Tom Brody

In the early 1970's, I took six philosophy classes at U.C. Berkeley, and two of these were taught by Prof. Stroud. One of these classes was on Wittgenstein and the other was on Hume. Prof. Stroud's influence on me is shown by two of my articles on patent law (JPTOS 99:192-249 (2017); JPTOS 92:26-70 (2010)). The first of these applies Wittgenstein's family-of-resemblances analysis to the obviousness inquiry (35 U.S.C. 103), and here I quoted from Prof. Stroud's essay in the book, "Mind, Meaning, and Practice." The second applies Wittgenstein's account of what is "expectation" to the obviousness inquiry (35 U.S.C. 103), where I reproduced an answer that Prof. Stroud sent me in an email dated Nov. 8, 2009. The answer read, in part, "Whether someone was expecting something can . . . be shown more by his reactions after the thing happens, than by anything that was going on at the time he is said to be expecting." Next year, I'll be publishing an article on patent law, where I cite Chomsky and Frege, on the topic of how context provides meaning to a word in a sentence (this further reveals the continuing influence of those six courses, that I took way back when). Now, regarding personality, I was surprised that in answer to my emailed question, Prof. Stroud addressed me as, "Dear Dr. Brody" instead of by something like, "Dear Former Student." Also, when Prof. Stroud had office hours in the early 1970's, I was surprised (and delighted) by the fact that Prof. Stroud listened intently and carefully to my questions, and by the fact that his answers were more than simply a direct answer to my question - - - his answers identified additional avenues that I could consider exploring for my term paper.

Tom Brody (A.B. from U.C. in 1973, Ph.D. from U.C. in 1980).