Charles Parsons is Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Harvard University. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1989 after having been at Columbia University since 1965, but earlier he had been a student at Harvard and had briefl y taught there. He has wri en on logic, philosophy of logic and mathematics, and historical fi gures, in particular Kant. Earlier articles are collected in Mathematics in Philosophy (1983, paperback 2005). He is also author of Mathematical Thought and its Objects (2008) and editor, with Solomon Feferman and others, of the posthumous works of Kurt Godel (Collected Works, vols. III-V, 1995, 2003). He is about half way through preparing a two-volume collection of his essays on other philosophers, from Kant to older contemporaries. He is a former President of the Association for Symbolic Logic. This interview was conducted by Julian K. Arni in February 2010 at Harvard University. HRP: How did you become interested in philosophy, and in philosophy of mathematics in particular? Was it—in part at least—on account of the class I see you took with Quine?