As it happens, I recently had to update the reading list for the logic paper of the first-year of the Cambridge Philosophy Tripos . One of the topic-headings is "Necessity" (see foot of p. 8 to top of p.10). That's a modest introductory list, concentrating on the notions of logical necessity and analyticity. Unfortunately, however, this might not be a terribly helpful response, as access to most of the references given will involve you using a university library. Perhaps others will know of useful and reliable free online resources of an introductory kind (and I'd be glad to hear of them to add to the reading list too!).

I used to be very interested in the philosophy of mind. And the fascination was in trying to understand how our ordinary talk about the mind ("folk psychology" as we sometimes say) fits together with what explorations in neurobiology, cognitive science and artificial intelligence tell us. These days, I spend most of my time thinking about the philosophy of mathematics. And again the fascination is trying to see how technical work in various areas of logic (and set theory, category theory, etc.) interrelates and throws on questions about the nature of the world of mathematics and our knowledge of it. How does it all hang together? Some of us just like plugging away at pretty narrow areas of enquiry (doing specialist neurobiology, or the technical work in some area of set theory, say): others among us get gripped by the project of standing back a bit and trying to fit things from a number of narrow areas together into bigger pictures. The American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars said that the task...

It isn't right to say that Christianity, per se, advocates a god that values what you might call blind faith, i.e. faith which is not grounded in reasoned argument. Perhaps that's true of some sects, but certainly not all. Catholic tradition has it that the existence of God is rationally demonstrable (and that God wants us to use the reason that we have been endowed with). So those atheist critics who argue that the supposed arguments for God don't work -- whether purely a priori arguments or partially empirically based arguments -- aren't point-missing, but are directly engaging with a major strand of Christian thought which holds that there are rationally compelling arguments for his existence. But suppose you do posit some god that goes out of its way to hide itself and give no rational evidence for its existence (even though it wants us to be credulous and believe in it). Then to be sure, the empirical state of the world is the same whether or not such a being exist. By hypothesis, we have no...

If you want to try something rather more accessible than the heavy-duty books that Eric Silverman suggests, then try Richard Dawkins The God Delusion . Sure, it's shallow in places, and a bit crass in others, but it will certainly be an enjoyable read that gets you thinking hard.

Yes. When the occasion calls for it, not having a bad word for bad people is just moral cowardice. Which isn't to say that you should be quick to judge, ready to put the worst construal on things or to spread the word about someone's shortcomings, let alone happy to indulge in malicious gossip. But those are faults many of us are all too prone to! And what is praiseworthy is lacking those faults, a disposition of character we respectfully but exaggeratedly describe as "never [but we really mean, never inappropriately] having a bad word to say".

"I have been to my university's department, talked with philosophy grad students and felt that they do not care genuinely about philosophy really." Then your feeling is almost certainly wrong. The great majority of graduate students care passionately about philosophy. After all, they are usually particularly smart people who have chosen not to go on to law school or do MBA s or whatever (leading to some very lucrative career), but decided to try to stay on in academia, trying to work on some tough philosophical problems that have gripped them. Why else do that other than because they care about the subject?! What may be true is that the grad students you talked to don't seem to care much about what you think of as "philosophy". And there is indeed something of a disconnect between some of the connotations of "philosophy" in the everyday use of the word, and the academic discipline that most of those grad students are engaged in. (There are connections too, of course: the varied use of...

There are things that I want (badly) that I certainly don't need. I might very much desire to get an iPhone (say), but by no stretch of the imagination do I need one -- nothing is going to go wrong with me and my life if I don't get one. Equally, there can be things that I need (badly) that I don't want. Perhaps, for a start, because I just don't know about them. The child needs zinc in her diet to keep healthy. But she doesn't want zinc: she doesn't know anything about it, has no thoughts about zinc. Other things I might in fact know about, and know that I need, but still not want them. The anorexic might know that she needs a full balanced diet; but she doesn't want to eat. Needs are connected to what is required to flourish; wants can exceed needs, and can also come adrift from needs through ignorance and malfunction.

Anyone who has sat through a life time of philosophy department meetings as we muddle through making another hash of things will smile wryly at the idea that your average philosopher would be any good at running a cake shop let alone something important. Fortunately, in any sizeable group of philosophers, there's usually two or three people who happen to be politically and managerially ept. So most, though certainly not all, departments function reasonably successfully. But that's a happy accident. Perhaps it would be good if more political philosophers had more input to government -- but which political philosophers, since they can profoundly disagree? But you don't want philosophers actually running the show, as arts of government don't correlate at all with philosophical ability.

In my experience, philosophers -- I mean, at least, those earning a crust as professionals in universities -- are a pretty cheery bunch. And why not? We are actually being paid good money to have intellectual fun . We like talking and arguing. A lot. Preferably, in the excellent tradition of The Symposium , over a drink or three. (I've been at more than one philosophy conference where the beer has run out, unaccustomed as the bar staff were to academics with our level of boozy argumentative conviviality.) And indeed, what we are having fun doing is mostly not that worth taking too solemnly: nothing very serious in life hangs on getting the ontological status of numbers right, or deciding whether there is a mereological sum of any collection of objects, or wondering whether knowledge is special state of mind, or whatever your favourite current philosophical problem is. So, as they say, just enjoy!

If Tiger Woods gets a hole-in-one on a rather short hole, he's got lucky. But he is a great golfer. He hit the ball with immensely practiced skill: and it is because he hit it with that practiced skill that he got the ball onto the green and then it happened to go down the hole. Indeed he can, let's suppose, get the ball from the tee onto this green nineteen times out of twenty. That's not luck at all but the result of a finely honed talent. Now, let's suppose, Tiger Woods would always try to hit the green from the tee on this hole, and he is very good at doing that. But even for him, intending to get the ball as close as possible to the pin isn't enough. He is at the mercy of the caprices of the wind, the manufacturing flaws of the ball, etc. But just once in a while he may fluke it and sink the ball on the first stroke. It is, to be sure, a bit of luck when the attempt succeeds, rather than the ball landing fairly near the hole but needing a putt or two. If he tried even fifty times more...