Enemies for life

I hate Ned Block. I know I shouldn't, but I can't help it.

It all started when I was an undergraduate taking Prof. Block's class on Philosophy of Mind, and trying to understand the word of the day, which was "intentionality." I didn't understand what the professor was saying about attributing intentionality; that is, how we can decide what has it and what doesn't.

I raised my hand and stumbled through a question, ending with a test case intended to probe the point of my confusion. I said, "I could claim that this pen has intentionality."

Prof. Block said, "Yes, but you would be wrong." This, by the standards of a philosophy class, was a very funny jibe. When the laughter died down, the professor gave a more serious explanation of why a philosopher might be willing to attribute intentionality to a person, but not to a pen.

If you would like to know what he said, I'm afraid I can't help, because I didn't hear a word of it. I was embarrassed and furious, and too busy plotting the professor's gory death to listen. But rather than risk a murder rap, I just dropped the class.

I wish I could tell you that I learned from this experience, and that, as a professor, I am very careful to be respectful toward my students, even when they say very stupid things. But no, it took one more anecdote for me to connect the dots.

In the second part of this story, I'm the jerk. I was teaching a class at Colby, and as far as I could tell it was going very well. The atmosphere of the class was casual and friendly, and I enjoyed joking around with my students. They would tease me, and I would take an occasionaly poke at them, and it was all in good fun, right?

Well, apparently not. At the end of the semester, I got eleven mostly positive course evaluations, and one enemy for life. One of my students, I learned too late, hates me more than I hate Ned Block. In the evaluation, the student claimed that I was often disrespectful to students, and that I had ridiculed him in front of the whole class!

I did no such thing, I protested. An unkind word never passed my lips!

And then I realized that if I had stuck around long enough to write a nasty evaluation for Ned Block, and if he read it, he probably would have raised the same protest. I doubt very much that on the day of the fateful pen incident he went home and bragged to his family about how he put some kid in his place. More likely, just like me, he has no idea what he did to make an enemy for life.

Students and faculty get along pretty well at Olin, so I hope that these kind of misunderstandings are rare. But even if the atmosphere of the classroom is casual, and discourse between students and faculty is friendly, there are still plenty of chances for a recurrence of the Debacle of the Pen. So let's be careful.

I already have two enemies for life; I don't need to make more.

Afterword: For an explanation of intentionality, see this article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. If you have any questions, send email to ned.block@nyu.edu