by Emily Fletcher

Emily: Where are you from?

Aja: I was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Emily: How did you get into philosophy?

Aja: I always liked having arguments about big topics with my friends, but when I was a senior in high school I took a philosophy class for the first time. I learned that you could major in philosophy in college, and a lot of people do, as a precursor to going to Law School. I went to Northeastern in Boston and double majored in philosophy and math, mostly because my mother wanted me to have a backup plan. Both my parents are engineers, so that informs their perspective of what a practical career path is. Doing the double major

allowed me to satisfy everyone. I also had a minor in law and public policy, which I thought would help me with the law school route.

Emily:  Many of our students are also double majors. What was it like being a double major in math and philosophy?

Aja:  One inadvertent consequence of the math double major was that I caught the attention of some of the philosophy professors. For example, they bent a rule for me so I didn’t have to take logic, because I had taken equivalent math classes. I was a TA for an undergrad logic class while I was there. There wasn’t a grad program at Northeastern, so I received the kind of attention from faculty that a grad student would normally get. All along I thought I would go to Law School and in my last semester a professor just said to me, “Have you ever thought about pursuing philosophy as a career?” and I was like, “Nope.” But it sounded kind of good.

Emily: What attracted you about the idea of philosophy as a career?

Aja: I liked the lifestyle, just getting to work on whatever you want all the time. I had also had several regular office jobs that I really hated. I applied to two philosophy grad programs, two law schools, and one public policy program, and I got into one of each thing. I think as soon as I got into a philosophy program, I was like, “I could just do this forever”, and I did.

Emily: You work in philosophy of science, which is a very interdisciplinary field. How does interdisciplinary work happen between humanities and STEM fields?

Aja: The math double major helps me out here again, I think, because I’m not scared to do things that are not philosophy. I don’t think of myself as someone who can only understand things or read things or talk about things in one field, and maybe not being scared is the first part to doing interdisciplinary work. Unfortunately, most scientists don’t hold philosophy in the highest esteem, which is a barrier to doing this kind of work. For me, it’s hard to disentangle being early career with being a humanities person. People don’t want advice from either of those types of people, but I can’t always tell what exactly the barrier is. I look forward to the type of relationship building that can happen when you’re at the same institution for a long time. It’s not effective to just show up at some department and be like “Hey, I hear you guys are confused about your concepts. I can help with that!”

Emily: You mentioned you’re not scared of doing things that are not philosophy. Do you feel like you have a clear sense of what philosophy is?

Aja: No, there’s no clear sense. When I’m trying to get things published, I’ll sometimes get this comment: “it’s not clear this project is philosophical enough”. I have a hard time responding to this, because the topic of my work is not what is philosophy or what counts as philosophy, and I don’t feel like I should have to answer that question. I live my life as though stuff counts as philosophy as long as it’s interesting and it’s something I have the skills to work on.

Emily: What do you think of Madison so far?

Aja: I was here in January for my interview, and the whole time I was here, everyone was like “Don’t worry, it’s actually nice here in the summer”. And then I got here in August, and I started telling everyone, “You completely undersold it!”. This place is like paradise in the summer. Everyone is riding their bikes around, smiling, there are concerts in the park every day, there are Famer’s Markets every day. It’s very wholesome, and there are a lot of community events. The food is really good. I like that I can walk everywhere. My dog is also happy here, as far as I can tell.