The Philosophers' Cocoon

How many philosophers does it take to change a light-bulb?

In the spirit of philosophy light-bulb jokes, each semester I tell my students a few light-bulb jokes and ask them to come up with a few of their own. Here are a few examples:

(1) How many philosophers does it take to change a light-bulb?

Three; one to change the light-bulb and two to debate whether they ought to, and if so, whether it follows that they can.

(2) How many ancient philosophers does it take to change a light-bulb?

Four; one to change the light-bulb and three to say "Yes, Socrates," "Well done, Socrates," "Good job, Socrates."

(3) How many medieval philosophers does it take to change a light-bulb?

Two; one to change the light-bulb and one to check what Aristotle said about changing light-bulbs.

Feel free to add your own jokes in the comments.

I wish everyone a very successful semester.

Making the First Day not the Worst Day

I don't know about all of you, but I tend to find the very first day of class the most difficult of the year.  Frankly, after all of these years, I still don't think I have the first day figured out very well. "Ice-breakers" always seem to come off as silly to me. Spending too much time on the syllabus puts students to sleep. Same goes for an introductory lecture in philosophical methods, which not only puts students into a daze, but usually seems to go over their heads. Argh. What do you all do? Seriously -- I'd really like to have a good first day tomorrow, so what works for y'all?

(Yeah, I know it's a little late to post this, but whatever. Maybe I'll get something good right off the bat.  Otherwise, maybe I'll learn something good for the future. At the very least, I suspect there are a number of other people who read this blog who might benefit!).

Teaching Tips: Fall 2012 Edition

The 2012 Fall semester will begin soon. For me, the first day of class is Friday, August 31. I think that it would be useful to discuss what people are doing to prepare for the semester.

So, to start things off, here are some of the things I’ve been doing:

1. Making sure that my Blackboard shells are up and running. Blackboard is an integral part of my courses. I use it to communicate with students, post announcements, share course materials with students, and moderate out-of-class discussions.
2. Polishing my syllabi. At the beginning of a semester, I like to give students an idea of what to expect in the course. So, in addition to the standard stuff one usually finds in syllabi, I include a course schedule with reading and writing assignments, and I try to stick to the schedule as closely as I can.
3. Going over my PowerPoint slides. I make sure that all the links, videos, and interactive media are working properly. I don’t want to click on a dead link or get a “this video is no longer available” message during class.
4. Learning students’ names. At my institution, I have access to rosters with photos. Before classes begin, I go over my class rosters and I look at the photos to get a head start on learning names. This semester I will have approximately 160 students, so I need all the help I can get. In addition, I choose an ice breaker for the first day of class that will make it easier for me to learn names.

What are you doing to make sure that your semester is off to a good start?

New Contributor

I'd like to welcome the Cocoon's newest contributor, David Killoren.  David recently received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and is now in a post-doc at Coastal Carolina University. He has published an article on the reliability of moral intuitions and disagreement in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, and has an article (co-authored with Bekka Williams) on group agency forthcoming in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. David is also interested in consequentialism and whether moral dilemmas exist. Welcome!

Course on X-Phi

After having been absent for quite a while (sorry about that!), I am back again with a question for you, the Cocoon community. Next semester I will teach a course on X-Phi for undergraduates. I intend to include sessions on the X-Phi of philosophy of language (e.g. reference), epistemology (e.g. knowledge) and ethics/moral philosophy (e.g. free will). In addition, I also want to include recent research on behavioral game theory, decision theory, psychology of justice and experimental economics (e.g. on the notion of fairness). Do you think that including the latter stuff makes sense? Or should one subsume it under ethics, if at all? Is it X-Phi although economists are doing this kind of research? And what basic papers/books/anthologies would you recommend for the course (in view of all sessions)? Thanks for your comments!

Cocoon Outreach

It has been wonderful to see the Philosophers' Cocoon flourish. We've had, and continue to have, a number of great posts and conversations -- not to mention a fantastic, supportive environment, as well as a steady (and pretty impressive) daily readership. Now that the fall job market is almost upon us, I'd like to ask all of our contributors (and readers!) to try to spread the word about our forum. If you know someone you think might be interested in the Cocoon, please...let 'em know about us and/or invite them to contribute (all they have to do is shoot me an email expressing interest)! 

I've got the moves like Chalmers

David Chalmers has three lists of Proofs that P on his website. All very funny. To these lists, I would add the following moves:

(1) p is conceivable; therefore, p is possible.

After all, isn't it rather anthropocentric to think that only what we can conceive of is logically possible? Why should that be so? No one thinks that only what we can do is physically possible (e.g., flying unaided is physically possible for birds, but not for us). So why should logical possibility be any different? Why should it be relativized to us?

(2) p is counterintuitive; therefore, not-p.

If p is a scientific claim, it would be unreasonable to deny p just because it is counter-intuitive. For example, entanglement is a counter-intuitive quantum effect but no one would claim that it is not real just because it is counter-intuitive. So, why not say, even in the case of philosophical claims, "If our intuitions clash with p, then so much the worse for our intuitions?

What moves would you add to the list of Proofs that P?

Cover Letters

So I pretty much have my job market materials together, except for one thing: the cover letter. I thought I had a good handle on what makes for a good letter, but I sent a draft of one to my grad department's placement director, and she said it was too long, and too much like my research statement.  At this point, I've heard so much (conflicting) advice that I'm not sure what a good letter looks like.  So what say you, Cocooners? It would be nice to hear from some of you who were successful on the market -- I'm sure the rest of us would benefit!

Balance Series, Part 3: Summer Teaching

It's been a long time since my first and second entries in the Balance Series, but Part 3 has finally arrived. As the summer winds to a close, it seems appropriate to consider an obvious but important question: should graduate students and early career faculty teach summer courses?

In my limited experience in the profession, my impression is that a decent number of graduate students teach summer courses but that full-time professors rarely do so. Lecturers with temporary positions seem about as likely to teach summer courses as graduate students. Admittedly, since so much of this comes from anecdotal evidence, I imagine there's a lot of institutional variation here.

I have a taught a summer course during both of my summers at the University of Tennessee. In both cases, the classes took place almost exclusively during June and had 24 meetings of 90 minutes. These classes are brutal because they meet every weekday and (aside from the 4th of July), there are no holidays. As a result, I did not have time to do much of anything else while I was teaching those summer courses.

While teaching a course independently is great experience and the summer stipend for teaching is quite high compared to the stipend I receive during a typical semester, acquiring this extra experience and money essentially requires sacrificing 7 weeks (1 for prep work, 5 for the course, and 1 for final grading) of the summer. Since that time could be spent working on research-related activities, it's worth considering whether summer teaching is worth it.

In my own experience, I've found teaching these courses quite valuable, particularly because I am still a relatively inexperienced teacher the grand scheme of things. But if I were, for example, working on a dissertation or preparing to go on the job market, I can see how the summer might be put to better use by focusing on other things. What are your thoughts, readers?

Poster Presentations Revisited

A few weeks ago, I posted some questions about poster presentations at philosophy conferences. Now that RoME 2012 has finished, I think it'd be useful for me to share what I learned at the conference (beyond what was already mentioned in the comments on my previous post).

First, my poster definitely had too much information, even though I had tried to avoid this. One professor told me a good rule of thumb is to keep the word count of a poster to no higher than 800 (although he admitted to violating this rule with his own poster). To have a poster with only 800 words at the approximate dimensions the conference advised (38" x 46"), I suspect body text would have to be around 32-point font. (Mine was only 24-point.)

Second, about half the presenters had their posters laminated. I didn't. Even though it would have cost a bit more, I think it would have been worth the investment: it looks better, and your poster won't take nearly as much damage during the conference (from being mounted/dismounted, rolled/unrolled, etc.).

Third, it was definitely a good idea to have a handout for these sessions. A few people opted to read the handout rather than the poster, and since only a few people can huddle around a poster at once without impairing one another's vision, handouts can keep interested parties (who can't see your poster well) from being drawn to other posters.

I suspect I'll do better at making a compelling poster if/when I get another chance at putting one together.

Job Market Advice?

Seeing as the job market will be on us in no time, I'd like to ask those of our readers who have been successful on the market to share lessons they've learned about what it takes to land a job. A friend of mind who was very successful last year shared the following with me:

1. Be as polished as possible: you need to prepare, and practice, everything -- your 1-minute dissertation schpiel, you job talk, how you plan to respond to different interview questions, job talk Q&A questions, etc.  Don't try to "wing it" on anything.
2. Have a well-defined, long term research agenda: don't just say that you plan to refine your dissertation work.  You need to have a well-developed research-agenda that you can make a career out of.
3. Give your job talk on your best work, and read it: no, don't read your paper.  But do put together a written "talk", and either recite it from memory or read it. Again, don't wing it. Committees are looking for someone polished.  The sole exception to this is if you're an absolute genius.  But of course very few of us are.  Also, don't be afraid to give your job talk on your writing sample.  You want your job talk to be on whatever it is you know the best and is your most promising stuff.
4. Job-talk Q&A is super important: philosophers are suckers for someone who "looks the part."  You need to show that you are quick on your feet, and that you can give well-thought-out responses to questions.  If you're not someone who *is* quick on your feet (and let's face it, not all of us are!), it's crucial that you prepare answers in advance so you *look* like you are.
5. Your writing sample should be clear, brief, accessible, and have an attention-grabbind introduction: I've heard this from many people in the know. You want whoever is reading your writing sample to immediately say to themselves, "Yes, this is clearly an important project."  Also, unless perhaps you're a historian-of-philosophy (for obvious reasons), your writing sample should be easily accessible to non-specialists.  Chances are, most of the people who are reading your paper are not in your area. Write for them, while showing to specialists you clearly know your stuff. Finally, writing samples should be brief: 15-25 pages max.
6. In interviews, remember it's "hard to move up, easy to move down": I don't really know what lesson(s) to draw from this, but it's what I've been told. Seems to me the lesson is "play it safe."  On the one hand, if you're low down on a committee's list, the only way to move up is to look pretty competent and have people high up on the list completely blow it.  On the other hand, if you're high up on their list, just don't blow it. So, it looks like either way, you should play it safe (whatever that amounts to!). I guess the sole exception to this is if you pretty much know you're low down on a committee's list, in which case you might just try to "go for it" and try to blow them out of the water (thereby also running the risk of tanking it). Or, finally, maybe you're just a schlup like me who hates to play it safe. Then, best of luck to you. ;)

Anyway, these are some of the pieces of advice I've been given. Anyone think any of them are wrongheaded? Anyone have different pieces of advice, or anything to add? Please do share!

Raising papers from the dead?

Suppose you have, I don't know, two or three papers that you've had around for a while, which you've presented at a conference or two, which you still think contain some very good ideas, but which you've had no success publishing, and which, if you are honest with yourself, you don't think you've done a very good job hammering out. Perhaps a part of the problem is that the papers are on issues outside of your areas of expertise.

What to do?

Authoring a negative book review

The question of whether it's a good use of one's time to write a book review has come up once before on this blog (here).  I thought the discussion was helpful, but one question was not addressed which I'd now like to put to you.  Before getting to the question, though, some brief backstory:

I've written three book reviews already.  I have an idea of how to do these things: focus on the positive, perhaps mention one or two drawbacks, and be sure to fit in the crucial claims/concepts/distinctions/arguments in the book.  So, when I was recently invited to write (for a journal I will not name) a review (of a book I will not name), I figured, "What the hell.  Why not?  I need to learn more about this topic anyway."

Unfortunately, I've just finished slogging through the book, and there's simply no way I could responsibly write a positive review.  Now, negative reviews can be helpful and entertaining in their own way (e.g., this, this, and especially this), but the power dynamics involved are treacherous.  Sometimes, I think it might make sense for a junior person to write a take-down of a high-flying senior person's book.  It makes a splash.  It gets your name out there.  It shows gumption.  Rarely, if ever, does it make sense for a senior person to flame a junior person's book.  If it's bad, just ignore it.  But what about a junior person writing a (mostly) negative review of a fully-established-but-non-superstar's book, which happens to be published with one of the top five presses?  Is the fact that this press has given the book its imprimatur sufficient reason to target it?  Is the relative non-superstardom of the author sufficient reason to give him/her a pass?

Basically, I'm struggling with whether it's all-things-considered correct to put on my brass knuckles.  Thoughts?

Services to Profession: PhilPapers

I’ve been a big fan of the PhilPapers project since its inception, and I got involved with it some time ago by becoming the editor of the Modality category. I’ve been too busy to devote much time to it, but now that I’ve finally got some spare time, I got around to working on it a little bit. I was also reminded that many interesting and central PhilPapers categories still lack editors. Since The Philosophers' Cocoon is becoming a meeting place for active younger scholars, I thought it might be worthwhile to mention this here. You can find a list of all categories and editors (as well as those lacking editors) here.

What do you get out of it? Well, for one thing, it's an easy way to stay up to date about new publications in your area, and perhaps further motivation to actually read some of that work. Of course, you do also get your name mentioned on the page, and I think that it's a not a bad line on the CV either, since the PhilPapers project is surely one of the greatest "services to profession" ever undertaken. It's already an invaluable resource to my work and together we can make it even better!

How to write a lot

Moments before I wasted my money on a book about writing well, Amazon suggested that I also buy a book on writing a lot. And since Amazon would never recommend a book that I didn't really need, I bought it.

The book is called How To Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing. It's by a psychologist named Paul Silvia. It's cheap. It's short. It's not bad. If you really have a hard time getting writing done, it might be worth your money.

The book's fundamental message, though, is one that you've probably heard before: The secret to writing a lot is to schedule writing time and to stick to that schedule. You can start with a few hours a week, preferably spread over several days. But make a schedule and stick to it. That's it.

Philosophers will want to skip some sections. Silvia explicitly wrote the book for psychologists. There's a whole chapter on writing papers in the Introduction–Methodology–Results–Discussion format that dominates psychology articles. Annoyingly, the publisher describes the book as "[d]rawing examples from [Silvia's] own field of psychology," rather than being for psychologists.

Silvia's adopts an informal, humorous tone, which makes the book rather quotable:

"Finding time is a destructive way of thinking about writing. Never say this again. Instead of finding time to write, allot time to write."

"Like businesspeople, academics enjoy talking about goals. Some academics are so enamored of goals, initiatives, and strategic plans that they become deans and provosts."

"I assume that each paper I submit will be rejected. It's the only rational conclusion, and my faith in rationality is supported by the amount of rejections I receive."

"Rejections are like a sales tax on publications. The more papers you publish, the more rejections you receive." 

"A writing schedule brings balance to your life.... Is academic writing more important than spending time with your family and friends, petting the dog, and drinking coffee? A dog unpetted is a sad dog; a cup of coffee forsaken is caffeine lost forever." 

 

 

New Contributor

I'd like to welcome the Cocoon's newest contributor, Nicholas Joll. Nicholas teaches at the University of Hertfordshire, and his main philosophical interests are phenomenology, Critical Theory, moral philosophy, and metaphilosophy. Nicholas also just published Philosophy and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is already out in Europe and will be released in North America in two days (congrats!). Welcome!

Get out the vote

Following up on Marcus' comment about appeals to intuition and commonsense, I'd like to ask you, fellow pupae, what you think about the following complaint against experimental philosophy.

Critics of experimental philosophy often say that philosophical disputes cannot be resolved by voting. (I just had a referee make this complaint about a paper of mine.) What do you make of this charge?

I've always found it rather strange for two reasons. First, to the best of my knowledge, no experimental philosopher has argued as follows: In response to thought experiment E, most people say that p; therefore, p.

Second, isn't it the case that appeals to intuition (i.e., "it seems to me that p; therefore, p," as in "it seems to me that it is morally wrong to push the fat man off the bridge; therefore, it is morally wrong to push the fat man off the bridge") are a form of voting? It's just that only one philosopher gets to vote and only his vote counts.

Puzzles for Our Intro Students

When I've taught ethics courses in the past, I've always presented the Trolley Problem on the second day of class, as a way to get students thinking and talking about a good philosophical puzzle--usually with very good results.  Now I am looking for a good puzzle of that kind for an Introduction to Philosophy course.

One possibility, of course, is to just stick with the Trolley Problem.  However, I have not included an ethics component in this intro course, as the students are required to take Introduction to Ethics as a gen ed requirement after they take the intro course.  So I'm trying to solicit some alternative suggestions (not only for myself, but for anyone else in a similar position).

I'm considering having them read Nozick's "Experience Machine" excerpt from Anarchy, State, and Utopia (and perhaps watching the clip from The Matrix where Cypher talks to agent Smith about reentering).  We will be returning to happiness and the meaning of life in the second half of the course, so this would give the students a taste of one of the philosophical questions we'll be exploring in depth. 

Another possibility would be to just give them an inconsistent triad (like the Trolley Problem), where all three claims are very intuitive and easy to understand for someone with little philosophical background.  I thought of presenting the "free will vs. determinism vs. incompatibilism" triad, but am thinking that this may be a bit too abstract for an initial foray into philosophical puzzles.  I'm looking for something that will immediately engage the students' attention and provoke puzzlement.   I welcome any suggestions.

How to waste your money without improving your writing

Zombies demand your attention. So when I saw an op-ed entitled "Zombie Nouns," I had to read it. In the op-ed, Helen Sword reminds academics of the hazards of nominalizations—nouns, like 'nominalization', forged by soldering an ending like '-ization' or '-tion' or '-ism' onto another word. I liked the op-ed. It reanimated my desire to make my writing more stylish. As luck would have it, the blurb below the op-ed casually mentions that Sword's latest book is Stylish Academic Writing.

I bought Sword's book. I read it. And now I'm writing this post to prevent you from doing either. The book is a waste of time and money.

To be fair, I'm being slightly unfair. The book's not a total waste, and some academics might find it liberating. In particular, the book might liberate academics who write unstylish prose only because they think their colleagues demand it of them. Sword claims to have met such people. But for the rest of us, the book's not worth its sticker price or its reading time. I'll post a very brief summary of each chapter as a comment, so as not to take up space here.

I have two main complaints about the book. First, I didn't find any of Sword's advice particularly novel. I haven't read Strunk & White in a while, but I'll bet that almost all of her writing advice is contained in Strunk & White.

Second, Sword mostly ignores the legitimate reasons that academics lean on abstractions; stuff their sentences full of adjectives, preopositional phrases, and other qualifiers; use jargon; etc. Most of these reasons, I think, have to do with expressing nuanced ideas. 

Take the title on this post as an example. It doesn't say what I mean. If I weren't following Sword's advice to use an engaging title, I'd entitle the post, "How to use your money suboptimally without improving your writing very much." The book's not really a waste of money. It's probably a poor use of money, but that's harder to defend than the claim that it's a suboptimal use of money. 'Suboptimal' is a precise word, and it conveys precisely what I want to say. Jargon often functions this way. Sword admits that jargon sometimes functions this way, but she is too ready to accuse academics of pomposity. Likewise, it's not that the book won't improve your writing at all. Sword does assemble helpful reminders. But the book won't improve your writing very much. 

Sword and others would probably retort that the best academic writers convey complex ideas in simple language. I agree. But I think that Sword and other critics want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I do like one things about Sword's book: I personally find her suggestion to use concrete nouns to be a helpful heuristic. I write better sentences when I follow her advice. Sadly, that's the bit of advice that's freely available in "Zombie Nouns."

 

Which books on stylish academic writing have you found helpful? Which specific pieces of advice have you found helpful? Whose academic writing do you admire as particularly stylish, and why?

The Greats Get Peer-Reviewed

A propos to these three discussions, I'd like to point out these two fictitious reviewer comments on work by Plato and Kant, and this actual review of Rawls' A Theory of Justice by R.M. Hare. They're so awesome that I'll save you all the time and energy you'd waste on clicking the links.

Here's the fictitious review of Plato:

I’m afraid that I cannot recommend the submission ‘Euthyphro, or On piety’ for publication in the Athenian Journal of the Pursuit of Wisdom. I come to this view despite the fact that there are lots of things to like about the submission. For example, there is a neat point here about the possible difficulties in relating ‘what is pious’ to ‘what the gods love’. However, even here at its best the submission is ultimately disappointing. Having raised an interesting question we find only a short and inconclusive discussion before the author moves on to something else. And that is the most important failing of the piece in its current form: no conclusion or positive thesis is advanced at all. This is most infuriating and I imagine your subscribers will find it very frustrating. After all, any philosophical thought worth taking seriously requires the assertion of, preferably, a very striking and surprising positive thesis from a clear standpoint of dogmatic authority. The present submission, on the other hand, neither claims support from divine revelation nor asserts as we would expect  at the outset of the submission that every other discussion of this subject is woefully misguided. Indeed, the author makes no personal assertion whatsoever and seems perversely excited at the thought of hiding his (I assume it is a male author) own views.

Indeed, I can see no reason whatsoever for the  unnecessary self-indulgence involved in concocting a conversation, at least one of whose participants is a well-known and controversial figure. Such a confusion of real figures and disguised authorship cannot fail to generate all manner of interpretative difficulties for your readers that seem to me to serve no useful purpose whatsoever. If the author would agree to recast his submission in a more usual form (some hundreds of lines of nice direct hexameter poetry perhaps)  then he would at least remove some of this unfortunate confusion. But even then it is not clear to me whether the author has any positive view of his own to offer. And until he does he should leave aside this kind of modern literary indulgence.

Here's the one on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (kudos to Feminist Philosophers for digging this one up):

Hard to know where to begin with this one. Lots of ideas -- too many ideas? -- and bold claims but the result ends up feeling essayistic and sweeping, leaping from one assertion to the next. Interdisciplinarity is one thing, but the author seems to want to invent entire fields of thought willy-nilly! It comes across as frankly arrogant and overreaching.

Not least, the author is almost wilful in neglect of secondary sources. This is a serious lack and the text feels ungrounded for it. One gets the sense that the author is interested in their own posterity than in dialogue with a community of thinkers! This needs redress. I might for example point the author towards some of my own recent work, among various writers.

With all this in mind, it seems pointless to engage too much with specific arguments, but the concept of "the noumenal" I found to be quite ungrounded and free from evidential basis. And I found the whole "categorical imperative" idea a bit..."categorical." Forgive the pun!

In summary: technically lacking, poor use of citation, strident, circuitous, dubious and sweeping. It would be foolhardy to recommend publication.

And finally, a small excerpt from Hare's actual review of TOJ:

In concluding this not very sympathetic notice, it must be said that a reviewer with more ample patience and leisure might possibly have done better for Rawls. I have taken a great deal of pains (and it really has been painful) trying to get hold of his ideas, but with the feeling all the time that they were slipping through my fingers...The book is extremely repetitious, and it is seldom clear whether the repetitions really are repetitions, or modifications of previously expressed views. I have drawn attention to some of these difficulties, and there are all too many others. Rawls is not to be blamed for failing to keep the whole of this huge book in his head at the same time (the only way to avoid inconsistencies when writing a book); and still less are his readers. He is to be blamed, if at all, for not attempting something more modest and doing it properly.

Many years ago [Rawls] wrote some extremely promising articles, containing in germ, though without clarity, a most valuable suggestion about the form and nature of moral thought. It might have been possible to work this idea out with concision and rigour (Rawls' disciple Mr Richards has made a tolerably good job of it in his book A Theory of Reasons for Action, which is much clearer than Rawls' own book as an exposition of this type of theory). If Rawls had limited himself to, say, 300 pages, and had resolved to get his main ideas straight and express them with absolute clarity, he could have made a valuable contribution to moral philosophy. 

That one just never gets old. :)  Makes one wonder whether there are better alternatives than traditional peer-review.

Update: Readers are invited to submit their own examples! Here's one from me on Mill's Utilitarianism: "Author claims to endorse hedonism, only to contradict him/herself a few pages later. His/her "proof" of utilitarianism is all of two pages long, and fallacious at every step. Although I am not optimistic about the viability of the author's project, I would advise that he/she submit the manuscript to a (graduate?) conference or two before wasting time submitting it to another journal." :)

Searching for truth under a lamppost

Commenting on my last post (A mind is a terrible thing to change), David writes: 

Unlike scientists, who can more easily think of themselves as devoted to *discovering the correct answer to some question,* I think we philosophers tend to see ourselves as devoted to *defending a particular answer* to some question. In our case, the question is often vague or ill-formed. It's hard to see ourselves as engaged in a communal search for the truth about X when see myself as chiefly engaged in defending view Y and you see yourself as chiefly engaged in defending view Y*.

That got me thinking about whether philosophy is really about searching for the truth and the difference between rationalizing and reasoning.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to rationalize is to "attempt to explain or justify (behavior or an attitude) with logical reasons, even if these are not appropriate." Rationalizing, in this rather pejorative sense, is more like making excuses and is usually done after the fact. For example, after I eat chocolate, I might rationalize my action (i.e., make an excuse) by saying that chocolate has antioxidants. But that is not why I ate chocolate in the first place. To put the same point in terms of beliefs, rather than actions, we could say that to rationalize is to find excuses for our beliefs.

Unlike rationalizing, reasoning (i.e., to reason) is drawing conclusions from evidence or reasons. To put the point in terms of beliefs, we could say that to reason is to find beliefs that are worthy of acceptance.

The red arrow depicts rationalization, whereas the green arrow depicts reasoning.

 

Now, it seems that, at times, philosophy has been more about rationalizing than reasoning. Here are a few examples:

• Philosophy of religion: Starting with the belief that God exists and trying to find reasons (or excuses) for this belief.
• Metaphysics: Starting with the belief that human beings have free will and trying to find reasons (or excuses) for this belief.
• Epistemology: Starting with the belief that we know certain facts and trying to find an analysis of knowledge that accommodates this belief.
• Philosophy of Science: Starting with the belief that science is a rational enterprise and trying to find a philosophy of science that accommodates this belief.
• Ethics: Starting with the belief that we are obligated to do only what we can do and trying to find a moral theory that accommodates this belief.

Are these fair characterizations of these philosophical projects? If so, is this a problem? Are we philosophers like the proverbial drunk searching for a lost item under a lamppost?

A mind is a terrible thing to change

I often hear philosophers say of Hilary Putnam that he frequently changes his mind as if that's a bad thing. In fact, Putnam wrote the following in the introduction to Representation and Reality (1991):

Strangely enough, there are philosophers who criticize me for [criticizing a view I myself earlier advanced]. The fact that I change my mind in philosophy has been viewed as a character defect.

Is changing one's mind a bad thing? Why is it viewed as a character defect by philosophers? Does it have something to do with the blood-sport mentality?

On the other hand, Richard Dawkins told the following story in his 1996 Edge talk:

A formative influence on my undergraduate self was the response of a respected elder statesmen of the Oxford Zoology Department when an American visitor had just publicly disproved his favourite theory. The old man strode to the front of the lecture hall, shook the American warmly by the hand and declared in ringing, emotional tones: "My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these fifteen years." And we clapped our hands red.

Can you imagine something like that happening in a philosophy conference? If not, is that a bad thing? If it's a bad thing, what's wrong with us philosophers? If we want philosophy to be more like science, should we do something about this negative attitude toward "mind changing"? If so, what?