Staff Standpoint with Kevin Decker

Can you tell me some information about the new book you have coming out?

This is the 25th book in the Open Court [publishing company] Popular Culture and Philosophy series, called "Star Trek and Philosophy." It's being released because apparently there is a new Star Trek movie coming out late this year or next year.

So were you part of this book series from the start or did you come aboard later on?

The 13th book in the series is the one that my co-editor [Jason T. Eberl] and I did first which was "Star Wars and Philosophy." We edited that one and we each had a chapter in that one.

The whole series was started by a fella named Bill Irwin who teaches in Pennsylvania and he's one of probably about 10 or 15 people who are really pushing this notion of pop culture and philosophy - that there's something to learn from these post-modern texts in the form of T.V. and music and movies.

I take it that's a theory you agree with, then?

It is. I don't personally subscribe to the fact that there's a big distinction between high culture and low culture. If you get rid of that, then most of the arguments that you can use against using pop culture in a philosophy class are gone.

What about this new book, "Terminator and Philosophy?"

"Terminator and Philosophy" will be out next year to coincide with "Terminator; Salvation" a re-invisioning of the "Terminator" legacy. I'm co-editing that, so I'm not actually writing in that book.

What are some of the other books in which you've had a hand?

I've contributed to "James Bond and Philosophy," "The Philosophy of Stanley Kubrick," and I have a contribution out for "Dr. Who and Philosophy" that I hope will be accepted.

That's a pretty influential show.

That is my favorite show, actually, and I tried to "shop" to Blackwell Publishers a "Dr. Who and Philosophy" volume when I found out that this other one was coming out from a different publisher.

A lot of the decisions about what gets made into one of these pop-culture volumes is directed by the market.

In particular, their first question is, "Are they making a movie out of it?" Because if they are, they think that's going to be enough national attention that the book might sell.

They say it's the golden age of television, what T.V. shows are good these days, in your opinion?

"Lost" has tons of sub-textual philosophical stuff going on. A lot of it's about social and political issues - "Lord of the Flies" type of stuff.

"The Office" - either the British or the American version would be a delightful show to watch to pick existentialist themes out of.

For example, the main character, whether it's Steve Carell or the guy in the British version, is amazingly inauthentic and does a lot of things in bad faith and you can look at that from a psychological perspective or the philosophical perspective.

You could ask, "Does every office have people like that and, if they do, what does being in an office turn you into?"

Which book that you've been involved in is your favorite?

Your first is always your favorite, I think that rule holds for a lot of aspects of life.

As a young academic, I enjoyed the attention that I got.

There was media attention, there were a few write-ups back in St. Louis where I came from. It was all an unknown challenge and it paid off in the end.

How long have you been teaching philosophy and is pop-culture philosophy something in which you've always been interested?

Yes, I've been teaching for about 10 years now, three of those at Eastern, and pop-culture philosophy is something I'm really interested in.

I've actually applied for a grant from the university for next summer to work on a book called "Philosophy through pop culture," which attempts to show teachers how pop culture can be used to teach an entire introductory-level class.

I hope it will also appeal to students with a diversity of interests in pop culture to approach philosophy, because they'll find it if they look carefully at things they enjoy viewing and listening to.

I think that if we look at pop culture as philosophers, there are new things that we discover.

For example, in the field of epistemology, the theory of knowledge or aesthetics - the theory of beauty - there are things that you don't get from high culture or works of art.

So there are new things that are being presented and new ways of seeing ourselves and the world in pop culture that you can do serious philosophical work on as well.

So pop-culture philosophy isn't only a good way to get kids hooked but an important new level of philosophy?

I subscribe to a view of philosophy that says we look critically and speculatively at everything in experience, so pop culture certainly isn't exempt from that. Pop culture has lessons, we ought to be learning them.

What is it about science fiction in particular that piques your philosophical interest?

Ray Bradbury, the famous science fiction writer, said that science fiction is one of the last free domains in which the philosopher can roam without constraint. Science fiction allows us to test out some of our intuitions.

Do you think our modern world, with its reliance on technology, is tweaking the basic philosophical questions, or will they always remain fundamentally unchanged?

Not only are they tweaking them, but they're making some of them irrelevant.

If there's a big controversy about stem cell research, and we come up with a way to take stem cells from amniotic fluid, and therefore we don't have to touch embryos, then the whole question of whether it's ethical or not becomes academic. There is still that question and people could debate it, but all of a sudden that question becomes irrelevant.

I happen to share this view of the history of philosophy that says that there are some questions that we solve but there are more questions that we simply get over.

As a teacher of philosophy, what issues do you see students grappling with most these days?

I think that students at this campus are deeply gripped by issues of the place of religion in this society, the role that science plays in this society, and obviously there seems to be a conflict between these two.

I don't think that there's an inherent conflict but I think there are people who are exploiting what they say is a conflict to basically raise a cloud of dust and then complain about it.

I also think the same thing is true about conservativism and liberalism in this country.

Again, there are people who want to divide us by labeling us and I think a lot of students have unconsciously bought in to that labeling. One of the things I try and say in all of my classes is that these labels may not be accurate and you should try and throw off the efforts of other people to pigeonhole you.

You have to ask yourself the question, "What would things look like if we genuinely treated everybody as individuals?" and I'm not talking about this Barney crap, you know, "Everybody's special."

What I'm saying is, what if we genuinely looked at somebody and didn't instantaneously label them so that we could either file them away or pay closer attention to them?

I think our relationships would be very different if we did that.