The Philosophers' Cocoon

On Active Learning, Part II

In a previous post about Active Learning (which was a follow-up to The Sage on the Stage), I said that active learning requires adopting certain attitudes. In discussing those attitudes, I mentioned a few in-class activities, such as small group work on case studies, team debates, role playing, and peer review, which can be used to turn a classroom into a place where students are active rather than passive. In this post, I will elaborate on these activities.

Before I do so, however, I will say a few words about the reasons for using class time to engage students in these activities, as opposed to the more traditional ways to spend class time, such as lecture, reading passages from a text, class discussion, etc.  The reasons are as follows:

• Concentration. It is difficult to pay close attention for one hour and fifteen minutes. In-class activities are good ways to keep students focused.
• Responsibility. I think that, if I cover the readings in their entirety in class, I give students the impression that they don’t need to bother with the texts outside of class. So I make sure that students read the assigned texts outside of class, and then engage them in activities in class that expand on the readings.
• Convenience. By making course material available to students outside of class (e.g., via a course management system, such as Blackboard or Angel), I allow students to go through the material on their own time and at their own pace.

Since I hold students responsible for reading and discussing the assigned texts outside of class, I don’t have to go over the readings in their entirety in class, and thus I have free time for doing exciting and engaging activities in class. To make sure that students read and discuss the assigned texts, I ask them to post summaries of the main arguments on the discussion board in Blackboard or Angel and comment on a classmate’s post. To help students with the readings, I post PowerPoint slides, notes, and links to online sources about the readings on Blackboard or Angel. I also participate in the discussion on the discussion board.

Let me give an example of what I do in class. After they had read Nagel’s “What It Is Like To Be a Bat,” posted their summaries on the discussion board, and commented on a classmate’s post before class, I show in class a video clip about a blind person who can echo-locate.

 

Then I put up a PowerPoint slide with the following questions:

• Does the case of Ben Underwood show that human beings can experience what it is like to be a bat? If so, why? If not, why not? 
• What would Nagel say about this case?

Through this case, students grasp the distinction between what it is like for one to behave like a bat does and what it is like for a bat to be a bat.

Instead of addressing these questions to the entire class, however, I do what is called a Think-Pair-Share activity. I put up a PowerPoint slide with the following instructions:  

• Think. Think about your answer and write it down. 
• Pair. Pair up with a classmate and compare your answers.
• Share. Share your answers with the rest of the class when called upon.

I think that this exercise is better than class discussion for the following reasons: (a) it gives students time to think about their answers (time that can now be spent on thinking, since the reading was done outside of class), (b) it lets them know what their classmates think and engage in conversation about it, and (c) everyone gets to participate.

Again, all of the above is based on my own views and personal experience. So make of it what you will. What do you do to keep your students actively engaged?

On Active Learning, Part I

In a previous post about The Sage on the Stage, I said that active learning requires more than class discussions. In this post, I will say a bit more about what I think is required in order to make students active participants in the learning process.

First, I think that encouraging students to become active participants in the learning process requires that we—as professors—adopt certain attitudes:

1. Assume that students want to learn. As I see it, our job is not to ignite the fire of learning. Rather, our job is not to extinguish it and to make sure that it keeps burning. (“All men [and women] by nature desire to know,” right?). Lecturing seems like a sure way to extinguish the fire of learning. On the other hand, activities, such as small group work on case studies, team debates, role playing, peer review, etc., are ways to get students active and engaged. (More on these activities in Part II.)
2. Put students first. In designing our courses we should not think about what we want to cover. Instead, we should think about what students would find most interesting, exciting, and useful to them. I usually do this by designing my courses based on an overarching theme, through which I can cover the stuff that I think students will find most interesting without “sacrificing” philosophical content. For example, I designed one of my courses around the big theme of surviving death (always a hit), through which I got to cover mind, personal identity, and so on.
3. Aim to leave students with something of lasting value. Another sure way to kill students’ curiosity is to require them to know what Big Name said about X and what Big Shot said in response. Instead, we should do our best to make students go through the arguments on their own. To this end, we should make sure that they master the skills of critical and analytical thinking. In other words, our courses should be focused more on “thinking” rather than just “knowing.” In making sure that students master the skills of critical thinking, I see my teaching as part of a collective effort to make students better citizens.
4. Be active, too. This means at least two things: (a) recognize that students have different learning needs, and so we should be prepared to offer help in various ways (e.g., office hours, discussion board on course management system, email, etc.); (b) show students that learning how to think philosophically is the most exciting, important, and useful thing they will ever learn. For example, I occasionally bring examples of bad thinking from the media and ask students to figure out why it is bad. It is a sort of “If only s/he had taken Philosophy 101, s/he wouldn’t have said that…” in-class exercise. Admittedly, this requires a lot of work. But it pays off when a student comes to you and says something like, “I used what we’ve learned in class last week. My friend and I had a disagreement about X and I showed her that her argument was invalid.”

Of course, all of the above is based on my own views and personal experience. So make of it what you will. Part II will be about some strategies to make your classroom a place where students are active rather than passive.

Conference Commentaries

I recently learned from Dr. Alastair Norcross that I'll be providing a commentary at the upcoming Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress. (I get to tackle an interesting paper on Kant and vegetarianism.) In light of that fact, I'd like to pitch a question that I have not yet seen addressed on this blog: What constitutes a good conference commentary?

I've done one formal conference commentary before, and one professor I consulted said that a good conference commentary does two things. First, it provides the author with some useful feedback that he or she can use to revise the paper after the conference is over. This feedback can come in the form of objections to refute, additional literature to consult, areas of the argument to clarify or explain, and so on. Second, a good commentary serves as a starting point for audience discussion of the paper. Presumably, if the first task is accomplished, this second task will come naturally.

I have had commentators for some of the papers I've presented at conferences, and I recall one in which the commentator essentially used my paper as a background for presenting his own view on a related topic. He did not address my paper or the central arguments in any significant way. Of course, this meant that I didn't have to wrestle with any difficult objections in front of the audience, but it also meant that I didn't get much feedback (from the commentator, at least) that I could use to improve the paper. Additionally, his commentary lasted significantly longer than the 10 minutes he was allotted, which meant that discussion time was limited. Thus, I suspect this approach to a commentary is a close approximation of what not to do.

I'll conclude with a related question: once you've put together a commentary, is it standard practice to send a draft of your comments to the paper's author? I've been told this is a professional courtesy of sorts, but from the experiences of other students and faculty, I gather that it's not a universal practice to give the author advance notice of what you plan to say. For what it's worth, I always send a draft to the presenting author at least a week before the conference, but I'm curious whether there really is a general assumption that this should be done.

New Contributor

I'd like to welcome our newest contributor, Jason Chen. Jason is an MA student in political philosophy at the University of York. His primary interests are the capabilities approach and human development. Welcome!

So it seems to you that my argument proves too much, eh?

[Cross-posted at Think: Just Do It!]

Philosophers often make the following complaint:

It seems to me that, if the author were right, then s/he would prove too much.

For example, some have complained that Moore's open question argument proves too much. I take it that those who make this sort of complaint mean that the conclusion argued for seems too strong. For example, in the case of Moore's open question argument, which can be reconstructed as follows:

1. Suppose that 'x is good' is equivalent to 'x is pleasure'.
2. If 'x is good' is equivalent to 'x is pleasure', then 'pleasure is good' is equivalent to 'pleasure is pleasure'.
3. But 'pleasure is pleasure' is an uninformative tautology.
4. If those who assert 'good is pleasure' mean to express more than a mere tautology, then the question whether pleasure is good remains "open."
5. Those who assert 'good is pleasure' mean to express more than an uninformative tautology.
6. Therefore, the question whether pleasure is good remains "open."

the conclusion strikes some as too strong, since it means that, for any definition of 'good' in terms of some natural property, such as pleasure, it remains an open question whether that natural property itself is good.

But so what? If Moore's argument is sound, so what if the conclusion strikes us as too strong?

[Please don't get hung up on the example. If you don't like it, pick your own example. I have no interest in defending Moorean non-naturalism. I am interested in the meta-philosophical question of whether an intuition that an argument's conclusion is too strong should outweigh a sound argument supporting that conclusion. In other words, should the "author proves too much" objection be taken seriously?]

If the choice is between a sound argument and an intuition that the argument's conclusion is too strong, I would go with the sound argument. Which would you go with, fellow pupae?

Update:

I've tried to sum up the different readings of the "proving too much" charge we have discussed in this diagram. What do you guys think?

A Small Milestone

This morning, a little less than a month and a half after the Philosophers' Cocoon launched, the site passed 10,000 visitors.  I'd like to thank everyone, particularly all of our contributors and readers, for helping to get the Cocoon off to such a great start!

Real Artists Ship

One thing is becoming clearer and clearer to me the further away I get from being a graduate student, and that is that it is important to trust oneself, write papers relatively quickly, send them out to conferences relatively quickly, revise them relatively quickly, and send them out to journals relatively quickly.  In other words, I have discovered that it is important to get a lot of papers done and out, without being too much of a perfectionist about them.  As Steve Jobs said, "Real artists ship."  Let me explain what I mean by this, lest I be misunderstood.

Let me be clear: I do not mean to suggest that one should write sloppy, bad papers and send them to conferences or journals. That wastes everyone's time. My claim is that I have learned, though first- and second-hand experience, that successful philosophers develop the ability to write decent paper drafts quickly, write a lot of them (by trusting their philosophical instincts), and get those drafts out to conferences (and later, to journals) in a relatively short amount of time. Let me explain why. 

I have heard some people say that it is better to focus on getting one or two great papers right and published in top journals than to write a lot of second-rate papers. I think this is a false dilemma, and that believing it is a recipe for disaster. Allow me to use my own case as an example. There is a paper from my dissertation that I have been working on tirelessly for over six years. I have written over 60 full drafts of it, presented it at several conferences, received promising comments from some top journals, and truly believe that it makes an important contribution to the field...yet I have not published it yet. In short, I have worked very hard to get it right, and I believe that (slowly!) it is getting there. But now notice where I would be today if this had been my sole focus. I would be up sh*t creek without a paddle. I would have no publications, and over six years of frustration.

Let's think a little bit about the publication process. In academia, one must publish or perish. Yet the publication process is absolutely horrific. One can get a string of slow, irresponsible reviewers one after another. On top of that, even when reviewers do a great job, standards are incredibly high. Top journals have acceptance rates well under 5%. You can also get "scooped." You can spend years on a paper only to see someone else publish something very much like it first. Etc. Because of all this, putting all of your eggs in one basket -- focusing all of your attention on one or two papers -- seems unwise. And indeed, every individual I personally know who has succeeded in publishing philosophy has not pursued this course. 

My first year out of grad school, I approached three people who had been in my grad program who had enjoyed a great deal of success. I asked them for advice. All three of them independently told me the same thing. They told me to "get stuff out." I trusted them. I wrote a lot of papers, and quickly. I used to spend months getting a paper draft together. Now, on average, I get paper drafts done in two to three weeks. Are all of the papers awesome? No. Are some of them not even decent? Yes. And yet...the more you get done and out (to conferences, etc.), the more efficient you become and the more you learn how to distinguish the good from the bad. So, for example, suppose you write five papers over the course of two months. You send them to conferences. Two of them get accepted, you get great comments, etc., whereas the other three continually get rejected. Well look, this is great. By getting stuff done and out, you have gotten feedback that two out of your five ideas have a good chance of flying with people, and the other three aren't quite working. Notice how different things might have been if you'd spent months on each of those papers. You would have spent a ton of time on them, and in the end you probably would find out later (from other people) that three out of the five paper ideas won't fly.  That's not a very efficient way to spend your time.

Why, then, in a nutshell, is it important to get stuff done and out quickly? I think the basic idea can be captured in the traditional idea of a division of labor. Two minds, the proverb goes, are better than one. Well, maybe...but they are certainly more efficient than one. By getting lots of stuff done and out quickly, you "offload" to other people perhaps the most difficult aspect of philosophy to accomplish: the task of determining what will fly to others (e.g. in the publishing world). When you send papers to conferences, etc., you learn which of your ideas others find attractive and which of your ideas you are sort of deluded about. Figuring this stuff out on your own is very, very difficult.  Ideas that you think are awesome just might not fly to others. So don't try to figure it out on your own. Trust your instincts, write things up, send them out. Let the world help you figure out which of your ideas fly. Yes, you will receive lots of rejections, and even some mean comments. But you will have spent your time wisely, and effeciently, and I bet you will have some good publications to show for it.

New Contributor

I'd like to welcome our newet contributor, Kristina Meshelski. Kristina is Assistant Professor of philosophy at CSU Northridge. Her primary area of research is political philosophy, particularly Rawls and nonideal theory. She also has interests in ethics, feminist philosophy, Spinoza, and the philosophy of mind. Welcome!

New Contributor

I'd like to welcome the Cocoon's newest contributor, Patrick Beach.  Patrick is an Adjunct Professor at Boise State University, and his research focuses on moral luck, blame, and moral responsibility. Welcome!

The Sage on the Stage

Following up on Marcus' last post, particularly his 4th tip about engaging students in active participation, as opposed to lecturing, I would like to open the floor for discussion on the merits and demerits of lecture as a teaching method.

I should say that I generally agree with Marcus that the traditional lecture (i.e., being "the sage on the stage") is not a particularly effective teaching method and that it should be used in a rather limited way.

On the other hand, however, it seems that the traditional lecture is a successful teaching method for some. For example, based on the videos available on-line, it seems that Shelly Kagan uses lecture almost exclusively in his courses.

 

Judging by the popularity of his courses, it seems that this method works very well for him. Of course, I am assuming that students can judge the effectiveness of teaching methods, at least as far as their own learning is concerned. Some might question this assumption, but I think that students are generally capable of making such judgments. And so, if they flock to Professor Kagan's courses, it is probably because they think that they will learn something valuable.

Another example for a successful "sage on the stage" is perhaps Michael Sandel. Again, based on the videos available online, it seems that he uses mostly lecture in his courses. [I say "mostly" because, as Marcus rightly pointed out in the comments to his last post, Professor Sandel seems to be doing an excellent job engaging students in discussion. However, I think there are several major problems with large class discussions: (a) only a few students participate, (b) Q&A type of active participation in large class format doesn't give students much time to think about their answers, (c) there is no record of the class discussion, so it may seem to some students as a waste of time. There are other problems, but the basic point is that making students active participants in the learning process requires more than engaging them in class discussion. Of course, this is not to say that there is something wrong with the way Professor Sandel teaches his classes. Obviously, he cannot have 200 students do group work in a lecture hall.]

 

But it seems that this method works very well for him, too, since his courses are very much in demand. So what is going on? Is it the case that the traditional lecture is not an effective teaching method? Or perhaps it is not an effective teaching method for some but not others? Are there good reasons why one should lecture?

Call for Tips and Tricks: Teaching

Thus far this blog -- like many others -- has focused primarily on research and professional issues, but not so much on teaching.I'd like, then, to change the subject a bit, and ask you, the community, to share some of the tips and lessons you've learned about teaching.  Here are some of mine:

• Tip #1 -- Maintain high standards: There is a real temptation to be an easy grader, especially if you're a hard grader and haven't learned yet how to do it well (see 2, below). Don't succumb to this temptation. Students may grumble and complain about bad grades. Still, you owe it to students to challenge them, and you should have the integrity to do it. Moreover, in the longer run -- at least in my experience -- students actually tend to appreciate difficult professors. As shallow and as short-sighted as many students might seem at first (and many of them do seem to want a diploma more than anything else), in my experience this is mostly a front. Students don't realize how much they really want to learn until they are challenged to learn. I can't emphasize this enough. I've had many a diploma-hunting student -- students who weren't the least bit interested in philosophy -- actually get into it and enjoy doing philosophy once they were challenged to do it well. You'd be suprised how many students really like a challenge -- and who can really begin to dig philosophy -- provided they are challenged in the right way. Which brings me to...

• Tip #2 -- Give examples of good and bad work: In my experience, students tend to begin to like philosophy, and see it as a challenge worth doing, only once they have a real idea of what is expected of them. They don't like receiving bad grades on papers if they feel like they had no idea what you wanted out of them. They feel a lot less bad -- and more apt to work hard to improve their work -- if you give them examples of strong and poor student papers. After all, once you do this, if they write a bad paper, you can point to one of the bad papers you gave them as examples and show them, "See, you did that...", and then point at a good paper and say, "...when you should have done this." In that case, they can't do what they otherwise tend to do -- blame their bad grades on you, the Evil Professor. Instead, they are forced to confront the simple fact that they didn't do what you gave them good examples of, and they will tend to take responsibility for their work.

• Tip #3 -- Give lots of comments, and opportunities to re-do work: In my very first philosophy course as an undergraduate (with Dan Dennett!), Dan gave each of us an opportunity to re-write and resubmit each of our (five) papers as many times as we wished until the final day of class. It was perhaps the most important experience I ever had as a student, and it is now a standing policy in all of my classes. Yes, it is a ton a work for me. I do it, however, because I see the results. I see most of my students go from doing bad work to doing good work. I see them starting to do philosophy. So I think I owe it to them, and it is worth it. Now, of course, such a policy just isn't possible in large classes (my classes top out at 25 students). Still, I think it's something worth doing, to the extent that one can. The way I see it, my job is to do what I can to help each and every student leave my class knowing how to write a decent philosophy paper. Insofar as students want good grades, the opportunity to resubmit papers for a higher grade gives each of them strong incentives to actually improve their work -- and in my experience a vast majority of them show tremendous improvement as a result.

• Tip #4 -- Make the classroom about them, not you: Many of us like to be the "Sage on Stage." Giving a bad-ass lecture to a class full of undergrads can feel great...but I don't think it does them much good. Yes, you may "wow" them, but they won't understand a tenth of what you said once they leave the room, and they certainly won't know how to do philosophy much better themselves for watching you do it in front of them. Practice, as they say, makes perfect -- but your practicing does little for them.  They need to practice philosophy themselves, and you need to give them a forum to do it. But how? One of the biggest challenges I had coming to the University of Tampa were our school's inordinately long class periods. Instead of 50 minute classes MWF, ours are 1:15 minutes.  Instead of 1:15 minute classes Tuesdays and Thursdays, ours are two hours. Let me tell you, undergrads do not want to watch you lecture about the Categorical Imperative for two hours. I learned that the hard way my first semester! Anyway, my experience at UT challenged me to come up with other classroom strategies. Two strategies in particular have worked well so far: (A) group work, specifically, in-class competitions for bonus points, where I require them to work together to put together and/or criticize arguments from their daily readings, and (B) a a daily assignment to submit, and raise in class, questions/worries about the daily readings (questions which I grade pretty rigorously for philosophical incisiveness). 

I realize that many of my tips won't work for larger class sizes, but perhaps they can be extended to larger classes in some sort of attenuated manner. Don't know. Anyway, those are some of my (admittedly anecdotal) teaching tips. I hope some of you find them interesting and/or helpful. I'm more than happy to discuss them in the comments section, but I'd also like to ask you all to share any teaching tips (or difficulties!) of your own.

New Contributor

I'd like to welcome our newest contributor, James M. Dow, to the Philosophers' Cocoon. James received his PhD from CUNY in 2011, and is Visiting Assistant Professor at Hendrix College. His primary areas of research are the philosophy of mind and cognitive science.  Welcome!

The Most Important Publishing Advice I've Received

I just presented a paper of mine Andrew Altman and Kit Wellman's NEH Summer Seminar on Liberty, Equality, and Justice. I have been working on this paper for well over six years (it is revised material from my dissertation), have written over 60 full drafts of it (no exaggeration), have gotten close to publishing it once, and have received very encouraging comments on it from several journals that rejected it. On top of all this, when I've presented it, I've had people tell me it deserves to get out in print. Despite all this, the paper is still in "no man's land." I've been flummoxed as to why it keeps getting turned down, and at a complete loss in terms of understanding what more needs to be done to get it accepted.  I feel like I've been running head-long into a brick wall over and over again with it.

I think I may have finally learned what the problem is, thanks to some advice I was just given by Andrew Altman (later seconded by Rosamond Rhodes).  I would like to share his advice with you all, because in retrospect the advice seems obviously correct but I had been completely blind to it because of how contrary it was to everything I had thought I'd learned about doing philosophy well. I wish I had learned what Andy and Rosamond told me 6 years ago. Better late than never, I suppose. Anyway, I hope that by sharing it with you, I might help at least one of you out there avoid similar frustrations.

I had believed my task, in getting the paper published, was to get every detail of my theory and argument worked out (so as to convince reviewers that what I am doing in the paper is really, really sophisticated and fully developed). This makes sense, right? It's what we're taught to do in graduate school. Don't fudge things. Address every salient issue. So, this is what I did in the paper. I developed and defended a framework for thinking about nonideal justice, and then filled in all of the details, defending specific accounts of various issues within the framework.  All makes sense, right? Wrong! Here is how Andy put it to me: the more controversial moves you make in a paper -- even if they are sophisticated moves -- the more things a reviewer has to disagree with.  In other words, "The larger the blanket, the more holes you can poke in it." 

Andy's advice, then, was to make the paper less detailed.  Yes of course, he said, I still need to demonstrate mastery over the material to reviewers -- but the important thing is to tread softly, introducing the new framework I want to defend at a very general level, suggest possible ways of filling in the details to readers, and then issue promissory notes to fill in those details later.  The basic idea is: get the reader/reviewer on board with the general framework, and explicitly leave many details for later. Again, this is contrary to everything I thought I was supposed to do. We're supposed to answer philosophical questions, right? Yes, but not all at once.

Andy's advice hit me like a ton of bricks. I must confess that I had long been surprised how certain "famous" papers ever got published where they did. One example is Rawls' initial paper, "Justice as Fairness" in Phil Review. The shocking think, to me, about Rawls' paper is that it didn't really seem to me to have an argument. No, Rawls simply presented a new framework for thinking about things. I have to confess that I always thought there was no way the paper would get published today, given how focused on arguments we all are -- but, then again, I've continued to read papers in top places that puzzled me (that seemed too elementary, too vague in the details). And here's the thing: I thought all of this was bad philosophy. I couldn't see why such things got published. Now I know how it happened. I had the wrong standards in mind. I was applying "Platonic" standards of philosophical argument (viz. Get every detail right!, etc.), whereas publishing in journals is a matter of satisfying reviewers and editors.  Again, their standards are in many ways quite different.  Don't get every detail down (at least not in one paper).  The more there is going on in a paper -- even if, again, what is going on is sophisticated -- the more problems people can find. 

In short, thing I learned is this: when it comes to publishing, less really is more.  Many people had told me the paper "tries to do too much" -- yet I hadn't received any determinate advice on how not to make it do too much. Andy got through to me. I will forever be grateful for the lesson. It was not what I wanted to hear -- I had to rewrite the paper from the beginning yet again (just finished!) -- yet, for all that, it was what I needed to hear. Thank you, Andy. I hope some of you find the lesson helpful, as well.

On Philosophy as a Blood Sport

As a follow-up to my previous post, I'd like to thank Moti Mizrahi for sharing this great little artice, "Philosophy as a Blood Sport."  For what it is worth, I think (admittedly anecdotally) that the "blood sport" aspect of professional philosophy probably is one of the main things that does discourage women from entering the discipline (and rightly so).  It seems to me to be one of several traditionally male, "macho" elements that we as a discipline tolerate far too much of. Other elements include: boasting of successes, ranking people and programs, name-dropping, provincialism, etc.

What, for example, is the primary purpose of ranking people and programs? One obvious (and perfectly legitimate answer, imho) is that rankings give prospective graduate students important information on where to apply and study. Alas, in practice, it seems to me that the ranking of individuals and institutions is often more akin to the "winner" and "loser" mentality that prevails in sports (particularly, male-dominated sports).  Anyone who spends two minutes in the philosophy world knows how obsessed many people in the discipline are with "who is better than who." Frankly, I think this is childish, and that it is entirely unsurprising if the better people among us -- particularly, members of the better gender -- avoid our discipline like the plague.

Again, these are just my admittedly anecdotal reflections. I may be wrong. Perhaps women tend to avoid philosophy for other reasons. But I doubt it. At any rate, I don't have a hard time imagining why someone (anyone) might wish to avoid our childish games. I also hope -- and this was a large part of what motivated me to create this blog -- that, by reflecting on these issues together, there are enough of us who have had enough of it, and who are ready and willing to do our part to help make our discipline a more supportive, inclusive place, one that more closely approximates the reasons I expect most of us pursued philosophy in the first place: cooperative, mutually beneficial pursuit of truth, knowledge and inquiry.

Professional Insecurities and Approval

In a comment on a previous post, Kyle Whyte suggested that I say a bit more about how to deal with professional insecurities.  Because I think Kyle put the issues quite well and offered a nice solution, I'd like to quote him at length (hope you don't mind, Kyle!). Kyle wrote:

It doesn't appear to me that our field works in a succinct way in terms of our being able to have whatever our accomplishments may be at some point in time recognized without our having to tell someone about it. I think this is in line with what you were saying about it being hard to avoid seeking approval. You kind of have to, at one point or another, when you're hustling on the job market or trying to network within a philosophical community that you're new to, as well as other situations. So this puts us in this strange bind in which we have to express insecurities, and insecurities of several kinds, including what we've been talking about. I also think there's a general insecurity in our field that comes from the fact that, although we know that it's highly possible for one's article to get published and never get any uptake, it is nonetheless unsettling to have to have this reality on our minds. I think there are other insecurities like this that have to do with the fact that there's no precise road to recognition in the field (and I mean recognition just in a very modest and appropriate sense as opposed to in terms of "fame"). When you're fresh off the dissertation or fresh in a TT or non-TT job, this is precisely the time you don't want to have to now deal with insecurities related to this fact I perceive about the field, plus the insecurities you inevitably have about the quality of the arguments in your own work. Then you're confronted with this challenge, like you indicated, that there are better or worse ways to manifest your own insecurities, and you see other people who you think do it badly, and maybe make you feel bad. Nuts. I'd be curious what some good ideas would be for how to manifest it appropriately. I think that one of the strategies might be related to how we engage with other people on shared interests. For example, if I approach someone whose work I think my own work is related to, and may even contribute to, instead of announcing my beliefs (along with superficial credibility boosters) about this as the lead in, I should instead focus on asking questions about his or her work, and delving into a bit, and seeing if the connections come up naturally, without having to rely on boosters like, "You should read what I just published in xyz," or "I'm working on this paper with so and so to send to journal xyz," or any other expression that indicates I'm trying to make my work sound credible before I've even said anything about the arguments. By asking questions in a spirit of curiosity and mutual support, it seems like the conversation would then begin to reflect the mutual interests that may be shared, which will build intellectual respect without the other person's even having to know whether you've published something or not, work with this or that person, etc. Perhaps that's the best kind of respect and approval. Just rough thoughts.

My experience, Kyle, is that your suggestion is right on the money. People are not attracted to the shameless self-promoter -- i.e. the person who trumpets their own successes (whether it be interviews, publications, etc.). In my experience, the best way (both morally and instrumentally) to get one's work noticed is to be genuinely interested in others' work and successes. People, perhaps more than anything else, want to be noticed and appreciated. It is not only a kind and good thing to be genuinely interested in what other people do; it reflects very well on oneself, and, in my experience, is often repaid with kindness and interest in return.

This way of comporting oneself -- having sincere interest in others, rather than seeking it out for oneself -- is, I believe, one of the very most important things to learn professionally. People (rightly) want to associate with and help others who go about their professional lives in a spirit of mutual respect, interest, and aid. In contrast, they avoid like the plague self-promoters who are only out for themselves. This is not to say that self-promoters always fail. Far from it. There are geniuses out there who can get along nice enough as intrepid egoists. But they are not the norm. 

Alas, if my experiences on the job market are any indication, the spirit that you (Kyle) and I are recommending also seems to be one of the things that graduate students are rarely taught, and which is in large part responsible for making the academic job market such a miserable experience. People simply do not need to hear how many interviews or fly-outs you have, or which article you published in The Awesome-ist Journal in the World. People also do not need to hear (or have it implied) that they have only published articles in The Fifth Crappiest Journal in the World. 

I do not hold up the things I have just written as The Truth. I am happy to discuss these issues in the comments section. Perhaps some of you think that philosophy is, and should be, a "dog eat dog" world. I don't. It is hard enough to be an academic philosopher without all of the insecure posturing and one-upsmanship. However successful the self-promoting egoists amongst us may or may not be, let us remind ourselves that success is not all that matters. I don't know about you, but I became a philosopher to become a better thinker and person -- and I want to be the kind of person who, to whatever extent I can, makes the profession a better place to be. If I wanted to sell my soul, I would have gone into business. Who's with me? ;)

New Contributors

I'd like to welcome our two newest contributors, Moti Mizrahi and Susan James.

Moti teaches at St. John's University, and his primary research focuses are in philosophy of science and epistemology. 

Susan recently recieved her MS in Cognitive Science from Cal State University - Long Beach, and is considering continuing her graduate studies.  Her primary interests are cognitive science, philosophy of language, philosophy of religion, continental philosophy, and feminism.

Welcome to you both!

Balance Series, Part 2: Vacations

In the opening part of this series, I discussed several aspects of our personal and professional lives that must be harmonized to live a well-balanced academic life. This time, I focus on a much more specific issue: taking vacations.

First, a bit of clarification is in order. I don’t consider a weekend trip to go hiking in the mountains (a not-so-uncommon practice here in Tennessee) a vacation. I also don’t consider a week where one works slightly fewer hours a vacation. I consider a vacation to be something more substantial—a sustained change in lifestyle, location, or both that usually involves very little professional work. For the typical academic operating on a semester system, there are two intervals where these kinds of vacations usually take place: winter and summer. The interval in winter between the end of the fall semester and the start of the fall semester is usually only a few weeks, but the summer break can be several months. So one of the questions we have to ponder when we make our summer schedules is how long our summer vacations ought to be.

I’m seen a great deal of variance among graduate students and professional philosophers in this regard. Sometimes, they leave campus for months to travel abroad or visit their hometown. Other times, they stay on campus the entire summer, teach a course, and work on their research. I tend to fall somewhat in the middle. This summer, for instance, I am currently teaching a course in professional ethics, but I also took a 2-week hiatus at the end of the spring semester. Once the course concludes on July 3rd (and I’ve gotten grades entered), I plan to begin work on my Master’s Thesis, but I also aim to squeeze in a visit back to Topeka, Kansas (my hometown).

Is there a best strategy in how to plan your summer vacations? I doubt there’s any one-size-fits-all formula, but extremes strike me as undesirable. Imagine one extreme—no vacation at all. I imagine that there could be some philosophers who don’t need a vacation, but I don’t know of any. We all need some time, especially after the end-of-semester crunch, to relax and intellectually recuperate. Considering how many graduate students I have known who have admitted to burning out at some point in their careers, I can’t imagine that the no-vacation strategy is advisable.

But consider another extreme—total disconnection from philosophy for 2-3 months. I’ve known some graduate students who appear to follow this strategy: they leave campus in early May and do not return until late July or early August. Perhaps they’re doing some philosophy while they’re away, but I doubt it’s very much. Obviously, one disadvantage of this strategy is that summers are an ideal time to revise old papers, submit to journals, etc., and taking such an extended vacation largely squanders this opportunity. Another is that when one returns to philosophy from such a lengthy absence, it can be difficult to scrape away the mental rust. I spent most of my summers as an undergraduate focusing on tennis (practicing, playing tournaments, etc.), and I always found it difficult to re-engage with academics in August after neglecting them for so long. I suspect this effect would be even more profound at the graduate level because graduate academics are far more rigorous than undergraduate academics, but I admit I have no data to back up this claim.

Since these extremes seem undesirable, I think a balanced approach is best. Some time off seems vital to staying sane and not burning out, but some engagement with philosophy over the summer seems crucial to one’s career development and to avoiding some rough adjustments in August. Thus, when I schedule my summer vacations, I try to abide by a 2-week rule: never totally disconnect from philosophy for more than 2 weeks. Sometimes, that means making sure I don’t leave campus for more than 2 weeks at a time during the summer. If possible, I also try to teach a class so that I’m forced to maintain a normal schedule and engage with philosophy frequently.

Now I’m curious as to how your summer planning differs from (or is similar to) my own. How do all of you plan your summers? How long do you take vacations (if you take them)? And how should graduate students and junior faculty spend these months?

On Bitterness and Resentment

The comment section of a recent post over at the Philosophy Smoker ("To Bail, or Not to Bail") has -- as is often the case -- manifested bitterness and resentment over the job market. Although these feelings are understandable and likely even justified (the market is truly brutal), I can't help but feel -- as I often do when reading the Smoker -- that people have no idea just how counterproductive their bitterness is.

As someone who struggled mightily for a time in graduate school, and who still does not have a TT job, I can empathize with these feelings. Indeed, I have some history of lapsing into bitterness and resentment myself. And yet...if I have learned anything from the experience, it is that almost nothing shoots you in the foot more than this. For, you see, bitterness and resentment do not remain hidden inside. No, they ooze out of you like poison.

I was recently told by someone I went to grad school with that I used to look so unhappy walking around the halls of the department. I had no idea it showed! And yet, the more that I think about it, I showed it in all kinda of subtle ways: through frowns, through insecure and defensive ways of responding to well-intentioned feedback, etc. Now, again, perhaps my bitterness was justified. But that's not the point, is it? Justified feelings can be profoundly counterproductive and harmful, and it is now clear to me just how harmful. It is only when I finally set my bitterness and insecurities aside that, voila, people actually came to my aid -- which is what I wanted all along. For let's face it: no one wants to be around someone oozing negative vibes.

Perhaps more to the point, no one wants to hire a miserable clod. Indeed, for all of the discussion that's always devoted to publishing, cover letters, and dossiers, it never ceases to amaze me how little time is spent discussing the obvious, which is that people who are considering hiring you are looking to hire a person -- someone who, if all goes well, is going to be roaming the halls and participating in seminars and meetings for decades; and who, if the wrong person is hired, may prove to be a departmental cancer for years to come. Think about it for a moment. If you were on a hiring committee, and you had many talented candidates to choose from -- which of course is always the case -- who would you hire: the kind, helpful individual or the bitter, self-absorbed prig? Isn't it obvious? Give up your resentment then, justified though it may be. It is not only corrupting your soul, and your behavior from the inside out; it is likely corrupting your career prospects.

The first is always the hardest

During my time in academia, there have been a lot of firsts: the first day of classes, the first exam, the first research paper, the first day of graduate school, the first meeting with my supervisor, the first draft of the research project, the first sentence, the first chapter, the first talk, the first article, the first submission, the first academic job application, the first interview, the first lecture, the first grading…and on and on the list could go.  Now I am writing my first post for The Philosophers’ Cocoon.  The transformational analogy in the title of this blog seems most apt in circumstances such as firsts.  Each first brings about a transformation, of sorts. 

I have thought about many topics to start off my contribution to this blog—all of them accompanied by the anxiety created by firsts.  But, as I understand it, this blog is about helping new philosophers get through the firsts. 

One of the great things about making it through the first is that it takes the pressure off.  For better or for worse, it is done.  Even if you have to redo it, at least the first is done.  Pressing through the anxiety is not always easy, and it is often (though not always) proportional to size of the task.  You can study and prepare yourself for the first all you wish (which is also, I have found, a great procrastination tool), but it does little to alleviate the anxiety.

The root of this anxiety can have numerous causes, but for myself I have found two that affect me the most: not being sure of what I am doing and whether I am doing it right, and the imposter complex.  Both of these deserve a bit of discussion.

It is hard for me (and I assume many other people) to see doing something wrong as part of the learning process.  Nevertheless, at some intellectual level, I realize that this is the case. Sometimes (with strong caveats), you have to do something wrong to learn how to do it right.  I have long endorsed the folk saying, “Stupid people never learn from their mistakes; average people learn from their mistakes; and intelligent people learn from others’ mistakes.”  In fact, I attempted to drill this saying into my son’s head as he was growing up, with some success.  But watching him mature through the years, I realized that sometimes (again, with strong caveats), making mistakes is an important (if not necessary) part of the learning process.  Nevertheless, I often feel that one with my level of education should be exempt from this process.  I should be above mistakes.  Thus, when friends, family and colleagues point out my mistakes, my first reaction is to get defensive.  Over the last few years, however, I have been (attempting to) suppress this reaction—which is not an easy task to say the least. Instead, I have been making efforts to grasp why I made the mistake in the first place. 

I have made professional mistakes.  I have sent in job applications that had typos, and ones in which I mistakenly misunderstood one of the requirements, and ones in which I accidentally overlooked an essential requirement of the application process. I also strongly suspect that I have said things in job interviews such as exposing my prejudices toward certain topics and some individuals’ work.  In other words, I have put my foot in my mouth on a few occasions.  Through making those mistakes, and thinking about them, I have learned some valuable lessons.  It is inevitable that one will make mistakes.  I no longer fear them, defend them, or deny them (usually!).  Instead, I try to learn all that I can from them.

The imposter complex can be paralyzing.  It usually takes the form of “not only do I think that I don’t know enough about this topic to have much important to say, but who am I that anyone would care what I have to say in the first place?”  Discussions with two different mentors that I trust helped me to escape this paralyzing phenomenon.  Several years ago now, in talking with a highly regarded and prolific academic in my field, he asked me whether I had turned any of my masters’ thesis into an article for publication.  I responded that I had not because I was just a lowly masters student who felt like I was just getting my feet wet in the vast field of ideas I was taking on; and I did not think that anything I had to say was very important.  That is when he told me about a conversation that he had many years previous with one of his mentors.  His mentor, one of the top names in his field and beyond, had expressed much the same sentiments as he was preparing a new book (that went on to do very, very well).  My mentor said that he reflected on that conversation many times, and thought to himself that if even his mentor felt that way, then perhaps it was just a common feeling that everyone (or many) had to push through.  My mentor mentioned that he (my mentor) still feels that way as he begins each new project, but he has long since realized that the allowing the imposter complex to get in his way is the surest way to make sure no one is ever going to care about what he has to say because he is never going to say it.

The other piece of advice came from one of my dearest friends and mentors when I was preparing for my masters’ defense.  In preparation for this event, I had worried myself to the point of feeling physically sick.  We had long conversations in which I would run through every nightmarish scenario in my head, to which he would respond sarcastically, “yeah, like that is going to happen!”  I was convinced that these were very real and probable scenarios, nonetheless.  Finally, he said something that rang true and through, made sense (at least intellectually at first), and has proved itself in reality numerous times now.  He said, “I don’t know why you are getting so worked up, because after all, you are the expert when it comes to your own work.”  How true this has been since then.  I do know more about my positions, my arguments, and problems with my positions and arguments than anyone else.  Sure, from time to time someone does press a novel objection or comment about which I have not previously thought, but this is usually a rare occasion. When it does happen, I can usually feel fairly confident that I will have an intelligent response.

With this, I have pushed through my first post at The Philosophers’ Cocoon.  It was not as bad as I thought it would be, even though it took me much longer than I thought that it would.  I hope the readers have found something helpful in this post, and that they might express their worries and apprehensions about firsts that they might have encountered as their academic career has progressed. 

Thanks for reading, and now that the first is done, I hope that more will follow in a more timely fashion.

All the best,

K. Mitch Hodge

Situationism and the Value of Art

Here's a link to a paper that Jacob Berger (CUNY Graduate Center) and I have been working on for the last few months.  It explores the potential implications for aesthetics -- especially the value of art -- from social psychology.  Any comments, criticisms, and questions would of course be most appreciated.

Tips and Tricks, Part Deux: Research

Seeing as this is a place to help each other, I figured I'd throw another call out for tips you've all learned. The topic du jour is research.  What sorts of strategies have you found helpful for getting good work done? I'm curious to hear what you all have to say.

Here's my story. My dissertation supervisor once told me that there's a "transformation" one undergoes during one's first few years as a professor. He told me that it is very hard to describe, but that it is rather wonderful. I am beginning to understand what he meant. I used to spend several months putting papers together. I really labored over them. I thought this is what it takes to put something really good together. In some cases, I still think this is true -- it can take time for a paper to really round into shape -- but one of the things I'm learning is to trust myself and get drafts out quick. I mean real quick. The last several papers I've written each popped out over the course of a week or so. No, the drafts are not always (or not even usually) awesome, but I've found it is much more efficient to get stuff out on paper quick, and only then go back in and get all of the details right. I can't stress this enough. To whatever extent I've experienced "the transformation" my advisor spoke of, I understand it this way: it is a matter of trusting oneself, of becoming confident. I think it is largely a matter of not having to answer to anyone. Once you're a prof, there is no advisor to satisfy, no faculty to impress (perhaps I am fortunate to have gotten a job in a very small department).

Now, maybe it takes time as a prof to go through this. I'm not sure. But if there's one thing I would advise to anyone reading this, it is that by trusting yourself, at least you get stuff done. No, that was not a joke. Think about it this way. For my part, I still have some trouble discerning my good ideas from the bad. I don't think I'm alone in this. If history is any indication, most smart people have more bad ideas than good. It stands to reason, then -- and it has at least served me well -- that you should just get stuff out of your head and see what happens. As Steve Jobs said, "Real artists ship." I agree. If you get stuff out of your head and onto paper -- and then send them to conferences (and then to journals) -- you'll find out which ideas are good and which are bad real quick. Indeed, I can't emphasize this enough.   Getting stuff out is a great way to cut one's losses. There have been at least a half-dozen papers that I spent a good deal of time on that I've cast to the scrap-heap. I learned -- mostly through the review process -- that they were no good. If only I had spent less time on them. I would've had more time to pursue other ideas. And this is what I've learned. The more ideas you get out onto paper (within reason, of course -- one should always be discerning!), the better the odds. For every five or ten mediocre ideas, you'll likely happen upon a couple of good ones. Just get them out. Let the world help you separate the wheat from the chaff.

Not to Bail

There's another discussion going on over at the Smoker ("To Bail, or Not to Bail") over whether it's a good idea to leave graduate school if you're struggling and regarded by your faculty as a weak(er) student. Although each person must of course come to their own answers, I can't help but be distressed by how many individuals in the comments section have advocated getting out. For what it is worth, here is my experience: things tend to work out for those who keep at it, and things are not so pleasant for those who do not. I speak of this as someone who struggled quite a lot in graduate school, and who gave serious thought to getting out (both as a graduate student and early in my professorial career -- for details, see here and here). If you'd all bear with me, I'd like to say a few more things.

There's some talk over at the Smoker about leaving philosophy for law school. At one point, I thought about this.  But I can't say enough how glad I am that I didn't go that route. First things first: studies have repeatedly shown that lawyers are among the most unhappy people among us. Just read this article, "Why Lawyers Are Unhappy." You can make it in philosophy. It is, however, a supreme test of will. Yes, that's right, I said: you can make it, but you have to choose to. I know this sounds like self-help tripe, but I've seen it happen, and not just with a few people, and not with the "chosen ones" in grad school. I have seen, in my own grad school cohort, people who (by my estimations) were not highly regarded -- myself included -- both make it through grad school and the job market. In each case, the story was the same: those who made it simply refused to give up. I, for one, am simply going to stand up (proverbially, of course), and say to you, "You can do it." Don't give up. It is worth it in the end. Just do philosophy for its own sake, remember why you love it, and love teaching it. Yes, it is a leap of faith, but I will tell you this: I do not personally know a single person who kept at it and failed. Yes, that's right: not one. And no, I have not only known people from Leiterific departments. If my life -- and the lives of others I've known in this world -- have taught me anything, it is that success is mostly a matter of will. You can will yourself to get where you want to get. No, it will not always look that way. And yes, there will be many times you will want to give up. But don't. You only live once. Being a professor is the awesome. Being a lawyer isn't. Sorry, lawyers, don't shoot the messenger!

Conference on Security, Ethics, and Justice

If you happen to be in Germany or if you are interested to come, I invite you readers to attend the Tübingen conference on "Security, Ethics, and Justice: Towards a More Inclusive Security Design". The conference takes places from June 21 to 23 in Tübingen (Germany). You will find more information on this page. Alternatively, you can email me or use the comments section. As I will present a paper at the conference, I will soon post it here, hoping to get some feedback from the Cocoon community...

In any case, you are very welcome to join us and contribute to highly interesting debates about security and justice.