How can I achieve the level of philosophical know-how and thinking ability that the philosophers of this site and the famous philosophers throughout history have had? Must I simply read many works of philosophers of the past, does the philosophical mind come with becoming more educated, or is there something else - a thought process or state of mind I must develop? Or is it an innate quality that people get at birth? I am eager to know because I have been reading much philosophical work lately and I very strongly desire to be a philosopher. and I want to write a book. Thanks, Jake - 15 yr. old

Should philosophy and epistemological precepts be taught to grade school children?

Hi, here comes another question about feminism and philosophy and feminist philosophers. I am 30 years old and was a student of philosophy in Germany for 6 years before graduating to Master of Arts. Recently I read a book about 19th century's feminists and stumbled over a small notice concerning John St. Mill's "Subjection of Women". Although I would describe myself as a quite diligent student of philosophy (even in high-school) and also very interested in feminist topics, I never knew about this well known philosopher being a feminist as well. Now I ask myself three questions and hope you can help: 1) How can it be explained that even at university level the discussion of a classic philosopher like Mill never touches the bad F-word (i.e., feminism)? And who is to blame? 2) If even students of philosophy do not touch these topics if not accidentally altough it should be their genuine field of activity, how will other people, to whom the matter is quite distant, ever find out? 3) How many other...

How do you think technology will affect the teaching and practice of philosophy? During my undergraduate degree (in philosophy), I took notes in numerous classes on a laptop and could download papers from a variety of journals as PDF. I have seen numerous academic perspectives regarding technology and learning - from Bert Dreyfus' idea that the podcast of his lectures at Berkeley on philosophy and literature reduced class attendance, to law schools having "laptops off" sessions to science professors encouraging (or even requiring) graduate students to blog about their lab work. I even saw a theory that ethical theories are implicitly tied to the technology of their time - the printing press linking with Kant, utilitarianism, Mill-style liberalism, the mass media of television, radio and newspapers doing the same for Rawls and Nozick. And, of course, many philosophy professors like Brian Leiter now have blogs and some have podcasts too. At technical conferences, we use technology to provide things like ...

I read a question on this site: What are the questions philosophers usually ask? My question is: What are the questions we (non-academic people/people not trained in philosophy) should put to philosophers? Elaboration: Are there areas in philosophy from the exploring of which laypeople would benefit? If yes, any list of priorities? With a list of questions (from various philosophers), I'll start my next innings on this site. :) But, seriously, I would really like to know what questions philosophers would "advise" people to ask, and not necessarily the ones they'd love to answer.

What are some points to keep in mind when writing for a philosophy class? I just finished a course where every thing I wrote seemed to be wrong.

For giving the students a good picture of a branch of philosophy are classic authors' text, specially very hard ones, replaceable by secondary literature or not?

This question pertains to philosophical education or philosophical pedagogy: Even though I do not hold any degrees in philosophy (I hold undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science), I believe that philosophy should constitute one of the foundations of higher education. It is impossible, I believe, to be truly educated without a sound background in philosophy and logic. To this end, I have always believed that with the wonderful emergence of new technologies it should be incumbent upon every capable institution of higher learning to seek to disseminate such core foundations. This can be done, with remarkable ease these days, through distance learning. However, with the exception of a very small number of philosophy departments associated with certain universities, most departments of philosophy look upon distance learning, seemingly, with great loathing. Furthermore, the thought of actually establishing distance degree programs in philosophy (whether at the undergraduate or graduate...

Are there teaching techniques for 40-student classes in order to make them think philosophically?

I teach Philosophy of Law to Law students in Brazil, a discipline that lasts no longer than one semester and does not count on the students' previous affinity, and I am always wondering about the best way of investing the short time I have. I'm an enthusiast of the analytical tradition and its way of approaching the problems of the field. May you give me some advices or tips? For example: Which units are better: subjects, problems, schools, authors, theories? Which model is better: cases and problems, or authors and theories? What is more important: learning a little on many subjects (authors, theories etc.) or learning more on one or two subjects (authors, theories etc.)? Is the direct reading of the authors' texts indispensable or is it replaceable by good introductions and commentaries? Should I spend some time with the history of the discipline, or only with the present debates? I know I asked too many questions, I know a lot of the answers depends on my options and preferences, I know that almost...