Michael Kirley is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. His primary research interests are in the philosophy of action. He also has interests in moral psychology, normative ethics, and ancient philosophy.
What excites you about philosophy?
The questions people care most about are philosophical in character, and nothing is really off-limits as an object of philosophical inquiry. I think this is because philosophical inquiry always starts with the actual puzzlement of some actual person. I find this really liberating, since it means that philosophy doesn’t presume which questions are worth investigating, nor what the fruits of its inquiry will look like. The fact that you don’t understand something is grounds enough for investigating it. You might not like the answers you find, and you might not answer every question you ask, but philosophy will never condemn you for asking. It’s exciting to be able to ask questions and have them taken seriously. As children, we’re always asking questions, often without much regard for propriety. As we age, we settle into familiarity and ask fewer questions. We still have questions, still desperately want to know things, but no longer feel at liberty to ask. Philosophy freely accepts our ignorance and meets us where we are. It takes our desire to uncover the truth seriously.
What are you working on right now?
I’m working on my dissertation, in which I aim to develop and defend a novel conception of intentional action as a distinctive form of cognition. More specifically, I argue that to act intentionally is to know—in a distinctively practical way—what one is doing. Elizabeth Anscombe made the same claim, but despite her enormous influence on the philosophy of action, and in spite of recent efforts to decode her cryptic remarks on so-called “practical knowledge,” it never gained widespread acceptance. I argue that this is a sign, not that Anscombe was barking up the wrong tree, but that we need to come up with a new way into the topic of practical knowledge, which I then go on to outline and pursue. What emerges from all this is an appealing account of intentional action that can naturally accommodate related phenomena like intending and trying.
If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?
I have often thought about this and have come to the conclusion that I would be better off not asking anything about my own future (I don’t like spoilers). Depending on the rules, I’d probably ask something like, “What is the most important thing I should know that I will not ultimately regret knowing?” But maybe that’s cheating.
What do you like to do outside work?
I like working out, chess, playing the piano, and writing fiction.
What is your favorite book of all time? (Or top 3). Why? To whom would you recommend them?
It’s so hard to pick just three. In no particular order: In Search of Lost Time (Proust), The Idiot (Dostoevsky), and the Divine Comedy (Dante). I began reading Proust in grad school at the behest of a dear friend and was immediately taken with his introspective style and rich psychological insight. I love The Idiot mainly for the titular character, Prince Myshkin, an utterly good but basically naïve/ineffectual person. I’ve always seen him as a tragic figure rather than a cynical indictment of pure-heartedness. Even though Dostoevsky does give us a sort of superior or “perfected” version of Myshkin in the character of Alyosha from The Brothers Karamazov, which is probably the better novel as far as artistic merit goes, The Idiot will always have my heart. Lastly, the Divine Comedy is simply beautiful, grand, and impossible to summarize. It’s a very difficult read, but well-worth the effort. There are lots of excellent poetic translations, but I recommend getting one with that also has the Italian text so that you can try to get a sense of the wonderful rhythm of the original.
What are you reading right now? Would you recommend it?
The Leopard, by Giuseppe di Lampedusa. It’s set in Sicily during the Italian unification. It’s cleverly written and (at least for me) oddly consolatory. I would definitely recommend it!
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Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall is an editor at the Blog of the APA who currently teaches philosophy, religion, and education courses solely online for Montclair State University, Three Rivers Community College, and St. John’s University.
