APA Member Interview: Shaun Gallagher

The APA Blog is publishing excerpts from Cliff Sosis’s long-form interviews with philosophers, which appear at his blog, What Is It Like to Be a Philosopher? The excerpts below are from an interview originally published on October 27, 2025 and reprinted with permission from Cliff Sosis.

In this interview, Shaun Gallagher, Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis, talks about growing up in Philly, Catholic school, summer on the Jersey shore, considering becoming a cowboy (or philosopher), JFK, Janis Joplin, studying theology as an undergrad at St. Columban’s, Vietnam and institutional religion, bad faith and existentialism, a stint as a private detective, pursuing his PhD at Bryn Mawr, summers in Ireland (where his parents were from), working with José Ferrater-Mora, Merleau-Ponty, becoming more aware of the relevance of science, his first publication, getting eight interviews at the APA smoker and one job offer, phenomenology, cognitive science, and the value of interdisciplinary approaches, embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive cognition, what drives him, Parmenides, and the meaning of life…

What was your earliest memory?

The ticking of an alarm clock next to my bed—or so I think. Memory is tricky. I think it may be odd that it’s an auditory memory. But I sometimes think this could be a reason for my philosophical interest in time.

Where did you grow up? What did your parents do, and what was your family like?

I was born and grew up in Philadelphia—West Philly and the western suburbs. I lived there until I went off to college in Wisconsin.

My parents were immigrants from Ireland. They had very little formal education. My father was a farmer, fisherman, and construction worker before he came to the US. After working as a grave digger for a couple of years in Philadelphia he got a job on the night shift in a factory where they printed the Saturday Evening Post. He also worked as a landscaper. He worked two jobs for most of his life, leaving for the factory around 3pm, getting home after midnight, getting up in the morning around 6:30 to go out landscaping. My mother worked part-time doing domestic work for rich families on the Philadelphia Main Line. This, it seems, was better than being poor in rural Ireland, or getting temporary jobs in the UK. When I was 13 they took me “home” to Ireland for a month, to the place where they came from, and I was shocked at how beautiful it was. It must have been a real culture shock for them moving to a big city like Philadelphia.

They came to Philadelphia because they had brothers and sisters already living there. The whole family were hard-working, blue-collar and very Catholic. My sister and I, and our cousins all went to Catholic schools, went to Mass every Sunday. We would spend part of the summer holidays at the Jersey shore (South Jersey)—aunts, uncles, cousins all getting sunburned on the beach. That was before there was sunscreen.

As a little kid, what do you think, or what did others think, made you unique?

I don’t think I thought of myself as unique, and no one told me I was unique. In school I excelled in geometry, but not so much in algebra. In grade school I always did well in religion class.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

A cowboy, a fireman, a private detective, an engineer, a priest, a philosopher—in that order.

Nice. Favorite classes or teachers in high school?

Geometry yes; algebra no. Calculus was strangely okay. My English teacher got me interested in civil rights. One of his assignments was to go to a CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) meeting in Philadelphia to interview activists and report back. And my Latin teacher declared one “philosopher’s holiday” every semester where he would teach us about philosophy—mainly St. Augustine and Aquinas.

Extracurriculars?

Football and softball in grade school, to the extent I knew I would not make the high school teams; but I did play soccer for one semester.

What was on your mind outside of school?

Girls.

Favorite author or authors from back then?

Hemingway, Faulkner, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and then later Sartre, Camus, Stendhal. These are all the serious authors, but I also read a huge amount of Ian Fleming.

Were you affected by other world events, or technological, or cultural developments, growing up?

The other political assassinations—RFK, MLK. Civil Rights. Television.

Where did you apply to college and why?

Trinity College, Dublin, because I was Irish (I’m an Irish citizen and have an Irish passport) and thought it would be cool to live in Dublin. Villanova University because I had a passing fantasy that I would like to be a chemical engineer. St. Columban’s College, a Catholic seminary, because I had a passing fantasy that I would like to be a priest.

For your undergrad education, you went to St. Columban’s. Why did you end up not becoming a priest?

It was the 60s and everything was up for grabs. I did some social work. I attended some protests. I converted to a different form of idealism. I broke a lot of rules in order to protest them. I listened to Bob Dylan. And I was forced to study philosophy, because that was preparation for studying theology. That was the most significant thing. They forced me to study philosophy and I loved it. It was like they opened a door and I was able to walk out.

Earlier, you said as a kid you were interested in becoming a philosopher. As an undergrad, when did you decide to commit to philosophy exactly?

It’s difficult to say. I know I read much beyond my course work for the philosophy major. I was motivated enough to do a Master’s degree, and once I started that I was hooked. Good teachers again. Thomas Busch (for Sartre and Merleau-Ponty), Jack Caputo (for Husserl and Heidegger), and John Tich, whose course on Nietzsche was mainly about the Greeks (whom he could recite from memory in the original Greek) and Heidegger.

Did you ever consider doing anything else?

Yes, I was a private detective for about three years. I worked for an agency investigating bank fraud among other things and I thought about getting my own license. Although I didn’t solve many cases the agency thought I was quite good because I knew how to write and they required written reports to keep their clients happy. There was a moment I considered going to law school, but my experience testifying in court on these bank cases quickly changed my mind.

Sure. When did you decide to go for the PhD? Where did you want to go and why? Receive any guidance on that front?

After college I worked for a year in Wisconsin as a land surveyor. With friends I went to Europe for a summer. Then I went back home to Philadelphia and worked for another year before deciding to do the Masters, which I did at Villanova. I continued to work as I studied for the MA – I don’t think there was any funding available, although Villanova gave me a tuition waiver.

What did you focus on at Villanova?

Phenomenology. I wrote my first published article there on Husserl’s phenomenology of time-consciousness.

So, Camus, Sartre, was it the atheism thing that got you into philosophy? What’s your favorite bit of existential writing?

It wasn’t atheism. It was the ontology, and Sartre’s analysis of bad faith that seemed so different from the other philosophers I was reading—I mean Aquinas, Descartes, Kant.

What should we read by Merleau-Ponty and why? What does he contribute to philosophy? 

Merleau-Ponty is difficult to read because of his flowery French prose and his detailed consideration of the positions that he disagrees with. But then you find brilliant insights that make the struggle worthwhile. I like his earlier work—The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception. But also his Nature Lectures which were part of his later work but covered so many interesting topics. He is most well-known for his emphasis on the body and is really a forerunner of embodied cognition. He also approaches the topic using not only phenomenology, but empirical studies in psychology, developmental psychology, neurology and psychiatry. My sense is that he was doing cognitive science, at least an embodied type of cognitive science, before there was cognitive science.

Explain what phenomenology is, for those who may be unfamiliar with the idea.

Phenomenology, as a historic school of thought started with Husserl. He was trained as a mathematician, and he studied psychology with Brentano and Carl Stumpf, and was influenced by William James. He attempted to work out a transcendental approach to consciousness. He focused on the intrinsic temporal structure and the intentionality of consciousness, the idea that consciousness is always about something or directed towards an object. He developed a phenomenological method and then analyzed a broad range of experiences, including intersubjective empathy. He had a great influence on Heidegger, who was his academic assistant for a time. Heidegger thought of phenomenology somewhat differently and applied it in his fundamental ontology—that is, the ontology of human existence—which was an existential-hermeneutical analysis. He influenced the French existentialists, especially Sartre, who was also influenced by Husserl. Sartre produced a phenomenological existential analysis of many of the same themes that Husserl dealt with— temporality, intentionality, intersubjectivity, embodiment. Merleau-Ponty, under the same influences, used the notion of embodiment, to deal with these same topics. Also influenced by Heidegger, Gadamer developed the hermeneutical side of this thinking. I mention all of these thinkers to suggest that phenomenology isn’t any one thing—it’s a broad philosophical concept that has motivated developments in existentialism, hermeneutics, and then embodied cognition. Accordingly, it’s difficult to define. I would add that various forms of post-structuralism developed in response to, and sometimes in opposition to phenomenology. 

How have students changed over the years?

I did a lot of teaching at Canisius and not so much at UCF. I’m teaching almost exclusively PhD students at University of Memphis. As a result, I have a hard time saying how students have changed over the years although I’ve always enjoyed teaching and engaging with students. One thing that stays the same is simply that some students engage more than others.

You are very productive. It’s bananas, man! What drives you? What’s your routine?

I really enjoy writing philosophy. It’s as simple as that. It makes me happy. My routine is to start in the morning, usually checking my email and responding to any legitimate requests. If I have to take care of academic business, I push that off until late afternoon if I can. I work best in the morning. I eat breakfast (sometimes bananas) but I don’t usually eat lunch. When my wife and I are in the same city, I have dinner with her most evenings—sometimes we go out. In Memphis I usually cook dinner unless I have to go out with colleagues. I rarely work after dinner. I either read or go to the screen (television or films). I like the dark Scandinavian shows like The Killing. When I have visitors in town I like to go to nice restaurants and then to the blues clubs.

What projects are on the horizon?

I just finished a book (now under review) with Enrico and Antonio, on SEM and institutional economics. I’m also working with Albert Newen at Ruhr University-Bochum on a book in philosophy of mind with some funding from the Humboldt Foundation. For the past few years I’ve been a visiting professor at the University of Rome—sometimes in the Psychology Department at Sapienza, and sometimes at the Philosophy Department at Roma-Tre. This has been extremely productive. With Guido Baggio at Roma-Tre, for example, I’ve organized a series of workshops on 4E cognition and economics and I’ve been working with Riccardo Viale on an enactive approach to problem solving in economics. And at Sapienza I’ve been working closely with the psychologist Antonino Raffone and the neuroscientist Salvatore Aglioti. We’ve recently published a paper on compassion in Trends in Cognitive Science, and we are currently working on several other projects together, including a paper on bodily self-awareness. Most of my collaborations are in Europe, so I’ve been spending a lot of time there. Also, over the past ten years I’ve been a Professorial Fellow at the University of Wollongong in Australia and I’ve been spending a month every year there (except for the pandemic years). I hope to be able to continue doing that, because working with Dan Hutto there has been very productive for our work on enactive philosophy.

Between the time you left grad school, and now, how has the philosophical landscape changed? Like, how have things gotten better? Worse? For grad students and faculty, and philosophy as a whole?

For grad students there are fewer jobs. For faculty, a lot more pressure to publish and to apply for grants. Philosophy as a whole is always threatened—programs disappearing in budget cuts or reorganizations of faculty. Medieval times were much better for philosophy – and of course much worse as well. Let me say that one thing that has improved is the number of underrepresented groups in the profession (with two provisos: first, there is still some distance to go; and second, the last 8 months in the US has involved a giant step backwards) I want to note that the University of Memphis has been doing its part in this. There was a study in 2014 (now somewhat out of date) indicating that Memphis produced more African-American PhDs in philosophy, and more women PhD’s in philosophy than any other American university. I’m not sure what the numbers are now, but I know that we’ve awarded over 20 PhD degrees to African-Americans, and we are trying to continue our work in that area.

How do you see the future of philosophy, in general?

It’s really difficult to come up with a new idea. It may be that new technologies will continue to force philosophers to think or rethink certain issues. I suppose the new AI will do something like that. So maybe we should ask ChatGPT about the future.

Meaning of life, in your estimation? Afraid of death?

I’m not sure what the meaning of life is, but I am sure it has something to do with how we relate to others. Not afraid of death, but deathly afraid of dying.

Last meal?

Pizza from a place in Trastevere called Cave Canem.

You have the opportunity to ask an omniscient being one question and get an honest answer, what’s the question?

I would resist the temptation to ask a philosophical question and instead ask a practical one, such as, what is the cure for pancreatic cancer. I know too many people who have died of that cancer.

This section of the APA Blog is designed to get to know our fellow philosophers a little better. We’re including profiles of APA members that spotlight what captures their interest not only inside the office, but also outside of it. We’d love for you to be a part of it, so please contact us via the interview nomination form here to nominate yourself or a friend.