In this interview, Scott Soames talks about growing up in Seattle, working for the family business, going to Stanford, Kierkegaard, taking a class with Davidson, teaching in Hong Kong, Janis Joplin, protesting Vietnam, applying for conscientious objector status and being sent to prison, working with Suppes and going to grad school at MIT, chilling with Judith Jarvis Thomson and Sylvian Bromberger, Chomsky, linguistics, landing a job at Yale, tensions within the department, trying to finish his dissertation while teaching, becoming friends with, and having a falling out with, Ruth Barcan Marcus, kids and philosophy, Lion King and Kripke, Reagan, Iran, inflation, philosophers and politics, moving to Princeton, the role of work in his life, David Lewis, Trump, philosophy of law, his new book The World Philosophy Made: From Plato to The Digital Age, Buddy Guy, C&C Music Factory, Muddy Waters, his last meal, and the liar paradox…
[12/5/2019]
What was your early childhood like?
I was born at Fort Hood, Texas, where my father was about to be discharged after WWII. A couple of months later we moved to Seattle, where my father and mother had met shortly before Pearl Harbor. I grew up in Seattle. Until age 6 we lived near the northern city limits, in Ballard, where my brother, who is 3 and 1/2 years younger than I am, was born. We then moved beyond the city limits to a small ranch house on a dirt road with acres of woods in front and behind. Those were great years. I spent most of my time when not in school playing every kind of sport I could — football, basketball, baseball, swimming, bowling, golf, etc. I played wherever and whenever I could, including school teams, boys club teams, church teams, little league teams, bantam league teams, playground games, and the like. I also missed most of two years of elementary school due to sickness. My health revived by 5th grade, but we had another scare when I was misdiagnosed with bone cancer at 14 — one of three potentially fatal diseases my parents had to worry about due to misdiagnoses. That was about the time my father started taking me to the gym downtown to lift weights, exercise, and generally get in shape. That became a habit that is still with me today.
Wow! What was really going on?
With the misdiagnoses? The first occurred when I was about 5 years old. I had a mysterious high fever misdiagnosed as polio. The second kept me out of school in the 2nd and 3rd grade, when I was 7 and 8 years old. Again it involved recurring high fevers that I couldn’t shake. The doctor diagnosed rheumatic fever, took blood tests every two weeks and put me on daily penicillin until I was 18 years old. I now think the problem was recurring bouts of scarlet fever that finally stopped after the doctor removed my tonsils. However, he stood by his original diagnosis and advised my parents not to let me play any sports. Fortunately, we ignored that. At 14 a different doctor discovered a large tumor on my left knee, which he told my parents had a 95% chance of being bone cancer. Surgery was scheduled and my parents spent the next few nights crying themselves to sleep. The tumor was removed and found to be benign. No comparable scares after that.
Wow! What about your teenage years…good?
At age 14, I started working at my father and grandfather’s business – Soames Paper Co. – in Seattle’s farmers’ market. We sold and delivered paper products and janitorial supplies to farmers at the market, butcher shops, fish markets, nearby stores, lunch counters, and taverns, commercial printers throughout the city, drive-in restaurants, grocery stores, a few upscale restaurants, the race track south of town, some golf clubs, etc. The company employed 2 drivers, 2 warehousemen, and my father’s cousin Jimmy who was deaf but could read lips and also speak in ways that those who know him came to understand; he serviced the farmers and made the signs everyday advertising their produce. The company also employed a secretary and a bookkeeper, and 2 or 3 salesman who worked on commission. I worked there 7 or 8 summers in the warehouse and driving delivery trucks. Looking back, I wouldn’t have traded that experience for anything.
Why?
I liked the truck drivers and warehousemen I was working with. I liked the people to whom I delivered goods. I liked being given adult responsibilities at a young age, and making a contribution to the little business that my grandfather and his son, my father, started in the depression in one tiny room across from that market they used to sell vegetables in. It was a business that survived its first few years only by installing a pinball machine with small cash payouts in the corner, but by the 50s and early 60s was growing with the city. The world I inhabited at work – especially the Pike Place Market – wasn’t then the tourist attraction it has now become. It offered the freshest but also the cheapest meat (including horse meat), fish, and produce in town. It was frequented by buyers who needed and searched for bargains, and sellers looking for a way to make a buck, who competed tirelessly with one another. It was bustling, multi-ethnic, and unsophisticated, but genuinely cosmopolitan. It had its share of hopeless drunks and down-and-outers, but also a larger share of people who were moving forward and wouldn’t let anything stop them. It had energy and grit. It was a young town determined to find its place in the sun, and I was in the middle of it.
Did you dig school?
I went to public schools — elementary, junior high, and high school. They were neither notably good nor notably bad. I was moderately interested in most subjects, but I spent very little time on them out of school. I didn’t have favorite subjects in high school or junior high. But I did dislike wood shop, craft shop, metal shop, and what was called ‘health’. There were teachers I liked, and very few I didn’t, but none were inspirational. I never did extracurricular reading before college. When I missed much of the second and third grades, I read a lot of books at home to pass the time — 90% about sports, dogs, the outdoors, and the like. I also learned to love the black and white movies I saw on daytime TV from the 30s and 40s. In high school I did once read a more or less serious book that influenced me — Arrowsmith, by Sinclair Lewis. Until then I always felt certain I would go into the family business. The book didn’t make me decide not to, but it made me realize I might do other things.
Describe Arrowsmith a bit!
The Arrowsmith book by Sinclair Lewis isn’t a classic. But it offered something I hadn’t seen — a young man who finds meaning in life through a noble calling (medical research). My happy childhood hadn’t led me to worry much about that, so the character opened a door for me.
Did you get into trouble as a kid? A teenager?
I slugged a kid in an elementary school class, and had to see the principal. I also broke my 6th grade teacher’s car window by mistake, for which he later ridiculed me and made me take a solo singing part in a school assembly, even though I had a terrible voice. And in junior high I once threw a piece of cherry pie in someone’s face and got paddled for it by the vice principal. Also, when I was first driving a truck for my father, I used to sometime lose loads on the very steep hills in Seattle, which meant I had to stop traffic and throw the goods back on the truck. I also once took a shortcut through a used car lot on one of my deliveries, which ended up pulling down all the lights in the lot, because they were lower than the height of my truck. There were a few other incidents like that. Fortunately, my father stood by me when the chips were down.
It was different only once, when, as a pretty young kid, I lost my temper when one of the farmers on the market had been inconsiderate. Five minutes later when I got back to the warehouse my father was waiting. He told me in no uncertain terms that the farmers had known our family for decades, and I was not to presume that I could ever speak disrespectfully to them. In another 5 minutes I was back at the farmer’s stall making a public apology in front of his customers. He accepted it with grace, and I never forgot the lesson.
Did you start thinking about what you wanted to do in college, if college was even on the table? Where did you apply and why?
I always thought I would go to college, away from home. But I never thought much about it. My parents told me I couldn’t leave the west coast, which was fine with me. When the time came I applied to only two schools -- a little college in Walla Walla Washington — Whitman College — and Stanford, in California. I applied to Stanford because a recruiter came to my school who seemed interesting. I was accepted at both, and first thought I could go to Whitman because I judged that I could play varsity basketball for them. My visit to the campus was mostly a visit to the gym. I didn’t visit Stanford, but for some reason I don’t remember — probably because people seemed impressed — I decided to go there.
Surprises at Stanford?
I was shocked that I was asked to read over 100 pages in the first week. Since I had coasted through high school doing very little work, I wasn’t used to it.
Favorite classes and teachers?
In those days there were lots of requirements — math, science, western civ, English, foreign language. They all worked out fine, but English was the most surprising. I got an F on my first paper, mostly for some ungrammatical sentence fragments, but perhaps also for banality. I woke up and wrote a second paper that my teacher — Donald Fritz — loved. He printed it up for everyone as an example. I was stunned. It was all good in English after that. He had us read Joseph Conrad, whom I came to idolize. In the second term I read, Graham Greene, who wasn’t bad either. I also read some Shakespeare, including some of the poetry, which even I could see was great. I developed a taste for great literature that has stayed with me. Mr. Fritz was then still a Ph.D candidate teaching lowly freshmen English, but he had a real impact. I made some good friends my freshman year, and played on the freshman basketball team, which was the high point of my brief athletic career.
When and why did you decide to major in philosophy? What did your parents make of that decision? What was your intro class like?
As a sophomore, I remember a literature course, a religion course, language courses, and two philosophy courses. I liked the literature but found the lectures and class discussions sophomoric. In the religion course, I read the theologians then deemed to be deep and respectable. I found them earnest and sometimes interesting, but unconvincing. But I did discover Kierkegaard, who fascinated me. One philosophy course was a quick a survey of the greats, each of whom puzzled me. For my term paper I struggled with Hume and Kant. When my teacher, John Mothershed, wrote on the paper “You have the true makings of an able philosopher,” I thought, “Why not?" The other philosophy course was “Good and Evil,” taught by Philip Rhinelander — a Stanford Dean and a Philosophy Professor. I attended a discussion section he led early Saturday mornings. In my senior year I took a course with Donald Davidson, though not in the philosophy of language. Decades later we renewed our acquaintance when we had a friendly dispute about truth.
Describe that class with Davidson a bit.
The Davidson class was on ethics, which had between 50 and 75 undergraduates. It was also regularly attended by a number of graduate students. Davidson lectured, quite brilliantly, and we wrote short papers. The first half of the course was an extended argument that there can be no true ethical theory — e.g. x is good/bad/right/wrong iff x is D, where D some descriptive condition. The idea was that it is a necessary feature of claims that something is good, etc. that, when accepted, they move us and so provide us with reasons for acting. But, Davidson contended, there is no descriptive D such that x is D necessarily moves one who accepts it. He thought, roughly, that for any such D it is never incoherent to accept that x is D even though x leaves one cold. Most of us found this shocking but hard to refute — though there are, of course, reasonable responses involving the nature of the modality, and the relevant class of agents (all conceivable rational agents, all normal human beings, etc). I later came to reject that idea that we need an ethical theory for all possible rational agents. Instead, I thought, we might be able to construct one (or more than one) that would provide potentially motivating reasons for most normal human beings. Doing so involves tapping into our common human nature, including our dispositions to form powerful social attachments and the natural intertwining of our own identities with that of others. Like Hume, I came to believe an updated version of moral sentiment theory augmented by values derived from favorable experience with voluntary social institutions built on reciprocity.
What did you do for fun in college? Did you party?
What did I do for fun? I pretty much enjoyed everything. I partied some but not a lot. I played intramural basketball after my freshman year. I pledged a fraternity and quickly de-pledged. In my senior year I was the chief resident associate in the men’s freshman dorms. We hosted a dorm party in which hired a group called “Janice Joplin and the Holding Company.” In my junior year spent 6 months at Stanford in Florence Italy. One summer I taught high school students in Hong Kong, and medical doctors fleeing China from the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. The work was set up by a Stanford group, Volunteers in Asia.
Politically active?
When I graduated, the Vietnam war was looming and I didn’t want to go to grad school just to get a draft deferment. So I worked for a year on campus for Volunteers in Asia, earning $90 per month, and living in a tiny room above a garage in return for weekend yard work. I protested the war, I spent 3 weeks in jail — half with radically intolerant leftist organizers and half in the general prison population, who were more to my liking. A few months later I refused induction into the army. After that I waited for the authorities to pick me up, but they didn’t.
Why did you protest Vietnam?
I read a lot about the war, and about Asia in general. I knew that the North Vietnamese regime was bad, but I thought that South Vietnamese regime was almost as bad, and also that it wouldn’t be able to lift the people out of poverty, as I wrongly thought the North could. Since I saw the two sides to be more or less morally equivalent, I thought the war was senseless and destructive. It wasn’t until the late 70s that I realized that the communists in North Vietnam and Cambodia were far worse for their people in almost all respects than those the U.S. had supporting. I still think the war was a mistake, not because there wasn’t a moral reason to defend the south, but because the United States seems to be very bad at fighting limited wars.
What did you do when you didn’t get picked up by the authorities?
Around then I read How Children Fail by John Holt who was a progressive reformer. So I looked for a job in elementary education. I found one in a federal project in Mt. View California (just south of Stanford) that was charged with diagnosing and remediating the reading problems of first, second, and third grade Mexican American children. I taught them for two years, until the project ran out of money. I found the work challenging and rewarding. I also saw how difficult the problems were, and how ill equipped the top-heavy professional staff (a director, assistant director, materials specialist, two educational psychologists, and a sociologist, and only one other teacher) was for dealing with the problems. Even if our budget had been doubled and our years tripled, our successes would have been small.
Toward the end of my second year on the job, my draft case came up. I was defended by two excellent San Francisco attorneys — Norman Leonard and Richard Gladstein — who agreed to defend me for $900, which was all I had. There wasn't much to defend. I had applied to my draft board for what was called “conscientious objector status”, which required a religious objection to war in any form. In my essay I stated that I objected not to war in any form but to the Vietnam war, and also that the basis for my objection wasn't religious, but rather was a moral view that occupied the same position in my life that religious views occupy in the lives of others. Of course my draft board rejected it. But my judge, Oliver J. Carter, read my essay, pronouncing me sincere but misguided. He was right. He also declared that because the draft board failed to give me a reason for their rejection, the induction order I had refused was invalid. The file was sent back to the draft board, who again rejected without reason, and in the end, I was free.
Nice! What was the deal with protesters?
We were kept together in a barracks. I didn’t like having nothing to do, or anyone I knew in the group. I quite disliked some of my fellow protesters, who were constantly haranguing and brooked no disagreement. When I had enough of that I asked a guard to put me with the ordinary prisoners, which was better. Not great but better. On my first day in the ordinary prison, I saw a mob corner another prisoner with, I think, the intent of killing him, before he was rescued by the guards. On the next day I went to work in the prison bakery. That was okay for me, but two other white kids were constantly insulted and demeaned. One of the older black prisoners bunked next to me, and since he and I got along well that may have helped me.
So what were you going to do with your freedom?
After that I enrolled as a special half time non-matriculated student at Stanford, while supporting myself working as a remedial teacher in a San Mateo middle school. It was then that I got involved in logic and philosophy of language, with the help of Professors Pat Suppes and Julius Moravcsik, who remained friends for decades. I also met and studied with David Kaplan and Barbara Partee that year, when both taught grad seminars one day a week at Stanford that I was allowed to attend. Julius insisted that I go to MIT and study both linguistics and philosophy. So I applied and got in. No one helped me apply, and I don’t remember my writing sample, though it may have been on Ed Klima’s terrific paper on negation that I did for Barbara.
What was Suppes like?
Smart. Nice. He had more or less his own building that included a big computer attached to work stations with electronic typewriters which would type lessons and problems for students, and tell us when the answers, proofs, etc. we typed were correct. I saw Pat for about 1 minute on the first day of the course, and after that worked only on the computer. I loved it. Later, when I would visit Stanford, I got to know him.
What did your family make of your decision to go into philosophy?
They were fine with it. My position on Vietnam was hard for them, especially when I was in jail over Christmas and later when I was tried for refusing induction. But they always stood by me.
How was MIT different from Stanford? Good experience?
MIT was fantastic. It had a great linguistics dept. and a small but wonderful philosophy department. In linguistics I spent most of my time with Professor David Perlmutter, a wonderfully intuitive linguist and great teacher. I also got to know and like Noam Chomsky. I was first a student of David, then his TA, then, a co-teacher with him, and finally a coauthor of a text in syntax. I only took one class from Noam. He was on leave in my first year, so I took one of his grad classes in my second year. He liked my term paper, and sent it off to a linguistics journal, which, of course, accepted it. I sat in on other classes of his, and in my fourth year I replaced Professor Jerry Katz (a great guy and good friend of mine) who left his MIT position which was half in philosophy and half in linguistics, to go to the Graduate Center at CUNY. Taking his place, I remember meetings of the linguistics faculty in Noam’s office. That year I taught one course on my own and co-taught a couple. My course was a graduate course in theoretical semantics, in which MIT was, and had been weak, so I had to learn it on my own. I managed to keep a week ahead of the class, which included MIT grad students, post docs, and a couple MIT linguistics professors. It was trial by fire, but it went well and I learned a ton. When I went on the job market in my 4th year Noam nominated me to the Harvard Society of Fellows — which is where he wrote The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory. I was honored, even though the Society didn’t select me. The same year the philosophers at MIT recommended me for an Assistant Prof job in the Harvard Philosophy dept, which I interviewed for, but also didn’t get. No problem. I knew I was too raw to take advantage of those opportunities.
What’s Chomsky like?
I always found Chomsky to be an easy person to be around, quiet, thoughtful, engaging, and, to me, considerate. Of course, I witnessed some of his attacks on those he took to be his enemies in linguistics and politics. One of the reasons I found those attacks distressing was that I thought he tended to be unfair to his adversaries — including some of his former students and colleagues, a few of whom I knew and liked. I found these two sides of him puzzling. Eventually I came to suspect that his remarkable intellectual power had bred an unhealthy confidence that led him to think that those who dissented from what seemed so clearly correct to him must have bad motives or be intellectually shallow. Since this character trait showed itself in matters confined to language, mind, or philosophy, its source was not ultimately political — though it clearly showed up in the political realm. I also came to believe that his lack of intellectual generosity hurt the field of linguistics and detracted from his towering achievements. No field that aspires to be a science can, without suffering for it, display the kind of unswerving fidelity to its great initiator that Noam seemed to expect — just as psychology suffered for decades from too great a deference to Freud.
You guys have some political differences…
My political distance from Noam increased over the years, and now is very great. But that doesn’t affect my friendly feeling for him as a person or my appreciation of his achievements. Recently I chaired a committee that selected him as the recipient of a prestigious award for his contribution to the advancement of human knowledge. Neither my personal feelings for him, nor my political differences with him had anything to do with it. He is a great man.
Guiding lights at MIT?
The philosophers who influenced me most at MIT were Richard Cartwright, Judy Thomson, James Thomson, George Boolos, Jerry Katz, and my dissertation advisor, Sylvain Bromberger. They were excellent philosophers and great people. I felt closest to Judy and Sylvain, but I may have learned the most from Dick. His cool, unemotional precision and attention to telling detail left a lasting mark on me. At that time he, more than anyone else, was my model.
What were Judy and Sylvain like?
They were the odd couple — Judy stern, demanding, and (it could sometimes seem) uncompromising; Sylvain warm, friendly, and accepting; Neither seemed to like the other very much, but both were extraordinarily good and helpful to me. Sylvain was so human, so willing to spend hours with me pouring over my dissertation. Judy was so high minded, so driven, a model, I thought, of professional integrity. I loved them both.
What was your dissertation on?
My dissertation was on presupposition in linguistics and philosophy — from Frege and Strawson in philosophy to Karttunen, Peters, and others in linguistics. It provided the basis for published papers in Linguistic Inquiry.
What was the philosophy job market like when you started looking for a gig?
It was tough. PhD candidates from MIT had a hard time. Also, you did it yourself; there were no departmental placement efforts. All in all, it was an adventure. I ended up with offers from Yale, Illinois, Texas, and one other place. The Yale interview was strange. The first “question" was “Name 5 philosophers of language prior to Frege that you would include in a philosophy of language course.” I got my back up, saying that I wouldn’t include any, and wasn’t sure I could even name 5. Afterward, I told my wife we could forget about Yale.
Wife? How did you meet?
I met my future wife, Jane Nakashima, at her home in Aromas, California over Thanksgiving break in my sophomore year at Stanford. My friend Howard Iryama, two years ahead of me, was taking me to his home in Marysville for Thanksgiving. On the way, he wanted to visit his friend Roberta Nakashima, Janes’s older sister. We stopped and talked for a couple of hours. Jane was then a senior at Watsonville high, and despite being younger than the three Stanford students in the room, her sparkling conversation and native brilliance made her the brightest light in the room. Still I didn’t see her again until near the end of her freshman year at Stanford (my junior year). We hit it off and I drove her home to Aromas before driving back to Seattle with my childhood friend Greg Leeland, who flew down to accompany me on the trip. Later that summer Jane and I met again at a Buddhist conference just north of Carmel, California. Except for a couple of relatively brief but difficult separations, she was my girlfriend for the next 5 years, when we were married and drove across the country to Boston. We were married for 19 years before we separated and then divorced 2 years later. Jane is one of the most brilliant people, and probably the most multitalented person, I have known. Unfortunately, we had our share of problems, and our marriage ended unhappily.
So, you ended up getting the job at Yale…weren’t you still working on your dissertation?
Since I taught my entire 4th year of grad school, I had no dissertation topic and no advisor when I finished teaching in May. Since I couldn’t write a dissertation over the summer, I asked Yale if I could start in January. I didn’t realize it then, but they almost said no. In those days the Yale department was bitterly divided, and often hired in pairs so that each side could get its candidate. The candidate of the anti-analytic philosophers had already accepted. So when I made my request the analytics fell one vote short. Fortunately Bob Fogelin noticed that one new senior member — the great Polish expert on Marxism Leszek Kolakowski — hadn’t voted but looked nonplused at the result. Bob announced that he believed there was a miscount and requested a revote. Since Kolakowski voted this time, there was a tie, and the motion to deny my request and terminate the offer to me failed. When I arrived at Yale, his daughter, Agnieszka, was a regular student of mine.
Finishing my dissertation was a bit of a trial. By January, when I was starting Yale, I had written almost 400 pages, but I found that the most important conclusion I had been working up to was false. That led me to consider postponing turning it in for another semester, when I could work on it more while teaching. But my wife rightly wouldn’t hear of it. Since we were in our salad days, and the postponement would have involved hardships, I finished it by explaining why the conclusion I had been aiming at couldn’t be correct. That turned out to be a pretty good lesson.
Once you settled in, was Yale a good fit?
Yes I enjoyed the area, and I had great undergrads. There was a very talented group who would take most of what I offered. Even some faculty — Ruth Marcus and Bob Fogelin plus Robert Sternberg, who was a professor in the psych department — attended some of my grad classes. Ruth and Bob attended a seminar on truth, which I taught because I wanted to learn about it. On their advice, OUP offered me a book contract, but I said no, because I didn’t know enough. A few years later they came back and I said “Yes."
Mind describing Marcus? Sorry, these details are really interesting to me!
Ruth and I were great friends — personally and professionally -- for many years, first at Yale and then after I moved to Princeton. Ruth was a powerful presence at Yale — a friend of the president of the university, the leader of the analytic wing of the Yale philosophy department, and, during those years, a good judge of philosophical quality. She was also a bit of a character. She would often fall asleep in colloquia, waking up in time to ask challenging questions in the discussion period. She always thrived on conflict and seemed to enjoy a good fight. For a long time we were comrades in arms, even after I was at Princeton. Although I left Yale in 1980, I was still taking the train up to NYC during much of the 1990s to meet her for dinner at the Yale Club a couple of times each semester. Unfortunately we then fell out when she and Quentin Smith essentially accused Saul Kripke, another close friend of mine, of stealing Ruth’s ideas in Naming and Necessity. Foolishly agreeing to adjudicate the dispute at an APA in Boston, I looked into the matter and found the case to be without merit. Although I also highlighted Ruth’s real achievements, emphasizing that her well-deserved standing was in no way threatened by Saul’s breakthroughs, it caused a rift between us. The event itself was a scandal and the resulting dispute was disreputable, but, worst of all, I forever lost a dear friend.
Sorry to hear that. Who else did you hang with?
Harry Frankfurt came a semester after I did. I was close to him and Bob Fogelin, but especially close to Ruth Marcus, for decades. Jane was a very talented musician, even wrote a terrific little song about her. “For us to be Ruthless would be like Tarski being truthless …" There were some good young people there too, e.g. Michael Williams and Jonathan Lear. However there were also quite a few anti-analytic full professors, who were pretty antagonistic.
How does anti-analytic antagonism manifest itself?
The two sides in the department didn’t like each other. At Yale it manifested itself most in appointments, the distribution of perks, and finally, as I mentioned before by revoking the voting rights of the junior faculty, which by that time was mostly analytic.
What were you working on at the time?
Philosophy of language, philosophy of linguistics, linguistics proper, presupposition, also truth, modality, reference, and rigid designation. I was learning enough about the history of analytic philosophy to start teaching it to undergrads.
Is that what inspired you to do the two-volume set on the history of analytic philosophy?
Those volumes grew out of undergraduate courses I started teaching at Yale and then expanded when I got to Princeton. I had some lecture notes, but didn’t plan to do anything with them until one of my former students, Jonathan Vogel, — who was then a friend and professional colleague — suggested that I publish them one night in the 90s when we were walking across the Brooklyn bridge. So in my last few years at Princeton I spruced up the notes and added to them when giving the courses there. Those versions of the courses were fun — and also well attended by both grad students and undergrads.
You had experience teaching, but at this point, did you have experience teaching undergrads? Encounter any pretentiousness at Yale?
No that was my first undergrad teaching, but I liked it. I encountered one or two students who were full of themselves, but I didn’t put up with any guff. I was young looking then, and sometimes mistaken for a student myself, which, I think, made me sensitive about establishing my authority. Once I dressed down a student pretty sharply in class. Perhaps not the best thing to have done, even though he was out of line. But he came around, did well, and we ended up on good terms. I, in turn, mellowed pretty quickly. On the whole, my students at Yale were extraordinary. I thoroughly enjoyed them
Family?
Jane and I were married in 1971. We had our first child, Greg, in my last year at Yale. Brian was born shortly after we moved to Princeton.
Does having kids change your philosophical views? Your approach to philosophical problems? Do your philosophical views, or does your philosophical training, have an influence on the way you interact with your kids, you think?
Since they have always meant so much to me, having them must have changed me a lot. But I know of no direct line between my having them and my being a philosopher. They could probably answer the question of what, if anything, my being a philosopher meant to them better than I can answer your question. I know they found the fact that I taught philosophy and wrote philosophy books strange, funny, and incomprehensible. In part that may be because in those days my personal calamities too often crowded out wisdom in the art of living. However, my boys were also influenced by the fact during much of their childhood Saul lived just a few doors from me. Since he would often come over, they got to know him too, which contributed in their minds to the funny incomprehensibleness of philosophy. He was not always happy then either, though he can be very entertaining and amusing when he wants. One time the four of us went to see the feature length Disney cartoon, The Lion King. We all enjoyed it.
What's Kripke like?
Very interesting. Great memory, fascinating conversationalist, sometimes quite funny. Brilliant philosopher of course. Some great riffs in seminars. His marriage fell apart about a year after mine did. For the next several years we saw quite a lot of each other.
Why'd you leave Yale?
The full professors cancelled an offer of an Assistant Professorship to a former colleague of mine at MIT, even though the dept. voted for it at the end of our search, the administration approved it, and the Chair, Harry Frankfurt, announced that we would be making the offer. The full professors held an emergency meeting to cancel the offer and to strip the untenured faculty—the chief supporters of my friend— of any voting rights on future appointments. When this became public, I announced I would look for a job the next year, and leave, which I did, for Princeton.
Around then, what were you thinking about, other than philosophy?
By the late 70s I was politically conservative, due many factors. The economy was a mess, interest rates had gone through the roof, making it impossible to sell our little house in Connecticut, the Iran hostage crisis was in full swing, and I was appalled at what had happened Cambodia and Vietnam. I also didn’t appreciate the sometimes incredulous and sometimes hostile reaction of some Yale people I began to indicate that I was off the reservation. On one notable public occasion, I brought down the house at a packed academic dinner with my modest expression of support of Reagan, rather than Carter or Kennedy. That wasn't a factor in leaving Yale. My wife and I enjoyed it there and left with some regrets and no hard feelings. In the week before the election, during my first semester at Princeton, the two of us sat on the floor in an empty house on route one calling likely voters and urging them to vote for Reagan. We were pleased when he won.
It is funny how philosophers can entertain the idea we know next to nothing, but are incredulous when people disagree with us politically! In general, philosophers are more liberal than average. Why?
Philosophers in America are more liberal than the average American. But so are college professors in general. I think we are less liberal than professors of political science, sociology, American studies, anthropology, English, comparative literature, or probably even history. I think we are a bit more reflective than other professors. Still, there is something about this whole demographic that affects us all. Of course I am much more conservative than most philosophy professors, but probably not much more conservative than the average American of my age. In my own case, I can see the factors in my family and early life that make my orientation pretty natural. Something similar is probably true of other philosophers whose political ordinations are quite different from mine.
What strikes me about the issues you raise isn’t where we end up politically and why we end up there. What strikes me is the contrast — even disconnect —your first sentence (which doesn’t ask a question) suggests. It suggests that our philosophical training and thoughts are disconnected with how we live. For those who do analytic philosophy in the way the most of us do, there is an extent to which that has to be so — just as the professional thoughts of mathematicians and physicists are disconnected with the way they live. Most philosophy has to do with the conceptual foundations of theoretical knowledge. Only some of it is about how to live good and virtuous lives.
As I have gotten older the different things in philosophy I do have come to seem more connected to one another and to my other commitments in life. This is both something I greatly value and an aspect that our discipline lends itself to. Perhaps because of this it takes us longer to mature in what we do.
How so?
Philosophy connects to so many different disciplines, intellectual enterprises, and universal concerns that we are often welcomed as interesting and gifted amateurs with something to offer when we venture into other domains. As we gain experience of this over the years, we are able to see connections that would otherwise have eluded us. Eventually, it becomes second nature to us to seek foundations and discern commonalities. It takes time.
Yes! Any surprises at Princeton?
When we arrived in 1980 my wife, Jane Nakashima, and I found Princeton to be a quiet, pleasant town with an interesting history. Perhaps a little too quiet. We called it the place that time forgot. We had a hard time finding housing though. The houses were expensive and we couldn’t sell our previous house in Connecticut because interest rates were 20%. So we spent three years in university apartments before we were able to buy a small place in Princeton.
Things you are proud of from your time at Princeton?
Things I am proud of philosophically from my time there. I won’t try to judge their relative importance.
Former grad students (some of whom I supervised, some I taught in seminars, some for which I was a reader on the dissertation, some were friends): Jeff Speaks (now Chair at Notre Dame), Gillian Russell (now at UNC), Jonathan Mckeown-Green (brilliant, blind, now tragically dead, after whom Auckland has named a student prize), Fiona Cowie (Cal Tech, died tragically young), Mario-Gomez Torrente (National University of Mexico), Jenny Saul (York University), Teresa Robertson (UCSB), David Sosa (Chair at Texas Austin), Mike Thau (freelance journalist), Jim Pryor (now at NYU), Bret Sherman (U. of South Carolina), Richard Holton (now at Cambridge), Alexis Burgess (now at Pamona), Mike McGlone (now in business), Mark Kalderon (now at University College London), Mark Hinchliff (now at Reed), Neil Delaney (Notre Dame).
Former Undergrads: Josh Dever (now at Texas Austin), Peter Hanks (University of Minnesota), Tyler Doggett (University of Vermont), Sinan Dogramaci (Texas Austin), Alex Shingler (Black Rock), Andy Strauss (family business), Homer White (the Navy), Peter Hanks (University of Minnesota), Brian Epstein (now at Tufts), Jonathan Epstein (finance), Greg Katsas (judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit), Chris Hitchcock (now at Cal Tech), Jon Garthoff (now at U. of Tennessee).
How did your experiences as a graduate student inform your approach to graduate mentorship?
I like to break projects into small enough chunks that allow us to meet regularly to discuss short bits of writing, which are improved, expanded, and put together over time. I don’t think my own experience as a grad student had much to do with this approach, since I worked on my own for most of the time. That’s not to say that I didn’t get good feedback on the work I turned in. I did. Very good. But my style was pretty solitary.
Any other accomplishments at Princeton you were proud of?
Strengthening the hyperintensionality problem and extending it to all approaches to semantics that take a theory of meaning simply to be a theory of truth relative to an index; arguing that semantic theories need to include an independent conception of propositions, which themselves have modal truth conditions; articulating related problems for 2D semantics and for diagonalization accounts of assertion
Defenses of direct reference and Millianism, developing austere conceptions of semantic contents often enriched by pragmatic enrichment; uses these ideas in dealing with versions of Frege’s puzzle.
The beginning of my publications on the history of analytic philosophy.
My work on truth and vagueness.
So, Princeton has, or had, a reputation for being a harsh place? Why is that?
I suppose we did have that reputation, but I didn’t see it that way. The standards were high, the grad students were smart and eager to make their marks, and the faculty held sharply divergent views on lots of topics. There were personal differences, of course, but little real personal antagonism. Occasionally a few of us – including me – had harsh words with others, but they were almost always regretted, and quickly washed away. On the whole, the faculty members were very independent. Each of us was intent on developing his or her own point of view, but when we were able to pick someone else’s brain we profited from it.
Some of our most interesting interactions came in searches, when we were deciding whom to hire, at departmental colloquia, and on examination committees for graduate students or undergraduate senior theses. The philosophical interchanges that occurred enlightened all of us. Because of that, it was a very rich environment. But there was no place to hide. One was always “on,” which meant it could be intimidating. Although I felt that in my first year or two there, I decided that I couldn’t take advantage of the department’s resources if I were a wall flower. So I wasn’t.
What did you do in your spare time?
Ran along the Delaware - Raritan canal, worked out at the gym, went to Princeton football and basketball games, rooted for the Boston Celtics and the Boston Red Sox, played golf occasionally, took hikes in the surrounding area — many of these with my son’s Greg and Brian. In the 90’s I also read or reread a lot of great novels.
Changes in your view of the world?
By 1980 my most basic cultural, social, and political views were in place. Changes since then are refinements and adaptations to a changing world.
How did philosophy, the field, change during your 24 year stretch at Princeton?
Putting aside changes in discussions of particular philosophical problems, there were some broader changes in philosophy. Philosophy of Science became more the philosophy of the several sciences than it had previously been. The center of gravity of philosophy of language moved further away from doing general philosophy by linguistic means to contributing to the conceptual foundations of the emerging sciences of language and information. Meta-ethics grew closer to the philosophy of language. Normative moral philosophy revived. Political philosophy did too (though not as much as one would first have thought following Rawls and Nozick in the 70s). In the philosophy of logic, modal logic became more central across wide areas of philosophy. In the history of philosophy, the analytic period became a more widely recognized area.
Must have been hard to leave Princeton after being there for so long!
Regarding Princeton, I have to mention great faculty colleagues who meant a lot to me — John Burgess, Saul Kripke, Gil Harman, Nathan Salmon (for 2 years), Paul Benacerraf, Harry Frankfurt, David Lewis, Stew Cohen, and Gopal Sreenivasan, were all either friends, or influences, or both. Bass Van Fraassen was also very kind to me.
Ah, Lewis! What was he up to?
David was somewhat shy and he tended to rely socially on his wife, Steffy, who was outgoing. When he was alone he tended not to talk much, so you had to draw him out. I would ask him a question, which he would ponder silently for between 30 seconds and a minute. He would then come out with two or three elegantly composed paragraphs, before falling silent again. That was my method. Rinse and repeat.
He could be a bit sensitive personally. But he could also be sensitive to others, sometimes displaying a truly kind heart. David was a very conscientious director of the department's graduate program at Princeton for about 10 of the years I was there. Unlike Saul, he also supervised a lot of dissertations.
How did your life change at Princeton?
I got a lot older, I lost my parents, I raised a family, my wife and I separated in 1990 and divorced in 1992, I struggled personally for a decade before I met Martha in 2001, who turned things around. We married in 2004 and moved to California two days after the wedding.
It took me a long time to mature both personally and philosophically. The most difficult period was between 1994 and 2000. It was then that I reached my lowest point, and concluded that I had to rescue myself by working long and hard on philosophy. It helped bring me back personally, and, of course, it spurred my philosophical development.
How did philosophy help you out of that, exactly?
In the end I discovered that work was the only thing I could do to remain reasonably functional.
So why’d you ditch Princeton?
Several reasons. First, I grew up in the west and I always wanted to return. Since my sons were grown they didn't need me to stay around. Second, since both of them had their own personal problems in late adolescence and early adulthood, they needed my financial help, as did my first wife Jane. So I needed more money, which prompted me to consider leaving Princeton. USC did offer more money, and although Princeton ended up more or less matching it, I was, by that time, excited by the possibility of building a great philosophy dept. at USC. Third, although Princeton was still an excellent department, it was — without Saul, David, Dick Jeffrey, and others -- no longer the department in which I grew up philosophically. Fourth, Martha and I were about to get married, and moving west seemed to be a good way of starting our new life.
Was USC what you expected? You've been remarkably productive. What motivates you?
When I arrived, USC was very eager to improve. They listened to my ideas and let me try things. Once the ball got rolling, it kept picking up speed. I found it all worthwhile.
The 90’s had been a dark and relatively unproductive decade for me. A backlog of unfinished work built up. Things turned around in 1997 or 98, when I became more productive. But it took me time to pick up momentum. I met Martha in 2001, 3 months before 9/11. We met online and then spoke by phone. She was working for a suburban version of a big urban newspaper in northern Jersey. By the second “date” we were a couple. During the next three years my life was work, spending time with my sons, and seeing Martha.
I was productive and happy; things were clicking. We were married in 2004, and we immediately moved to southern California. Because it was a new challenge, I was even more energized. I taught add-on courses beyond my normal load, the research ideas just kept coming, and I became highly organized — which allowed me to do everything I wanted and needed to do. Martha did a lot to make that possible. She took care of our home life, our social life, and, for quite awhile, organized my trips and traveled with me when I lectured in other places. The last is less common now, but she still takes a lot off my shoulders.
How has your teaching evolved?
I teach a greater range of things — philosophy of language, of course, but also some history of analytic philosophy and now philosophy of law. This fall I will co-teach a course with an economics professor here called "Free People, Free Thought, and Free Markets.” I have also done more co-teaching. At Princeton my only co-teaching was a great year-long seminar co-taught with David Lewis. At USC I have taught twice with John Hawthorne, 2 or 3 times with Gabriel Uzquiano, 3 times with Jim Higginbotham, once with Jeff King (now at Rutgers), once with Andrei Marmor (now at Cornell), twice with David Manley (now at Michigan), and once with Jeremy Goodman. I have enjoyed that.
What are you working on nowadays?
I am very excited about my latest book manuscript, which was just published! The book, which is unlike anything I have ever done, is called The World Philosophy Made: From Plato to the Digital Age.
Sounds cool! What’s it about?
It is about the contribution philosophy has made to human progress from Plato onward, including those we are currently struggling to make.
Any other interesting projects in the works?
I am now writing regularly in the philosophy of law. The next thing out will be “Originalism and Legitimacy” which will appear in the Georgetown Law Journal of Law and Public Policy. In the last three years I have developed professional friendships with two great law professors there — Randy Barnett and Larry Solum — who have helped me apply my knowledge of philosophy of language to issues in the interpretation of legal texts.
So, you were invited to explain why you voted for Trump. What did you make of the invitation?
I have been invited more than once — generally from people or institutions whose normal audience/clientele/ etc. can’t imagine an intelligent or respectable person voting for him. I find that attitude problematic. To be well educated on a subject, one needs to have a pretty good grasp of the arguments on the other side, and some sense of why others find them plausible. I hope I satisfy that condition myself. I don’t have trouble talking to open-minded people on the other side, especially one on one, or in face to face venues. But large public venues, especially the internet, have become fraught.
How do you feel about Trump's performance so far?
Very good on judges, good on foreign affairs, largely good on the economy — GDP, unemployment, work-force participation, wage growth, the stock market — but I worry that the deficits remain far too large. Pretty good on balancing the value of free trade against the need to protect certain parts of the country, certain groups of workers, and portions of our economy from stagnation or decline. I am concerned about the needs of the working and lower middle classes who have suffered economically, socially, and culturally in the last 30 or 40 years. I think they are right in seeing Trump as someone who takes them more seriously than elite politicians normally do. Finally, I suspect Trump views the vast apparatus of the administrative state with the proper skepticism.
No criticisms of Trump strike you as fair? Thoughts on impeachment?
Of course some criticisms are fair, as would true of any leader. But Trump is more sinned against than sinning. His enemies have been looking for ways to remove him, or to cripple his ability to govern, since before his inauguration. He had to fight back with equal intensity. I see no valid grounds for impeachment. I do see grounds for thoroughly investigating, and perhaps prosecuting, some of those who led the witch hunt against him.
Best philosopher you disagree most? Please, explain your answer!
Earlier in my philosophical life I disagreed so thoroughly with Quine, Wittgenstein, and David Lewis that I could scarcely appreciate them — only to find that more thought and more study revealed how much I had originally missed. Which other philosophers who do not now stand high in my pantheon might belong in that category? I won’t speculate.
In philosophy, are there views that are considered controversial that shouldn't be, in your estimation?
The only one that occurs to me right off the bat is the view that philosophy makes progress. Of course it does.
Gun to your head, how do you define philosophy?
Philosophy is the partner of every serious intellectual discipline. It appears when enough is known about a domain to make new progress conceivable, even though it remains unrealized because new methods are needed. Philosophers provide new concepts, new interpretations, and re-conceptualized questions that expand solution spaces. They do this not only when disciplines are born, but also as they mature. As inquiries advance the new knowledge they achieve generates new and more perplexing puzzles for philosophers to attack. The process is never ending.
That is one of the best definitions I’ve heard! How do you explain what you do to non-philosophers?
Depends on the non-philosophers — what they are interested in and what I know most about in philosophy.
How do you see the future of philosophy? Exciting or disconcerting trends?
Exciting. There are always disconcerting trends. They didn’t stop philosophy in the past and they won’t in the future.
Favorite books? Movies? Music? TV shows? Art in general?
I never go to movies. I never watch TV. I almost never go to museums, though when I do I like classic sculpture and painting.
I love big city American blues — Paul Butterfield (especially East-West), Charlie Musselwhite, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf. I also like Lynyrd Skynyrd (especially Free Bird), the C&C Music Factory. Also the old Donna Summer.
I read a lot. Recent reread Willa Cather’s My Antonia, Herman Wouk’s Winds of War and War and Remembrance. Just read, Tom Wolfe’s Back to Blood. I read tons of pulp fiction — James M. Cain, Jo Nesbo, Daniel Silva, Michael Connelly. Also non Fiction: Heather MacDonald’s The Diversity Delusion, John Marini’s Unmasking the Administrative State, Raoul Berger’s Government by Judiciary, Andrew Roberts’s Walking with Destiny, Andy McCarthy’s Ball of Collusion, and Kimberley Strassel’s Resistance (At All Costs).
What else? I exercise a lot — a little swimming, a lot of aerobic exercise, also weight training.
Martha and meet a couple we like for dinner every week.
C&C Music Factory? Classic! Last meal?
My last meal today was a bagel with cream cheese. The last meal of my life? Not a concern.
If you could as an omniscient being one question, and be sure you were going to get an honest, comprehensible, answer, what would it be?
What is the correct solution, if there is one, to the liar paradox.
[interviewer: Cliff Sosis]