Professor of Philosophy Alexander George recently launched Askphilosophers.org, a Web site where people can ask philosophical questions to academic philosophers. George created the site to address what he thinks is a philosophical need: Although people confront philosophical questions every day, very few have the opportunity or the means of learning how to deal with their questions.

George explained that the basis for creating the Web site was the universal nature of philosophical questions. "The initial thought was that philosophical questions are pretty universal. But access to a philosophy class is not. Most classes are taught only at the upper collegiate level," he said. "The Web site, therefore, would help to bridge the gap by allowing [the public] access to philosophers to help guide the general public in their search for answers."

Teaming up with Paul Chapin, a curricular specialist for humanities at the College, George started working on the project last year. "I worked in identifying the software [along with Rob Ansaldo in the system group] that we would modify for our needs and did a first pass of the modifications," said George.

Two of Curricular Computing's summer interns, Nick Doty '06 and Qingsi Zhu '08, did further work for the Web site this summer. Doty and Zhu restructured and rewrote large parts of the site's code to meet George's needs. After the summer intern program ended, Zhu continued to work on the code for George.

The Web site was officially released to the public on Oct. 1. "The site had been up and running all along while it was being remodeled, so there wasn't really a ribbon-cutting moment when we hit a magical button and set the site off into cyberspace," said Zhu. "We just decided that it was ready to be publicized."

The immediate response to the Web site exceeded everyone's expectations. "The initial response has definitely been stronger than I expected," said Chapin. "I'm pleasantly surprised at the amount of traffic it's getting in this short period of time."

Zhu was also pleased when people began accessing the Web site. "It was so exciting to see real questions and responses, as opposed to meaningless paragraphs which we used for testing, start to appear on the site. [That's how] you know people are actually using what you have helped build, and that feels good," he said.

According to the Web site's statistics, 252 questions had been asked with 292 responses as of Oct. 16. "We've had over 19,000 hits visitors, 111,000 hits to the site, and we've supposedly been utilized in over 78 countries," said George.

AskPhilosophers.org has 33 respected academic philosophers who constantly scan questions on topics ranging from logic and mathematics to freedom and ethics, from politics to religion to science, all of which are posted on the site. The Web site offers the chance to ask questions and browse through queries that have already been asked and answered.

A number of Amherst graduates and professors are among the contributing philosophers, including: Andy Carpenter '88, Professor of Philosophy Jyl Gentzler, Steven Gerrard '78, Sean Greenberg '94, Amy Kind '90, Associate Professor of Philosophy Joseph Moore, Sharon Street '95, and Professor of Mathematics Daniel Velleman.

A faculty member at the College since 1988, George received a B.A. from Columbia University and an M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University.