Kinsale Community School Alumnus Interview

1.       Name: Billy McCarthy 

2.       Position: I’m a PhD student in Philosophy at Columbia University in New York.  

3.       Year of Graduation from KCS: 2010

4.       Favourite Subjects at KCS: Mathematics, Religion, Biology, History

5.       Best Memories of KCS: My best memories are definitely of the very dear friends I made.

6.       Tell us about your career path to date: After I graduated from Kinsale, I studied Arts at UCC. In my first year there I studied History, Greek and Roman studies, Math, and Philosophy. In my second year and third years I studied math and philosophy. I graduated with a first in philosophy and math. After that I did a masters in philosophy at UCC. I then spent two years working in bars, tutoring, travelling, and applying to graduate school programs in math and philosophy. In 2016 I accepted a fully funded offer from Columbia University to do a PhD in philosophy. During my time at Columbia I have been a teaching assistant for many classes, including symbolic logic, metaphysics, epistemology, quantum mechanics, and philosophy of art. I am currently mostly focusing on finishing my dissertation on logical pluralism.

7.       If you weren’t in the job/course you have, what would you be doing? If I weren’t doing a PhD in philosophy I would probably be doing a PhD in math, or physics. And if we are considering even more exotic counterfactual situations, then I might have been a programmer of some description.

 8.       What advice would you give your teenage self? I would probably tell myself to accept all the parts of me, and to definitely try to move to New York.  

9.       Favourite quote or motto: I’m not really a fan of quotes. But I suppose I’ll go with, “I don’t mind hypocrisy in myself; I just can’t stand it in others” – Oscar Wilde.  

10.   Who/what has been your biggest influence in education? There have been several people who have been particularly important to me at various stages in my life vis a vis education. In secondary school my history and religion teacher Diarmaid O’Donovan had a big influence on me. In my time at UCC my lecturers Joel Walmsley and Lilian O’Brien introduced me to analytic philosophy, which has occupied me ever since. But at this stage, I would probably have to say that my dissertation advisor Justin Clarke-Doane has been my biggest influence in education. He has had a significant influence on my views about everything from math, to physics, to ethics. He has been a great help in writing my dissertation. And we have recently co-authored a paper about higher-order logic.