Doing Things with Philosophy - beyond academia

Emilie Prattico

Development Director for a Climate Change Non-profit

Where and when did you study philosophy?

BA (Hons), Oxford, 2003; Ph.D, Northwestern University, 2013. 

What excites you about philosophy? 

Philosophy is a door onto some of the most exciting and enduring thoughts available to our society, which have passed muster of generations of critics and commentators. It’s like a fast pass to deeper understanding about our history, our existence, the natural world that is earned through dedicated work, consistent dedication, and a willingness to never to take one’s own positions for granted and to always question and revise them. 

More exciting even than that is the fact that the practice of philosophy helps us see beyond what is, to what is good, to what is desirable and to what is possible.  This has proved to be the most valuable upshot of a long education in philosophy. Daily in my career and in my personal life, I imagine a future rooted in scientific discoveries, aimed at creating a just world, guided by philosophical notions of freedom, civilization, and justice that I have spent years exploring. 

Could you tell me something about your current career?

My current job consists in raising funds for climate action and advocacy with a focus on the private sector as a part of the solution to the environmental predicament we are currently in. I approach this through the lens of the injustice that the current climate predicament causes and what is required to address it.

The job involves analyzing the role of the private sector in climate solutions, proposing ways in which the ambition of the private sector can be raised in this area, how policy environments could lead to unlocking even more company commitment to climate action, and most of all, seeking independent funding support so that this work can be carried out by mission-driven non-profit organizations. 

How does your philosophical training and formation help you in your current career?

All of the skills usually associated with a philosophical training serve me well on a daily basis: critical thinking, conceptual analysis, building strong arguments, intellectual curiosity, and the ability to question my own certainty. 

Even more important to my work, however, is being driven by notions of justice and integrity that I continue to develop as I continue my philosophical education outside of formal channels. Philosophy has taught me that we can aspire to a good life, and what is more to a good life for all – indeed that the latter may even be our duty. I am motivated by this view even as I must contend with aspects of my job that challenge my philosophical aspirations.

Alicja Gescinska

Novelist and public intellectual

What do you do?

I am a novelist and public intellectual. My non-fiction debut De verovering van de vrijheid (The Conquest of Freedom) was published in 2011 and combines autobiography with an analysis of the meaning of freedom. My debut novel Een soort van liefde (A Kind of Love, 2016) won the Flemish debut prize. I also made Wanderlust, a philosophical program for the Flemish Public Broadcaster. In it I talk with philosophers, writers, scientists and artists all over the world about the things that matter most in life and in their life.

Where and when did you study philosophy?

I studied (Ba and Ma) Moral Sciences at Ghent University (2003-2007), after which I obtained a grant to do research at Warsaw University. After that year, I started my PhD, again at Ghent University and became doctor of Philosophy in 2012.

What excites you about philosophy?

What excites me is the confrontation with thoughts that are not your own. I think the most essential quality of a good philosopher is the ability to listen (also in the sense of reading) to what others have to say, and to interrogate and examine not only the views of others, but also one’s own views.

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Oryan Wilson

Internet Entrepreneur

Where and when did you study philosophy? 

I studied Philosophy at Edinburgh University and won a Hamilton Philosophical Fellowship which enabled me to continue my studies at Oxford University where I wrote a thesis on the Concept of Time and gained a B.Litt. in 1963.

What excites you about philosophy? 

Originally I was interested in Philosophy because I enjoyed playing with ideas.  The biggest issue: “What is Philosophy?” I have just recently understood the importance of paradigms to science.  See www.highrosehouse.com.  My argument here leads to the conclusion that for the past 400 years philosophy has been mostly about trying to solve insoluble problems.  My discovery is that they were insoluble only relative to the Cartesian ‘ghost in the machine’ paradigm.  It follows that if we adopt a new paradigm, they may cease to be insoluble.  Paradigms, metaphors that inspire many explanatory and predictive hypotheses, are very rare but one has appeared recently.  

Could you tell me something about your current career? 

After lecturing in Philosophy for about ten years, I moved into commerce as a business and systems analyst and I am now an Internet entrepreneur.  

As an analyst, I had to understand the existing activities within a company or government department and then propose a new way of doing things in the light of current technology.  I specified the new processes and the computer system that would support them plus the business case (cost/benefit analysis) and a project plan.  

Specification of complex systems consists of several models where each one depicts the system from one point of view.  This is a good technique because it is self-correcting: each new model leads you to correct earlier ones.   You end up with a coherent whole.  

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Melissa MacAulay

Freelance Copy Editor

Where and when did you study philosophy? 

I finished my undergraduate at McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario) in 2007, and then my MA and PhD at Western University (London, Ontario) in 2010 and 2015, respectively.

What excites you about philosophy?

I began my undergraduate in English Literature, while taking elective courses in philosophy. I was excited by philosophy because it was the first time I’d realized that there was a whole community of people writing and thinking about things that had taken up so much time in my own head – Is death a bad thing? How does time pass? What is consciousness? How do I know if other people have it? etc. Not only that, but these people were writing and thinking about it seriously and rigorously, like scientists. So, inevitably, I took more and more philosophy courses, until I found myself in a PhD program. My PhD thesis, in a nutshell, was about whether or not time passes. I really think spending those years thinking and writing about this (to some, arcane) topic has had a huge impact on my general outlook on life.

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David Koepsell

CEO and founder of the software startup Encrypgen, LLC in Florida

Where and when did you study philosophy?
I studied law and philosophy at the University of Buffalo, in their joint law/PhD program from 1992 until 1997. I received my J.D. in 1995 and the Ph.D. in 1997. I started work as a full time lawyer right after I got my law degree and finished writing my dissertation in the meantime and then slowly, ever so slowly sought and eventually found full-time work in academia.

What excites you about philosophy?
I was mostly intrigued by the idea of clarifying the nature of the world around us through better understanding and use of terms and categories. In fact, this is something I felt had a natural nexus with law. As it turns out, a fair amount of law involves this process. I applied this method to my dissertation, The Ontology of Cyberspace, which was later published by Open Court, and my thinking about the objects of Intellectual Property law has informed much of my research ever since. I do, mostly, what we might call “legal ontology.”
Could you tell me something about your current career (describe your current job, and your career path. Please include some detail on what the job involves, what the day-to-day activities involve etc.)

I was an academic for about a decade, having done a number of adjunct, visiting, then eventually tenure-track work from about 2003 until 2014. I left a tenured, associate professor position in The Netherlands in 2014 to be with my family in Mexico, where my wife had just secured a plum position at their national center for genomic research. I took a bureaucratic job at the Mexican Commission of Bioethics, and continued to do some visiting research at Mexican Universities. I also have an adjunct position at the University of Buffalo in their Graduate Education program, though I now only guest lecture sporadically.

About a year and a half ago I had an idea about how to protect genomic data and still keep it available for use in science, as my wife and I had co-authored some articles and chapters on the problem of genomic data and privacy. I started thinking of the standard ways of disseminating this idea, and gave a lecture in Buffalo about it, and was approached by a software engineer who said I should just build the thing. Faced with the thought of spending years trying to fund and further research something I knew the specifications for, I decided to start a company and just “build the thing.” Now I am directing a team of developers, conferring with researchers in genomics, and have raised money to develop software that, I hope, will accomplish the ethical goals I had long written about. It is exciting, dynamic, and I am learning a hell of a lot while brining my background and interest in genomics, ontology, and ethics to bear on a real-world application.

How does your philosophical training and formation help you in your current career?

In the software world, logical thinking goes a long way, and so does some training in applied ontology. I have long written academically about the nature of property, ownership, and ideas as well as tokens, and now I am using my skills to “design for values” as it has come to be called in the world of philosophy of technology. Essentially, I am guiding specifications for a product that will incorporate ownership and control over genomic data so as to provide donors with previously legally and practically impossible power over their own genomic data. Designing for Values is an active research field at Delft University of Technology where I was a professor for 6 years, and I am putting it now to practical use outside the ivory tower.

What career advice would you give recent philosophy graduates?

I spent about 10 years after graduate school looking for a tenure-track job and never gave up. You need to be openminded and keep striving if that’s what you want. Meanwhile I engaged in a number of other careers, some satisfying, some not. Be open to that too, and if you find that job and enjoy it, stick with it. If you don’t there are so many other ways you can find to fulfill your creative needs. Don’t despair, mostly, and if that chance never comes, it isn’t the only way to enjoy life. You can do philosophy no matter what career you end up having. Right now, besides this company, I am raising two lovely children which turns out to be the most rewarding occupation I ever had, and from which I am learning so very much. Life is rich and full of surprises if you keep your options open and take opportunities as they come.