A native of Canada, I attended school in the U.S. and then 
moved to Asia, where I’ve lived since the 1980s. I began to pursue philosophy seriously after spending a few years seeking mystical experience but failing to have any. I visited temples in Taiwan and considered becoming a Buddhist monk but found myself too critical to become a believer. I concluded that philosophical reflection was more enlightening.
Before earning a Ph.D., I worked as a technical writer, editor, and translator at electronics companies in Taiwan. I also taught English composition to graduate students at two universities there, a job that led me to publish a pair of English textbooks in Chinese.
I hold an undergraduate degree from Yale University, a master’s from National Taiwan University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Hong Kong. As an undergraduate, I studied both philosophy and Chinese literature and history. At the master’s level, I studied mainly Anglo-American philosophy and wrote a thesis on scientific realism. My doctoral dissertation, written under Chad Hansen’s supervision, was on early Chinese philosophy of mind and action. Since for pre-Han thinkers mind and action are deeply intertwined with language and epistemology, the dissertation also included chapters on the latter subjects.
In July 2009 I joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong as an associate professor. Previously I was assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 2001–2009 and a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, Taipei, in 2000.
At present, I devote most of my professional attention to early Chinese philosophy, particularly philosophy of mind, epistemology, action theory, and the various ways in which these fields intersect with ethics. In the past, I have also taught contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, including epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, and political theory.
Brief Biographical Note for Conferences and Journals
“Chris Fraser is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of The Philosophy of Mozi: The First Consequentialists (Columbia, forthcoming) and numerous scholarly articles on classical Chinese philosophy of language, ontology, epistemology, ethics, and psychology. Previously he taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 2001-2009.”
