Volume V (2022)
agreement about which theory is true in science. For example, you will be laughed out of any
biology or anthropology department for saying that the biological taxa we see on earth today didn’t
originate from evolution. However, in contrast, there is significant disagreement among ethicists
about the truth-value of very basic moral claims. For example, Kantians say that enslaving a person
(in the moral sense) is always wrong, while consequentialists disagree.
MJ: How have you enjoyed your time teaching philosophy at an Ivy League institution? When you were younger, did you envision yourself as becoming a philosophy professor?
QS : Teaching at Penn is a privilege and a joy. It’s barely work. The students are highly motivated
and curious. They often push me to think deeper and more carefully about the issues in the course.
As for the second question, absolutely not. I envisioned myself as a professor when I was in high
school. I looked at the work lives of my principal investigators at Meharry and I liked what I saw.
In particular, when Professor Adunyah at Meharry (one of my mentors) left the lab for a week to go
“work” in Europe by attending a conference, and all on the college’s dime, I was infatuated with
the life of a professor. Of course, I thought I’d become a biochemistry professor, not a philosophy
professor, when I was in high school. In fact, in high school, I didn’t even know what philosophy
was. I didn’t learn about philosophy until college.
MJ: Thank you for giving the keynote address at the Tenth Mid-Hudson Valley Undergraduate Philosophy Conference. Some students are skeptical of the value of studying philosophy and instead pursue what they consider more practical majors. What do you consider the value of philosophy?
QS : Before I say what I consider the value of philosophy to be, I’ll say that studying philosophy
isn’t incompatible with not majoring in philosophy. In other words, one doesn’t need to major in
philosophy in order to study it, much like one doesn’t need to major in biblical studies in order to
study the bible. This segues nicely into my answer to your second question. Just like studying the
bible can make you a better person, I think that one major value of philosophy (and of studying it)
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