B.Sc. (Physics), Calcutta University, 1970

M.A. (Philosophy), Viswa-Bharati University, 1973

Ph.D. (Philosophy), University of Waterloo, Canada 1987.

I started out aiming to become a philosopher of science, drifted into epistemology, moved on to classical philosophy of language, became drawn to cognitive science, and somehow ended up looking at biolinguistics, nature of musical organization, and the general properties of the human mind.

Currently working on a book tentatively titled Routes to Reference. The work generally falls under what is now known as internalist approaches on human language; among other things, I hope to examine how the human linguistic system interacts with non-linguistic systems to ‘give’ the world to us so that we can talk about it on favourable occasions.

I am also professionally interested on general questions of life, including the character of philosophical practice. There is no conscious attempt, but sometimes these two apparently disjoint interests seem to merge.

There is also a third, more recent interest: to do something about peace, justice, human rights. There is little academic philosophy in it, but I don’t think I could have written them without lifelong engagement with philosophy.