 Hello, I'm J.J. Rohin and welcome to Philosophy and What Matters, where we discuss things that matter from a philosophical point of view. Our guest today is one of the leading philosophers of this generation. Many of us know him as the co-creator with the late Ken Taylor of Philosophy Talk, a pioneering philosophy podcasting program which questions everything except your intelligence. I reckon that many people, myself included, were introduced to the fun and media philosophical thinking through this program. He's also known for his book The Art of Procrastination, which offers a more positive, more structured way of putting off things you have to do in order to do other more productive things. The philosophically initiated among us may know him through his contributions in various areas of philosophy. His ideas and situation semantics, developed with John Barwais, introduces an alternative formal account of explaining how meaning in information processing works. His defense of views, wretched subtitude, a broadly compatibilist view of free will and determinism has gained some traction as well. Arguably, his lasting legacy is his frege influence views on self-knowledge, which demystify the notion of the self. To talk about his views on things that matter, we have the philosopher extraordinaire John Perry, emeritus professor of philosophy in both UC, Riverside and Stanford University. So hello, Professor Perry. Welcome to Philosophy and What Matters. Thank you very much, JJ. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm thrilled that you were influenced by philosophy talking. I'm thrilled that you started up something along the same lines in the Philippines. I think that's really great. No, thanks for that. So before getting into our main topic, let's first discuss your philosophical background. How did you get started in philosophy? Well, that's a good question. I guess I got started because I always had a philosophical bent, but I didn't know that for a long time. When I went to college, I mainly went in order to play football. But I wasn't really all that good at football, so I went to a small college so I could make the team. But I wasn't even good enough to make the first team. So at the end of the season, the coach came by, put his arm around me and said, Perry, you're small, but you're slow. Maybe next year, don't worry about coming out for football and just concentrate on academics. I think you'd be good in the humanities. Well, that was very good advice. So that's what I did. And pretty soon I took my first philosophy course. And, you know, we studied Play-Doh. And, well, we studied utopias, starting with Play-Doh and then B.S. Skinner, and then somebody else's name I forget, but it'll come to me. A very famous guy that wrote, oh, Brave New World, who wrote Brave New World. Hoxy, I'll do Hoxy. Yeah, that's right. So then I continued in philosophy, and I actually did pretty good, and I got a fellowship to Cornell. And at Done College, where I was, philosophy mostly consisted of Play-Doh, Aristotle, Sartre, and Heidegger. A good combination. Yeah, but at Cornell, philosophy mostly consisted of Wittgenstein and Heidegger. And with roots of both of them in Fraga. So that's how I spent my dissertation on Fraga's views about identity. Okay, so. I was hooked into analytical philosophy by them. So it's analytic philosophy all the way for you, since Cornell University? Well, not quite. I actually always liked Sartre. And then recently, I wouldn't say like, but I began to appreciate that Heidegger had some pretty good ideas. Heidegger. So from your college years, reading Heidegger, now you're back to reading Heidegger. I'm actually back because I had a PhD student at Riverside. I mean, it was on his committee. Heidegger's views and my views had a connection. That's interesting. My views are kind of based on information and acquiring information and what Gretzky calls harnessing information. And Heidegger doesn't talk about those things, but his view is you're kind of thrust into the world. You have the ability to gather information from perception and put it to use. And then you have a series of breakdowns. I mean, this is not scholarship. Yeah, yeah, that's all right. Then you have a series of breakdowns. And to, to deal with them, you have, you develop more and more complicated. I think for Heidegger, that's the notion of your throne in the world. Yeah, being in the world, then there's a brokenness in the world. That's why you need to think, yeah, to think about. So I certainly don't agree with everything Heidegger, for example, his Nazism does not appeal to me. I do think he had some good ideas. And so I don't sit around and read Heidegger on my own. But sometimes people suggest paragraphs to me that I find very interesting. Okay, so who else influence you do pursue an academic career in philosophy? Well, actually, the main influence is my father-in-law, my late father-in-law. After I listened to my football coach, I started to focus on academics, which I'd never done in high school. And this was a religious college. So we had to take a course in religion. And our teacher, Dr. Fralingham, wanted us each to write a paper on their thoughts about God. So I really got into it. I wrote a paper about God and different ideas of God and reasons for thinking that God existed and so forth and so on. And so after he graded them, he read my paper to the class as a really good example of what might be done. So after class, this pretty girl comes up to me and she says, thanks, asshole. You really were in the curve for the rest of us. So we started dating. We got married about a year later. It turned out oddly enough that her father was a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. And we got to know each other and he learned that what I was getting at Dome College was really what he thought was out of date. And he started giving me books by like Victor Stein's Tractatus and Victor Stein's Investigations and so forth. And he also told me, which I had no idea that he could make a living being a philosopher, which may not be true now, but it was true. So he was really one of the biggest influences and he's the one who said, no, you should go to Cornell. That's the place to go. So he was a great guy, made a big influence on me. Not so much that what he believed, I don't know what he believed really, but just his awareness of the importance of analytical philosophy is what led me to Cornell. Then when I got to UCLA in 1968, I went to UCLA as an assistant professor. And at that time, UCLA was just the forefront of thinking about philosophy from the point of view of modal logic and possible worlds. So this is where David Lewis is as well. I thought David Lewis and I were assistant professors together. And Richard Montague was a full professor and David Kaplan was an associate professor. So I went to all our seminars and absorbed all I could. I never have really come to believe in possible worlds is the greatest idea ever, but I so I went from being kind of a victim standing Austin to being kind of a combination, ordinary language, philosopher and technically aware philosopher, not really a technical philosopher. And then when I got to Stanford, of course, no, this is 1974 another very technically and philosophy of science and logic oriented place. And there I worked with John Barois, who is a big influence. I do very well with logic as long as I have a collaborator going to explain what the fuck is going, I'm sorry about that. That's right. What was going on if I left him I stick to English. And, you know, I wrote my dissertation on Frega he's always been a big influence I just wrote another book on Frega called Frega's detour. But I must say over the last 20 years, I mostly just sit in my chair and think only read what somebody else says to say when I have to, but, you know, maybe I shouldn't say that maybe delete that. Okay, but what is philosophy for you and what's the best thing about it. I heard in an interview that you have an analogy between philosophers and lawyers. The best lawyers are given the hardest cases to defend. And by the same token, the best philosophers are given the hardest, stupidest ideas, as you have said. So what's what's the philosophy and why is it the best thing. What's the best thing about it. I think the best thing about philosophy is, if you're a philosopher by nature. That is, if you just have this kind of mind that asks why, what does it mean, how do you know that's your first reaction to everything. That's right because the Pope says so or that's right because the Pope didn't say so, or that's right. But geez, what does that mean, why should I believe that a lot of kids are like that, you know, 12 year olds, 10 year olds, 14 year olds. They don't get a lot of encouragement from institutions like schools. They don't necessarily get discouraged, but you know, if you go to high school in America, we used to get a lot of history courses, a lot of English courses, science and math, but you don't really get philosophy. But I think this is a very important part of a lot of people's personalities. And so when they get to college and take a philosophy course they say wow. I really groove to that. So, and those people, you know, they don't really solve many of our most practical problems. But in the long run, I think they're a good thing for society to have philosophers. And so it's good to have philosophy teachers. So the most important thing about philosophy to me is it's what I like to do. It's what I find myself thinking about if I sit down. The next best thing is that when I find a student or a child or a grandchild that has this frame of mind, it's really a wonderful feeling to kind of make it legitimate for them to think about. Are we really free? Do we really have minds? Christianity really makes sense? Does Buddhism really make sense? Does anything make sense? Is there a world out there at all? So I just, I think it's a little like art. It doesn't appeal to everyone, but it's very important for those to whom it appeals. And I'm glad to be a part of their lives, because I'm one of them. And you are two, obviously, and you have the same zeal to reach out to others like yourself and say, hey, this is an okay thing to be interested in. As a matter of fact, it's interesting. So listen to my program and you know, some now lawyer. Now, what you mentioned, I've known a lot of really brilliant people over my career. People like Richard Montague and David Kaplan studied people like Quine. And my mind always operates at two levels. At a higher level, it says, God, these guys are brilliant. I'll never come up with anything that's true about things that they've thought about because they're so bright. But at the lower level, the one that's in their 95% of the time, they think, God, my ideas are right and their ideas are wrong. And I asked myself, well, what's going on here and I invented a myth. The myth is that there's a muse of philosophy. I don't know her name. But she's a little bit like the person in charge of defense for people that can't afford lawyers. I don't know if you have that Philippines, but you probably do we have it in America, public defenders. Yeah, we have that here. My imagination is a public defender gets a bunch of cases. She has a bunch of lawyers working for her. And she gives the easy cases to the least brilliant lawyers. The cases anyone should be able to win. And then they're really difficult cases, you know, where somebody was caught and done his hand over a corpse. And he gives to the most brilliant lawyers. Well, I think the music philosophy is the same way. If he comes up with a really crazy idea that makes no sense, she gives it to someone who's so brilliant, they'll be able to defend it like David Lewis. But when she comes up with a really good idea that's easy to defend because it makes a lot of sense. She gives it to me. So that's that's my view. Okay, that's that's funny. Only at the bottom level, I admit at the top level, the chances of my being right and David was being wrong very small. On the other hand, do you really believe in an infinity of possible worlds equally as real as our own, each one, each possibility in our world having a world that makes that possibility actual I don't see any reason to believe any of that. Okay, so would you say that, yeah, that you have an overall pretty good but now you're fading a little you disappeared or what I've said is struck you so much that you're frozen. I'm not sure. Wait. I think I'm good. Okay. Okay, so would you say that you have an overall philosophy, an overall view of how to do philosophy. Well, I'm 77 years old, and the time's running out to develop one. But I'm a naturalist in the sense that I think humans are part of nature, and even our consciousness and our freedom has to be explained in naturalistic terms. On the other hand, I don't equate naturalism with materialism I think materialism is a philosophy from the 18th and 19th century that's pretty much been refuted materialism the idea that you go back to lock and you have material as has these primary shapes so forth shape size. And if that's all there is well no no physicist believes that anymore they have all kinds of non material properties. Most of which they don't really understand, you know, like in and being a quark and so on. So, materialism doesn't say well a physicist of the 18th century or 19th century or the early 20th century or the late 20th century even now had everything right. It's just that I think that eventually, or, or theoretically, we're all part of the same natural world. Earth, which was a bit of a miracle that occurred for under very special conditions. And we need to understand ourselves everything from the way that balls drop to the way that people think in terms of a theory that takes account of all the evidence so that that's my view. And there's a lot of questions that I wish I had answers for. What is the meaning of life. One of the big questions, one of the big questions, and I think the important thing is not to be sucked into some inadequate theory. On the other hand, not to end up with a view that life is meaningless. The question is, well, given that it's meaningful, is it, is it meaningful only the humans does this have meaning in terms of nature as a whole. Or is it meaningful because there's some necessarily have a completely worked out positive view. But after you've run this program for a couple years, you will and then you can send it to me. Okay. What is your more technical work on situation semantics. What is the situation semantics all about, and what is its target, and how does it work. Well, situation semantics is. Well, let me back up. So, as I see modern analytical philosophy really begins with Frega and Russell. Both brilliant guys. And, but when you get to the end of the Franco Russell period. You don't have, you have a lot of solutions in that Frega gave us good notation for logic and a good understanding of what it was all about. Russell gave us even more notation and more theories about what it's about and he identified a lot of paradoxes and he gave us a pretty good notation. When you end up and you know the late 20s or early 30s, Frega is dead, Russell is getting old and turning it out of things. You don't really have a consensus that they were right about much of anything. And the influence of Russell's paradox. Which was originally a problem for Frega's formalization logic was really important. Now as a result of that, you end up with what we think of the coin, what I think of as a coin Davidson, Karnab coin Davidson here. Karnab tried his best to make everything work within a basically Frega and framework. And Tarski and others came up with the idea of a model. A model is a function from bits of language to extensions and for sentences truth values. Can you put those together, Karnab really tried. And he came up with the notion of, of what you might call a realistic model, the model instead of being just a function from bits of language to extension is a function from bits of language to what I would call he didn't but what I would call properties Now this notion he called, called a possible world, at least I think he did, but it really came into vogue with Yeah, and for a cryptian in that possible as an index for a model interpreted in that realistic way. And then he proves some very powerful theorems about motor logic in terms of possible worlds understood that way. On the other side at about the same time you had coin. He said, well, Frega is great, but all the intentional stuff. The properties the proposition sets bullshit. We should take Frega's theory of sense and ignore it but take his theory of reference and these theory of reverence. Words in general stand for sets and sentences stand for truth values. And so that's quite an extensionalism and he's tried to make that the basis of logic and philosophy of science. And then Davidson came along and said, yeah, and, you know, we can do quite a bit of philosophy language within that framework. But at the same time coin students Kripke and David Lewis. We're saying well, not quite. So they decided we don't want to just be extension. But we don't want to ignore our teachers. Yep, this is about about properties and propositions. So we will have, we have, we will have an extension list interpretation of properties and propositions well how the fuck again do that. Well, all you have to do is introduce an infinity of possible worlds. So on my view. That's what I call Frega's detour. I'll send you a copy of that book. Oh yeah, thanks. And so this, I think what we need to do is go back to Frega not to Frega sense and reference but to Frega the regressor. And there we have properties, circumstances, propositions what she calls thoughts at the level sense and at the level of reference we have extensions. Although he was really preset theory. So he does different terminology and truth. And he put that all together in a big group shift and then he was talked out about talked out a part of it by himself. And I think well we should go back to the group shifts. Now that's what we really did in situations and attitudes. Because in the big group shift Frega has circumstances, circumstance. I mean, it wasn't a technical term for him. He would construct it would say well a circumstance, or a state of affairs is individually by a sequence of a, of a, of a relation and a suitable number of a suitable sequence of objects, and a time and a location. And I had the idea that well really, that should be the starting point or the real starting point should be what we call situations. What's the situation. The situation is a region of space time where things happen. I didn't borrow I couldn't like that because he didn't think I paid enough attention to mathematics. Since he's died I've quit worrying about that. So we got situations regions of space time and stuff happens. Okay, so is this like a state of affairs, like baseball and strong. Yes, we called them states of affairs. Well the situation, as I see it now we were a little confused and as I see it now the situation is a spatial temporal region was stuff happening. And then we as humans, we don't interact that in terms of basic objects and properties. We interpret that in terms of what we called uniformities between happenings and properties and objects that we familiarly talk about that are part of our conceptual apparatus arise out of that. By the way, this is very my take on this is very much influenced by whitehead. Who was one of my heroes in college. So, whitehead said the world consists of actual occasions. But anyway, so situations are bound. So instead of a possible world that it's interesting people call impossible worlds but why worlds, the universe. Why do we want to call them worlds because the universe is so big it makes you dizzy. Right. You know, I used to call the possible worlds and look for most similar. Does that really make sense if you've got universes. And by the way, is there any reason to believe that the the universe has any bounds. I've never seen any reason but that seems anyway so I digress. So our idea was we need to reinstate what I now call circumstances but we called states of affairs, which has been exiled by fragrance decision that that sentences stand for truth values. And and doing that will be the key to understanding the propositional attitudes, which is to say sentences like JJ believes that the Philippines will rule the world in 10 years. That's probably false. I believe that Trump is an idiot, which is both true and a belief in something true. And Frank I had a very persuasive but rather complicated theory of propositional attitudes and we gave a much simpler theory of propositional attitudes in terms of situations and states of affairs. And I wouldn't say that we won the day most of the philosophical world said interesting but I don't think I have it quite right. But I've kind of been working on it ever since making it better, I think and so I don't know what your original question was but yeah influence so yeah and then I work with David Israel David was a philosopher turned computer science scientists. And so we had a lot of fun thinking about information and action and so forth. And those are the views I've more or less tried to develop over the last four years. With, you know, some success in converting others but, you know, music philosophy gives you an easy task you have to fulfill it whether anybody believes. Okay, let's go back to situation semantics. So the idea is that you have the circumstances, and we are confronted by those circumstances and we have attitude towards them. But are these circumstances some actual states of affairs or even possible states of affairs. Well, I believe a circumstance what I call a circumstance and a state of affairs are both. I mean, I'm talking about not necessarily everything borrow I should agree with but he would agree with most of it. So what would be so I think of reality as what I call concrete reality that's happening. Okay, happening within space time locations or regions. So these are actual things. And these are actual these are real. But what humans interact with is not the real world as such. But the world of possibilities. It'll be a while I've been interviewed. So, so circumstances or state of affairs are really possibilities. And, and so, forget about language forget about negation just say oh so we got, we got these possibilities possibilities are circumstances are individuated by a relation and a sequence of individuals. And a time and a location. Now if you just think of them that way don't think of my sentences. Just think of them as things that set theoretically we can describe in that way. Okay, they come in pairs that are opposites. JJ has had dinner already. JJ hasn't had dinner already. Those are opposite circumstances. Only one is a fact. Yeah, so I'm seeing, I'm seeing the frege influence here right so frege has a notion of the true and the false and you have. Yep. Okay. But on my view, I don't think we're too clear about it. You have to distinguish between circumstances and facts and propositions and truth. Propositions are made to classify representations, which they beliefs and utterances. Whereas states of affairs or circumstances are abstract objects for just classifying the world. And the relation between them is that propositions are the Boolean closure of circumstances. Whenever I say a sentence like that, you shouldn't make it too seriously because I need to have borrow us or Israel. Wait a minute, you don't understand what bull had in mind. I'm giving you my current thinking. Okay, so, so I think a lot of philosophy. So I think you need states of affairs to get at possibilities for the world. And you need propositions to get at representations of what people are thinking or saying. And so we have, we have circumstances and facts and non facts and we have propositions and truths and falsehoods now. I'm really giving you the, either the cutting edge or the blunt edge of my. That's all right. But how did you get it? Yeah. So how did you get into this kind of work? In the situations and attitudes. Yeah. Well, I, I, once I got to Stanford, I was a UCLA from 1968 1974 and I went to Stanford 1974. And I came with tenure because those were different times. And two years later I was chairman. Mm hmm. And after being chairman for a year or two, I hired bar wise. Because Doug Gabbay left and we needed a logician. And then what once bar wise, and I got here, I didn't get to know him very well until it turned out that one quarter we were both giving seminars. And in my seminar, I was worried about self knowledge and I and things like that. And, and I was really saying, we need something like states of affairs. To, to, to be the objects of beliefs. And something like captain, you know, called Deiret or somebody called Deiret propositions and so forth and so on. But but. But And, and, but, but Fred had argued that circumstances or states affairs cannot be what sentences referred to. Bar wise was talking about what he called naked infinity perception statements. That's like I'm saying JJ is the Pacific from his office. Not, not that JJ sees that the Pacific Ocean is there. Not, not a that clause. But just what's called a naked infinitive. Or so so we got a number of verbs that that don't take that clauses, a number of cognitive informational action verbs that don't take that clauses typically so they're not propositional. They don't seem propositional so and so so borrow I was particularly interested in in in perception verbs. Let's see JJ sees the spider crawling up his leg. It doesn't follow from that the JJ speeds sees that there is a spider crawling up its leg. This is all related to dress keys work on on information. So that's, and borrow I said to get at how naked infinity perception reports work. You, you have to have. You can't bring in sense because it's not sees that. You can't get by with the truth value. You really need to have a state of affairs. It shows for some information like shows. The trail of blood on the ground shows that the corpse was pulled out of the office. Sorry, not a very happy. Now, you know, there is a shows that but there also is a shows that that seems to not be happy with a that clause. So he was convinced mostly for the perception case but also for the information case that you can't just have truth values as a reference. And both of us in our seminars were were dealing with an argument that Freya came up with, or possibly church. He suggested church articulates it. That we call the slingshot. We call it a slingshot because Davidson uses it against Reichenbach. So this is a slingshot argument, right? Yeah, so this is a case of a very small person Davidson using a very small weapon the slingshot, trying to play a giant. Okay, that's why we're calling it. Okay, Reichenbach was a giant. And Reichenbach believed in states of affairs. And so did Carnap in one version of his book which church criticize anyway so there's a slingshot, and we found over lunch one day that we were both considering the slingshot in our seminars, which is kind of a coincidence. And that got us started we decided to write a paper together on the slingshot. And then we ended up writing a book together about situations and attitudes. And, you know, Okay, so did this inform much of your philosophical views or is it the other way around so you started with the self the notion of self knowledge. No, I was, I was drawn into this part of the fly. I was very interested in Frege as a graduate student mostly about identity, not so much propositional attitudes and all that stuff. But then I got involved in the self. When I got to UCLA. The chairman there was Don Kalish. Who like Richard Montague was a student of Tarski's from Berkeley. And wait a minute. No, I'm miss. I miss. So, I thought he was the other night went to Stanford and past soupies was there. Old and incredibly distinguished person. Supe's is that the pronunciation. I always thought it. Yeah, Patrick Supe's are not everybody. That's the way he pronounced it. So he called me into his office. I'm scared to death. He's the most, you know, one of the biggest important philosophers ever met. And he says, Okay, Perry, we've hired you. What did you do? I say, Oh, well, I think I do philosophy of language. You don't do philosophy of language. I said, Well, I mean, I'm not a logician because like Richard Montague is a logician. But I'm really interested in language. So I think of myself as a philosophy language is none. Church is a logician. Arskie is a logician. Montague is a philosopher of language. Language. You're, you don't know not logic to be a Kaplan or Montague. So you're not a philosopher of language. I said, Hmm, well, could I be a phenomenologist. I don't know, you can't be a phenomenon. We've got a phenomenon. It's Dagfen Falastal. And he's editor of the Journalist Symbolic Logic. Very logic oriented, please. And I said, Well, what am I going to be? And he said, Well, why don't you say that you specialize in the self. I'm not a philosopher of the self. Yeah, anyway, so, but then at the same time, we're influenced by Kaplan who got into demonstrators and indexicals. So I kind of put those interests together and came up with some views about the self and the word I got a lot of attention and kind of define who I was going to be for a while. And that was what led me to do this seminar. And to kind of combine Kaplan's theory and Cassiniata's insights and Frege and Shoemaker. And I was finding I just couldn't do that without states of affairs. So it was kind of a combination of both things. So what's your view to your views about the self personal identity and identity. So your work seems to be a shout out of Gottlob Frege's view. So what's your view about identity. Well, when I was writing my dissertation. Peter Geach, the man I admire very much had put forward a view called relative identity. In spite of being a big Frege admirer, his theory of relative identity was was a criticism of Frege. You said Frege thought there was this relation identity, transitive and whatever, you know, reflexive and whatever, and that, you know, any, anything in itself is related. Anything is related to itself by the relation of identity the same for all things whether it's the number four is identical to number four. Or, you know, Cicero is identical with Tully or whatever it is. And Geach very excitedly says there's something wrong here because, you know, when numbers the relation between the number four and the number two plus two doesn't have anything to do with space and time or anything like that. The relation between the relation personal identity has a lot to do with, with minds and space and time and so forth he says, so I really need to recognize lots of different identity relations relative identity. And in my dissertation I said no, Geach doesn't have it quite right. The different relations are what I call the unity relations. These are relations between the parts or phases of a single thing. And that's what differs from kind of object to kind of object. So about personal identity, you're talking about the identity between different stages of what we call a single person. Okay, so this is this distinction between synchronous and diachronic or. I think that's Carnab's phrases. So, so, so, you know, take your office. Now, you know, you got two walls your office, they're different walls. There's a relation between them that make them walls of the same office. Take two parts of a factory maybe separate buildings. But still, they're different buildings but they're parts of the same factories. So I said you have to distinguish identity which is a relation just like Fraga said, a relation that everything, anything has to itself. It's a relation between the vulnerability and substitution. And the relation between the temporal or spatial parts of that thing if it's a concrete object. Such that makes them parts or stages of the same thing. What makes as cases of relative identity are really cases of referring to different things, not using different relations of identity. Yeah, I should be able to give a good example right now but let's see can I think of a good example. Well I say something's you say look at something on you look at a couple of letters. And I'm looking at your thing. Jeremiah, Jovan walking. So we got three days or do we, we have one letter that occurs three times or do we have three letters that are importantly related. Well, he said well that's already by the end of you got the same J type but different J tokens. And I said well, yeah, but also when you say this J. This letter is the same as that letter pointing to two different occurrences of J. Or you say this letter isn't the same letter as that letter. The problem isn't different kinds of identity the problem is what you're referring to. Right. Anyway, so that was a paper that at the time received a lot of attention got me two jobs first the job at UCLA. And then a job with tenure at Stanford a couple years later. Those were that was a different period. Okay, so how did it influence your views about personal identity. Well, then I began to think that so personal identity I want to interpret it personally in these terms this wasn't part of this rotation but later. So how can I make sense of the insights of Locke and shoemaker about personal identity. The insights of Kaplan about the way the word I works. And, you know, Parfit's well actually Parfit and I wrote about same time but cases of splitting cells with shoemaker had talked about and Parfit was talking about. Well, I think I can do it in this framework if we distinguish between person stages and persons. And what we're doing when we try to analyze person identity is analyze the relation between person stages, or experiences or mental state phases whatever language you like that makes them stages or middle state phases of a single person. Right. And so that's then. Then I got thinking about persons and the self and where the word I fits in and came up with this theory of people called essential indexicality, although I call it. Yeah, so let's go there to your theory of essential indexicality, which you don't call that. It's not self knowledge right and you have an example about and smart can go there, can you expand on. Okay, all right. So, so essential index Kelly with is isn't saying that indexicals are essential to talk about thinking about self so I just wrote a third book on that called something. Reflexivity. Reflexivity I think that's your. I know I wrote a book called rethinking the essential indexicals mostly a critique of the Kaplan and Dever. But anyway, so, but that the phrase essential indexical became very popular, while the theory that I actually intended to be exposed was mostly ignored but anyway. So, but I came, I came to think, and this was connected with some of the thoughts in situations and attitudes that self knowledge is a very interesting phenomenon that is normally or paradigmatically expressed with the word on. The Kaplan theory. If I say, John Perry lives in Palo Alto and I say I live in Palo Alto. We're expressing the same proposition. The day where a proposition that John Perry lives in Palo Alto. Now this, this view of his has two sides to it on the one side. It's extending to indexicals the view that the now on and grippy and others had come to regarding reference. The reference doesn't work the way Freda thought it did with the stereo sense and reference. It's, it's, it's, it's got a different account usually a historical account. And the propositions we express in propositional attitude statements when I say, JJ believes John Perry lives in Palo Alto. JJ, JJ believes you talking to me I believe JJ says I believe you live in Palo Alto express the same day Ray or singular proposition. Right, right. Okay, so Kaplan was extending that index. On the other hand, he did not think the theory of reference for indexicals was at all simple away the kind of historical chain theory for names. So he thought indexicals had unlike proper names is kind of a robust meaning. They look up in a dictionary. And that's the character. And so, so, probably essential indexical was, as I can see it was that if I say, I live in Palo Alto, you say, how come you're so worried about farce I live in Palo Alto and California's on fire. I won't explain the same thing if it's like a well John Perry lives in California in Palo Alto and California's on fire. The eye seems to play an essential role in explanation. And names don't. Right. You have to argue a bit. You have to bring in some grice, but pretty much by that time, Kripke and then Ellen and Kaplan and all convinced themselves and most of the rest of us that no singular names give a singular propositions. They don't really have senses. They're rigid designators basically are rigid designators. Yeah. And that sentence doesn't work for I because, because the difference between I live in Palo Alto and he lives in Palo Alto, pointing to a picture of myself. It does play an important role. It's it's it's explanatory there is essentially explanation so that was where the phrase came from wasn't there essential to thinking, but essentially explanation. So that's the kind of you have been working on for a long time and it's in that book that you've got there personal identity, personal identity itself. And an important notion is, is the theory of self knowledge that some states are normally self informative. Right. There's always a perfect perceiving or normally self informative. So, well, the best examples are not only are not always the most polite ones. But we'll set your nation aside, which is a wonderful example. If, if Jeremiah JJ has a headache. Then he will know that he has a headache. And he will know it in a certain way. And it seems like it's the same way that I know if I have it. So that seems like at a high enough level of abstraction to similar to Kaplan's notion of a character. Right. Right. I is a self referential way of referring. The only thing we have a headache is a self informative way of knowing. And we also have self affecting ways of acting. So if my head itches I do this. If your head itches you do the same thing. But you wouldn't bring about the same proposition. I bring it about the John Perry's head gets scratched scratch you bring it about that. JJ said he is scratched. There's self informative ways of knowing and self informative self affecting ways of action. And it occurred to me, well, this is really the basis of all evolution. Right. Because, you know, throughout most the animal kingdom, or even go, that's what you need. You need self informative knowledge that initiates automatically self affecting action. If you're a chicken and you see a Colonel corn in front of you, you'll walk to the Colonel of corn and peck. We will have acquired through perception knowledge about yourself. And that will have cause knowledge that are action and nourishes yourself. Now this formula is the same for all chickens. What a chicken does when that chicken sees. Colonel corn is the same as what every other chicken does simplify a little bit. But what it believes is different than any other chicken will believe in version of the same perception. But maybe we shouldn't talk about believe in the case of chickens. But we as theorists, not as chickens, but as theorists trying to figure out how chickens work. We need to talk about something like we say, well, the chicken picks up information about the very chicken. That's doing the perceiving about it. Yeah, and then it takes actions that will be good for the very chicken that's doing the perceiving. And we need to refer to the chicken to do that. We the theorists, but the chicken doesn't need to refer to the chicken. Of course. They can do exactly the same. They don't. This is why the essential index of it was so misleading if people interpret it that way. It doesn't need a name for itself and it doesn't even index it for itself. So I say the chicken has knowledge concerning itself. We the theorists need to give a propositional content to what it knows. Or if you don't like knows what it has some positive vaxxastic towards. And we have to explain between this chicken and that chicken when they're in the same perceptual state, but the chicken doesn't have to do that. So that that was one big connection between all the philosophy of language stuff and all the self stuff. And I think you still seems to me to be right very deep and I think I think it's up to some philosopher from the Philippines though to really work it out in detail. Yeah, yeah, right. So I'm thinking about your theory of self knowledge and how it demystifies the notion of we have a direct axis of ourselves. Yeah, I like that pretty demystified. Yeah, I think you use that phrase actually I'm just coding you. So how did this your theory of self knowledge demystified that notion of self. Well, the self is, you know, self knowledge. I mean the self is a historical philosophical problem going back to you know, Christians and pre Christians like Plato and so forth and it's just, it's, you know, it's a puzzling phenomenon. Those are very important to human being. And they had all kinds of demands on the self like by the time we get the Christianity itself has to get you from here to heaven or hell. And Descartes wants it to be immaterial and so forth and so on. But if we kind of ignore those things or you know, to the to the teacher in in in a Catholic school that is telling you about the Bible but then ignore them when you go to the philosophy class, which I'm sure what happens at your university. There are still some very puzzling things. But one of the central puzzles is the puzzle of how the same states in different systems carry different information. And yet, work in the same way. Right. This is connected with this problem that of so called internalism and externals. Right, right. It's very plausible that my brain is in a certain state and that's internal right it's not it's not relational right. On the other hand, my brain being in a certain state will cause me to perform certain actions. And those actions will be on external objects. And the success of my action will depend on what happens to those external objects. Right. So some people like so called neo fragrance think that well, you know, somehow your internal states somehow are individuated by external objects or something I never actually follow through on what they all believe. And, you know, some people like sir will have a little bit. But I think it's, it's, it's, it's an example of a very common philosophy in nature. I mean, think of Mother Nature. God gives her this assignment, you know, create 1000 species in an efficient way. And Mother Nature goes back so how am I going to do that. I mean, you know, here's here's JJ and he has to believe I'm in Manila. He has to believe that he is in Manila. And here is Perry and he has to believe that he's in Palo Alto. And yet Perry also to also believe that JJ is in Manila and JJ has to believe that Perry is in Palo Alto. Now, it looks like I'm going to have to create a lot of states. I'm going to have to create a state by which JJ believes that he's in Manila and the state by which JJ believes that Perry is in Palo Alto and the state by which Perry believes that JJ is in. And then but then those different states are going to have to connect in the right way to actions. Right, you know, we don't want JJ believes that Perry is in Palo Alto. We don't want JJ putting Palo Alto in the return address of his letters. That would be wrong. God being brilliant as well. Go read David Kaplan. Okay. Everything works out fine. Speaking of externalism, that's what we call efficiency in situations and attitudes. Oh, okay. Going back to internalism and externalism, there's a related debate concerning free will and determinism. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'm just kidding in my lighter. I'm pleased that you'd heard of that. Did you read the article or? Yeah, I actually read the article. So I think you're leaning towards a union compatibilist view in your human. Yeah, yeah, I'm working on the book now with the same title direction subterfuge. And it's both mostly aimed at the consequence argument, you know, Von Inwagen and those guys. And so, so the main argument, the main thing is the consequence argument and the main idea comes from Hume. No, you should say Hume. So, so Hume says, basically Hume says, okay, so, so we got two things can the word can and the word free. Okay. And Hume says, if you if you have a choice, you can do a or you can refrain from doing a. And what what causes you to do one thing than the other is your own will. Then you're free. Now, if you think about that. That that means a question or you're free in way abstracts from your will from the content of your will. Okay. So let me give you an example that that's kind of crude but it makes the point right. Suppose I'm walking down a path between Palo Alto and the Baylands, which is San Francisco Bay. And I come to a fork in the past. And there's a sign that says to Palo Alto. Another sign that says to Mountain View. Okay, so let's apply. Hume's theory. I mean, it's two sentences. So it's not really there. I go to Mountain View. Can I walk to Mountain View? Yes. Walk. Well, if I can walk. And if the path goes to Mountain View. Then I can walk to Mountain View. I mean over. The ability to go there. Yeah, the ability to go there. And similarly, if I want to forget about wanting. If I can, I can also walk to Palo Alto. Because of the path leads to Palo Alto and I can walk. I need a few little extra things. So can doesn't have anything to do with what you want. Right. It doesn't matter what you want. I mean, you know, you know, we have a group of people, they come to the fork in the road, half of them want to go to Palo, half of them. I want to go to Palo Alto. Half of them want to go to Mountain View, but they all can go either place. Right. So their will, their desires, all that shit. Will cause them to do one or the other. But have nothing to do with it. They can do one or the other. They can do one or the other. But they can do one or the other. There's a lot of competencies to walk and. And the external world. Hmm. So. Now, if you think about. The consequence argument. Are you familiar with the consequence argument? Yes. The basic ideas are, well, you have the beginning of the world and then you have this. and the other countries don't talk about cause. They talk about entailment, but that's the other side of the problem. So, and these causal chains will lead to half of the people being in a state where if they think it over and they'll liberate the determinations there will be to walk them out of you. And the other stuff will same with Palo Alto. But they all can do exactly the same thing. That's Schoon's insight. Now, the fact, since their will, their desires and so forth, that's gonna end up deciding what they do, doesn't have anything to do with what they can do, then the history of all that has nothing to do with what they can do. The history of the universe and the loss of nature. The history of the universe is, you know, it's very weird that you can't do through if it is and it's very weird that whether I'm gonna go to Palo Alto or Mountain View depends on something about the Big Bang or God's mood at the time of creation. That's very weird, don't deny that it's weird, but still, the fact that I can go to Mountain View and I can't go to Palo Alto, that's a property I share with all the other people in the group as different as their histories are. The history will determine what they do, but it won't determine what they can do. Now, that's what I call Hume's Wretched Subterfuge because that's what Kant called Hume's Wretched Subterfuge. Right. It seems to me to be true. And if you follow it through, you'll see, ah, the consequence argument always depends on this transition between I can't change the past and I can't change the laws of nature. Therefore, I can't do anything other than I was determined to do. Right. And that's just not right. The laws of nature and the past have nothing to do, well, I mean. You have something to do with what you can. It's not determined what I can and can't do. Right. So to walk the Palo Alto, I can walk the Palo Alto. I can walk the Mountain View. I will walk the Palo Alto because that's where I want to go because I have an appointment there. I like the appointments, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So determinism guarantees that I will walk the Palo Alto. But you're still free. But that's what I mean. I can't walk the Mountain View. Right, right. So this is the so-called classical compatibilist, right? So you're preserving the idea that you're free so long as you could have done otherwise. But, Well, except that's a conditional analysis. Right, right. And it's what Jim suggests. And that's what Moore tried to make work. And that's what Austin criticized. My analysis is not conditional. Oh, okay. It's completely categorical. Oh. It has to do with the fact that, let's put you there instead of me. So here you are. You can walk the Palo Alto. You can walk the Mountain View. Why? Objective fact, there's a path. Right. Second objective fact, you have legs. You can walk. Yeah, well, yeah. I try to avoid the word can, but I say you have the unimpaired competence to walk. Okay, better. You've got your legs at muscles. You're not in chains and so forth and so on. So those are all categorical facts. They're not conditional facts. So my analysis is very much like the traditional compatible analysis, except it doesn't have the securities teal of depending on conditional. All right. Yeah. And that's good because conditionals, well, everybody has been talking about conditionals with me and I haven't worked out my view. Okay. I just want to press something on this one as well because your beliefs and desires might be determined as well by the history of the universe. Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. But to me, my view that I'm working on the book, that leads to a different problem that is now confused with the problem of freedom and determinism, I mean, with the problem of freedom and determinism, which is the problem of free will. Oh, okay. So suppose I convince you of Hume's rigid subterfuge and I convince you that therefore the consequence argument doesn't work. But it'll be a very natural thing to say, okay, okay. So let's call it human freedom. I've got human freedom to walk either way because I can walk either way in which I do will be determined by what I want to do. But isn't that a pretty superficial kind of freedom because how about what I wanted? That itself is, whether or not it's a requirement for can, it is something that is determined by the past and the laws of nature. So don't we want more out of freedom than human freedom? Right. Now, my view is the answer is yes, we do. But this is an important different problem because this problem in here, it's all kinds of stuff from Plato and Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas and historic debates about whether we're free just like Adam was before the fall. We're not free like Adam was before the fall. And we got, you know, we got, what's his name? St. Augustine arguing with Pelagius. We got Luther arguing with Erasmus. And guess who doesn't want to write a book about us? Okay. I taught it for years, that's enough. But the point is it's a problem ultimately if you don't think it's a problem if you're not worried about Christianity and making everything work. It's basically still a problem. It's a problem about we just don't feel like we're part of a natural world. We don't feel that our decisions are determined by the laws of nature in the same way that if a tree has cut down, it will fall or if a wind blows the leaves, we don't feel like that's us. We feel like there's something much more important going on. The cell foot 12 or Adam might as well be the soul. And then we can get to heaven. And that's for a company argument. But I don't deny the intuitions. The intuitions are something like agent causation. And so I say, well, I believe in agent causation, but I don't believe what Shisham said about agent causation. I believe what Janan Ismail says about agent causation. Well, she doesn't use the term, but she has a book, I don't know, do you know her? It's a great book called How Physics Makes Us Free. And it just points out that many of the intuitions that lead to the problem of free will are based on very natural things to think about the difference between selves and minds like we have. And what the rest of the natural world has. But it turns out that they can't be given a naturalistic explanation for 90% of it. If somebody thinks, well, to have free will, you have to be the ultimate source. The values and characters, well, sorry, that's hopeless. Yeah, I think that's a Galen-Strausson argument. Yeah, although Galen, he doesn't think we have that kind of free will. Yes, that's why we don't have free will. If that's what free will requires, then we don't have it. But I think that the intuitions and the evidence we have for free will, which I think is quite real. I mean, in a moment of moral decision, we don't feel determined, we feel, you know, but I think Janan Ismael gives us a way of looking at agent causation as a very special kind of causation that is not incompatible with event causation, but it's a very, very special case of it that we can now understand in terms of contemporary physics. Anyway, that's how I hoped in my book, but I haven't figured it out yet, so. I wonder how Harry Frankfurt's higher order. Yeah, so what I actually say is my theory of free was a combination of Frankfurt and Ismael. Yeah, right, yeah. I'm actually writing something on Ismael. Oh, are you? Yeah, her paradox of predictability, I think, that's the... Okay, is that in her book on...? I think so, it's in part of her book, but there's also... Yeah, can you have this program that makes you choose whatever you're not determined to do? Yeah, is that it? I'm glad you're writing about that because I read that chapter and I said, oh, oh, this is over my pay grade. Okay, okay, now, let's go to your more popular views. So Philosophy Talk has been one of my inspirations in getting into philosophy. I have to tell you this. So when I was younger in the undergraduate, I was listening to your show via online philosophy podcast and I was hooked, but how did it...? That is so true, it makes me so happy, thank you. But how did you start with this program and what was your motivation in doing it? Well, the true story goes like this. Back before the turn of the century, I started listening to a show called Car Talk on public radio. Have you ever listened to Car Talk? Nope, we don't have that here. Now, Car Talk was these two guys back in Boston and people would call in with problems about their car and say, well, you know, my differential doesn't work and I went to my mechanic and he said I should have it all replaced, but my neighbor says, no, go to a different mechanic because you don't need to have it all replaced, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then these two guys who were brothers were very funny and they would talk to the person about their car and they would give them good advice, but they did it in such a way that it's great personalities that it was hilarious. So I was listening to that and I said, well, you know, well, you know, I'm not as funny as those guys. You are. I will. And, but philosophy is so much more interesting than cars. I mean, I grew up fixing cars. You know, I grew up owning a Model A. Do you know a Model A is 1929 Ford. I know a lot about cars. I find cars very interesting, but not nearly as interesting as philosophy. And so if there could be a show, car talk that managed to get people to listen to cars for an hour, because it was funny, we should be able to get a show that talked about philosophy for an hour and it wouldn't have to be quite as funny. And there's all these people out there, you know, there's not much on public radio about philosophy. I mean, you know, there's shows on history and art and all kinds of stuff. So I thought that was a great idea. So I went to my friend, David Israel, because David and I are very funny together. And I thought we could be as funny as Tom and Ray or whatever their name was. Or funny enough that they were listening to philosophy and cars could compensate. And David says, as he often says to my ideas, that's really stupid. I wouldn't touch that with a Ted Lutpol. So then I went to my friend, Michael Bratman and he said about the same thing. Yeah, this one is the political philosopher, right? Michael Bratman. Yeah, political philosopher of action. Very nice guy, old friends. So then I hired Ken Taylor because in one of my senses, chairman. Ken and I got to know each other and so I brought the idea up to Ken expecting one more turn down. And Ken said, oh, that's terrific. Let's do it. But Ken, unlike me, is not a procrastinator. 10 days later, he had $100,000 from the provost to develop the idea. And a week and a half later, we were in Portland going to the National Public Radio Conference. And Ken induced a radio producer, Ben Manila, to work with us. So we were really starting and I thought to myself, hey, this was my idea. Do I feel bad that Ken's taking it over? No, not because he is gonna take this and run with it and it's gonna be terrific. And I just need to show up every Sunday morning and that's the way it was. So he really made the show but I still want to get a little credit. It was originally my idea and I think I added something. And his dying was just such a tragedy. I'm sorry about that as well. Well, I should say, then I took it to someone who actually was an old acquaintance of mine, a friend of a friend, who was the program director at the most important public radio station in San Francisco, KQED. And interestingly, she and I, she had been married to a philosopher. You know, years earlier. And I gave her the idea and she was not enthused. And she just couldn't believe that philosophy could be that interesting. But then we took it to the second radio station, KALW, and they said, okay, let's go with it. And at the same time, Oregon Public Broadcasting to Ben Manila knew the people. They also said, we think it's a good idea. So we started out on those two stations. And you know, now we've got, you know, what over a hundred, maybe 200 stations. And I'm sure the people over KQED just wake up every morning and say, oh, we could have had philosophy time. And you're on the internet. That's why, you know. Yeah, and I'm only on now on reruns and occasionally we've got now two other guest hosts or two other hosts and they're doing really well. A guy named Josh Landy and a fellow named Rachel Briggs. No, Ray Briggs. No, Ray Briggs, yeah. I'm, we're friends. Right. Right. Formerly Rachel Briggs, but now Ray Briggs. Unless I have a- R.A. Briggs. R.A. Briggs, really nice person. Right. Very great. And I think the show's in very good shape. Yeah. How do you know, how do you know Ray? So I was at the A&U, Australian National University with her. Okay, so speaking of procrastination, your work on procrastination has been featured in many popular media outlets as well. And you said that you are a procrastinator, but what's your positive twist on this otherwise negative nation? Well, I don't encourage people to procrastinate. It was not their natural. But for people made for who it is a natural inclination, I think some way in my life, I discovered a way of looking at it that makes you feel less guilty and more productive. And that is to say, that we always have a lot of things to do. And we can always rank them in terms of importance. And if you're a procrastinator, you may not have to just do none of them to be at peace with yourself. It may be okay to just not do the most important ones. But you're working on less important ones that are still of some value. So that's the basic idea, be a structured procrastination. And this doesn't mean that you should never do the important things, but you need to think it through. For one thing, a lot of things that seem most urgent really aren't because some Dean told you to do them. And by the time they're due, the Dean will have forgotten all about them. Some things you can throw together in the last minute. Like a book review or- Like a book review or something. And there's also this myth that all of us procrastinators believe that while we're procrastinating in the back of our mind, we're thinking over the tasks that we're procrastinating about. And so in the end, we do a better job. Now, unfortunately, I have a friend at the University of Ottawa who is actually a scientist who studies procrastination. And he says he has never been able to find evidence for that. But anyway, I still believe it. So I'm not increasing people procrastinate. I'm saying if you are procrastinating, if you're a structured procrastinator, you get a lot done and, you know, you won't be the worst person in the world. Okay, so I heard that your book, The Art of Procrastination is a best seller now. Is that true? Well, it depends on what you mean by the word now. It actually made the New York Times best seller list, but not the top 10 that they published, but the top 20. That's what I heard. Yeah. Yeah, so I was very happy with that. And I never intended to write it, but then an agent, so I had written an essay a long time before. Yeah, structured procrastination in the website as well. And I won the ignoble prize. The ignoble prize is a prize I forget exactly how it's defined, but it's basically for writing something funny. It's of some value. So I won the ignoble prize, so it doesn't bring any money with it. And he happened to read this guy, an agent in New York, and he wrote me and said, well, if I could get a short book out of this, he was sure he could get it published and it might sell well. Well, I have 10 grandchildren, and I wanted to pay all their fees, tuition and everything through college, which is not so trivial in America these days. So I thought, well, here's a chance to earn some money that will help with that. So it compared to any book of mine. It is the best seller. It's been translated into like 22 languages. And the amazing thing is that it's still a best seller in China. And I never thought of the Chinese procrastinating. I mean, I think we'd all be better off if they procrastinated a little more, but it wasn't really caught on there and still sells well. I just got a check for the Lithuanian rights. Okay, so given your media exposure, do you consider yourself as a popularizer of philosophy? Philosophy, social media influencers, so to speak? Well, yes and no. I think I've done my best as a teacher and then on a radio. And working on this introduction book with Michael Bratman and John Fisher and through the three dialogues I've written, to make philosophy accessible to people that have some natural bent and interested in philosophy. So I'd give myself a lot of credit for that. As to my own views, I haven't put a lot of effort into making them popular. I've put a lot of effort into making them not be rejected out of hand. But I'm fairly well known, but I wouldn't say my views are popular. At the first level, I think they're right. At the higher level, I think, oh, well, I couldn't be right or Plato and David, those are wrong. But I mean, the popularization is just kind of happened. I've never set out to be a popularizer. You ever read Will Durant's book, The Story of Philosophy? Yes, I did. That is a great book. Yep. I've never set out to write anything like that. But who knows? Okay, so on a more personal note, you've been an academic philosopher for most of your life. You've seen all there is to see in this career from being a lowly assistant professor to being a distinguished professor. So you've been really out there. So to say more to Meredith's professor. But what's your advice to those who want to get into philosophy or those who want to get career in doing philosophy? Well, the best advice is a bit impractical is to somehow change things. So you were born in 1943. Okay. When I was getting my PhD, the children of baby boomers, that is the baby boomers, not the children of baby boomers, but the baby boomers, the children of GIs freshly back from World War II. Well, a lot of them, they were coming of age, they were going to college and they were in a faculty teaching. So for a while there, it wasn't that hard to get an academic job. And that's, if you're a war baby, then you were just enough older to get in on that. And that's why I got a job at UCLA with one article published. Or maybe it wasn't even quite published, I don't know. And then got a job at Stanford with two articles published. Attend your indecision at that. Yeah. Now, there's no hope of doing that now. And that's too bad. Now you have to have more publications than I had to get a tenure to get a job. On the other hand, there's still some jobs out there. And there's some backups. Now it's a philosophy major does better on the LSATs, the things you need to get into law school than any other discipline. As a matter of fact, philosophy majors do better on the MCATs than most pre-meds. That's interesting. No, it's probably not quite true, but it's based on something that's close to true. I used to figure out all these things when I had the... So to be an undergraduate philosophy major is not to preclude you from doing anything for a living except philosophy. The same goes for getting an MA in philosophy. Means you'll be a little older by the time you get to law school or medical school or business school. Philosophers do very well on whatever those are too. And so you do your best as a philosophy major, write a philosophy thesis and then see what happens. If you don't get into a PhD program, that's a pretty good side. Maybe just philosophy should be your hobby. You get into a good PhD program. There's a good chance eventually you'll get a job. However, you should realize that if you want to be a professional philosophy philosopher, you have to kind of be willing to live wherever you end up getting a job. That's right. I mean, I would have been perfectly happy to go back to Lincoln, Nebraska. That's kind of all I ever thought I would do, but so I ended up in California where everybody wants to be here, at least until recently. And if you're gonna go in for a four or six year stint of getting a PhD, you need to get girded for the fact that you may end up in Nebraska or Kansas or Calgary, rather than Harvard or Manila or Palo Alto. But that's not the end of the world if you can do philosophy. You have to feel that passion about it. And if you feel that way, then I think it's still a very reasonable place to aim for. Okay, it's the career worth it. Would you say that your career is worth it? Well, I've been pretty happy with my career and I've got three children, 10 grandchildren have been married for 58 years or something. So I would say that's all worked out pretty well. Another problem in philosophy these days is, you know, you're gonna spend four years with a group of, or six years getting PhD with a group of other chances of you falling in love with one of them is pretty good. Then you kind of have to find a place where you can both work. So it's not easy. If you can fall in love with, you know, somebody getting a PhD in something a little more marketable or maybe a lawyer or, you know, an entrepreneur who can move around where you move around, that's much better. So I wouldn't give people that advice. They say, don't fall in love with your guy who met in my seminar. I mean, for Christ's sakes, you'll end up, you know, anyway, but no, I think it's a wonderful, you meet a lot of interesting people. Decent percentage of which are very nice people. You get to deal with the world's most interesting problems. I think you get to do a lot of good in the sense of philosophy is a very good thing for undergraduates to learn. So you're doing good teaching them philosophy and you're doing good teaching graduate students who will be able to go on and teach more undergraduate philosophy. It isn't exactly being an oncologist. People from cancer, there's no doubt about that. But I don't have the physical coordination to surgery or the mental capacity to learn medicine. And, you know, like right now, I mean, I think I could be a very good speech writer for Joe Biden. Okay, are you advertising? No, but, you know, I have ideas and sometimes they drive me crazy. Like the American Constitution, like third sentence is it's job of federal government to provide for the general welfare. Nobody ever quotes that. And Republicans call you a socialist and then you don't know what to say. You don't need to say, I'm not a socialist or you just need to say, I read the constitution and I try to abide by it. Whether you call it socialism or you call it, you know, there's nothing in the constitution about libertarianism and Rand was not a signer of the constitution, nothing in there about communism. There's nothing in there about socialism but there is this very one important sentence. It's the job of the federal government to ensure the general welfare. It's one of three jobs. The under is military. And I forgot what the third one is. Rights, I guess, yeah. So I could write great speeches and I even wrote some speeches and sent them to various people. They never paid any attention. So that's a little frustrating. But, you know, I'm living with it. Okay, so on that note, thanks again for sharing your time with us, Professor Perry. Well, I enjoyed it tremendously. So, I admire you for doing what you're doing and you're doing it without some super dynamo like Ken Taylor did all the work. So congratulations and thanks. Thanks. Okay, for you guys, join me again for another episode of Philosophy of What Matters where we discuss things that matter from a philosophical point of view. Cheers. I hope our physical path.