I looked at my high school yearbook somewhat recently and someone had written, "Don't pursue
your dream of being a philosophy professor." So, I must have had that dream in high school. When I
was about um seven or so, I started worrying. I think maybe kids at some point they realize
their parents are separate from them. Then it becomes possible to like doubt. But in my case,
the form it took was like thinking that God had created a world to trick me, that my parents were
either weren't real or were somehow in on a trick. So then when I was like maybe 14 and uh someone
had given me an encyclopedia of philosophy, I came across Dick Hart's argument that we don't
actually know anything about the world because an evil demon could be tricking us and all of
our perceptions could be illusions. And then when I read that, I was just really astonished that
someone else had this thought. I started reading more and I realized this was just kind of a way
of thinking that I had sort of naturally found myself in and that there were people who for a
living thought about this. It got onto my radar. Happiness is an extraordinarily important part of
being productive, at least for me. I was really lucky to get a job at Auburn University because
of not only the university but just the amazing philosophy department that we have here. There
are, you know, a dozen people in the department who I can have really interesting and productive
and friendly conversations with. A lot of the work that I've done is directly an effect of meeting
people here in my department and being affected by their work. Just by and large, the department
has been incredibly supportive of research and teaching and just generally a wonderful place for
um academics to thrive. So I feel very lucky. I'm Eric Marcus, Professor of Philosophy in the
College of Liberal Arts, and I am the recipient of the Creative Research and Scholarship Award.