Heather Browning: What is it Like to be a Philosopher?

The APA blog is working with Cliff Sosis of What Is It Like to Be a Philosopher? in publishing advance excerpts from Cliff’s long-form interviews with philosophers.

The following is an edited excerpt from the interview with Heather Browning.

In this interview, Heather Browning, Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Southhampton, talks about growing up in Australia, working at the Auckland Zoo, becoming vegetarian, netball, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Scully and the X-Files, studying animal behavior at Australian National University, The Blind Watchmaker and Philosophy of Biology, bass clarinet, love, eliminativism, consequentialism, creating the ultimate sugar drink, Guitar Hero, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, working with Sterenly at Australian National University, the Global Priorities Institute, measuring well-being, the relationship between pleasure and health, the Foundations of Animal Sentience Project and the Animal Welfare Act, spending the pandemic at Notting Hill, Untitled Goose Game, Better Call Saul, Bentham, Chalmers, and pizza…

So, where did you grow up?

I was born and grew up in Canberra, on the east coast of Australia, and lived there until I was 24. A lot of people don’t like Canberra, I often hear it described as ‘boring,’ but for me, I liked the slightly small-town feel, and it had everything I wanted, plus plenty of kangaroos in the fields around town!

What was your family like?

My family was big! I have four sisters, so our house was always busy and there was always someone to play with. I’m the eldest and was lucky because that meant I got to have my own room to retreat to, while the others shared. I also have a very large extended family—my mother is one of six and my father one of four, and I had over 20 first cousins. Almost all lived in Canberra, so we had frequent large family gatherings. I’m very comfortable in that sort of quiet chaos.

We’d take a lot of big family trips—every two years my parents would pick a part of the country we’d never visited and plan a month-long holiday. We’d pack up the station wagon and the trailer with the camping gear and all the accessories you need for seven people over multiple weeks, and drive. Many of my childhood memories are of car rides with my family, the usual squabbling with my sisters, but also playing car games, and lots of singing. I always found it disappointing that I was too carsick to ever read though, it would have been a perfect time to get through extra books.

Sounds great. As a little kid, what were you interested in?

Books, more than anything else. I was an early reader and took a book with me everywhere so I could usually be found hiding out in a corner reading. Because I went through so many books, we had to visit the local library every week to stock up, and since any car trip with a huge family is an ordeal, as soon as my mum thought I was old enough (around 10) I got my own bus ticket so I could head to the library each Friday and fill my bag with books for the week. I’d come home and stay up late reading, often getting through more than one book in that first night. I also loved the local second-hand bookstore and my dad would take me occasionally, trading in his old books and letting me use the credit to pick out some for myself. My whole bedroom was dominated by shelves of books, and I have still kept some of my favorites.

I also loved animals. Hippos were always my special favorite, which is still true today, and one of my biggest regrets is that I never really got to work with them as a zookeeper. We didn’t have any pets until I was older, so I was simultaneously fascinated by and scared of most of the animals I did meet. My next-door neighbor had a gorgeous little sheltie, which is basically just a miniature Lassie, and I was obsessed with him but didn’t know how to deal with the usual canine excitement and jumping, so I’d end up hiding behind her. We also had several neighborhood cats who would visit our yard, who were very tolerant of us carrying and patting them, and served as de facto pets.

How were you similar to, and different from, the rest of your friends and family? 

My family are similar in many ways, particularly our intellectual leanings. We had a huge bookshelf next to the dining table, and many family dinners ended with one of the big reference books coming down so we could check some fact we were unsure about. We love trivia nights—highly competitive and with a range of different expertise, we do well as a family team. I was probably different in being more introverted, preferring to spend most of my time reading and writing on my own.

What did your parents do for a living?

When I was young, my father worked for the public service and my mother was a stay-at-home parent. Around the time I went to high school, they switched roles, so my dad stayed home and my mum went to work as a teaching assistant, helping kids with additional needs integrate into the classroom. I think raising so many of us gave her the perfect patience and understanding to work with other children.

As a teenager, did you enjoy school?

I did, largely because it was time I got to spend with friends, and I was often noisy in class, focused more on the social aspects. But I had quite an academically-minded friendship group, so the competition between us would keep me at my homework and my grades stayed up. I took it pretty seriously, and was quite frustrated when I ended up losing the top student award to someone else—it was because the physical education grades also counted and that was not one of my strengths.

Not into sports and whatnot?

I have always been absolutely terrible at sport—no hand-eye coordination. I couldn’t enjoy team sports because I always felt like I was letting the team down and I preferred the forms of exercise that can be done alone, like swimming. The one time in my adult life I tried joining a team ended fairly disastrously. I was working at the Auckland Zoo, and when a group of staff started up a netball team I decided to give it a go as it seemed like a good way to keep fit and be social. I didn’t have any sports shoes so for the first game, a friend lent me her spare pair and as it turned out, they were slightly too big. About 15 minutes into the first game I tripped on them and fell, breaking my wrist, requiring surgery and 3 months off work. At that point, I decided to stay away from those types of sport for good. More recently, I’ve started aerial sports—which are a form of gymnastics, or acrobatics, on suspended apparatus such as hoops or silks—and absolutely love it. I can build strength and challenge myself, without the stress of competition.

This interview has been edited for length. The full interview is available at What is it Like to be a Philosopher?

Clifford Sosis

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Cliff Sosis is a philosopher at Coastal Carolina University. He created, and in his spare time he runs What Is It Like to Be a Philosopher? in-depth autobiographical interviews with philosophers. In Sosis's words, "Interviews you can’t find anywhere else. In the interviews, you get a sense of what makes living, breathing philosophers tick. How one becomes a philosopher. The interviews show how our theories shape our lives and how our experiences influence our theories. They reveal what philosophers have in common, if anything, and what our goals are. Overall, the interviews give you a fuller picture of how the people who do philosophy work, and a better idea of how philosophy works. This stuff isn't discussed as often as it should be, I think, and these stories are extremely interesting and moving!" He has a Patreon page here and tweets @CliffordSosis.