", and somehow your life isn't really worth living. Maybe you just prefer to spend time with your friends, or having sex, or going to the opera, or sailing, or hill-walking, or working as a doctor, or bringing up a family, or acting, or gardening, or raising money for Oxfam, or playing string quartets, or doing any of the myriad other things that...

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