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?

Well, to take the obvious starting point, what about Jane Austen? -- any of her novels you choose, really, other perhaps than Northanger Abbey . 1 My own favourite is Emma, though perhaps her exploration of the virtues (Aristotelian and Christian) is equally near the surface in e.g. Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion. The great tradition of subtle moral reflection in novel form continues in e.g. George Eliot, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. Then of course there are the Russians (longer, yes: but wonderful -- and, for heaven's sake, with such masterpieces to read, don't wastetime on a fourth rate writer like Ayn Rand). What about Crime and Punishment , for another obvious suggestion? And the greatest of all novels -- Anna Karenina -- is shot through and through with reflection on what it is to live well. 1. Incidentally, there's an engaging essay by the philosopher Gilbert Ryle, 'Jane Austen and the Moralists' which is well worth reading (perhaps most...

I'm sure that you are right: most algebraic topologists don't give a moment's thought to what goes on in the philosophy of mathematics. But that's only fair: most philosophers of mathematics don't give a moment's thought to the nitty gritty of algebraic topology (well, maybe there are two or three hardy souls who know a fair bit about the roots of category theory in topology, but that's a pretty specialist topic!). Topologists and philosophers mostly have very different fish to fry. So why not study topology, and just ignore the philosophy of maths? Fine, if what you are interested in is the behaviour of sheaf cohomologies and the like. Similarly, why not study neuroscience, and ignore the philosophy of mind? Fine, if what you are interested in is how our brains work at different levels of functional organization. But suppose you start getting interested in how all those different scientific enquiries fit together? For example, the scientific study of our cognitive psychology seems to suggests...

Well, there's mind-altering and mind-altering! Dope that makes you dopey might give you time out from the nagging concerns of philosophy, but isn't likely to play a role in producing serious thought. Wine or beer seems different. The glass or two in the pub after the seminar do often lubricate good philosophy, and the convivial arguments in the conference bar certainly play their part in world of philosophy. As to philosophizing about mind-altering stuffs, there's of course a good amount of discussion on the ethics and politics of legalizing this or banning that. But Charles Taliaferro is right that, when it comes to writing about our experience of the stuff itself (as opposed to ethical and legal issues about it), it is wine that traditionally gets the attention. That's not too surprising, perhaps, when we recall that at least some it is produced, not just to be glugged down, and certainly not just to make you intoxicated, but to be an object of aesthetic attention and reflection, as a...

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 ...

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...

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!

Neither. Assuming by "philosophy paper" you mean student essay, then what you need to be doing is evaluating arguments, as carefully and as honestly and as rigorously as you can. You must aim for maximum explicitness, maximum clarity, maximum organization of your thoughts. But you are writing ordered English prose, not lab notes or a mathematical proof. "Personal style" will look after itself, and shouldn't be your conscious concern. (It is always a pleasant surprise to me, e.g. when I have to mark a stack of undergraduate dissertations, how -- despite the fact that students have gone through the same teaching treadmill and drilled by weekly one-to-one essay tutorials -- distinct voices will always come through.)

I agree that philosophers should engage with relevant science. But of course, what science (if any) is relevant depends very much on what philosophical questions you are tangling with. If you are concerned with the metaphysics of time, for example, then you'll no doubt want to know something of what various kinds of physicist doing foundational work on relativity, etc., are thinking (but you needn't care at all about e.g. neuroscience). If you are concerned with the philosophy of mind then you'll probably want to know something of neuroscience and experimental psychology (but you won't care about cosmology). If you are interested in whether numbers are objects in Frege's sense, or under what circumstances abortion is permissable, or in how names latch on to the world, or whether a non-minimal state is justified, you won't care much about either neuroscienc e or cosmology, or about evolutionary biology either. So what science, if any, you need a "firm grounding" in as a philosopher will...

Charles Taliaferro is, of course, right that there are philosophers who are serious theists. But noting that doesn't really answer the question why more aren't. (My guess about the proportion of serious theists in UK philosophy departments is no more than one in eight, probably less.) But I rather doubt that this is because "religion does not stand up to philosophical scrutiny": my non-believing colleagues mostly show no interest at all in the philosophy of religion. The reasons why they find no sustenance in theistic religion and it wouldn't cross their mind to attend church are more complex than explicit argumentative considerations. And so too for other non-believers. For at least in the UK, among the educated middle classes (as opposed e.g. to among immigrant communities maintaining a cultural identity), religion is in quite general and continuing decline, and the lack of belief among philosophers is matched much more generally. And not, surely, just because of how the arguments...