In this interview, Mike Huemer, Professor of Philosophy at University of Colorado Boulder, discusses being a little kid thinking about where God came from and the nature of consciousness, Ender’s Game, his mother’s reaction to his decision to major in philosophy, taking classes with Searle and Feyerabend at UC Berkley, social justice warriors, Ayn Rand, the problem of induction, moral intuitionism, anarchism, the collapse of communism, the fledgling internet, dualism, which views in ethics are complete non-sense, submitting a stylistically Wittgensteinian writing sample, grad school at Rutgers, Colin McGinn, Vann McGee’s logic class, Civilization (by Sid Meier), refuting skepticism, two common grad student problems, evolving as a teacher, the job market, landing a job at UC Boulder, woke ideology, the great questions of philosophy, his book, Approaching Infinity, reincarnation, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, his blog Fake Nous, and his last meal…
[10/14/2021]
So, where did you grow up?
I came from the Los Angeles suburbs.
Religious family?
We were non-religious, though most of our neighbors were religious. I recall the following anecdote only because my mother repeated it many times, apparently because she found it so hilarious.
I was maybe 5-10 years old. I was sitting in the waiting room of my father's office (he was a nutritionist), reading a book of Bible stories that I found on the table. A patient came in, saw me reading the Bible stories, and thought how nice that was. Then I came up to her and said, "This is stupid. I ask people where God came from, and they say, 'He created himself.' That's stupid. I don't believe in God." Then I sat back down and continued reading.
What I said was true, by the way--one of the neighborhood kids had told me that God created the world, I asked her where God came from, and she said he created himself.
How were you similar to, and different from, the rest of your friends and family?
I was much, much quieter than other people. I didn't like talking, and didn't really like interacting with people very much in general. I said as little as possible, and when I spoke, people apparently could barely hear me. I couldn't understand why other kids were constantly screaming, and I wished they would shut up. In first grade, when the teacher took attendance, other kids would see I was there and would answer for me.
I was also much smarter than almost anyone else, including the adults. I knew this, and I knew it was weird.
As a kid what were you interested in?
You're not going to believe this, but what I remember being interested in was philosophy. I didn't know that it was called "philosophy" until I got to college. But, e.g., I thought about the existence of God. I wondered about why there was consciousness, and why I was finding myself in specifically this body, in this place. I wondered if identical twins shared some of the same experiences because they had such similar brains (maybe their brains were so similar that each twin's mind could sometimes connect to the other brain). After I learned that plants were alive, I told people to stop tearing off flowers, leaves, etc., because "How would you like it if the Jolly Green Giant came along and ripped off one of your arms?"
Interested in anything else?
In the first day of one history class in elementary school, I thought that I liked history, but I later learned that I'd been tricked. The teacher (Mrs. Denison) had started a discussion of the question, "Who discovered America?" It was traditionally said that Columbus discovered it. But wait, there were already Indians (that's what people called the Native Americans then!) living in America when Columbus arrived. Also, there was evidence that Leif Erikson had traveled to America hundreds of years before Columbus. Etc. I thought this was a great discussion. But as I was later to learn, that wasn't typical of history classes, that was really more like a philosophy discussion, and I actually hated what history classes were normally like.
In another elementary school class, the teacher read a story in which a king had promised some big prize to any hero who could save his daughter from, well, something bad that had taken her captive. I don't remember the details, except that basically three people wound up all contributing to saving the princess. Each one (as I would now describe it) provided a causally necessary but insufficient condition on the rescue. We then had a discussion of the question: Who gets the prize? Again, I thought that was a great discussion. As I much later recognized, that was also a philosophical discussion.
And it continued like that throughout all my years of schooling. All the really good classes that I ever had were discussions about questions that I would later recognize as philosophical questions, or at least philosophy-adjacent. But there was never enough of it. Not until college, when I could have whole classes on philosophy.
Entirely philosophical interests then?
I was interested in science fiction and fantasy. And to some extent computers, which were first becoming available to ordinary consumers when I was in middle school. I played some of the first computer games that existed. I also learned a little about programming in middle school and college. My grandmother later told me that she thought I was going to become a scientist, because I was always so curious. At one time during early childhood, I thought I'd like to be a pilot, because I liked airplanes. At other times, I thought I would be a writer. Like a novelist, not a boring academic writer (I don't think I even knew about the latter possibility).
Did world events have an impact on your life in a significant way?
No, world events didn't really affect me. The outside world as a whole didn't have that much effect on me. Except that of course I learned from reading books.
Favorite books before college?
When I was a child, I think my favorite book was A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin. It's a fantasy novel for children, I guess, but with a profound sort of Jungian theme (though LeGuin says she did not know about Jung at the time). My other favorite books were Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, and Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov, which I think I might have read in high school or thereabouts.
Best thing that happened to you in high school?
I graduated. Does that count? Because that was by far the best part. Also, I learned some stuff that I'm glad to know. Especially in the science and math classes. Especially chemistry -- I learned lots of stuff about how the world works from that. Oh, but the one most valuable class I ever had, by a wide margin, was a high school class in typing. I use that skill every day. That's a lot more than I can say about any other class.
College plans?
I don't remember where I applied, except that I know it included Stanford and Berkeley. Stanford rejected me (jerks!), but Berkeley took me, and it was supposed to be one of the 5 best schools in the country, so I went there. I didn't know what I was going to major in or what I was going to do after college. There were a lot of possibilities, because I did well in just about everything (except history). By the time I was about ready for college, I thought about being a lawyer, mostly because other people told me that I could do that and it would be good. I also thought about being an engineer, because I excelled in science and math classes, and it seemed like people who excelled in those classes were becoming engineers.
If the person you were in high school saw you today, what would he think?
I think the high school me would be very unsurprised by the current me. I didn't expect to change much, and I haven't. He might be surprised that I'm a philosopher, since he didn't know that there was such an occupation. He'd certainly be surprised that I'm now an anarchist. And I think he'd be slightly disappointed that I've only written 8 books. Another thing that the 18-year-old me would be surprised by is that I've given a lot of public talks, successfully. Public speaking was my least favorite thing in the universe. He wouldn't believe that I have a job doing that all the time.
So, how did you get into philosophy?
I got into philosophy through a class on "the Nature of Mind", taught by Richard Wollheim. It was Philosophy 3, so presumably intended for beginners. I wanted to find out why consciousness exists, and this class sounded like it was the most likely to answer that. It didn't really. To this day, I've never gotten the answer to that question.
Wollheim stood at the front of the class lecturing for the whole time, and I'm pretty sure none of the students had the faintest idea what he was talking about. In the course readings he included what I now recognize as classic articles in philosophy of mind, like "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?". Great papers, but far over the heads of freshmen taking their first ever philosophy class. He was pretty out of touch.
However, there was also a discussion section that went along with the class (like most classes at Berkeley). And the TA (Karen Pilkington) would just have us discuss fascinating philosophical questions every week. In one class, she pretended to be one of the first generation of robotic TA's. She invited us to determine whether she was conscious or not. Of course we could not tell.
It was clear then that this Philosophy stuff was the most interesting subject they had at Berkeley.
Still feel smart when you got to Berkely?
Yes. People had told me that when I got to Berkeley, things would be very different from high school, because suddenly, everyone around me would be smart. Then school would be hard, and I'd have to finally work hard. Nope, false. It was still easy. I was still at about the top of every class. I could still get A's without doing most of the readings.
How did your parents react to your decision to major in philosophy?
My mother thought philosophy was a waste of time. She thought I should major in math, because I was good at it and, apparently, I had an uncle who had majored in math and then became a rich banker. I completely ignored that.
Favorite authors in college?
Ayn Rand, Hermann Hesse, Richard Bach, John Searle, Arthur Schopenhauer. I usually didn't do the assigned readings for my courses, but I went around the library and found other things to read instead, like the above authors.
That might seem like a weird list of authors, because I'm pretty sure that if they were all in a room together, a brawl would break out. Rand and Schopenhauer would be punching each other in the face. But I liked authors who were clear, and sincere, and passionate about what they were writing.
Why do you think Rand is not taken seriously by most academic philosophers? Style? Substance?
Two reasons: One, her writing is heavy handed and sprinkled with colorful insults toward almost everyone. Two, she didn’t read much of the existing literature in philosophy, which means that she didn’t recognize things like which premises needed extended support, what objections a smart interlocutor would raise, etc. If she had engaged with other philosophers, she could have developed a more sophisticated intellectual system, but she just assumed that she didn’t need to do that.
Favorite professors in college?
I had two favorite professors: John Searle, and Vincent Sarich.
Searle was very clear, sensible, and witty. He also covered a ton of material. To this day, I think most of my knowledge of philosophy of language and philosophy of mind comes from Searle's classes in those subjects. He supervised my honors thesis on the mind/body problem. He never had more than a couple of minutes at a time to talk to me, though. People referred to his Philosophy of Mind class as "Philosophy of Searle", since he assigned all his own books and was very forthright about his philosophical views. I thought it was just great.
He also let me in his graduate seminar in philosophy of mind, where we discussed the Kripkenstein problem (from Kripke's book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language). I couldn't for the life of me figure out how Searle thought there was any non-trivial problem there. (I later figured out that it was because he and Kripke and Wittgenstein were all assuming nominalism. They didn't actually say it; they were just presupposing it all the time. It didn't occur to me that they would be assuming such a ridiculous thing.)
Tell me a bit about Sarich.
Vincent Sarich was an anthropologist who had done work showing that humans and chimpanzees' common ancestor was a lot more recent than people previously thought, based on some kind of genetic molecular clock or something. Anyway, he got in trouble for talking in class about the brain size differences between different groups. The SJW's of the day went ballistic and tried to get him fired. They failed since he had tenure, but they gave him a lot of publicity, which is how I learned of him. I decided to see for myself what this guy was up to. He turned out to be a lot nicer than people were saying. He would walk back to the anthropology building after class with a few students in tow and sit on the lawn talking with the students for hours, about whatever we wanted, for as long as we wanted. He said his job was to make us think.
Are any controversial, or half-baked, ideas off the academic table, in your estimation? Where’s the line?
It depends on what you mean by “off the table”. Obviously, some ideas are not worth spending time on. If someone proposes that human beings are actually robots built by cats to take care of them, I don’t think academic anthropologists should spend any time investigating that. On the other hand, I wouldn’t fire someone for holding such a view. I can’t think of a view that I would fire someone for holding. I can think of some information that should be censored, but not for being controversial or half-baked. E.g., I think you should not be allowed to publish plans for an atomic bomb, or a stolen celebrity sex video, or libels against specific individuals.
You took a class with Feyerabend. What was he like?
Feyerabend was not one of my favorite professors, but he was a very distinctive professor. He was teaching Ancient Philosophy. He would just sit on the stage at the front of the lecture hall, rambling for the whole period about relativism and the presocratics. It wasn't so bad, but I don't think we learned much from him. We never did manage to get to Aristotle in that class. The TA's had to assign the grades because, I was told, Feyerabend was not allowed to assign grades anymore, since he would just write "A" on the top of the grade sheet and an arrow all the way down. One time, a student had died during the semester but still got an A from Feyerabend. Feyerabend reportedly said, "Well, he would have gotten an A."
Consider majoring in anything other than philosophy?
I considered multiple other majors, including physics, psychology, sociology, political science, and maybe some others. I was good at almost everything, so I thought that I should do the thing that was most important to have done well; I wanted to make the best use of my abilities and not waste them, you see. I loved philosophy, but I wasn’t sure it was useful enough.
What convinced me that it would be okay to major in philosophy was Ayn Rand. From my last year of high school to my first year of college, three unconnected people suggested I should read Ayn Rand. When the third person said it, I finally got a copy of The Fountainhead and read it. I thought it was just great. Then I read several of her other books. I showed up to philosophy class one time with a copy of Philosophy: Who Needs It. One of the other kids looked at the cover and said, "Well, if that's how you feel about it, then why are you in this class?" Another student helpfully explained, "No, that's not what she means. She means everyone needs it. That is, everyone needs her philosophy."
Rand basically portrayed philosophy as the key driver of human history, and doing philosophy as the single most important job that any human being can do. That's what convinced me that it would be a suitable major for me.
How did your philosophical views evolve in college?
I started out with few philosophical views, and I started to develop more in college. I started trying to answer Cartesian skepticism (which would ultimately become my dissertation project in grad school).
I started trying to figure out the problem of induction. It would take about a decade, starting with an undergrad course in which I was introduced to the problem, for me to develop the view finally set out in my paper "Explanationist Aid for the Theory of Inductive Logic".
When I first heard about ethical intuitionism, I thought it was lame and rested on "arbitrary" assumptions. But when I thought about it more, I came to realize that it was just true. I can't really even explain why I didn't like it at first. I was just confused.
The most important way that I grew intellectually was just learning to think clearly, instead of being stuck in the fog of utter, ridiculous confusion that all undergraduates start in (and most people remain in for their entire lives). I attribute my ability to get my thoughts clear and organized to the study of analytic philosophy.
Did your political views change?
I started college as some sort of socialist, partly as a result of doing speech & debate in high school, where people are constantly proclaiming the virtues of socialism for solving every human problem. In college, though, I came to realize my true identity as a radical libertarian. That was partly through the influence of Ayn Rand. There was a long excerpt in For the New Intellectual that I found particularly trenchant, portraying the practical consequences of adopting the principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
Then I met Bryan Caplan, who was an economics student at Berkeley with a minor in philosophy. (Caplan is today a famous libertarian economist at George Mason University.) Caplan introduced me to some work by Rothbard and David Friedman, and then discussed it with me. This pushed me the rest of the way, from libertarianism to anarchism, where I remain today.
Empirically, seems like stateless people almost always create states. Why do we keep making this, what I imagine you would describe as, mistake?
Well, the people who create states do it because they want to be the ones in power. It’s not a mistake for them – they get what they want, which is to dominate others. I should say it’s not a prudential mistake; it’s only a moral mistake.
Today, most people accept government because they don’t know how a stateless society would work. Most people have never read any anarchist literature and have no idea that there are developed theories about such things (see The Problem of Political Authority).
What world events, if any, had an effect on you in college?
I’d like to say that the collapse of communism, which happened while I was in college, had some effect on me, since it was and still is the most important historical event of my lifetime. But it didn’t. I was pretty much ignoring current events.
Of course, my life was changed forever by the advancing computer technology. I participated in the precursors to the internet, which were computer bulletin board services. Basically, someone with a powerful computer and multiple phone lines would host discussion boards. Other people with computers would call in, connect to his computer, and leave messages. So I did a lot of that. Later, when the internet was available, I seamlessly transitioned to posting on the internet. Which is still a big part of my day.
Did any of your pre-college views survive college?
I was an intuitive mind/body dualist, from a very young age. That has never changed. I was also an intuitive moral realist from an early age, probably about the age of five. It seemed to me that I could just see that you should not do to others what you didn't want done to yourself. I thought that was the core moral insight. When I first encountered moral relativism, subjectivism, error theory, and such, I instantly viewed them all as complete nonsense. I never felt that any of the arguments for any of those views had any force at all against the core moral insight. That has never really changed either.
Complete nonsense seems a bit strong! What’s the core moral insight?
One should not treat others in ways that one would not want to be treated. On this, I would recommend Thomas Nagel’s The Possibility of Altruism.
If you see this intuitively, then you see that relativism, subjectivism, and error theory are wrong. If you don’t see it intuitively, then there probably isn’t that much that can be said.
How did you grow, personally?
Other than intellectually, I don't think I changed significantly during college. Over the succeeding few decades, though, I've gradually grown less neurotic, more emotionally stable, and more cynical, yet less bothered by the cynical truths of the world. As, I guess, happens to most people.
So what was the plan?
I thought, “I have intellectual ability; I better use it to do something good and meaningful.” After I decided that philosophy was not only fascinating but super-important, I decided to try becoming a philosopher. I knew nothing about the job market, but as long as there were some jobs in that field, that was good enough for me.
Where did you apply to grad school?
I applied to five schools: Stanford, Cornell, Rutgers, Syracuse (because Peter van Inwagen was there), and Michigan. If I didn’t get in to any of those, I was going to reconsider my career plan. I don’t know what I would have done. Maybe go program computers or something.
I was actually hoping to go to Stanford, but they rejected me again (jerks!). I was under the false impression that Rutgers was the least good of the five schools I applied to (I’d looked at some lame ranking that wasn’t specific to philosophy). In fact, it was the best. Fortunately, it was also the only one that accepted me. Barry Loewer called me on the phone to recruit me, which was very nice. He had an easy time of it, since all the other schools rejected me.
When we later met in person, Barry told me that he considered my statement of purpose “pretty far out.” I had promised to solve the mind-body problem, the problem of induction, and the problem of external-world skepticism. I’d also sent a very idiosyncratic “paper” as a writing sample, which perhaps only Barry Loewer appreciated. It was sort of in a Wittgensteinian style, with short, numbered sections making a series of loosely connected points having to do with the notion of logical form and other stuff. I sent different papers to different schools, though, with the idea that whichever of my papers was best, it would go somewhere.
Was grad school what you expected?
I'm not sure; I didn't have many expectations. I guess it was pretty much what I expected. On the whole, grad school was much better than college, as you could get a lot more attention from the professors and have much better discussions, both in class and after class. Everyone was smart and interested in philosophy.
Did you still feel smart?
Yep.
Surprises?
One episode that was surprising: Colin McGinn openly insulted me in class when I challenged his view on free will (which was a mysterian compatibilism). I said it seemed like his argument for compatibilism was that he wanted to accept free will, but he also wanted to accept determinism, so he had to be a compatibilist. He said, "That's the stupidest thing I've heard you say. And that's saying something." I found that pretty surprising. I didn't think that professors would behave that way.
Nobody else that I met was like that. Everyone else was professional and willing to engage with arguments.
What were your fellow grad students like?
Probably pretty much like the philosophers that you know! Only smarter than the average philosopher, since they were all at a top-3 program. Also, people were very interested in whatever philosophical topic came up (we hadn't yet become hyper-specialized like mature professors).
Whom did you hang out with and what did you do to unwind?
Susan Schneider. She was there at the time; she's now a prominent philosopher of mind at Florida Atlantic U. We worked in coffee shops and stuff. I also hung out with Elizabeth Vlahos, who was an undergrad; she later went to NYU, but I don't know what happened after that. (If anyone knows, let me know!)
I continued to spend time with the computer. Both playing games and posting on the fledgling internet. I started my first web site when I was at Rutgers.
Favorite computer games in grad school?
Civilization (by Sid Meier) was among the best games ever conceived by the mind of man. Also, Wizardry 7. I had a really hard time finishing Wiz 7. And you didn't ask this, but while a professor, I have played other great games such as Fallout (1 & 2) and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (1 & 2). Those are probably the computer games that the angels play in heaven.
Low points?
I was pretty shocked when one of my fellow students committed suicide. We weren't close, and I don't know any more about the case, but it was still shocking to hear. Also, one of the professors (Robert Weingard) died of a heart attack. I didn't know him, but I knew who he was, and it was kind of shocking to suddenly hear one day, without warning, that he was dead.
Terrible. So, philosophically, what was trending, and in general?
Philosophy of mind. That's what people were doing at Rutgers. I thought I would do it too, at first. I still wanted to know why consciousness exists! But I drifted away from it; I didn't feel as if people there would help me figure that out. Apart from McGinn, I think everyone was a physicalist, which I just didn't think was a promising starting point. There was a lot of cognitive-science-related work, but that wasn't really what I wanted to do. So I decided to focus more on one of the other problems that I wanted to solve, the problem of skepticism.
What was the dissertation on?
Skepticism and perception. I was also thinking of doing ethical intuitionism. But I noticed that a lot of the problems for intuitionism (inability to independently "check" on intuitions, lack of evidence of reliability, 'arbitrariness') were really general skeptical problems, just applied to ethics. So I thought I should first refute skepticism in epistemology; then I could go on to ethics.
Who was your dissertation advisor?
Peter Klein. He was developing his infinitist view at the time, and we had great discussions. He loved arguments, and I loved arguments, so it worked out.
He would later say (to another philosopher, over dinner) that I didn't learn anything from him. This was literally false, of course, but I think what he meant was that I didn't get any of my philosophical views from him. We continue to disagree about a lot of stuff. But it's cool, because he just likes to argue and explore the territory.
Was grad school in general, or writing the dissertation, challenging?
Not really. The most difficult part was probably Vann McGee's logic class. Undergraduate logic was super-easy, so I was surprised to learn that logic could be difficult. He had some challenging problems for us.
Writing a dissertation was easy, because I like writing, I very much knew what I wanted to say, and it was a big enough idea to easily fill a dissertation.
Did you refute skepticism? If so, are you sure?
Yep, pretty sure I did. 🙂
You still think that epistemology/ethics analogy holds? I mean, are moral claims true just like scientific claims are true? Important differences there or no?
Yep. Ethics is a different subject matter from each of the empirical sciences, but it doesn't have a different kind of truth. As far as I know, there's only one kind of truth. (If a sentence says that P, then it is true iff P -- that kind of truth.)
Advice for graduate students?
Philosophy, and academia more generally, is probably a much harder place to make a career than you think (unless you've already been in the academy for a while). It is way harder to get a good job, way harder to get published, and way harder to get anyone to pay any attention to you than you probably think. You probably also think you're much better and more important than you are. Sooner or later, you're going to realize all of those things.See my advice on my web site: “Should I Go to Graduate School in Philosophy?” and "Publishing in Philosophy."
Grad school high points?
Getting my first two academic papers published!
Were you encouraged to publish?
I don't recall being especially encouraged to publish. However, Howard McGary did help me get my first real publication, "Rawls' Problem of Stability" (1996). He helped me get the paper into shape suitable for submission.
In grad school, how did you change, philosophically?
There are two opposite problems that grad students have when it comes to writing philosophy. The first problem is not reading enough and not taking account of other people's ideas. The second problem is reading too much and not having enough of your own ideas. People have one or the other problem. I had the first. In graduate school, I significantly reduced that problem. I learned to spend more time learning and reflecting on what others have come up with.
Did you get a chance to teach in grad school? What was your first time in the classroom like?
Crappy. My first time teaching was as a grad student instructor at Rutgers. The students were way, way less intelligent, knowledgeable, and engaged than I expected. I'm pretty sure they had no idea what I was talking about most of the time. I had become like Professor Wollheim from Berkeley! I realized this after I gave my first exam. The test was graded such that you got 0 points for an incorrect answer, 2 points for failing to answer a question, and 4 points for a correct answer. This was to discourage guessing and to recognize that (as I learned from Socrates) it is better to know that you do not know, than to think you know when you don't. As a result of this grading scheme, you would have gotten 50% on the test if you just put your name on top and handed it in blank. The average grade on that test was 54. Percent. For the next several years, I had to work at progressively making my tests easier. By now, I've gotten up to around 80% averages.
What was the market like when you finished?
Tough. But probably not as bad as today. I applied to about 20 jobs, which was all the ones that sounded alright to me and that I qualified for. I was graduating from a top-3 department, with two serious journal publications (which was two more than most people had), so I thought I was pretty well positioned. I got 4 interviews at the APA. That's what people did -- everyone went to the APA meeting in December, where hiring departments did interviews in their hotel rooms. So I was interviewed by UC Davis, the University of Utah, the College of William and Mary, and the University of Colorado. The interviewing was all cool with me, because I like talking about philosophy, especially about my ideas, and that's what the interviews were about.
Tell me a bit about the UC Boulder interview.
There was some grey-haired man who kept grilling me about direct realism; I assumed he didn't like what I had to say about it. It turned out that that was Michael Tooley, and he loved me. I got a call-back from UC Boulder, offering to fly me out for an on-campus interview. None of the other schools pursued me further. Tooley picked me up from the airport. During the long ride from Denver to Boulder, I mentioned that I'd had 3 other interviews, but none of the others had called me back. He said, "Well, they must not have read your writing sample." I felt pretty good about that.
Ultimate goal at the time?
To be a philosopher! Especially a famous one, spreading the truth far and wide. I wanted to get to the most prestigious department I could, so as to be more influential.
You've been at UC-Boulder for more than 20 years. Lots of people jump around. Why did you stick around?
Well, it's super-hard to move once you've gotten tenure; there are very few senior-level openings. I didn't realize that when I started in the academy. (Important thing for new academics to know!) Also, after my political views became well known, I think it would be extra-hard for me to move anywhere. Also, Denver is a really good city to live in.
Which of your views, in your experience, do fellow philosophers find most objectionable?
It’s got to be the whole right-wing libertarianism thing. You mean within libertarianism? Within the category of libertarianism, it would have to be my ideas about gun rights, or about taxation.
How has the department changed? How have the students changed? How has philosophy changed?
I would say that in the last few years, all three of those things have become more ideological, oriented toward a specific, "woke" ideology, and less oriented toward the great questions that drew me to philosophy 30 years ago. That's part of why I doubt that I could get hired by any academic department today.
What are the great questions?
You know, do we have free will? Is there a God? Did the universe have a beginning? What things are good, bad, right and wrong? How do we know about the external world?
Proudest academic accomplishments?
Well, the theory developed in Approaching Infinity is my favorite theory that I've come up with, and it might be the most intellectually impressive thing I've done, though it's almost impossible to get anyone to pay any attention to it. In previous discussion of infinity, the major debate was over whether it is possible to have an “actual infinity”, or whether only “potential infinities” are possible. I defend an alternative view, which holds that infinite cardinal numbers and extensive magnitudes are possible, but an infinite natural, intensive magnitude is impossible. I show how this view helps to solve 17 paradoxes of the infinite.
Also, my proof of reincarnation is cool. Here is the very short version: I assume that time is infinite in both the past and future directions. If time is infinite, and if a person could live only once in all of time, then the probability that you would be alive now would be zero. This is basically because you would have had infinite opportunities to live before now, which would have prevented you from being here now. But you are here now. So it must be that persons can live more than once. Indeed, they live infinitely many times. That is my favorite argument that I've ever thought of.
Personal highlights?
Marrying Iskra Fileva. I'm pretty proud of that one.
Low points?
All the previous time before I met Iskra.
Regrets?
Not meeting Iskra sooner. Other than that, I've done most things pretty well.
How’d y’all meet?
She was a post-doc at UN-Reno at the time. One of my fans, David Kaspar, invited me to give a talk there. Afterwards, David invited Iskra to join us for dinner. Iskra said she would love to come, but she had a lot of grading to do. I said, “I heard, ‘I would love to come.’” So she came.
Do you talk philosophy? What’s your deepest philosophical disagreement?
We don’t really argue about philosophy. We mostly share insights about how misguided other philosophers and philosophical positions are.
Word association game, tell me the first word that comes to mind!
Can I use more than one word?
Sure. Let’s start! Clinton.
Fake.
Bush.
The torture-meister.
Obama.
The extra-judicial execution meister.
Trump.
Scammy McScamface.
Biden.
Uncle Alzheimer.
Brutal man! Do you think social media has improved philosophy? Has social media hurt philosophy?
It has both helped and hurt. Not sure where the balance lies. The good part: it gives us a new medium in which people make their points more succinctly, it reaches more people, and there is a lot more interaction. The bad part: Humans doing their typical social animal bullshit -- bullying each other, socially pressuring each other, using language to signal tribal affiliation instead of to describe reality.
You mentioned earlier that one of your goals starting out was to reach as many people as possible. Does your blog, FakeNous.net, do that, you think? What is the mission?
I think it's easier to reach an audience with a blog than with academic papers. I named it "Fake Nous" partly because the phrase "fake news" was popular at the time, and partly to suggest that my blog is different from both the journal Noûs and the blog Daily Nous. My mission in the blog is also my main mission as a professor: to promote rational thinking. Also to express whatever thoughts I had recently that I found interesting.
What's your take on the other blogs out there?
I don't really follow other blogs; no time for that. I am sure there are a lot of good ones. For my taste, Daily Nous and Leiter Reports are too much about academic gossip and not enough about philosophical ideas.
What's your writing routine like, nowadays?
No routine, because I have too much other miscellaneous stupid junk to take care of. When I periodically get caught up on the miscellaneous crap, then I spend a day in front of the computer in my home office. I have everything very comfortable and quiet there.
Any interesting projects on the horizon?
I have two debate volumes forthcoming in the Routledge series “Little Debates About Big Questions” – one on authority and another on skepticism. After that, I’m going to write an epistemology textbook. And then maybe do a 2nd edition of my general philosophy textbook.
Best philosopher or philosophers you disagree with most?
Aristotle is an obvious choice -- both because he's one of the greatest thinkers ever, and because he's almost completely wrong. Similarly for Kant. Very smart, very original, very totally wrong.
Best living philosopher or philosophers you disagree with most?
Well, the criterion of “bestness” is in tension with the criterion of “most disagreement with me”. I guess the person who best satisfies both criteria might be Peter Unger. He’s very smart and thought-provoking, while being full of super-crazy views, such as the view that no one knows anything, that nothing is true, that he himself does not exist, etc.
You seem fairly self-confident. Any nagging doubts, philosophically?
No. I'm sure some of the stuff I've written is false (since that has been true of every other philosopher ever). But this doesn't really nag at me. I have trouble relating to people who have constant intellectual self-doubt, and I don't know what to tell them, since I don't even know what they're experiencing.
How do you see the future of philosophy?
It's going to survive the current political/ideological takeover and return to doing what it has done for the preceding 2000 years -- contemplating the great questions about the nature of reality and our place in it.
Earlier, you mentioned Rand’s thesis that philosophy is a driver of human history. Isn’t this because answers to questions about the nature of reality are often political, or, have political implications?
Sure. But note that Rand might have been wrong about that. She didn’t really marshal evidence for it, and the 20-year-old me didn’t think to demand it.
What I mean about the political/ideological takeover is the practice of using political positions to drive our philosophy (or drive out the rest of philosophy), rather than the other way around. Also, the concrete political questions themselves are often treated in a simplistic and dogmatic way.
What are you reading nowadays?
Right now, I'm in the middle of Andy Weir's science fiction novel, Project Hail Mary on audio. He's also the author of The Martian, which was made into a movie that you might have heard of. Andy Weir's novels are great for illustrating principles of physics and other sciences.
Love The Martian. Book and movie! What are you watching?
Random, entertaining videos on YouTube, such as those on the "Daily Dose of Internet" channel.
Smashed the subscribe button. Last meal?
Uh oh, I’m not up for execution, am I? If I am, get me something vegan and gluten-free. I know a really good carrot-ginger soup recipe, and some nice quinoa-vegetable bowls…
You can ask an omniscient being a question and get an honest answer, what's the question?
What are the best things for me to know that I don't already know, that you can tell me in a reasonable time and expect me to understand them? But since that question isn't very interesting to you (without the answer), here are two more specific questions I'd hope the omniscient being would answer: Why is there consciousness? And why was the universe in the state that it was in at the time of the Big Bang? Those things are both very mysterious and bizarre.
Good questions, Mike! Thanks for your time.
[interviewer: Cliff Sosis]