By the time he started his freshman year at UF, he knew that he wanted to major in philosophy. He has been going strong ever since. Chudnoff's focus is metaphysics and the philosophy of mind and language, so far as they intersect with metaphysics. He knows his subject is considered obscure by some and is misinterpreted by others. Whenever you say 'I study metaphysics,' you sound like a freak.
Spoon bending and levitation, it sounds so mystical and weird.
But Gene Witmer, one of Chudnoff's closest mentors in the Philosophy Department, explains that the sort of questions that Chudnoff wants to address are very important methodological questions to philosophers. All of those things that come up typically in philosophy. These are hot and controversial questions. Chudnoff uses investigating the nature of pain as an example to explain the kinds of intellectual processes that he engages in. It is not as if you have a pain and that a part of the pain is a piece of your brain and therefore it is clearly physical.