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Mark Greene’s
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If your aardvark is having an existential crisis, you’ve come to the right place. I used to be a veterinary surgeon but escaped with the remains of my sanity and became a philosopher. This means I am paid to get up late and think a bit – Sweet!
About me
I completed a degree in Veterinary Science at Bristol University in 1990 and worked in mixed veterinary practice in England for three years. During this time I learned to operate on tigers, to patch up poorly skunks, to comfort ailing camels, and to autopsy fruit bats. I also learned to get up at odd hours of the night and to sound authoritative on matters about which I knew nothing. Eventually, I realized that this last skill has been the basis for many a glittering career in philosophy, so I set about the task with an MA in applied ethics from the University of Hull and an MLitt from Bristol. In 1996 I headed over the pond for my PhD in philosophy at Stanford University, completed in 2002. Two years of Greenwall Fellowship in the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins followed. I am now an Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Delaware.
Though employed in the State of Delaware (more of a franchise than a state really), I live in Philadelphia with the artist, Talia Greene and our son, Amit. Living in Philly enables me to maximize both commute and tax burden.
MATTERS PHILOSOPHICAL
Explore my philosophical websites.
My Philosophical Research
And other curios.
My Philosophy Classes
Syllabus and other info on current and recent classes.
Philosophy gives the means to speak with apparent authority on all matters, and to make oneself admired by the less learned; while law, medicine and the other sciences bring honor and riches upon their practitioners.
– Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method .
Why I am called ‘Vole’
Many years ago, when Catherine, my youngest sister, was a bit more than this size, she ran into the room shouting, “I can spell ‘vole’! I can spell ‘vole’!!”
“That’s good.” said our mother, “How do you spell ‘vole’?”
“V-O-L-E!”
Catherine was positively euphoric to discover that, not only had she spelled ‘vole’ correctly but it was a real word with its very own meaning.
Shortly after this it was my birthday. Catherine drew me a card. As she was toiling away writing out, “HaPPy BiRTHDay VOLE LOVE FrOM catherine” in her very best fist, our mother asked, “Why are you writing ‘Vole’? His name is Mark.”
Catherine is very patient with dumb questions. Still, she couldn’t quite hide her disbelief at the stupidity of this parental inquiry. In withering tones she spelled out the obvious, “Because I can spell ‘Vole’.”
As a postscript to this, another incident from around the same time might just be related. Someone used an old nail to carve the words “VOLE VOLE VOLE VOLE” into one of our windowsills. The culprit was never apprehended but the fact that ‘vole’ was spelled correctly leads us to suspect…
