The Philosophers' Cocoon

UK research council funding?

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

I have a couple of questions about UK research council funding. Firstly, I hear it is highly competitive, but can't seem to gauge how competitive, at least in comparison to US R1 Grad school admissions. Do people know the sort of success rate for applicants? Also, it seems that you compete against people from other subjects, so how well do philosophers do on average?

Secondly, how valuable is it when applying for jobs? For instance, would it be better to go to Oxbridge or a highly ranked UK institution without funding or a lower PGR ranked or unranked UK institution with UKRI/AHRC funding? And is the perception of it different in the UK/Europe to the US?

These are all excellent questions, and I have no idea what the answers are. Do any of you have any helpful insights?

Higher standards for longer papers?

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

I have a question for journal editors and reviewers. Those journals that have length limits for articles usually make it clear that longer articles have a higher standard for publication. I wonder if this is true even for those journals that do not have length limits for articles. Do editors and reviewers for those journals really treat articles with different lengths equally? Or are longer articles still harder to get published? (I do not know but maybe editors still care about lengths and the number of articles they can include in a single issue? Or reviewers just hate long articles so they might implicitly raise the standard?)

These are good questions. I'm curious to hear from reviewers and editors: do you impose higher standards on longer papers, even for journals that don't have an explicit policy on this?

Funded MA at Texas Tech

From Texas Tech:

To all undergraduates interested in pursuing graduate study in philosophy:

The Texas Tech Philosophy Department is now accepting applications for its Master of Arts Program in philosophy.

Our M.A. students are regularly admitted to some of the best PhD programs in philosophy including most recently NYU, Rutgers, Pittsburgh, and UCLA. Recent placement can seen on our website here: https://www.depts.ttu.edu/philosophy/degrees/placement.php

We are able to offer students generous funding packages. Teaching Assistantships are provided to almost all of our graduate students which include tuition and fee waivers that cover more than 80% of tuition and fees as well as a stipend of an additional $14,000 a year. Additional fellowships of up to $5,000 may also be available as well. 

For financial aid purposes, US students should fill out a FAFSA form as early as possible. For full consideration, all other applications materials should be received by Feb 15th, though applications are still accepted and considered on a rolling basis after this. Further information about our program can be found on our website here: https://www.depts.ttu.edu/philosophy/degrees/gradprogram.php as well as on the attached poster.

Please contact Dr. Amy Flowerree, Director of Graduate Admissions, at Amy.Flowerree@ttu.edu with any questions. 

Disclosing you were a reviewer post-publication?

Elsewhere on social media, Elizabeth Scarbrough (Florida International University) asks:

Question for academic friends: Once an article is published, can you tell the person you were an anonymous reviewer? (Especially if you loved the article, wrote a positive reader report, and genuinely didn't know who wrote the article?)

This is an interesting question. What do you all think, and why?

Philosophy Across Borders (new series at Oxford University Press)

This is a guest blog post announcement by Amy Olberding, President's Associates Presidential Professor, University of Oklahoma 

I’m one of the co-editors on a new series OUP is initiating and wanted to reach out here in particular to make clear that we welcome proposal submissions from younger, less established philosophers.  One goal is to promote novel approaches to philosophy through work that is less constricted by the standard or more traditional boundaries and I’m hopeful that newer philosophers may be more adept at that, as well as interested. 

SERIES ANNOUNCEMENT

Oxford University Press is seeking submissions of proposals for a new series:  Philosophy Across Borders.  OUP is committed to publishing high quality philosophical work that draws on broad sourcing to create novel philosophy or novel approaches to recognized problems, methodologies, or approaches.  The hope is that books in the series will exhibit conversation between traditions or cultural sources not often engaged together.  This might include, e.g., engagement between underrepresented traditions and more widely studied western sources, but it could also include work that engages multiple underrepresented traditions not often engaged together.  The goal is not to re-create comparative philosophy, but to provide accessible philosophical work that simply does philosophy in an idiom that is open and global.  If you have a proposal for the series, please contact any of the series editors below or the OUP editor, Peter Ohlin.

 

Series Co-editors:  Kristi Dotson, Bronwyn Finnigan, Jonardon Ganeri, Amy Olberding, Evan Thompson

Undergrad submissions to grad conferences?

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

Hello! I am helping organize a graduate student conference and we've received a submission from an undergraduate. I can't think of a reason to exclude them from the review process (other than the fact that we are branded as a venue for grad student work), but I'd love to hear if other people have thoughts about the benefits of a grad-student-only conference environment. Is it needlessly elitist of us not to consider their work?

Interesting question. On the one hand, as the OP notes, the conference is branded as a forum for grad students to present their work, and I guess admitting an undergraduate might mean one less opportunity for a grad student to present their work--which seems relevant. On the other hand, undergrads can use forums to present their work as well, and some undergrads may very much benefit from presenting at a grad conference. So, I don't know. What do you all think?

Podcast interview w/Michael Cholbi

This is just a quick note that Bradford Cokelet (Kansas) has a new podcast interview with Michael Cholbi (Edinburgh) on Michael's forthcoming book, Grief: A Philosophical Guide. Check it out!

Talent and Bias

By Sam Duncan

In this post I want to dig more deeply into some points about the deeply worrying effects of our belief in talent on our students made by Allison Gopnik and Eric Schwitzgebel. As Gopnik notes there’s good reason to think that there is some causal relationship between the fact that philosophy puts so much stock in talent and our lack of gender and racial diversity. And Schwitzgebel paints a very plausible picture of one way that this likely plays out in practice; as he notes it’s a lot easier for a young white guy to get away with various ploys that allow him to seem smart than it might be for a woman or a member of a minority group (It’s also a lot less risky). However, I think there are deeper ways that a belief in talent sets up bias in our field.

Let me begin with a question: When you look at student papers or consider how to respond to student comments, questions, and challenges in class do you think about whose paper it is or who made the comment? I’m betting that you do. If you make much of an effort to know who your students are it’s hard not to do this, and to a great extent this is part of getting to know our students. But this also opens up a danger of bias and believing that talent determines success in philosophy makes this danger much worse.

The job market & financial health of universities

An anonymous reader writes in:

I was recently thinking about applying to a private, non-elite SLAC simply because it's a lot closer to my and my wife's families. I decided not to for a lot of reasons but one deep hesitation I had was that I know a lot of the private, non-elite SLACs are likely to flat out fold in the next ten or fifteen years and the public ones are likely to come in for some deep cuts. This brings me to a question that I thought it would be very good to put out there: How in the world does one get any information on the financial health of the place one is applying and related stuff like enrollment trends?

This seems super important. The people who ended up getting two jobs I interviewed in the past at public SLACs have already gotten laid off. It would have been a disaster for me and my family if I'd left a renewable lecturer gig . . . that, while shitty in oh so many ways, was at least stable, for a TT gig only to get laid off in three years. It seems important that applicants know that this is a real threat they need to worry about at a lot of schools, especially SLACs.

This is a really important question, and I'm really glad someone asked it. Over the past couple of years, I too have heard of at least of a few horror stories--cases where someone was finally able to get a tenure-track job, only to see their job eliminated a year or two after they started. Alas, I'm not sure how to answer the question. You can of course ask faculty or administrators at the university about the financial health of the institution (either during an on-campus visit or after a hiring offer is extended). But, as for asking faculty, my sense is that sometimes even they can be quite in the dark about these matters, as the actual financial health of the institution may only be known by upper administration (which, I think, is why so many of the recent waves of faculty-line eliminations have come as a total shock out of the blue to those who faced them).

So, while the OP's question is a super important one, I don't have any real guidance above and beyond: ask around before accepting a job offer. But this advice probably isn't all that helpful. What do you all think? Do you have any helpful tips or insights (or personal experiences) on this issue? 

The problem with "don't go to grad school" advice

You are a professor at a small liberal arts college. A bright student approaches you and says she is considering graduate school in philosophy. She loves philosophy and wants to dive deeper into it. She foresees a life of the mind where she might do this for a living.

Oh, your heart just breaks. This student is so excellent. Her final paper for your philosophy of science course blew you away. Still, you steel your heart and give her the advice that not only is sensible, but that strikes you as your moral duty to tell her.  

"Just don't do it!" you say. "Just don't go to grad school. The philosophy academic job market is abysmal for years, and now with Covid it's gone even further down."

You might temper this advice by saying that maybe she can consider it if she cannot imagine doing anything else (this is terrible advice, btw, but that's for another time), or only if she can get into a top program.

On the face of it, it seems straightforward to give this advice. We might even think we have a moral duty to actively discourage a student who contemplates getting a PhD in philosophy. 

But there is a fundamental problem--the advice takes away the student's agency. This piece by Tracy Evans, who started a PhD at age 60 is illuminating. Evans is privileged in many respects. She already had a long career already behind her when she "heeded the call to change". Yet, her reasons for embarking on the PhD are, I think, recognizable to many of us. As she writes, "'What do you intend to do with a Ph.D.?' [my colleagues] asked. 'It is all about the journey,' I responded. She goes on to quote one of her favorite authors, Ursula K Le Guin, who wrote  “It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the end.”

Did you receive adequate mentoring?

Laurence B. McCullough (Distinguished Emeritus Professor, Baylor) writes in:

As a retired professor, I follow your blog to keep up with what is happening in the world of philosophy.  I spent my career as a medical educator.  In the Baylor Center we (Baruch Brody and I, then the only two senior faculty) had a program for mentoring for all junior faculty.  We met with our colleagues regularly both formally and informally, read their work, advised them on academic matters, etc. 

We called what we did mentoring for success.  For example, Baruch and I mentored a junior colleague who followed Baruch as Director of our Center and therefore as my boss before I retired.  This is common, and a point of considerable pride, in the world of medical education. 

I am struck as I follow the postings on your blog by the absence of mention or mentorship.  I benefitted from mentoring when I was junior faculty, especially from a philosophy colleague at Texas A&M (where I was on medical and philosophy faculties and my first position).  I get the sense that many of our colleagues whose comments you post have no mentoring.  Perhaps mentoring – the absence of it, when it helps, when it does not help – would make a good topic for your blog.

This is an excellent query, and I'm thinking of running a short series on the topic. But, before I move forward with that, I'd like to ask the Cocoon's readers a few questions:

1. If you are a current or recent graduate student, what kind of mentoring are you receiving (viz. research, teaching, professionalization, the job market, etc.) have you received or are you receiving? Do you think the mentoring you've received is appropriate/adequate? Why/why not?
2. If you are or recently were a junior faculty member (e.g. a postdoc, TT faculty, non-TT faculty, etc.), what kind of mentoring have you received or are you receiving? Do you consider it appropriate/adequate? Why/why not?

Repeatedly publishing in the same journal?

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

How do we feel about having multiple publications in the same journal?

For instance, there are four major journals specific to my subfield. Of them, one is an absolute pleasure to work with; one has had egregious, well-documented problems with response time (i.e., taking many years); one has lesser issues with response time (i.e., taking many months); one has an acceptance rate of about 2% and hardly seems worth the effort.

Given this situation, sometimes I'm tempted to stop sending to the other three and only send to the 'good' one. Of course, I'm not actually going to do this, but I'm curious whether anyone has thoughts or stories about this subject. In particular, I wonder how multiple publications in the same (good, maybe A- level) journal would look to search committee or tenure committee members.

Good question, and I'm curious to hear what readers think. Assuming the journal is well-regarded, it's not clear to me why publishing repeatedly in the same journal should be a problem--or why search committees or a tenure committee should care. But maybe I'm missing something. Anyone have any helpful insights here?

Work habits on the tenure track?

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

As a (very) early career person, it would really help me to know how later career people spend (or spent, when they were on the tenure-track) their average week. How much time to you dedicate to writing? How do you make sure you are setting aside the right amount of time for editing / pipeline type work (responding to reviews, getting papers submitted) vs creating type work (developing new projects, drafting new paper sections)? I'm finding it difficult to navigate this and am curious if others have systems that work for him. I expect this varies widely, but it would still be helpful to hear about others' experiences.

These are very good questions, and I am very curious to hear how readers respond. It is difficult for me to give a simple answer in my own case, as during my time on the tenure-track (and post-tenure) my work habits have varied tremendously. A lot depends, I think, on how in need of publications one is. When I needed to publish a lot, if I had a two-day-a-week teaching schedule, I would basically spend the other three days of the week writing. On the other hand, during times that I didn't need to publish a lot or had a three or four day a week teaching schedule, there have been entire semesters when I've gotten very little writing done--and, in any case, I get the vast majority of my writing done during winter and summer breaks. In general, I've found it pretty difficult to shift-gears between teaching and research on "teaching days", and have friends who report the same thing--though maybe things are different in R1 jobs where one has a very light teaching load.

In terms of how I partition my writing time between pipeline-type work (editing pre-existing papers, completing R&Rs, etc.) and drafting new work, I'd say it's roughly 50/50. On writing days, I'll usually spend the first half of my day (say, 9am-1pm) drafting new work, and then the afternoon (2-5pm) on pipeline stuff. I will say that my sense is that it is vital to always be drafting new things. Most of the people that I know who are the most successful (including in terms of receiving tenure) are people who consistently publish a lot, and hence, always have quite a few things under review at any given time--which requires producing a lot of new work pretty consistently. 

But these are just my habits and experiences. What are yours? It would be great to hear not only from those on the tenure-track who are pretenure, but also (for obvious reasons) from those who received tenure. What does your average work week look like, and how do you partition your time between teaching and research, and between drafting new work and work in your pipeline?

How many applicants are PhD programs receiving?

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

I wish you all a happy new year. I would like to ask if the readers who serve on the admission committees at their schools (or are otherwise acquainted with the situation) know or have any guess how applications to PhD programs they have received or expect to receive this year, especially compared to the last year (when the applicant pool was so big) and earlier years (2020, 2019..).

This is an excellent query. I have heard anecdotally that some programs are way down in terms of the number of applications they've received this year, while other programs are either similar to or up from recent years. I've also heard, again anecdotally, that this might have something to do with whether programs require the GRE--which, for obvious reasons, might push applicants to apply instead to programs than no longer require them. 

Any readers (e.g. on PhD admissions committees) willing to share how large their applicant pools are this year compared to recent years? This might not only provide some idea of big-picture trends (in philosophy PhD applications in general), but also perhaps help us to understand the causes of them. It might also be good to hear from applicants too! Did you apply to fewer PhD programs this year for some reason? If so, why?

Freelosophy: a centralized forum for commenting on philosophy papers

Two philosophers, Filippo Contesi and  Giulio Pietroiusti (University of Barcelona), have created a new site, Freelosophy, which allows users to search and leave public comments on PhilPapers or PhilArchive. Contesi writes:

In some academic disciplines, publication and discussion of articles
before journal submission is generally much more widespread than in
philosophy. Indeed, most journal publishing houses are publicly
committed to considering pre-archived papers for publication. You can
double-check this for your journal of choice here: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/

Philosophers already can make their pre-prints publicly available at
any point on at least one pre-print repository: PhilArchive.org.
However, currently existing web platforms for public discussion of
scientific pre-prints (e.g. PubPeer.org) cannot be used to discuss
PhilArchive-d papers.

So, we have created a website that allows anyone to comment freely on
papers present on PhilArchive and/or PhilPapers: https://freelosophy.github.io/
On Freelosophy, scholars can add comments to a paper (and read them)
by using its PhilPapers/Archive ID, an identifier present on the page
of each paper on PhilArchive. Each paper on PhilPapers also has its
own PhilPaper/Archive ID (in the URL).

Everyone interested is most welcome to start using our service, which
is currently in public beta. Please do not hesitate to contact us at
philfreedback@gmail.com for any comments or feedback.

Readers can learn more about how the site works at Daily Nous. I hope the site takes off, as I think it's a great endeavor--and I encourage the Cocoon's readers to try it out!