The Philosophers' Cocoon

The wagon has three wheels: Reimagining philosophy of action from a working class perspective

This is a guest post by Deborah Nelson

Bio: Deborah Nelson received a Master’s Degree in Philosophy from Brandeis University in 2014 and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from UCR in September 2022.  Her dissertation examined the philosophy of action literature for class-centrism and proposed advancing this literature by balancing the current focus on stability with flexibility in order to address increasing complexity in agents’ lives. She now works as an Instructional Designer at XCITE, UCR’s center for teaching and learning.

--

There’s a story my family likes to relay about my father as a child that has had a formative impact on how I approach claims about knowledge, rationality, and the evaluation thereof.  The one-sentence summary of the story is that, when he was five years old, my dad took an IQ test and only got one question wrong.  The more interesting facet of this story, though, is revealed by examining that one question.

The test question displayed a picture of a wagon with only three wheels and asked what was wrong with the wagon.  It just so happened that there was a three-wheeled wagon in regular use in my father’s household, which still functioned perfectly well, so he could not identify the problem with the wagon.  Needless to say, when I learned this story at a young age, it gave me early ideas about the ways that experience can affect how people perceive and understand the world, and the discussions in recent years of problems with IQ testing, as well as other standardized tests, have only added fuel to this fire.  These intellectual proclivities have clearly inspired my research interests and I just recently defended a dissertation at UCR which reflects them.

In my early days in philosophy, I was excited to learn that there is a whole subdiscipline dedicated to how people reason about which actions to take, but became less enthused as I learned that the concerns within it did not resemble my experiences.  Within the philosophy of action, the concerns seem to reflect that of people who enjoy economic advantage.  The agents described (directly or indirectly) as ideals in this literature are self-complete entities, who consistently resist temptation, retain stable intentions and characters, and have life-defining projects and plans, etc.  This focus seems, to my working-class-inspired mind, to ignore some central concerns and ideals for which my background prepared me.  

For the present, however, I don’t plan to criticize the current state of the literature.  Not only does it take a significant amount of space to argue for the structural biases that would inform this kind of gap between theory and experience, I just defended a whole dissertation on this topic.  Instead, I want to explore what taking up the perspectives of economically disadvantaged agents could add to the dialectic.  To that end, I want to propose three concerns which would likely garner more attention were the philosophy of action literature written by people whose backgrounds more resemble my own.  In doing so, I am not implying that the current literature could not take up these norms, but I am suggesting that were they to be taken up in a more substantial way, it would help to make that literature more salient to economically disadvantaged agents.

1. Flexibility

One of the more prominent ideals in the existing literature is that of stability; reasoners should keep their intentions and plans stable, display stable traits and characters, and must resist giving into temptation. 

How can we help you? (October 2022)

Now that it's been a month since our last "how can we help you?" thread, it's time for a new one.

For those of you unfamiliar with this series, this is a chance for you to post openly or anonymously in the comments section below on anything you could use help with related to the profession. After you post your query in the comments section, I will then post new threads for readers to discuss your query.

As usual, feel free to ask questions on anything (within the Cocoon's mission) that you could use help with, including but not limited to:

• The job-market (applying for jobs, etc.)
• Issues in the profession (including issues of social justice)
• Graduate school
• Publishing
• Teaching
• Work-life balance
• Mental health & well-being
• Personal struggles
• Etc.

Ask away - we're here to help! 

Important reminder: if you submit a comment in this thread responding to someone's query, I won't post it, as this makes it difficult for me to keep track of everything in the comments section, particularly which queries I've started new threads on and which ones I have not. However, if you do post a follow-up comment, chances are good that I will post it in the new thread I start on the relevant query. So, do feel free to submit responses. Just know that they won't appear in this particular thread and might instead appear later in a new post.

'Black Nihilism and Antiblack Racism' (APA blog)

The APA Blog has a nice discussion of my colleague Devon Johnson's recent book, Black Nihilism and Antiblack Racism. Having read the book, I can confirm that it's a fascinating and worthwhile read. Chapter 2 in particular struck me as one of the more original and thought-provoking pieces of philosophy that I've read in a long while. Do check it out!

Job market numbers update

At the beginning of this month, I published a post noting that this year's academic job market in philosophy appeared to be off to a hot start. However, in mid-September, several readers in our job-market discussion thread noted that it seemed like there were fewer jobs this cycle than last year. I promised to follow up on this, so I took a look today at different types of job ads on PhilJobs this year (from August 1 - September 30th) in comparison to the past 10 years to see how things are going.

Here is what I found:

Total Job Ads on PhilJobs

• 2022: 174 ads
• 2021: 133
• 2020: 65
• 2019: 146
• 2018: 156
• 2017: 135
• 2016: 155
• 2015: 136
• 2014: 149
• 2013: 163
• 2012: 252

Long story short: at least so far, taking all job ads on PhilJobs into account, this does appear to be the best academic job market in philosophy since 2012 (though not by a tremendous margin; 10-year mean = 151; median = 149).

Still, because general numbers can be a bit misleading, I took a little bit of a deeper dive, looking into numbers for different types of jobs. It would be nice if PhilJobs had a search function narrowly tailored to specific types of jobs (such as VAPs, non-tenure-track Lecturers and Teaching Professors, etc.), but it has the next best thing--namely: 

So, I tried searching by some of these terms (not all of which were useful or informative), and here's what I found:

Junior faculty (tenure track or similar)

2022: 96 ads

2021: 73

2020: 21

2019: 75

2018: 101

2017: 81

2016: 89

2015: 84

2014: 95

2013: 111

2012: 108

 

Quick takeaway: the number of junior TT job ads this year seems to be a little above average (the mean number of junior TT job ads over the past 10 years is 85; if we subtract out the COVID year 2020, the mean is 91. The median number over the past 10 years is 89).

 

Junior (Postdocs or similar, 'fixed term')

2022: 39

2021: 34

2020: 30

2019: 46

2018: 28

2017: 37

2016: 42

2015: 20

2014: 33

2013: 31

2012: 87

 

Quick takeaway: this year is 'a little above average' (mean over the past 10 years = 39, but this is skewed by 2012's extreme outlier. The median is more representative and = 34).

 

Junior (Visiting Fellowship / Professorship, 'fixed term')

2022: 12

2021: 14

2020: 9

2019: 18

2018: 8

2017: 11

2016: 21

2015: 11

2014: 15

2013: 21

2012: 60

 

Quick takeaway: broadly in line with last 9 years, 2012 is an extreme outlier.

 

Senior faculty (tenure track or similar)

2022: 31

2021: 32

2020: 11

2019: 24

2018: 35

2017: 25

2016: 34

2015: 29

2014: 43

2013: 45

2012: 45

 

Quick takeaway: the number of senior tenure-track jobs is broadly in line with the past 8 years, but there were a lot more senior TT jobs in 2012-2014. So again, about 'average' this year, though the number of these jobs advertised each year is about 33% less than in 2012-2014.

 

Senior faculty (Tenured, continuing or permanent)

2022: 13

2021: 14

2020: 8

2019: 13

2018: 13

2017: 8

2016: 21

2015: 19

2014: 21

2013: 19

2012: 33

 

Quick takeaway: 'about average' compared to the last five years, but there were significantly more senior/tenured jobs from 2012-2016. This and the last category may suggest that colleges and universities are not filling senior retirements with senior positions as much as in the past, but instead more junior positions.

 

So, is this year's philosophy job market good or bad so far? My hot take: it's complicated. It's a little better in some ways than recent markets (junior TT jobs & postdocs), but on the whole, still pretty bad (much as it has been for decades now)...

Putting together a good academic website?

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

Do people have any thoughts/tips about putting together an academic website? I take it that it's a consensus good thing, but are there platforms/kinds of content/organization tips that people would recommend?

Good question! I discussed websites briefly in this post in our Job Market Boot Camp a few years back, but I'm not sure how good or helpful that advice was. I did my best with my own website just by looking around at other people's as examples--but I've seen websites that are far better than my own.

Anyway, what do you all think? What should a good website look like? Links to ones that you think are particularly good would be helpful, I think--and do feel free to self-nominate by linking to your site, if you think it would be helpful!

Hurricane Ian pause

This is just a quick note that there may not be many (or perhaps even any) new posts on the Cocoon this week due to Hurricane Ian. My spouse and I live in Tampa, and bought our first home only about a month ago. We are in the process of prepping and may have to evacuate. We may also be without power for quite a while, depending on how things go.

Readers should feel free to post comments on existing posts (including our job market discussion and reporting threads), and I'll do my best to moderate and approve them as soon as I can. Having lived in Florida for about a decade now, sometimes things can unexpectedly turn out okay with these things. If (depending on conditions) moderating becomes infeasible, I'll try let you know--but you'll probably be able to infer what's going on from news reports.

To everyone in Florida (or otherwise in the path of the storm), I hope you and yours stay safe. Wish us luck.

Working in 'elite' vs. 'non-elite' programs?

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

I hope this question is in the scope, because I am genuinely curious for practical reasons. Is anyone here a faculty at an elite program who has also worked in non-elite programs? How do those experiences compare? In particular, are you bothered by/developing/acting out some elitism? How do you like this aspect? Does anyone like their non-elite program experience better, assuming all duties are roughly equal? I have never been in a super elite program for study or work, and find it awkward to ask this in real life.

I've never worked in what one might call an 'elite' program, and to be honest, I'm happy for it. I do work that I enjoy, both in research and the classroom, and I'm a heck of a lot less self-conscious than I was in graduate school, when I always felt pressure (much of it self-imposed) to impress those around me. But this is, of course, just my experience and a fairly narrow experience at that. Anyone else have any experience or insights to share?

Beyond the Ivory Tower Workshops

I just returned home yesterday from a wonderful time in Boston for the Beyond the Ivory Tower Workshop. For those of you who may not have heard of them before, the workshops are held several times per year, and participants are guided over the course of several days on how to 'Learn to write short pieces, for wide audiences, about the big questions.'

The Workshop Team was spectacularly helpful and supportive, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Participants ranged from philosophers to psychologists, physicists, and biological anthropologists, and it was cool to learn about their work and share work with them in turn.

Finally, the Workshops are fully funded, so if you have any interest in doing public-facing work, you may apply here!

Getting Closer to a Permanent Position?

In one of my posts from 2021, I considered the question of how long a job candidate should continue pursuing a tenure-track position before moving on and what factors could affect someone’s answer. Recently, someone left a comment on that post that I think warrants a little further discussion:

To what extent does having a VAP each year provide evidence of landing a permanent gig? Maybe that’s not an easily answered question. But I’ve been working on the assumption (I guess “hope” is more accurate) that it counts for something, e.g., it’s another line added to the CV.

This question gets at an important challenge associated with repeated job market runs: how do you assess whether your chances of getting a long-term position are improving or not? Here are a few thoughts on getting a short-term visiting position.

U. Chicago philosophy job

Matthew Boyle (Emerson and Grace Wineland Pugh Professor of Humanities, University of Chicago) wrote in asking us to draw readers' attention to this job listing:

Assistant Professor - Philosophy

Description

AOS: Open, but with particular interest in applicants working in any of the following areas: (1) Twentieth-Century Continental Philosophy, (2) Kant and Post-Kantian German Philosophy, (3) Philosophy of Race/Racial Justice, or (4) Non-Western Philosophy

AOC: Open

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago invites applications for a position as Assistant Professor to begin July 1, 2023, or as soon as possible thereafter. Minimum teaching load of four courses per year over three quarters, at graduate and undergraduate levels, and usual dissertation, committee, and advising responsibilities.

Is PhD life hostile to families? (and beyond...)

Jared Oliphint (PhD, Texas A&M) has an interesting substack post up entitled, 'Why a PhD Program Is a Hostile Environment for a Family', which is in a sense less about PhD programs per se than 'PhD life' (broadly construed). A few snippets:

So what makes PhD life so hostile to families?

1. The Big One: Lack of Income

...Any philosophy graduate program worth considering will be funded, which means tuition is all or mostly covered, and you get an annual stipend over the life of your program ranging anywhere from $12k-$25k, in exchange for being a teaching assistant, a research assistant, or teaching your own courses. This will put you below the poverty line even if you are single.  It is extremely challenging to cover basic living expenses if that stipend is your sole source of income, even if you’re single, and it’s impossible to do so if you have a spouse and kids. The math doesn’t add up...

2. The Psychological Toll

…the psychological challenges of grad life are real and constant. You’re doing all this work in social isolation while in the back of your mind you know that there is a good chance you will have little or no employment payoff at the end of it.

I’ll give you an example. While I was looking at job listings in my field over this past year, a realization hit me like a ton of bricks: in the mainstream academic world, the skills I have trained for and honed for years are simply not valued, financially speaking. I was perusing philosophy jobs and noticed that Mississippi State University had an opening to teach in their department. It was one of the temporary positions I mentioned above: only 9 months (an academic year), and it paid $36k. Now, MSU is an R1 institution with a lot of financial resources, and a quick google search reveals that they recently set a fundraising record. Another quick google search reveals that the average public school teacher salary in Mississippi is…$48k. So if I was “lucky” enough to land this position at MSU after years of successfully grinding through a PhD, I would be making as much as the average public school teacher, but without the stability of long-term employment...

3. Isolated Work

The nature of graduate work is also unique... The level of research you need to achieve to be successful... requires a long-term physical space that is isolated and distraction-free, and such a space can be especially difficult to find with a family...

But the constant isolation is bound to have both short-term and long-term effects on your family and social life, in a way I haven’t yet figured out or processed...

The other unique part is the ever-present, relentless time-limit of your work in the program. You feel the constant pressure of completing the dissertation, of course, but sometimes even more important is the unavoidable, intense pressure to get your papers accepted at conferences, and to publish in a good journal before going on the academic job market...That job cycle can be indescribably tough on a family in many ways: financially, socially, psychologically, etc. In many cases those costs can be too high to be worth whatever the gains are.

Oliphint concludes the piece by making it clear that, 'I don’t want this post to read as a list of complaints; if it reads that way I’ve done something wrong.' Rather, as he puts it:

Being in a graduate program is a privilege, and getting accepted happens because of some mysterious proportion of merit and luck. I’m thankfully on the other side of all this, so I no longer have to navigate some of the intense challenges. My primary reasons for writing this post have been to warn those who may be thinking about applying to grad school (particularly in philosophy), and simply to provide a window into the tragically unique trials and challenges that have more to do with daily living than with the academic demands like presenting at conferences, getting published, pleasing an advisory committee, etc., which obviously provide their own unique trials and challenges. I could say quite a bit about the ways a PhD program is unimaginably difficult, academically speaking. I’ll probably say more about that broad topic at some point, but I wanted to focus here on why PhD programs are unavoidably hostile environments for grad students who enter the program with a family, or who start a family at some point during the program. 

I don't have children of my own yet, but I do have a spouse who suffered with me during the end of graduate school and during my seven years on the job-market--and when it comes to my family as such (including my extended family), Oliphint's post very much speaks to my experience. Further, now that I think about it, all three of Oliphint's major sources of hostility to family life seem to me to be hostility to individual and family well-being more broadly, including the well-being of those who don't have families. After all, financial insecurity, isolated work, and the psychological toll of grad school and the job-market all apply to single individuals too, though perhaps not in the same ways. In fact, some of the things Oliphint discusses--such as the isolating nature of grad work--might be even worse in certain ways for single people (who may have few, if any, loved ones to turn to for daily support). So, perhaps the real issue--or rather, more complete picture--is that grad life is profoundly hostile to individual and family flourishing. That seems very bad, but again, not at all inconsistent with my own experiences over the course of my career, both as a (formerly) single person (and son), and now as a husband.

Anyway, I'm curious. Did Oliphint's post speak to you, as it did to me? Or, if you had a family in grad school, did you have a very different experience? Finally, to the extent that you may share Oliphint's experiences, what (if anything) do you think grad programs or the profession more broadly could do to do better and be more supportive--both with respect to family life, but also (for reasons noted above) individual well-being too?

Legit journal?

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

Does anyone know about the MDPI journal "Philosophies"? I see several recognizable names on the editorial board:

https://mdpi.com/journal/philosophies/editors

I also have heard concerns about the publisher: borderline predatory practices and worries about the peer-review process. It isn't on Beall's list and a quick Google search only yields one Reddit thread warning people to be wary, but without specifics.

I have no idea, but that page does indeed list a number of prominent philosophers on the editorial board. Anyone have any helpful insights?

Philosophy majors: how many credits?

I'm curious: how many credit hours are required for the Philosophy major in your departments? Asking for a friend!

Job market do's and don'ts: campus visits

I'd like to continue our new job-market do's and don'ts series today by asking search committee members to weigh in on what job candidates should or shouldn't do during campus visits / 'flyouts'.

I wrote one post on campus visits for our Job Market Boot Camp series, but I think it would be great to hear from other search committee members. Are there things that you’ve seen candidates do during campus visits that reflected well on them? Alternatively, are there things you've seen candidates do that came across poorly?

Finally, job candidates: feel free to ask search committee members in thread below any questions that you have (and search committees, feel free to answer)!

Using an introduction as writing sample?

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

I have a question about writing samples...would it be frowned upon to send an introduction to a dissertation or book project in progress as a writing sample? I work in a pretty technical area, so I think my introduction is clearest and most engaging for a general audience. But, of course, it's only the beginning of an argument, and perhaps search committees want to see a full argument in article form? Apologies if this has been asked before.

This seems to me like a mistake. Your research statement should serve as an accessible and engaging introduction to your work. I think you want your writing sample to show your "chops", as it were. It should be a piece that does hard philosophical work, showing your best as a philosopher! 

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?