should study logic and philosophy of religion, as well as other areas of philosophy. And my brother was studying mathematics at the University of Pittsburgh. So, I thought maybe I could study in America as well. I can major in philosophy itself. But I didn't even know the difference between continental and analytical philosophy then. I just went to Stony Brook, where most philosophers were continental. But there were like three analytic philosophers there. So, I took courses taught by them mostly. They were particularly interested in philosophical logic, philosophy of computing, philosophy of language/linguistics. So that's how I started to study analytic philosophy. And for a while, I was mainly interested in philosophy of mind. So I wanted to study philosophy of mind as a graduate student. That was almost when David Chalmers published a book called “ The Conscious Mind ,” which was kind of a revolutionary book where he introduced the distinction between the hard problem of consciousness and the easy problem of consciousness. He basically developed a new way of approaching the philosophy of mind. And many other people like myself were very excited about exploring the philosophy of mind. And that is why I decided to specialize in the philosophy of mind. Then I wanted to study in Australia, because there are a lot of great philosophers of mind from Australia. Why did I decide to get into the philosophy of religion? I decided to focus on the knowledge argument against physicalism, so I worked with Frank Jackson and various other people there. Then I noticed that people often describe Mary, the protagonist in the knowledge argument, as a physically omniscient scientist. So, I decided to look up the literature on omniscience, and then I found that there were a lot of other discussions on omniscience. What can God know? If God is meant to be transcendental, can God know what it is like to be human, what it is like to be me? This is where I started to see some link between these issues of consciousness and issues of omniscience. I ended up writing a PHD thesis on omniscience, covering the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of religion. My Maximal God thesis came a little bit later. So, I wrote this PHD thesis on omniscience, and then I wrote several small papers on issues in the philosophy of religion, and then I kind of shifted my focus from philosophy of mind to philosophy of religion. Then I thought if I want to discuss God, first I have to understand the
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