I got into Philosophy a fair bit when I was younger, first major work I read was Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, which I still regard highly. I became progressively disillusioned with the ability of Philosophy in general to come up with something that had some relevance to the real world, with a few exceptions.

I find the work of Daniel Dennet, for example, very interesting and enlightening. I also like Peter Singer. Not quite a philosopher as such, but I have a LOT of respect for Richard Dawkins. I won't go thru them all here.

On Morality for example, I honestly can't see anything remotely interesting or relevant to the way I currently conduct my life in the whole moral realist/objectivist stuff, in fact of no more worth to me than the theist based ideas. Mostly it seems to amount to little more than wrapping some impressive sounding words around personal intuitions and hunches.

Science in its broadest sense seems to me way more useful in understanding the world than a whole college full of Philosophers (did someone mention Theologians? - LOL). One of the most fundamental general principles one is forced to acknowledge is that reality is 'not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose'. Simply sitting and arguing juggling ideas in your head may have its uses, but its not going to get you very far unless you also study and experiment on the real world. This was the mistake of most of the ancient Greeks, leading them to propose quite invalid ideas about the way objects moved, for example, when a few simple experiments would have quickly revealed that they were simply wrong. Like postulating that the heavenly bodies had to move in circular paths because a circle was the most 'perfect' figure. Some people still lean to this way of thinking - its certainly evident in many of the arguments that God must 'necessarily' exist, but its a mind-set not confined to fundies or even just the religiously inclined.

As an example, anyone speculating about the origin of the universe and ideas like 'something cannot come out of nothing', and 'nothing is truly random', and so on needs to have some working familiarity with quantum theory or they are not to be taken seriously. That's not easy, but quantum theory works, (consider pretty much all modern electronics), and simply cannot be ignored.

As scientists get better techniques for probing the brain, both technical (scanners) and psychological, they are encroaching on areas of thought and consciousness that have traditionally been considered way beyond the purview of scientific investigation. They are really only limited by the experimenters ingenuity in coming up with subtly designed tests.

And I contend that if an area of 'knowledge' just doesn't lend itself to scientific investigation, or at least some form of systematic evaluation designed to minimize the influence of personal beliefs in what is the 'Truth', then we simply cannot say we 'know' anything about the area with any significant degree of confidence - we are just speculating, pulling ideas out of our head, There is simply no justification for enshrining such ideas as 'known truths'.

One of the most consistent personal developments I have experienced thru life is a steady erosion of automatic respect for people in positions of authority, whether as bosses, technical experts, religious or 'spiritual' leaders, gurus, whatever, as I've watched them all do or say the silliest things. At first I would think, ok, they presumably are in that position because they are cleverer or have more knowledge than I have, so I must be misunderstanding something. But so often as things proceeded, outcomes were closer to what I had expected or feared, so I learnt to trust my own judgement more. Not absolutely of course, but it became clear that most of this voices of 'authority' had no better and frequently worse grasp of reality than I did, simply based on comparing their claims about the real world with what I understood and then subsequently observed. As I get to observe, listen and/or talk to people I decide how much they do know about the relevant subjects and accord them appropriate respect, or in other cases try to ignore them as politely as possible, based on their 'track record'.