I hope no one is offended by this question: if you like doing philosophy much in college but are not particularly good at it (in the sense that he/she only gets average grades at it) and if you aren't quite well off economically to be reading philosophy every day, would you say that philosophy is low at the priority list? On another note: do you really need college philosophy education to understand complex philosophical books?

I've seen some people romanticize about philosophy in melancholic terms, as if it's a "symptom" of the depressed and sensitive minds to do philosophy. Is this generally true? Does the intricacy of philosophy require to some level quiet reserve and conscientiousness rather than an outgoing personality?

What's the deal with "experimental philosophy"? Is it really the appropriate methodology for exploring folk concepts? Is it just a chapter of social psychology, revealing merely "mundane" details of how the mind works? What is its philosophical import?

I have a question on how to study philosophy; that is, should I start from the text or from the lectures? Is it better to listen to lectures and look at summaries/webpages before going on to the text, or to struggle with the text in the beginning and start from the concepts that arise from it? Thanks - from a Junior; student of philosophy

I have a very vague understanding of Goedel's famous Incompleteness theorem, but I know enough to know that I see it constantly interpreted in what seem like bizarre ways that I am sure anyone who really knew the relevant math or logic or philosophy would find ridiculous. The most common of these come from "new age" sources. My question is, for someone who knows something about the theorems, what is it about them that you think attracts these sorts of odd and (to say the least) highly suspect interpretations? I mean you don't see a lot of bizarre interpretations of most technical theories/proofs in math, logic, or philosophy.

Hi! I've read some philosophy stuff and I came to notice some kind of a "family resemblance" among some pairs of philosophical terms. You work with dichotomies such as type/token, concept/referents, set/members, whole/parts, object/appearances, property/instantiation, description/satisfaction... Well, you'll know many more of those than I do. My question is: do you have a general name for all those dichotomies? Thank you!

What does one must be in order to be called "a philosopher"? For example, Are those from psychoanalysis tradition - Zizek, for example, has been influenced by Jacques Lacan - are legitimately called "a philosopher"? If this is the case, what is a - or, is there a - boundary between those who ask "philosophical" questions and those who ask "phychoanalysis" questions?

Do you think that etiquette is a proper subject of philosophy? I wonder why the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has several articles on morality and law but none on etiquette.

Having grown tired of reading secondary material in my study of philosophy, I have decided to read primary texts in a chronological, rather than thematic, order. I have started with Plato and have read most of the works I can find online or at my library. Before I move on to Aristotle, I would like your advice. Do you think a chronological approach is a good idea for someone untrained in philosophy? Do you think I should read every work by a given philosopher, or are there 'key' works that serve as their primary contribution to the field? If the latter, are there any lists that you are aware of that state what those key works are?

I would like to know more about the (supposed) difference between dictionary and philosophical definitions. There is a free access introduction by Norman Swartz on the Internet. Swartz says that dictionary definitions are "reports of common usages". My problem is that dictionaries (try to) explain what words MEAN in common usages. Even if you accept that there is not more to meaning than usage itself, dictionaries seem to report THEIR UNDERSTANDING of usage, which is something quite different from usage. For instance, when dictionaries quote writers who used some word, they never give information on how READERS reacted to that usage. I think that they assume that those quotations somehow prove by themselves the accuracy of the proposed definitions. On the other side, I suppose that philosophers also rely on usage when they try to define the meaning of a term (if they are not stipulating it). Aren't philosophers reporting their (or arguing for a certain) understanding of a word usage?