The Philosophers' Cocoon

Attitudes toward co-authored papers

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, a postdoc writes:

What are the general attitudes about co-authored papers? For example, is it to one's advantage to co-author with notable philosophers if the opportunity presents itself or are co-authored papers viewed less favorably than papers written solo?

We've covered this issue on a number of occasions before, but since it comes up often and raises interesting issues about the profession, I think it's good to repeatedly return to it. Generally speaking, the overall sentiment expressed before has been that there is a bias in philosophy against co-authored work because, as a third-party, nobody really knows how responsible each author is for its content. The paper itself may be great--but especially if you're an early career person and another much more notable philosopher's name is on it, people may wonder: was it mostly the notable person who is responsible for the paper? Is the less notable person 'riding on their coat-tails? My understanding is that these questions also appear in the sciences, but that there are conventions in the sciences for estimating who is responsible for what (viz. 1st author, 2nd author, 3rd author, and so on). But, in philosophy, my sense is that people generally think: the best indicator of someone's philosophical abilities is their capacity to produce strong solo-authored work.

Journals that publish replies?

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Some good and respectable journals that I can think of that publish reply papers are Analysis, Thought, and Philosophia. What other journals might be interested in publishing short reply papers to recent publications, especially in the areas of epistemology? Episteme?

Good questions! The best resource I know of here for most things journal-related is this crowdsourced spreadsheet. As you can see, it lists all kinds of details for different journals, including word counts for full-length articles as well as for those journals that accept discussion notes/replies. In terms of epistemology, a few journals seem like plausible candidates, including Logos & Episteme and Erkenntnis. However, if you visit the 'epistemology' page via the tab at the bottom, you'll see that no journals are listed there. I'd encourage this blog's readers to add and update the spreadsheet to help it become an even better resource! 

Anyway, in addition to updating it, please do feel free to note in the comments section below which journals accept replies, including but not limited to epistemology.

Teaching in the time of COVID: what's working?, what's not?

Now that many of us are a month or so into fall semester courses, and have been teaching in new formats due to the pandemic, I thought it might be good to have a thread checking in with readers to see how things are going. What format(s) are you teaching in? What things are you doing that seem to be working well? What things haven't worked well?

In my case, I'm teaching two classes twice a week in-person in the classroom to half of my students each day, while the others Zoom in. By and large, I've tried to keep the class format similar to how I normally run courses, with the first-third of each two-hour session involving discussing student reading responses, the second third giving a lecture, and the final portion of each meeting having students do graded group work. Aside from using Zoom (which I think has actually worked quite well), the one major difference is that instead of having student compose short written reading responses to discuss, I'm having them record short video responses (there are a number of platforms for this, including Flipgrid). My basic rationale for trying this is that I took an online teaching-certification course this summer, and learned that one of the more important things (apparently) for online teaching is to get students engaged with each other. I figured that since my students aren't all going to be in the classroom with each other and will be wearing masks when they are, it would be great to begin each class session with students by playing selected video responses as a springboard for class discussion. I also thought this would probably work well given the general demographic of my students: namely, the fact that they are generally young people who grew up with social media, including short video platforms like TikTok (one quick note: I don't require students to actually film themselves on video. I leave it open to them whether to just record audio instead of video, and I'd say probably 2/3 record video and the other audio-only).

Anyway, I didn't know how this would go, but I have to say: I think it has worked spectacularly well. I have frankly been astonished at how consistently good and insightful their video responses have been. It's clear to me that students have a much easier time speaking insightfully about philosophy than writing about it--as the responses have consistently been far better than the kinds of written responses I've required in previous semesters. I've also found it helpful to play several video responses back to back when multiple students raise similar issues--as this can help them and their classmates see that more than one student had the same kind of reaction to the reading. Now, to be sure, there is a cost here: my students are doing more speaking this semester than normal, and less writing. But, to be frank, I don't think this is a bad thing. Students in my classes have plenty of other assignments where they have to write (including daily group assignments where they collaborate on Googledocs or whatever), and for most of my students who are non-majors, I'm inclined to think that being able to think and speak about philosophical issues competently is probably more important (after all, how many students are ever going to have to write about philosophical issues in their lives after university? It seems far more likely to me that in real life, the ability to think and speak about philosophical issues will be more important--as they are likely to have discussions about morality, politics, religion, etc. with friends, family, and so on).

Other than this, I've tried to keep my courses as close to 'normal' as possible. The only other major difference is that whereas students in previous semesters did group assignments in the classroom, this semester they are doing them via Zoom breakout groups--with some members of groups in the classroom (or leaving the classroom to work outside) and others Zooming in. Aside from giving groups more class-time to complete the assignments, I haven't done anything different here, and it all seems to work pretty well. To be clear, this has been a challenging semester. Teaching this way (half via Zoom, viewing and selecting videos before class) hasn't been easy, and has required more work and juggling than normal. But, on the whole, things seem to be going okay and my students seem pretty engaged and happy.

Anyway, this is what I've been doing.  What have you all been doing? What new things have you been doing that you have found work well? What hasn't worked so well? Why?

How are different types of publications weighted?

Yesterday on social media I came across an interesting question: namely, how different types of publications are weighted, both on the job market and in tenure and promotion. Among other things, it was brought to my attention that different types of publications can be valued more in some countries than others. For example, I learned that in Germany, publications in edited volumes are looked upon very highly, but that in the UK, this may not be true (with exceptions, perhaps, for publications in volumes published by OUP or CUP). Similarly, I heard that public philosophy (i.e. publications in popular press such as Aeon, The New York Times, etc.) can be looked upon highly in the US, but not in other countries. I think it might be great to crowdsource more information about these differences in the comments section below.

I also think it might be good to hear people's thoughts on other particular issues, such as how it looks to a search committee  or tenure and promotion (T&P) committee when most of a candidate's publications are in edited volumes (as opposed to journals). For example, suppose someone has a publication or two in decent but not great journals, but a bunch of publications in edited volumes by top-ranked presses with influential editors. How do people think this looks on the job-market and in T&P? On the one hand, I imagine that it may look good to publish in volumes put together by big name editors for good presses. On the other hand, I've always wondered whether publishing primarily in edited volumes may raise the following concern: namely, that publishing in edited volumes is a more ambiguous measure of research quality than publishing in journals. After all, one of the key things about journal publishing--at least in the present system--is that peer-review is anonymized. In edited volumes, on the other hand, the editors know who you are and (depending on the review process) so too may any reviewers they send your chapter to. Because content for edited volumes isn't selected by a fully (double- or triple-) anonymized process, the worry is that readers (i.e. search committees or T&P committees) won't feel in a good position to know if the work was selected primarily on its merits or as a result of the person having 'good connections.'

For these reasons, I can't help but wonder--at least in terms of job-market success and eventual tenure decisions--whether candidates should focus primarily on journal publishing. Maybe I'm off on this--it's just something I've long wondered about, and figured it might be good to hear from more people about. Anyway, what do you all think, particularly those of you with good experience in these matters? How are different kinds of publications weighted on the job-market and T&P? How do things differ from country to country? And how do things differ with respect to department types (e.g. do R1 institutions weigh certain things more heavily than non-R1's)?

Visualizations of PhD program placement data

Charles Lassiter (Gonzaga) writes in:

I've been working on a project for some time now. I've downloaded placement and graduation data from Philjobs, cleaned it up, did some analyses, and visualized the findings. The result is a site where visitors can find job placement rates for PhD programs. There's also a searchable drill-down table where users can see where graduates of a program have historically placed. You can find it here: https://charleslassiter.weebly.com/placement-data.html

Lassiter adds, "This is an ongoing project and I plan to update every 6 months in September (for job seekers) and March (for students headed into PhD programs)." He also notes that, "The biggest issue is that the data is crowd-sourced from Philjobs' placement page as well as PhilPeople profiles."

Tips for choosing a dissertation supervisor?

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

Would be very curious to hear about strategic choices grad students must make when it comes time to form a committee. If i know “famous” professor X would serve as chair on my committee and also for someone in my cohort, and that person is held in better regard than I am, should I avoid having professor X as my committee chair? Is this way of thinking about things misguided? Do faculty compare students? Need one’s chair be the most “famous” person on the committee to be competitive for the best jobs?

Interesting questions, and a good issue more generally. My experience is that the choice of dissertation supervisor can be crucial. Some supervisors are good mentors who graduate and place a lot of students in good jobs. Others can be brutal to work with and rarely graduate anyone, let alone place graduates in good jobs. Indeed, I've heard all kinds of horror stories, ranging from supervisors who take 6 months to provide any feedback on chapter drafts to perfectionists who won't agree to hold a defense until the dissertation meets impossibly high standards. By my lights, these are probably the most important things to know: does the supervisor graduate students within reasonable time-frames and place them in jobs? Are they supportive and helpful or neglectful and impossible to work with?

While I have heard that faculty do compare students--including in recommendation letters--I'm not sure how huge of a concern this should be. For again, the best supervisors I've seen are ones that graduate a lot of students and regularly place them into good jobs. Whatever 'ranking' of students is going on, it doesn't seem to hurt their students' job prospects! Finally, in terms of whether you need the most 'famous' person to head you committee, I think that probably depends a great deal on what your job-market aspirations are. If you're in a top-ranked PhD program and out for an R1 job, then yeah, I think it probably makes sense to have high-powered people on your committee. But if this is not the case--if you're a better fit for a job at a teaching-focused institution--then I suspect it doesn't matter all that much (though you might want that person on your committee anyway so that you learn the most as a philosopher and write the best dissertation you can!).

But these are just my off-hand thoughts, and I'm perhaps not the most in the know here. Anyone with experience in these areas care to weigh in?

Publishing outside one's AOS/AOC and the market

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I am a grad student who has been fortunate enough to publish a few papers. But my publication record is peculiar: while I have one paper in an AOS in a top generalist journal, my other two papers are in areas I don't even list as an AOC. (One is in a specialist journal; the other is in a decent generalist journal.)

These latter two papers were the culminations of side projects. I am hesitant to list the relevant areas even as AOC's because I sincerely consider myself incompetent to, without very serious preparation, teach advanced undergraduate-level survey courses on them. Basically, in both areas, I found a niche question and completely ignored any literature that did not directly address it. I have no other background in these areas. Moreover, I do not expect to continue research in these areas. My current research lies within my AOS's.

I am curious how hiring committees would perceive such a publication record. In my own case, I do have at least a couple years before I go on the job market. So, if I am lucky, I might be able to get another publication or two squarely within my AOS's. But whether or not that happens, how would hiring committees view an applicant with several publications in areas that they do not list as either an AOC or AOS?

This query raises a few good questions:

1. What is enough background to list something as an AOC?
2. How do search committees think about candidates who publish outside of their AOS & AOC?

I'll be honest about #1: it's never been quite clear to me what is sufficient to claim something as an AOC. As this reader notes, the standard rule of thumb is whether you would be able to teach an advanced undergraduate course. However, as someone who has hired four times at a liberal arts university, this rule of thumb actually seems wrong to me. We normally have people only teach upper-division undergraduate courses in their AOS, and treat AOCs more like areas that a person would be well-prepared to teach lower-division courses. And so, in that regard, we're looking for things like 'enough graduate coursework' or teaching experience in the area to make us think that the candidate has a fairly good basic understanding of the area.

In terms of question 2, my guess here is that search committees think very differently here at R1 institutions as opposed to liberal arts universities. At R1's, my sense is that search-committees are primarily look for someone who is outstanding in their AOS--someone who is likely to 'make a name for themselves' and become a leading figure in their main research area. So, to this extent, my bet is that unless your publications outside of your AOS/AOC are in leading journals and you have a good track record publishing in top journals in your AOS, they may work against you, making you look like you lack focus. However, for liberal arts universities, my sense is that the opposite may be true: that publications outside of your AOS/AOC may make you look like a more attractive candidate--namely, as someone with broad research interests with the ability (at least in principle) to teach a wider variety of courses. 

But these are just my guesses. Anyone in the know care to weigh in on either or both questions?

Protocols for attending conferences?

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I'm finding myself confused about what the protocols surrounding going to conferences are. Who can attend conferences? Under what circumstances should you submit to a conference? Should you ever write an abstract to submit and then write the paper later? Are there different types of conferences?

Great questions! I think it could be good to crowdsource answers to these and other potential questions about conferences. For example, is it okay to submit a paper to a conference if you're unsure whether you'll be able to attend if accepted? Here, it's worth noting many of us work under significant uncertainty about funding. At some universities, you can only apply for conference funding after you receive an acceptance notice--which means that you may be able to afford that conference that costs $1,000+ to attend, but then again you may not. I imagine some would say that you should only apply to conferences you are confident you can attend. But in that case people in the above situation would be pressed to apply to few (if any) conferences, which would be a real problem (conferences are invaluable in all kinds of ways).

Anyway, here's what I propose: readers should feel free to answer the OP's questions and propose and discuss questions of their own in the comments section below. Here are a few of my quick answers:

1. Who can attend conferences?: This depends on the conference. Some conferences are open to the public, and some are for attendees only (e.g. paper presenters, session chairs, and commentators). So, if there's any doubt, I think the thing to do here is to look at the conference webpage and/or ask the organizers. In any case, anyone can submit a paper to a conference, and oftentimes conferences put out calls for commentators. 
2. Under what circumstances can one submit to a conference?: Generally speaking, anytime you have a paper or abstract that satisfies the application requirements. In my years presenting at conferences, I've seen everyone from advanced undergraduates to MA students, PhD students, and independent scholars present at professional conferences. Personally, rare cases aside, I'm not sure that I would advice advanced undergraduates to present at professional conferences, as I've seen a few cases where the presenter seemed clearly overwhelmed--but then again, everything is a learning experience and I'm generally not one to dissuade people from taking a few chances here and there that can be good (if challenging) learning experiences.
3. Should you ever submit an abstract and write the paper later?: Absolutely, as long as you have reasonable confidence that you can successfully complete the paper. I've done this many times. Sometimes, if the abstract doesn't get accepted, I never write the paper. But, in cases where I have gotten acceptance, I've never had trouble writing something up. And indeed, I've found that doing this can be a real boon to one's research. My second book, for example, basically came about this way: I submitted an abstract to an empirical ethics conference in Beirut, it was accepted, I presented the paper, got a good audience reaction, and turned it into a book manuscript. I personally love applying for abstract-submission conferences for this reason: they can often lead to new ideas one might have never developed otherwise!
4. Are there different types of conferences?: Yes, there are many different types:
   1. Generalist conferences: like APA meetings, where specialists of all different types present.
   2. Specialist conferences: where all the papers are in a given area (ethics, metaphysics, etc.).
   3. Themed conferences: which are even narrower, focusing on a specific issue in a specialized area.
   4. Workshops: which typically have more of a roundtable format, where some group of (say) 5-10 scholars present their work to each other (and any observers who drop in) in the same room over the course of the conference. 
   5. Pre-read conferences: where papers are sent out to attendees ahead of time (which is often the case at workshops).
   6. Undergraduate and Graduate conferences: which are just what they sound like!

Anyway, these are just a few of my own quick answers. Feel free to provide answers of you own. And again, if you have questions of your own about conferences to add to the OP's, please feel free to present and discuss them them in the comments section below!

Backup plans for grad school applicants?

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

UPenn, Rice, Columbia, and UChicago have all suspended admissions for incoming PhD students, and at this point it seems inevitable that several more will follow suit, and the ones that do accept new students will more often than not be reducing admissions.

I am a current undergrad who is applying to both PhD and funded MA programs, but I am concerned that even some MA programs might lose their funding/accept fewer students. I think many of us applicants need to start thinking of "backup backup" plans in case we don't get into any MA programs, or for those MA students who may be shut out this cycle.

Presuming we plan on applying again in the future to PhD programs, what would people recommend we do if we don't get into an MA? Spend a year auditing courses and doing more independent research? Try and get a job that is somewhat relevant to our AOI and get some life experience? Get a (funded) MA in another subject relevant to our AOI?

Psychologically, having this "backup backup" could potentially be a comfort to those who are experiencing high levels of anxiety right now (I know it will help me at least), so any advice is greatly appreciated!

These are really good questions. I have some first- and second-hand experience with similar situations. After my BA, I took a year off to work in the mental health field and study for the GRE. While it was good life experience and probably improved my GRE scores, I don't think it did much to help me get into a good grad program. Instead, I think I probably would have been better off doing what my spouse did. My spouse, who received her PhD in another field (I-O Psychology), had relatively little background in the field, but when we moved to Tampa, it turned out that a nearby university, the University of South Florida, had a top-5 PhD program in the area. So, what she did for a couple of years was work in a restaurant and take graduate courses there as a non-degree-seeking student while studying for the GRE. This proved invaluable. She not only vastly improved her background and training; she also got to know some top scholars in the field, got recommendation letters from them, and developed a strong reputation in the program itself. While this took a couple of years, it turned out to be a wonderful self-investment: she ended up getting into a variety of highly ranked programs, ultimately enrolling in and completing their program. I don't know for sure whether the same sort of thing works in philosophy, but I suspect it does. Indeed, I have a friend who is currently doing something similar, and it seems to be working well for them so far. Obviously, side-jobs (such as working in a restaurant like my spouse did) are difficult to get right now--but it seems to me that if you can get one or otherwise have the resources to do something like the above, it's probably a good strategy.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours, particularly those of you with some experience in these matters? 

Co-advisors for a dissertation?

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I am a grad student and a faculty member suggested to me that I may want or need co-advisors for my dissertation given my department's faculty and the two intersecting areas I want to work in. I can imagine that this has both pros and cons. Can anyone offer any advice about this? Has anyone had co-advisors? If so, how did it go?

Interesting questions. I've never heard of co-advisors for dissertations before. One obvious potential benefit here is that you would have two people who are highly invested in the dissertation. However, the obvious potential con is that they may want fundamentally different things out of it. I didn't have co-advisors, but something like this happened to me. When I was doing my dissertation, my advisor thought that I should make the theory broader than just Rawlsian nonideal theory. However, one of my other committee members thought the dissertation should focus primarily on Rawls. Yet, precisely because the latter wasn't my supervisor, they deferred to my supervisor. What would have happened if they were both co-advisors? I can imagine it would have been a stickier situation. And I could imagine it could be an especially sticky situation if the co-advisors are in quite different areas. Here, I imagine it is important to think about the personalities of the potential co-advisors, and how well they might 'work together', as it were, in supervising a dissertation in common. Then again, this is really just me speculating. Anyone with any experience here able to weigh in?

Types of journals and the job market

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I'm an upper-year PhD student whose looking to go on the job market in a year or two. My question: in deciding where to publish papers, how should I balance general prestige with area focus? My default view has always been to just publish in the best general journals possible. I guess my more specific question then is whether there is any special value in, for instance, publishing in a less prestigious ethics-focused journal as opposed to a general journal that might be more 'prestigious.' My thought has always been that people looking at a CV want the most prestigious journal possible, but I hear from some that there might be a value in going for an ethics-focused journal, at least at times.

I'm curious to hear from people in the know here. I would have thought that as far as R1 jobs are concerned, as long as you're publishing in top journals, you're good to go. I mean, is it really going to bother someone that you haven't published in an ethics journal if you've published in, say, Phil Review, Nous, and PPR? That just seems weird to me. And when it comes to non-R1/SLAC jobs, my sense is that venue doesn't tend to matter much in general. As long as you're publishing consistently in decent journals and your work is interesting, you're a good candidate. 

Am I missing something? Anyone in the know care to weigh in?

Handling a 'two-body problem' when applying to grad school?

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I'll be applying to PhD programs this year, and my significant other will be applying as well. We're currently at different institutions, but have similar backgrounds (same undergrad program) and similar philosophical interests. I wonder whether there's any effective way to promote the chance of doing grad school together?

We're planning to apply to programs that are geographically close (those in NYC, UCLA/USC, etc.) I guess there's no harm in doing this.

We're also considering whether to apply to the same programs or actually avoid applying to the same programs, as I'm not sure whether this would enhance or harm the chances. On the one hand, this is the only chance of going to the very same program. On the other hand, it seems likely that admission committees would avoid admitting multiple students with similar AOS and similar backgrounds.

Also, I wonder whether it would be wise to mention the two-body problem in the SOP. I'm inclined not to, as I'm not sure how it would look like to the committee - perhaps it would seem unprofessional, and maybe they'll see us as a whole package, which might seriously undermine the chance of admission. But might some departments have preferences in "couple hiring"?

Alternatively, it might be helpful to inform the department of the two-body problem after one of us receives an offer (if that happens). I guess this could enhance the chance of admitting the other, especially if that person is on the waitlist - but I'm not sure whether this is true, and whether it would be appropriate.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Wow, this is a real tough one. I'm inclined to think that the best one can do here is for both applicants to simply apply to programs in similar areas, and to focus on applying to programs in geographical areas where there are a lot of programs clustered around each other (e.g. NY, New England, Southern California, etc.). Anyone have any tips to share here? 

The philosophy paper as an experience

I'm teaching a graduate course Fiction Writing for Philosophers (syllabus here,  some videos on how to write fiction I made here, writing dialogue, idea, plot, governing idea,  character, point of view, emotion and scene building). I designed this course to help philosophy grad students to understand that philosophy can be expressed in a variety of ways, not just in the format of papers or monographs. It helps them to recognize philosophical fiction, and to write it too. 

Writing fiction is also valuable because it teaches you to write with the reader in mind.

Fiction writers must achieve two things, first, they must write a story that works. The story must be internally coherent, the elements (character, plot, governing idea, point of view, world building etc etc) must all work well together to deliver the story. Second, it must also move the audience. If the audience gets bored and zones out, or abandons your work halfway, then it didn't work for them. 

What makes a story work? Movies, novels, and other fictions as well as artworks more generally move us because they give us an experience. We want to be moved, we want to feel, be transported by the artworks we interact with. John Dewey in Art as Experience saw experience as the driving force of art making and art appreciation: "By common consent, the Parthenon is a great work of art. Yet it has esthetic standing only as the work becomes an experience for a human being."

I saw the Parthenon only once, when I was 18, on a school trip to Greece. We walked up the slope and it was very hot and dry, and none of us had even the slighted interest in ancient architecture. Moreover, the building looked unfinished, with many parts schlepped away to the British Museum, and its scaffolding were even then a near-permanent fixture. Yet, I was impressed by the building and how it was integrated in the surrounding landscape. I understood somewhat why architects, and people more generally, kept on being inspired by this building. 

What's true for artworks is also true for philosophical works. Philosophy that continues to resonate is philosophy that creates an effective experience. How often does one not encounter philosophical papers that are completely boring, that don't excite you, that you just don't care about? Sure, they might be coherent and well-researched, but if they don't do anything for the reader, if they leave the reader entirely unmoved, they have not done enough.

 

Job Market Reporting Thread (2020-21 season)

Each year, readers ask for threads for discussing and reporting news on the job-market. I recently posted this season's discussion thread here. Please visit that thread if you are interested in discussing/commiserating about this year's market. The current thread (below) is for reporting news on the market (i.e. reporting interviews, flyouts, offers, hires, and so on). Although it should go without saying, commenters are asked to please remember the Cocoon's supportive mission while reporting. A link to this thread will remain on the blog's right sidebar for the remainder of the job season.

Flagging your career stage/situation in job apps?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I wonder how TT assistant professor folks can flag that they are in their first or second year when applying for TT positions? The worry is that folks on search committees may unwittingly favor assistant professors who are further along the tenure track because these folks will often have more publications and generally a more robust CV.

Two readers replied:

Your CV will do it, so long as you list employment and dates. - Submitted by TT

JuniorTT, it should come across clearly on your CV. That is, your employment history should make explicit when you got your PhD, when you started your job, etc., from which search committees shouldn't have to work too hard to figure out how far along on the tenure track you are. I also don't think there's anything wrong with a cover letter saying: "I'm in my second year of a TT position at X, but I'm interested in your job because Y..." - Submitted by Daniel

Let me add a couple of quick remarks here that I think job applicants in general might find helpful, and then add a question to follow up on Daniel's reply.