A Dialogue between Brit Brogaard and Matt DeStefano about Research Strategies

Brit Brogaard (website) is a Professor of Philosophy at UMSL, where I am a graduate student. She has been fantastically helpful during my time here, and agreed to let me share a discussion between us about research strategies. 

MD: Hi Brit, thanks for agreeing to do this. Recently, we've been talking about research strategies at the Cocoon. Given that you have a background in both science and philosophy (and conduct a wide-range of empirical research), you have a unique perspective that other philosophers might not share. Do you think that your background in scientific research has significantly influenced the way that you do philosophical research?

BB: In some ways it has. In the sciences collecting data is usually the most time consuming part of research and publishing. Once you have the data and have analyzed them, the paper writes itself (almost). Because you usually don't know when you have enough data and whether the data will show something that's worth publishing, it's important to be working on many different projects at the same time. 

Because I began my career in the sciences, I was trained to juggle several projects simultaneously. When I started contributing to armchair philosophy (which I still do now and then), I continued this approach. I am usually always working on several different papers. This has numerous advantages. For example, when reading background material related to one paper, you might learn something that can be used in the arguments of a different paper. It also decreases the chances of getting stuck in the writing process. If you feel you need to take a break from one paper, you can just work on one of your other papers.

Another lesson I took with me from the sciences was that while it's important to write well, it's not the writing itself that should take up the majority of the time spent on a paper. You really need to do the work involved in the paper first (whether it's in a lab, in your head or with pen and paper). Deadline crunching is a big no-no. That involves cranking out a paper in a few hours, and you just cannot produce good work that way. Speaking of which, why do you think graduate students tend to wait until last minute before they write their papers?

MD: I can think of two reasons for why I wait until the last minute (besides the laziness that creeps in now and again). The first is that I often feel as though I'm not yet finished with my research. Although I've usually read a significant amount, I often get worried that another philosopher has already made the point I want to make, or that there is a response already existing in the literature which would answer my argument. The second reason is what I call 'topic paralysis'. It is nice to have freedom to address issues which might strike you, but it can be difficult to pick a topic that is both narrow enough to cover in a paper but substantive enough to contribute to the work already being done. 

In his post on the topic, Marcus shared two of his strategies for writing papers: "worksmanship", which he describes as reading a paper, writing a very targeted, rigorous paper that motivates an objection and then advocating a positive thesis. The second is "paradigm busting", which can be described as reframing the way that philosophers approach a given debate. One I would add is debate-framing: in which a philosopher spells out the various views in a debate and provides a narrative by which we can approach the problem (David Chalmers' Consciousness and its Place in Nature is perhaps the exemplar of this type of paper). Do you find your own writing tending towards one of these strategies, or do you have an entirely different strategy for writing a philosophy paper?

BB: I can identify with those worries. I think most of us go through phases of deadline crunching on similar grounds, particularly when exploring new territory. As long as a lot of thinking (and sometimes testing) precedes the writing, it can still lead to excellent papers.

Many of my own papers fit into one or more of the categories you mention. I usually don't have a particular strategy in mind when I do philosophy but looking back I would say that my book Transient Truths falls into a fourth category, which is to defend a view that just about everyone else (initially) thinks is wildly implausible. This strategy, of course, works best when you are inclined to believe the minority view in question. In Transient Truths I defend temporalism, the anti-Fregean view that propositions can change their truth-value as time passes. The vast majority of philosophers who have thought about these issues have argued against this view. 

Lots of philosophers have used this particular strategy of defending a view that most others simply assumed was false and needed no counterargument, for example, Jonathan Schaffer (monism), David Lewis (genuine modal realism), David Chalmers (dualism), Graham Priest (dialetheism), Charles Travis (radical contextualism), Max Kolbel/John MacFarlane (relativistic semantics), John Hawthorne/Herman Cappelen (monadic truth), Peter Unger (skepticism), Peter Klein (infinitism), John Hawthorne/Jason Stanley (subject-sensitive invariantism) and Jon Kvanvig (knowledge isn't uniquely valuable). In some cases the views are no longer minority views (e.g., relativistic semantics) but they were when they were first defended.

Looking back at my own papers I can think of a couple of other research strategies, but before going there it may be useful to identify some examples of wildly implausible views that may have had some advocates throughout history but which are yet to receive an elaborate defense by a contemporary philosopher. I believe Russellian monism, the sense-datum theory and adverbialism may be views of this kind. (My apologies to people who, unbeknownst to me, have offered elaborate defenses of these views.) Can you think of other views of this kind? 

MD: I can think of positions that seem wildly implausible to most philosophers, although it's a bit more difficult to think of positions that I am also inclined to believe. (Let's call this strategy "revival", because it is advocating for a philosophical position that is currently not in vogue.)  I have to admit being impressed by the acuity with which philosophers can defend wildly implausible views. For instance, Alvin Plantinga's defense of reformed epistemology has always been intriguing to me, and I've found myself returning to it again and again. 

However, I am sympathetic to some views which seem to be in the minority among philosophers: eliminativism (Paul and Patricia Churchland), non-cognitivism (Ayer, Stevenson, etc.) scientific anti-realism (Van Fraassen). Some of them are relatively new (and perhaps not as controversial as some of the views that you mentioned), so I don't know that it's completely accurate to call them a "revival" - but I get the impression that many philosophers find these views to be implausible. On a slightly related note, I also have certain philosophical interests that don't seem as popular as I think they should be (Stoicism, philosophy of film, etc.), but I suspect that many philosophers feel this way about their interests. Given the wide array of topics that you have published on, I am sure you can relate to the ebb and flow of philosophical interests. (Although I'd be interested to hear about your more "fringe" interests!)

I am curious about the reception a young philosopher would get if they were to attempt to revive or defend a controversial view.  Do you think that a defense of a particularly controversial view by a younger philosopher would be well-received? Or would they be better served to establish themselves as a careful and competent thinker, and then set out to defend their more controversial views? 

BB: With respect to the revival strategy my guess is that it will be easier for a senior person to get a paper reviving a wildly unpopular view published. But if it's done well, it really shouldn't make a difference whether you are junior or senior. Regardless of whether you are junior or senior, the trick is to offer a super-rigorous argument resting on very plausible assumptions. If you can pull that off as a junior person, I think people will be very impressed. One thing to watch out for, if attempting this strategy, is the existence of relevantly similar yet more widely accepted views. Suppose I find the sense-datum theory extremely appealing. I then offer a rigorous argument resting on hard-to-deny premises that shows that perception is not a direct relation between the perceiver and the external world. I conclude that the sense-datum theory is correct. The problem with this sort of argumentative structure is that there are relevantly similar views which people tend to regard as far more plausible than the sense-datum theory and which also deny that perception is a direct relation between the perceiver and the external world, viz. representational views of the internalist variety. 

I certainly can relate to your thoughts about "fringe" interests. I think the revival strategy applies, not just to unpopular views, but also to subject matters that are not currently in vogue. However, specializing in a subject matter that hardly anyone works on can be risky business. If you are simply defending an unpopular view within a fashionable sub-discipline, there will be lots of people to run your argument by and lots of people that editors can ask to referee your paper. But if you are reviving an area of philosophy that people haven't thought about since that one obscure undergraduate class they took 20 years ago, then it may be seriously difficult for you to get published.

Returning to research strategies, a further strategy I have used is to take an argumentative structure or problem-solving strategy that has been used successfully in one area and re-apply it in a different area. In one of my papers I extended Ted Sider's holistic ersatzism to presentism. In another I developed a Fitch-like paradox for modal fictionalism.

It's probably one of the most widely used research strategies in philosophy. In epistemology, for example, many aspects of the debate about virtue epistemology have been informed by debates about virtue ethics and debates about the value of knowledge and the aim of belief have been informed by analogous debates in action theory and meta-ethics. In philosophy of language, arguments for a relativistic semantics for certain terms (e.g., 'know') have been used to argue for a relativistic semantics for numerous other terms (e.g., epistemic modals, predicates of personal taste, color terms) and arguments for fictionalism about a particular discourse (e.g., mathematical discourse) have been used to argue for fictionalism about different types of discourse (e.g., modal, temporal, moral and color discourse). And arguments and views in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind and meta-ethics have been heavily influenced by particular theories in philosophy of language (Think of Lewis'/DeRose's/Cohen's arguments for contextualism, Stanley's/Hawthorne's arguments for subject-sensitive invariantism, Chalmers' zombie argument, Peter Ludlow/Dean Zimmerman's arguments for tensism, Ted Sider's arguments for four-dimensionalism.)

Another research strategy I haven't used much is to take two views that are commonly thought to be in opposition and show that they can be unified. Call it the "unification strategy." Susanna Schellenberg has used this strategy in several of her papers, arguing for a view of perception that is both fundamentally relational and fundamentally representational. If you google "a unified account of" + "philosophy," numerous other examples will pop up. Now that I have come to think of it, I did use the unification strategy in a paper arguing for a unified account of knowledge-how that accommodates both intellectualism and anti-intellectualism, and in one of my first papers I argued that presentism and perdurantism are compatible.

MD: Your first strategy, I'll call it 'redeployment', is one that I have used myself quite a bit when writing papers. Last semester, I wrote a paper for a Metaphysics seminar that redeployed Ted Sider's argument from gunk against mereological nihilism as an argument for a certain conception of temporal parts. I think we can end the discussion here - there is a lot to digest here and it has been incredibly helpful. Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts on all of this. 

Comments

[T. Parent]

Matt, this is awesome, thanks! And thanks too to Berit (assuming she reads the blog). We now have *six* different research strategies:

(1) workmanship philosophy (in grad school we called this "workerbee philosophy")
(2) paradigm busting
(3) debate framing (for reference works only?)
(4) revival
(5) redeployment
(6) unification

I might add something like "de-unification," where views that often go together are argued to be incompatible. I think of Stich arguing that content externalism precludes folk-psychological explanation.

Like Marcus, I am most attracted to (2), but I suspect it is indeed harder for junior faculty to publish this type of thing. I thus feel a pressure to do more of (1), which is not as rewarding. (This work tends to seem less important and/or less intellectually stimulating.)

Often, it's even less rewarding to do (4) or (5); it feels too much like mere "filling in logical space." (There are exceptions however.) Yet here too, it seems easier to publish...

Are these impressions accurate?

[Marcus Arvan]

Matt: I agree with Ted. Thanks for this -- it is awesome! And thanks to Berit for agreeing to take part.

[Matt DeStefano]

Ted: I'm mostly in line with your impressions, although I can't speak to how accurate they might be. I actually enjoy writing (5) quite a bit, as sometimes I think it can yield pretty interesting papers. I think that (3) could perhaps be extended beyond reference works, as arguably Gettier-type revolutions could still be classified under "debate-framing". Of course, most papers don't fit neatly into any one category and could easily fit into a couple.

Marcus: No problem! I'm grateful that Brit took the time to write such detailed responses - it was very informative.

[Moti Mizrahi]

Great post, Matt. Very useful. And thanks to Brit, too.