Talking philosophically with Jeff Johnson

By Tom Vogel
Oct. 13, 2009

Assistant Professor Jeffrey T. Johnson. Photo by Julie Michener.

Assistant Professor of Philosophy Jeffrey Johnson has a full schedule this fall. He was recently elected as vice president of the Minnesota Philosophical Society, and this year he’s in charge of organizing the organization’s annual meeting, which the philosophy department at St. Catherine University will host in November.

In addition, he’s the program committee chair for the North American Wittgenstein Society and, over the summer, served as a referee for Cambridge University Press. Recently, Professor Johnson took a break from his busy calendar to talk about his various responsibilities and the upcoming Minnesota Philosophical Society meeting at St. Kate’s.

Q. What drew you to the St. Kate’s philosophy program?

A. I began at St. Kate’s in 2003 as an adjunct, teaching a few classes a year as I was finishing up my graduate work at the University of Minnesota. I received my Ph.D. in the fall of 2006, during the same term that I was hired on at St. Kate’s as a visiting assistant professor. This term is my first term on the tenure track.

I’m delighted to have found myself at St. Kate’s. My colleagues in the philosophy department are wonderfully collegial, and the diversity of their philosophical points of view has helped me come to appreciate neighborhoods of philosophy through which my studies only briefly traveled.

Q. Your area of expertise is the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. Can you discuss these areas, as well as a few of your influences?

A. Philosophers who do philosophy of language work on questions like “What’s the meaning of a word?” and “What is it to understand?” Most philosophers are tempted to answer the second question in the same way. To understand is to have knowledge of meaning.

But there is a great deal of disagreement about the right answer to the question about what kinds of things meanings are, or can be. Some think that the meanings of words are objects in the mind of the person who utters them and that language gives a kind of public voice to that otherwise hidden mental stuff. Others think that the meanings of words can -- at least sometimes -- be objects outside of the mind of the person who utters them and so are there for all to see.

People who work on the philosophy of mind work on questions like “What is the nature of the mind? Or of consciousness?” and “What is it that we are immediately aware of in perception?” Many philosophers are tempted to think that when we see, for instance, we are immediately aware only of visual representations which we hope accurately depict the world around.

There is a much sharper divide among philosophers, however, when it comes to the question about the nature of the mind or of consciousness. Some philosophers are inclined to think that consciousness is at bottom a physical phenomenon and that neurophysiology promises to discover to us an adequate account of all of its workings. Other philosophers are inclined to think that consciousness is nonphysical and that no amount of investigation into the brain will get us any closer to an explanation of what it’s like, for instance, to see the color red.

Q. How did you wrestle with these issues in your dissertation?

A. In my dissertation, I show that many philosophical problems that arise in thinking about language and perception betray a particular way of thinking — what we might call a “picture” — of the facts that give rise to them. To take a case, the problem about what counts as the meanings of words comes as a consequence of endorsing a picture of talking that has it that just about every instance involves the production of sounds or gestures that are accompanied in some way or another by objects that count as meanings.

Trying to say what those objects are, though, is really tough. The standard answers are all subject to very serious criticisms.

In light of this, I ask whether the pictures responsible for the problems are accurate. In an effort to test the picture of talking that I've just sketched for you, for instance, I consider an array of examples of talk of meaning, and I find that it’s nowise clear how to support the pictures without already taking them for granted. In light of these results, I argue that we ought to worry about how to show whether those pictures are accurate in advance of tackling those problems to which they give rise.

J. L. Austin, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Plato are prominent on the list of philosophers who’ve influenced my thinking.

Q. What can a student who takes one of your courses expect?

A. My aim in my classes is to get students into the grip of philosophical problems. We work together to lay out the arguments that breathe life into the problems. We uncover and poke at crucial assumptions, and we cast a critical eye at attempts at solutions.

My hope is that this develops in students an ability to worry about arguments while still giving them a run for their money, that it arms them with lots of ways to size up arguments, and that it helps them to express themselves more clearly in discussion and in writing. So far, I am happy with this approach mostly because the students get a chance to do some philosophy and it positions them to go on to decide for themselves which answers to philosophical problems they find most reasonable.

Q. Do you have a particular favorite course or subject matter?

A. I have affections for a great many philosophical problems, so I find myself feeling at home in lots of different neighborhoods in philosophy. In addition to my work in the philosophy of language and mind, I regularly worry about problems that perplexed such ancients as Parmenides and Plato, and such moderns as Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume. I worry about moral matters generally, about disputes to do with moral realism, about the swarm of problems that buzz around the notion of moral luck, and also about problems to do with knowledge and skepticism, with personal identity and with determinism. I’m not sure that I could pick any one of these out as a favorite.

Q. You were recently elected as vice president of the Minnesota Philosophical Society. What responsibilities does this entail?

A. The chief responsibility is organizing the meeting in the fall. I’ve been crafting and sending out a call for papers, collecting submissions and reviewing them, matching papers with commentators, arranging for a keynote, setting the program and so on.

Q. St. Catherine's Department of Philosophy is hosting the Minnesota Philosophical Society's annual meeting on Nov. 7. What’s the agenda for the meeting?

A. There will be talks from 9 a.m. till 4 p.m., with a break for lunch in between. There will be a short business meeting and then Valerie Tiberius, from the University of Minnesota, will deliver the keynote address, titled “Wisdom and Wide Reflective Equilibrium.” A reception will be from 6 to 7 p.m. It’s worth noting that the conference is open to the public.

Q. What’s the significance of this meeting being held at St. Kate’s this year?

A. The Minnesota Philosophical Society meeting is in every respect an academic conference. Philosophers and students from all over Minnesota, from Wisconsin and Iowa, and from the Dakotas will attend. We’ll have as presenters faculty from schools such as the University of Minnesota (both the Twin Cities and Duluth campuses), the University of St. Thomas, Macalester College and St. Olaf College.

All of this is a great way to bring attention to St. Kate’s philosophy department. It also provides our students with an opportunity to interact with a lot of interesting philosophers doing a lot of interesting philosophy and to see up close some of the important aspects of the life of a professional philosopher.

Q. You also serve as program committee chair for the North American Wittgenstein Society. What does this involve?

A. The North American Wittgenstein Society is the only professional organization devoted to Wittgenstein in the country. It meets yearly along with the meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association. It’s now in its 11th year, and I’ve been helping put together programs for the past two.

Last year we had a panel of four speakers that included Meredith Williams, a prominent Wittgensteinian from Johns Hopkins. This coming meeting, in the spring, we’ll have a panel of three speakers selected from the submissions we’ve received. We’ll also have a panel discussion on teaching Wittgenstein in philosophy classes, as well as an author-meets-critic session, in which Avner Baz from Tufts University will discuss his book on ordinary language philosophy, soon to be published by Harvard University Press.

The work involved with the North American Wittgenstein Society meetings is very like the work involved with putting on the Minnesota Philosophical Society meeting. I help to craft and send out a call for papers, to collect submissions and review them, to match papers with commentators, to set the program and so on.

Q. You also served as a referee for Cambridge University Press this past summer. What was that experience like?

A. It was a delight. I had a chance to look at a proposal for a book on an aspect of Wittgenstein’s philosophy that has intrigued me for some time, what in the tradition is called Wittgenstein’s “private language argument.” I can’t wait to see the book in its finished form.

Q. Finally, how has St. Kate’s and its philosophy program affected your teaching? What opportunities have you had since joining the faculty?

A. Working at St. Kate’s has greatly expanded the range of philosophical problems that I teach and, because of that, it has greatly expanded the range of philosophical problems on which I find myself working.

I’ve had a chance to organize a Sr. Mona Riley lecture by Sandra Peterson, of the University of Minnesota, on Socrates in Plato’s Republic. I’ve been working with majors and minors and other interested students on reviving the St. Kate’s philosophy club. I’ve had a chance to present papers in the Department of Psychology’s colloquium series and in the Department of Philosophy’s colloquium series. I’ve developed and taught two versions of a class focused on the philosophy of language, and I’m now teaching a course I’ve developed on contemporary responses to the classic philosophical problem of skepticism.

I’ve also had the chance to work closely with a student as she crafted the philosophical bits of an honors thesis to do, in part, with Noam Chomsky’s work in the philosophy of language. And I’ve been in a number of reading groups on philosophical works and discussion groups on philosophical problems with my colleagues and with students in the philosophy department. What fun.

Contact Julie Michener, (651) 690-6521

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