The Philosophers' Cocoon

Reader submission: experiences interviewing candidates

One of our readers, who recently submitted this post sharing their impressions of job-candidates' "cover materials" (i.e. cover letter and CV) as a search-committee member, emailed me the following impressions on interviewing:

I recently interviewed candidates for a position (research assistant, not in philosophy), at a research-intensive European university. I found this a really interesting experience, starting from reading the cover letters (which I found to weigh unexpectedly heavily in my decision) to the final process. As is the custom in European universities, we went straight on campus (with Skype talks for those who could not make it).

Here are some things I've learned. Some of these observations might also be generalized to other kinds of positions.

1. Interviews are precious and scarce things.

Why then, do job candidates not do their homework? The first striking thing I've noticed was that most job candidates had failed to do even the most cursory lookup for this position. This job was a research assistant/postdoc position that required working with a relatively new experimental technique. In their cover letters, all finalists had indicated that they did not have experience with the technique but that they were eager to learn it. However, during the interview, all but 2 of the candidates did not know what the technique involved when they were asked "Can you briefly explain what [technique] is?" Even a simple Wikipedia article would have been sufficient to give a satisfactory answer. I did notice that candidates did their homework about the department and members of the search committee. This is not a bad thing, but the position itself and the work it involves is also important to investigate.

2. Everyone's nervous, and nervousness doesn't seem to harm candidates, but too much nervousness can definitely interfere with your performance on the interview.

Two of our candidates were extremely nervous. When shaking hands at the end of the interview, the hands felt cold and sweaty. One of our candidates was trembling like a leaf. It was perhaps no coincidence that the 2 very nervous candidates did not do well on the interview. They answered questions that weren't asked, fell still in the middle of the sentence, and seemed totally nonplussed by some of the questions.

3. If everyone is interviewing live, Skype may put you at a disadvantage.

One of our candidates could not make the interview, and because we could not find an additional date when everyone of the search committee could be available, we had to use Skype to interview them. All other candidates were interviewed on campus. There were, unfortunately, several glitches in the process. At first, there was no sound, then the image disappeared periodically. The candidate had to ask, almost after every question "Sorry, I did not get your question. Could you repeat it?" After about 15 minutes, the connection was broken, and it took several tries to reconnect. Overall, it certainly did not help the candidate. It made them nervous and less able to answer the questions, and it was a drag for us. We did take it into consideration during our discussion, but with several good in-person interviews, it's hard to say what would have happened if the Skype interviewee had been able to make it in person.

4. A brilliant interview will only get you so far.

I've often heard that the only rationale of your cover letter, CV and other materials is to land you an interview. Then the clock is reset, and your performance on the interview determines to a large extent the outcome of your application. In my experience, a bad interview can certainly harm someone with good cover materials (e.g., PhD from prestigious school, strong pubs). In this search, we had 2 candidates that seemed perfect fits for the position. But both interviewed poorly. They did not do research on the position (see 1), and also did less well on other aspects. However, while a good interview may be a necessary condition, it is not a sufficient condition. We had a brilliant interviewee who had just completed their masters. The candidate seemed motivated and capable. However, we also had a very good interview with someone with a PhD and several publications. Although this position did not require a PhD, it did require some autonomy and writing papers, and probably it would involve co-writing subsequent grant proposals. The person who had earned their PhD and had published articles seemed more likely to be able to do this autonomous research and grant writing than someone with masters degree. It's, unfortunately, a buyer's market.

5. Fit is probably overrated by candidates.

I would never have predicted the outcome of the hiring process based on the shortlist. The person we hired was, among the shortlisted candidates, a bit of a stretch, but the motivation letter convinced us to shortlist them anyway. Yet on the whole this candidate was considered to be the best candidate we interviewed. They had a PhD in the relevant field, and several published articles including as first author. Moreover, they answered all the questions of the interview competently. That the fit was a bit of a stretch was only a minor concern, one we were able to address during the interview. Our "perfect fit candidates" (there were 2 like this) were disappointments on the interview. They seemed to be sabotaging themselves by going into irrelevant details.

I'd like to thank this individual for taking the time to share these impressions, and hope readers find them helpful. I'd also like to invite other search-committee members who are so willing to weigh in on the issue. I expect our readers who are present or future job-candidates would be very appreciative!

New Contributor

I am happy to welcome our newest contributor, Shelley Tremain, to the Philosophers' Cocoon. Shelley earned a PhD in philosophy from York University and specializes in philosophy of disability. Shelley has published in the Philosophers' Magazine, Hypatia, International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, Disability Studies Quarterly, Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, Social Theory and Practice, as well as through the University of Michigan Press. Welcome!

Reflexivism in Indian Philosophy

A comment by Marcus on my last post made me realise that I should have given you some background to the debate.
The basic question we should start with is: How are cognitions cognised?

1. Philosophers of the Nyāya school (ca. 1st c. BCE--today, sic!) maintain that cognitions are not aware of themselves at the moment they arise. They are, instead, only aware of their object. However, at a later time the subject can act as a synthetiser and perform a higher order perception (henceforth HOP), which is a sort of apperception and makes the subject aware of the fact that he or she has cognised something. It is only because such a HOP has taken place that we can, for instance, be aware of the fact that we have cognised a certain thing and then remember our experience of it. Without HOP we would only remeber the cognition's content, but not the cognition itself. This position can be labelled non-reflexivism, insofar as it stresses that cognitions are not "transparent" for themselves.


2. Philosophers of the Buddhist School of Epistemology (ca. 5th c. AD--13 th. c. AD in India), instead, maintain that cognitions are at the same time aware of their objects and of themselves. A cognition C is, thus, by the same token, aware of its content (say, a patch of blue) and of itself. Thus, a cognition is like a light, which at the same time illuminates itself and other objects. This position is usually labelled by Analytic Philosophers working on Indian material as "reflexivism".


3. Philosophers of the Bhāṭṭa branch of the Mīmāṃsā school (ca. 5 th c. AD--19th c.) maintain that cognitions are not aware of themselves. While cognising X, I am not aware of my own cognition of it, but only of X. Why is it, then, that I can remember not only X, but also the fact that I have experienced it? Because I have inferred out fo the fact that X had become known to me, that a cognition must have taken place. Thus, my awareness of the fact that I cognised something is of inferential nature. This also means that cognitions are recursive: I can cognise a patch of blue through cognition M, and then know M through cognition M' and so on.

To put it in an extreme way: If we do not accept reflexivism, we live as zombies as regards the most part of our cognitions, apart the ones for which we do a HOP. This means, that most of our "unimportant" cognitions would remain blind. However, accepting reflexivism involves the problem we have seen in the provious post.

Related articles

Philosophy of Mind and Buddhism: A discussion on reflexivism

Philosophy of Mind and Buddhism: A discussion on reflexivism

I am just back from the one-week IABS conference and I thought that the following panel should be of interest also for scholars not specialising on Buddhist philosophy.

Within the panel, Mark Siderits talked about what Indian scholars call svaprakāśa- and paraprakāśavāda, equating them with reflexivism and not reflexivism. These answer the problem of how are cognitions cognised. According to the Indian philosophical school of Nyāya, they are cognised through a higher order perception, which they call anuvyavasāya, so that for each cognition a cognition of it is possible:

M (object: blue)
M* (object: M)

Please note that this possibility does not imply that for each cognition there needs to be a cognition of it.
By contrast, the Buddhist Epistemologists from Dignāga (5th c. AD) onwards, uphold that cognitions are reflexive. Within the panel, Christian Coseru went into further details about what this means and stressed the fact that this reflexivity (in Sanskrit svasaṃvedana) cannot be a further condition. Rather, it can only be an aspect of the same cognition of a given object.
While Coseru played the role of the supporter of the reflexivity view, Siderits showed some of the possible objections to it. One of them goes back to the Buddhist author Nāgārjuna (2nd c. AD ca.) himself, namely that there are no reflexive acts throughout the world. The reflexivity of cognitions would be an absolute unicum. Now, some of you might think of a counter-example, namely the light, which can illuminate itself while illuminating other things. But the example does not hold, Siderits-Nāgārjuna explained, since the light is not something which can, stricto sensu, be illuminated, since in order to be illuminated an object needs to be able to exist also in the darkness, which is not the case with the light.
A further objection is contained in a syllogism by Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (7th c. ca.), another Brahmanical upholder of non-reflexivism of cognitions:

One does not cognise one's cognition, because it is a cognition, like Maitra

(Maitra is a proper name used to mean "a certain person"). The point here is, in Siderits' interpretation, that we have seemingly two different ways to know about consciousness. In the case of ourselves, we come to know that we are conscious through a simple act of introspection (which is, let me add, an undeniable token of an intrinsically valid cognition, since it is inimaginable to think that one could be wrong in ascribing consciousness to oneself). But introspection cannot work in the case of other people's consciousness. We can only infer that other people are conscious by observing their behaviour, most notably their bodily movements.
So, it seems that we have to do with two widely different concepts, and that consciousness must have two different meanings, and, thus, be two different things. This brings us to either solipsism (which is in fact embraced by later Buddhist Epistemologists) or to the view that cognitions are not directly cognised.

Last, Siderits pointed to the fact that the non-reflexive theory harmonises with some findings in cognitive sciences, namely that there is a high-road and a low-road system in our brain. The latter does not need one to be aware of what it cognises. For instance, if one throws us a stone, we will bend on the opposite side immediately, before being aware of the stone.

This post is a part of a series on the IABS (you can find the other ones at my personal blog). Please remember that these are only my first impressions and that all mistakes are mine and not the speakers' ones

Silvermint on Grad Traps!

My one-time fellow grad at Arizona, Daniel Silvermint, has posted a great list of "grad traps" (i.e. things not to do in grad school) over at Daily Nous. 

For some of my own "lessons", see here, here, here, here!

Sixth Post at Flickers

My newest post, "Libertarian Compatibilism and the Consequence Argument" is now up at Flickers of Freedom. Check it out! In it, I utilize Einstein's famous "reference-frame trick" to advance a new solution to one of the most influential arguments against free will. In a nutshell, I suggest that the Consequence Argument is sound relative to one reference-frame but unsound relative to another one within which the former reference frame emerges.

I hope you all find it interesting!

Another reply to Van Der Vossen's argument for philosophers staying out of politics--and a case for feminist philosophy, critical race theory, etc.

Last month I wrote a blog post responding to Bas van der Vossen's forthcoming article, "In Defense of the Ivory Tower: Why Philosophers Should Stay Out of Politics", forthcoming in Philosophical Psychology. Bas' argument is:

1. People who take up a certain role or profession thereby acquire a prima facie moral duty to make a reasonable effort to avoid those things that predictably make them worse at their tasks.
2. The task of political philosophers is to seek the truth about political issues.
3. Therefore, political philosophers have a prima facie moral duty to make a reasonable effort to avoid those things that predictably make us worth at seeking the truth about political issues.
4. Being politically active predictably makes us worse at seeking the truth about political issues.
5. Therefore, political philosophers have a prima facie moral duty to avoid being politically active.

Bas then responded to my post over at Bleeding Heart Libertarians. Although many people in the comments section over there were sympathetic to my argument (and offered arguments of their own against Bas' view), Bas remained unconvinced, claiming in a comment far down in the thread that he still thinks the argument sound. 

I've been thinking a lot about Bas' argument since then (and so am thankful to Bas for writing such a thought-provoking paper!) -- and while I still think my initial objections are correct, I'd like in today's post to provide some real, deep theoretical justification for them.

In my earlier post, I questioned Bas' premise (2): the premise that the task of political philosophers is to seek the truth about political issues. In brief, I suggested that this is far too narrow a way to construe "our task." We are not hired by universities merely to seek the truth. Our employment contracts do not explicitly or implicitly state any such conditions of employment, and as human beings in an occupation, we have many moral responsibilities: not only to truth, but also to things like justice. And so, I suggested, it is not our sole task as political philosophers to seek the truth. "Our task" is very much up to us to decide for ourselves, on the basis of our own conscience and moral judgment.

I still think this is right. But let me now give a deeper argument for it. In my forthcoming paper, "First Steps Toward a Nonideal Theory of Justice" and my 2008 PhD dissertation at Arizona, "A Non-Ideal Theory of Justice" (the latter of which, however, is a much earlier and inferior piece of work), I argue that justice in a nonideal world like ours -- a world in which principles of ideal justice are not met (either libertarian principles, egalitarian principles, or whatever) -- is a matter of empowering people who suffer from past and/or present injustices to collectively deliberate and pursue their interests in a fair and inclusive manner in proportion to the severity of the injustices suffered (i.e. the worse off people are, the more they should be prioritized in said deliberation).

Let's think about this a bit.

First, I did not reach this conclusion through political advocacy, but rather through an abstract philosophical model of freedom and equality under nonideal circumstances: a "nonideal original position." Further, in "A Non-Ideal Theory of Justice" and unpublished work, I argue that this model is "ideal theory invariant" -- that is, that it models nonideal justice regardless of whether one is a libertarian, egalitarian, etc., within ideal theory.

Second, let us think about my theory of nonideal justice's implications vis-a-vis Bas' argument. Bas' premise (1), recall, is that people who take up a certain professional role have a prima facie duty not to make themselves worse at their professional tasks. Notice how weak of a claim this is. A prima facie duty is an "on the face of it" duty -- one that can be overridden by countervailing considerations. If my view about nonideal justice is correct, political philosophers can have very strong countervailing considerations here: if they can help to empower unjustly disadvantaged people through political advocacy, then, on my theory, justice demands it...even if it makes them worse at their tasks as academic truth-seekers.

A similar point also follows from my theory with respect to Bas' premise (2): the premise that the task of political philosophers is to be truth-seekers. On my theory of nonideal justice, this is just false. Morality and justice both come prior to professional obligations. If I took up a job as a slaveowner, justice and morality would both require me to be worse at my tasks (indeed, they would require me to leave my job!). Similar considerations apply to political philosophers. According to my theory of nonideal justice, our fundamental moral task as political philosophers is not to be truth-seekers, but to seek justice. Now, of course, Bas is right that we can't know what our duties of justice are unless we know the truth about them, but if my theory of nonideal justice is on the right track (as I believe it to be), then the truth about justice is...that we should not merely be truth-seekers as academics, but rather people who are interested in empowering the unjustly disadvantaged -- contrary to Bas' (2).

Similar considerations also speak against Bas' premise (4): the premise that political advocacy makes political philosophers' worse at their task. Bas believes this premise is true because (i) he thinks our only (or dominant) task is to be truth-seekers, and (ii) he provides lots of evidence in favor of the proposition that political advocacy biases people (infering with truth-seeking). If my theory of nonideal justice is right, however, then nonideal justice itself -- treating people as free and equal persons under nonideal conditions -- requiresbeing biased in favor of the interests of those disadvantaged by past and/or present injustices (as defined by one's favored ideal theory of justice).

In short, if I'm right about the nature of nonideal justice (or at least on the right track, as I believe I am), then Bas' argument does not succeed for several reasons: premise (2) and (4) are false, and even if they were all true (even if the argument were sound), his conclusion (that we have a "prima facie" duty to avoid political activism) would be so weak that it would be easily defeated by the countervailing duty of justice to prioritize justice over our professional obligations.

Finally, if all of this is right, then there are important implications not merely for Bas' argument (i.e. it is unsound), but for academic philosophy more generally. There has for a long time now be vigorous debate in philosophy (see e.g. here) over whether feminist philosophy, critical race theory, and other related fields are "genuine, worthwhile disciplines." And indeed, at a recent Leiter poll, a full 30% of respondents voted that feminist philosophy is really "just political advocacy, not a real discipline." Similar concerns have, of course, been raised about critical race theory and other academic inquiries into the "politics of difference."

Let's think for a moment about the arguments that people typically give against these areas being "genuine disciplines." Aside from the claim that such disciplines are less rigorous than mainstream analytic philosophy (something which I personally think is false), the general complaint about these disciplines is that they prioritize political advocacy over the truth. Notice that, on my theory of nonideal justice, "political advocacy interferes with truth-seeking", is patently false. Some forms of advocacy (i.e. those that violate principles of nonideal justice) may interfere with truth-seeking. But just forms of advocacy need not. And indeed, on my theory of nonideal justice, the only way to figure out what the truth is about nonideal justice (i.e. what a fair and just division of social costs in order to rectify past or present injustices) is to empower the unjustly disadvantaged to collectively deliberate in a fair and inclusive way to overcome injustice.

In other words, on my theory of nonideal justice, social advocacy on behalf of women, minorities, etc., is a crucial and necessary part of truth-seeking vis-a-vis truths about social and political philosophy. One cannot, on my theory, determine what nonideal justice requires without it. But, with this in mind, we now have an argument that feminist philosophy, critical race theory, etc., are legitimate areas of inquiry vis-a-vis philosophical truth-seeking. Their forms of political advocacy -- provided they are appropriately inclusive (etc.) -- are a form of truth-seeking. Or so my theory of nonideal justice entails.

Now, of course, I could be entirely wrong about nonideal justice. If I am, I would be happy for people to engage with and refute my work. That being said, I think my arguments are worth grappling with, and that they make a strong case not only for political philosophers engaging in advocacy, but also for the legitimacy and importance feminist philosophy, critical race theory, and other academic fields dedicated to examining social and political matters from the perspective of those who suffer from past or present injustices.

Some light encouragement

I enjoy blogging tremendously. It has been a great outlet to share and discuss my ideas about philosophy, teaching, the profession, etc., as well as a place to get to know a lot of great people. At the same time, given that (1) the Philosophers' Cocoon is not primarily a "news" outlet, (2) its scope is intentionally narrow (its mission is to be all things safe-and-supportive), and (3) coming up with worthwhile new topics to discuss all the time (and then writing on them) can be difficult...I thought I would take the opportunity today to reiterate (and emphasize!) what sometimes seems to me to be a neglected part of the Cocoon's core mission: namely, that this was never intended to be "my" blog, but rather a community-based one with many active contributors each bringing their own diverse thoughts, perspectives, and experiences to bear on aspects of our lives in professional philosophy. My hope, at any rate, has always been that the Philosophers' Cocoon would grow organically to be a place where a wide variety of people -- of different backgrounds, genders, philosophical proclivities, etc. -- would actively contribute in blogging roles, thereby broadening and deeping the kinds of issues and perspectives addressed. While I am in many respects happy with the Cocoon and the supportive community we have developed here, I still have the aforementioned hope, and sometimes fear that I have not done enough to express it.

So, with all that said, I intend to keep on blogging as I always have...but at the same time, I would like to encourage all of our existing contributors, as well as readers who are professional philosophers who would like to contribute, to take a more active role. It would not only take some of the pressure off me (and I do feel pressure to keep things going and interesting), I think it would -- for all of the reasons given above -- result in better, more diverse discussions, ideas, and perspectives.

In any case, I hope the beginning of the academic year treats you all well, and wish everyone who's on the job market this year the very best of luck! :)

DeCruz's Interview with Parent Academics

Helen DeCruz has posted interviews she conducted with several tenured academics with children about their experiences in the professional while being mothers and fathers. Although all of the people interviewed are tenured, some of them had children before tenure or before having a tenure-track job.

Given that the Philosophers' Cocoon is intended to be a helpful place for early-career philosophers, and many of our readers are either in grad school, post-docs, non-TT positions, or in TT positions, I expect that DeCruz's interview will be of interest to many.

Indeed, given that questions like, "When is it best to have a child as an academic?", "How does having a child affect one's career prospects?", and the like, are pressing for very many of us, DeCruz's interview strikes me as a great service and resource. I hope you all check it out and find it interesting!

SpaceTimeMind: Episode 11

Richard Brown and Pete Mandik have posted episode 11 of SpaceTimeMind, "Scientism." Here's the episode's capsule-summary:

Good news, everybody! SpaceTimeMind turns it up to 11 as science-obsessed philosophers Richard Brown and Pete Mandik duke it out over which one is the most egregious purveyor of scientism, the view that anything worth knowing is worth knowing scientifically. Or is scientism just empiricism? And what the bleep is that, anyway? Is it simply an affirmation of the superiority of sensory knowledge? Or is it at bottom a denial of necessary truths? Or is being a scientismologist just what happens when you label yourself as such to achieve greater societal respectability and sell more books? Put on your goggles have a clean beaker handy, for today we science!!!

Enjoy!

Fifth Post at Flickers

My newest post, "How we might have phenomenal consciousness and libertarian free will, while animals might have neither", is now up at Flickers of Freedom. I hope you find all find it interesting!

My next series of posts at Flickers will move away a bit from the really speculative stuff I've been focusing on in my last few posts, and turn directly to how my Libertarian Compatibilist theory of free will addresses famous anti-free will arguments: the Consequence Argument, Mind Argument, Luck Argument, etc.

So, if you're at all interested in that kind of stuff, stay tuned!

Is it okay to write/publish on things you think are false leads?

I had an experience at a conference recently that puzzled me a bit. A presenter was presenting on a set of philosophical views I think are false, and for which there are no good arguments. The basic thrust of the paper was this: "Many people take theory X seriously. This paper will argue that the reasons people give for X are actually reasons to think that Y is true, not X."

Since I've always thought the reasons that people give for X are bad, I thought the reasons the author was giving for Y over X  were bad too (inheriting the badness of extant arguments for X). Because of these worries, I asked the author, "I think there are problems 1, 2, and 3 for arguments for X. Since arguments for Y share these problems, do you really think Y is true?"

The author's reply suprised me. He said, "No, I think X and Y are both false. I think the arguments for X are bad just like you do, and that the arguments for Y inherit those problems. But I thought it still worthwhile to show people who take X seriously that if they take X seriously, they should believe Y instead."

I wonder what people make of this. I thought there was something wrong with it -- that one should not intentionally pursue what one believes to be "false leads." Indeed, I fuzzily recall being upbraided by a mentor at some point in my career for doing something similar (I can't remember if it was grad or undergrad). The best I recall, my mentor said something like this: "As philosophers, we should be seeking the truth. If you pursue what you take to be false leads, you have intentionally undermined this aim. You have sought what you take to be falsehoods." Finally, the mentor implied that this was a form of intellectual dishonesty (I distinctly remember this person being quite upset with me).

What do you all think? I'm not quite sure. On the one hand, the presenter who gave the paper I'm talking about justified the paper by saying (in essence), "Look, it would display a lack of intellectual humility on my part to assume that my estimations of philosophical arguments are correct. Although I think the arguments for X (and Y, by extension) are bogus, there are a lot of philosophers who think those are good arguments -- and so, by showing them that they should prefer Y to X, my paper contributes something valuable to philosophical debate. It shows proponents of X that the real implications of their arguments is Y, not X -- though, again, I think Y is crazy too."

I sort of found this argument persuasive...sort of. I guess I can see how writing a paper on views one believes to be false -- and deriving the true implications of arguments one takes to be poor -- is a contribution to philosophical debate. Still, there seems to me (A) something potentially (actually?) dishonest about it, and (B) something about is contrary to the aim of being "truth seeking."

First, why do I think it is arguably dishonest? Well, look, if your paper is simply arguing that arguments for X entail Y instead, but you think the arguments for X are bad, then you've intentionally withheld something you think is philosophically relevent to the debate from your readers that you think is true. Which seems to me dishonest.

Perhaps, though, there is away to avoid this. An author could, I suppose, write explicitly in their paper (perhaps in a footnote?) that they think arguments for X aren't good, but that since other people take those arguments seriously, their paper is going to simply assume the arguments for X and show that they entail Y. This seems to me at least honest, and to that extent, morally preferable to saying nothing.

But although that may be a way around being dishonest to readers, I'm not sure that it sufficiently addresses the second worry I had (and which my mentor also had), which is being committed to truth-seeking.

To take an analogy I pressed this particular paper-writer with, suppose a scientist who believes Young Earth Creationism to be bunk wrote a paper that took arguments for Creationism seriously and showed that that far from entailing some hypothesis Creationists tend to believe, X, is true (let's say, X is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity), those arguments entail Y instead (where Y is, let's say, the proposition that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is false). This is of course contributing to the debate over what Creationists should think -- yet, if the author thinks Creationism is false, the author is not engaging in truth-seeking. Moreover, the author is playing into the hands of other people the author thinks have things wrong. Their paper, as it were, lends a little bit of added legitimacy to a false view (Creationism) simply by taking it seriously.

Now, the author of this paper replied to these worries by saying that the views his paper is on are not like Creationism -- as Creationism is not taken seriously in mainstream science, whereas the arguments he was considering in his paper are taken seriously in mainstream philosophy. But, does this really help? Suppose we were to go back in time several hundred years, when Young Earth Creationism was taken seriously by philosophers and natural scientists. Would it be okay to publish a paper like the one above (teasing out the theological implications of Young Earth Creationism) if one thought Young Earth Creationism to be false? I don't think it would be. As a scientist or philosopher, the ultimate of aim of inquiry should be the truth -- and so if you think the arguments for Young Earth Creationism (or whatever) are bad, you should not write papers that implicitly further the extent to which those arguments are taken seriously.

I pressed the author on this as follows. To paraphrase, I asked him, "Do you think philosophy would be better off -- closer to the truth -- if philosophers stopped taking X, and the arguments for it, seriously?" To the best of my recollection, he indicated that he did (since he thought X is false!). "But then", I asked him, "don't you think writing a paper on X lends greater legitimacy to the continued discussion of X? After all, if you write (yet another) paper on X, that may lead other people to think that X is worth taking seriously, and indeed, contribute to the furtherance of the X-industry -- something you yourself would like to see disappear (since you think X is false)!" I can't remember exactly what the author said to this, but I do recall that he was unconvinced. It seemed to me that his view was something like this: "Although I think the X-industry should disappear, there are a lot of philosophers who don't think it should disappear -- and so it's not my responsibility to help it disappear. It's everyone else's responsibility to stop believing arguments for X, and hopefully, that will happen."

I didn't like this reply. I was inclined to say, "No, if you really think X is false, you should in no way contribute to the literature on X, except to provide arguments that you genuinely think disprove it or the arguments for it. Any other contributions -- contributions that implicitly lend legitimacy to X, despite you yourself thinking it is a false theory -- lend legitimacy to a false theory, which you should oppose on truth-seeking grounds."

I think I still think this: that our ultimate allegiance should be to the truth, and to contributing to philosophical discussion only insofar as we believe we are furthering the truth.

What do you all think? First, do you agree with this? Second, do you think the author in this case was in any relevant sense pursuing truth? (Again, he was pursuing the implications of arguments for X -- which are truths of sorts! Yet, at the same time, he thought those arguments are unsound, which is deducing unsound implications!). I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts... :)

What constitutes a legitimate AOS/AOC?, etc.

Now that fall academic job-market ads are starting to go up, candidates have to begin the process of determining which jobs to apply for. This process is not necessarily very straightforward, as indeed, two difficult questions may present themselves:

1. When should one claim something as an AOS/AOC?
2. When should one apply to a position advertised in an area that one does not claim as an AOS/AOC (but which one may, nevertheless, do some research in)?

Question (1) is not as easily answered as it might initially appear. Consider a candidate whose doctoral work, dissertation, and published work are primarily in areas X and Y, but who also had significant graduate school training in area Z, has published a couple of articles in Z, and has something of a long-term research program in that area (though, let's say, it might be a fairly narrow one, dealing with a very specific set of issues in Z).

Should this person claim Z as an AOS, even though it's clearly not among their main lines of research? Should they even claim it as an AOC, given that (perhaps) they've never taught a course in the area (and, again, given that their interests in Z are relatively narrow)? 

I'm curious to hear what people think. I suspect this is just a case of vagueness, and there's no clear answer in penumbral cases like these (one just has to make a judgment call). But perhaps I'm wrong. What do you all think?

And what about issue (2)? When should one apply for positions advertised outside of one's claimed AOS/AOC? One tempting answer, obviously, is: "Never - don't waste your or the search committee's time applying for a job you don't fit." One problem with this stock answer, however, is that a number of cases have been reported on other blogs recently of search committees hiring outside of the AOS they advertised for (or, at least, people who didn't clearly fit the advertised AOS very well).

Or again, consider the kind of candidate mentioned above: a person whose primary training and research programs are in areas X and Y, but who also carries out serious research (and has published) in area Z. Setting aside the question of whether this person should claim Z as an AOS/AOC, should this person apply for a position advertising Z as its desired AOS? Offhand, I'm thinking this person should take the chance--given, again, that they do serious work in the area (though what if their recommendation letters might primarily focus on their work in areas X and Y, not Z. Does this make a difference?).

Anyway, I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks. I suspect more than a few job candidates out there could use some answers to these questions!

Fourth Post at Flickers

My newest post, "Holography and the Holographic Principle: or why physics might entail some new reasons to take mind-body dualism seriously", is now up!

Third Post at Flickers

My third post this month at Flickers of Freedom, "The Case for Libertarian Compatibilism: A Brief Overview" is now up!

Another Kind of Kinds of Philosophers

There are a lot of kinds of kinds of philosophers. Most obviously, we can break down philosophers by AOS. We can also divide philosophers by method: ‘empirically oriented’ or ‘arm chair’ (each year at the SPP a psychologist asks me which kind of those I am!) or something else. What I want to suggest is that there is another kind of kinds of philosophers, which perhaps depends more on one’s dispositions or personality than the content of what one argues in papers. I don’t mean to suggest that any of these are ‘bad’ kinds of philosophers, and I want to suggest that we all benefit by having the different kinds around. Here is a list (by no means comprehensive, feel free to recommend others):

1. The systematic philosopher: Most of the greats belong here. These are folks who operate within most (or all) areas of philosophy offering a systematic view of everything.
2. The expert in just that area: Folks who focused on one area (sometimes one problem!) for their whole career. Sometimes to the exclusion of almost anything else. I think this is less common in philosophy, but in other disciplines (such as history) often folks will become the world expert on a very narrow topic and are able to conduct all their research in that very narrow topic.
3. The non-believer: This is the philosopher who is not interested in being pinned down. Perhaps lots of their papers are conditional (“here is how to solve the overdetermination problem, if you want to be a non-reductive physicalist”).
4. The desultory philosophers: Some philosophers make a career out of disagreeing with themselves. (I consider this kind of philosopher distinct from the non-believer because they sincerely argue and endorse positions that they later sincerely argue against and reject).
5. The formalizer: Sentential logic is too damn simple! Let’s break it all down to see what the hell is going on!

My point is not to prize one of these kinds of philosophers over the others. I think they all need each other—just as there is a division of labor among the disciplines within academia (and perhaps between the sub-disciplines of philosophy), I think we need to acknowledge a division of labor within the field of philosophy. The benefits of the systematic philosopher and the expert in just one area are, I think, pretty obvious, but we need the other folks too. I appreciate the honesty of the desultory philosopher, and it’s fun talking to them since they are totally willing to change their minds! The non-believer helps move debates along, even if they’re not sure about the starting points. I’m no formal philosopher, but there are plenty of times when a debate needs some ‘house cleaning’ (as a formal philosopher put it to me once).

I think adding this taxonomy is helpful because, while we might admire the content of what some philosopher says, we might not be the same kind of philosopher that they are. So attempting to emulate their overall approach might not be right for you. Maybe your supervisor is an ‘expert in one area’ type, but you would prefer to spend time thinking about the implication of your views in that area across sub-disciplines. Maybe you find a certain debate really interesting, even though you disagree with the starting premises. Maybe you’re not even a theist, but have something to say something about the trinity!

I have found myself thinking that all philosophers should be of either the first type or the second type. Or, in the case of early stage career philosophers, one must be the second type. However, after I finished writing my dissertation (on dual-process theory), I decided I wanted work on some of the tangents in the dissertation that I didn’t get to pursue then. It seems that realizing that there are other kinds of philosophers to be is healthy individually (I can do stuff I want to do!), and for us as a profession (we all benefit from these different kinds of philosophers being themselves).

 

New Contributor

I'm happy to introduce our newest contributor, Joshua Mugg (York University). Josh is finishing up his PhD, and his dissertation is entitled, How Many Minds do we Need? Toward a Multi-Dimensional Account of Belief. He works in philosophy of psyschology, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics, and recently published, "What are the cognitive costs of racism? A reply to Gendler" in Philosophical Studies. Welcome!

 

SpaceTimeMind: Episode 10

Richard Brown and Pete Mandik have posted their newest episode of SpaceTimeMind, "All Up In the Global Workspace of Consciousness (with Bernaard Baars)". Here's the capsule summary:

Neuroscience and philosophy meet in the arena of consciousness when neuroscientist guest Bernard Baars joins philosopher hosts Richard Brown and Pete Mandik on the SpaceTimeMind podcast. Topics we tackle include (1) the interface between science and philosophy, (2) the Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness, (3) the relevance of quantum mechanics for phenomenal consciousness, (4) the possibility of machine consciousness, and (5) Ned Block’s thesis that perceptual consciousness overflows cognitive access. And that's just for starters! We’ve saved you a seat in the theater of consciousness,  so pop open an ice cold can of qualia and enjoy the show.

Enjoy!

Second Post at Flickers

My second post at Flickers of Freedom, "Contextualism About Free Will? A Case for Incompatibilist Compatibilism", is now up!

Reader query on job-market cover materials

A reader writes:

Hi Marcus: I was wondering if you could open a job-season thread on cover materials? Last year was the first time for me at the other side of the interview table. I was part of an interviewing panel (not in philosophy; the job involved designing and carrying out experiments on human participants which had ethical implications - I was asked to be part of the panel to evaluate how job candidates thought about the ethical aspects). Anyway, I went through applications (ca 100) for a temporary research position within a project, and convened with the other search committee members to longlist (12) then shortlist (6) applicants.

Here are my introspective thoughts about the cover materials [note: I paraphrased from the cover letters, so nothing is an exact quote]:

- In the total application package, I found the cover letter to be more important than I expected. Of course, CVs are important too and give essential info like completed degree and publications. But many candidates have CVs that are very similar in quality. When you're at application #20, you've seen at least 10 people who meet and exceed all the criteria. The cover letter allows one to see the motivation of the candidate and place that in a larger picture. We didn't shortlist anyone who did not tailor their cover letter to the job.

- There was lots of redundant verbiage in the cover letter, empty phrases like "I am a hard-working and committed researcher" and "I am passionate about research" and "I am a very fitting candidate for this position". I used to use this verbiage in my cover letters too (not anymore though!). It is not a total turn-off, but in the limited space of a cover letter, it is useless (anyone can claim these things about themselves). The people we shortlisted had few, if any, such phrases.

- The institution I work for is highly ranked worldwide for research. I was surprised, in at least 20% of cover letters to see the following statement "I think working at [your university] would help my career greatly forward" - yes, probably, but that does not give us any reason to hire you. The cover letter needs to be written to convince the SC that you are a fitting candidate, not to argue why you'd like the position. At this stage, your enthusiasm for the job is not important.

- I was surprised to find pedigree play a non-negligible role in my decisions to longlist and shortlist. I am not pedigreed myself, and I have always found the emphasis on pedigree unhealthy, but I caught myself thinking "She did her PhD under xxx. And xxx has really done lots of work related to the project. Moreover, university Y has a good reputation for this field."

- Very flashy CVs with unusual fonts, bright colors, etc are a turn-off - they are just hard to interpret or sometimes just even to read. Yet about 10% of our applicants had CVs like this. One of them used 4 different colors, including mustard green and red. One of them looked like a film poster from the 1930s. None of these applicants made the shortlist stage.

- Also puzzling was that many candidates listed non-relevant non-academic experience on the CV, such as being shop assistants. If this was their current job (as for some it was), I can see the point, also perhaps to explain gaps in the CV, but otherwise, it does not make a CV look better. Completeness is not an end in itself.

- Similarly, at least for me, high school grades and where you went to high school and elementary school are not important. I am interested only in your degrees since the BA. All our applicants had at least a BA and many had a PhD. Yet about 25% of applicants listed where they went to high school (sometimes even primary school), and listed grades for high school

- If you have to go through many applications in a very short period of time, you will not bother (so I have found) with materials that people send but were not requested, such as transcripts, research statements or writing samples. If there's anything essential in there, I will have missed it (note: we needed to go through all these materials in less than a week - with other commitments it was not possible to look at non-requested materials).

- Although fit is important, we ended up hiring someone who did not fit the profile as well as some other candidates. The candidates we shortlisted on the basis of their cover letter and CV who weren't a perfect fit provided some rationale for why the mismatch, e.g., "the past year, I have shifted my research attention to topic [of the project], having followed courses and read books on this topic [specify]; moreover, I have one article in preparation and one under review on [topic]" While this search was not for philosophy, and not for a tenure track, I think some of my experiences might apply to that domain too.

Any thoughts? I'd like to thank this person for sharing their experience, particularly the point about cover letters mattering, as well as how not to write them. I also have to confess that I'm pretty surprised by many of the things mentioned. Flashy, colored CV's listing high-school grades and accomplishments? Sounds like some people aren't receiving anything remotely close to adequate job-market guidance. Finally, I'm happy to report that this same individual offered to share their experiences/thoughts on interviewing, so look forward to it!

My tentative plan at Flickers

Given that I'm guest-posting at Flickers of Freedom this month, I figured I'd link to my posts over there. Here's a link to my first post on my plans for the month!

This Month: The Wayback Machine

This month I am guest-blogging over at Flickers of Freedom. I plan to post over there every few days on a variety of things spanning metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, and the philosophy of physics. Please do stop by! 

Because of my guest-stint at Flickers, as well as a couple of family vacations this month, I will most likely not be posting too much new stuff here at the Cocoon the next few weeks (though I may well post new stuff from time to time). In order to keep the Cocoon from languishing too much (and I certainly encourage other contributors to post!), I've decided to feature some old posts I've made over the past couple of years that newer readers of the Cocoon might have missed, and which, hopefully, longtime readers of the Cocoon might find worth revisiting.

My plan will be to feature old posts at the top of the blog every several days in their original form. Other new posts on the Cocoon will then appear below the featured post, and when I change featured posts, the old one will return to its original date/time in Cocoon history.

In any case, although they are old posts I hope you all find them interesting, and I look forward to coming back to normal blogging come September!

Recent Work By Cocooners (June 2014)

The following works were published or uploaded to philpapers by Philosophers' Cocoon contributors during the month of July:

Clayton Littlejohn (forthcoming). Oxford Handbook of X and Y.

Clayton Littlejohn (forthcoming). "Reasons and Theoretical Rationality." Oxford Handbook of X and Y.

Clayton Littlejohn (forthcoming). "Skeptical Thoughts Concerning Explanationism and Skepticism." Symposion.

Moti Mizrahi (forthcoming). "The Fine-Tuning Argument and the Simulation Hypothesis." Think.

Meg Wallace (2014). "Muslim women reformers: inspiring voices against oppression [book review]." The Australian Humanist.

Congrats! If I missed anything, please let me know in the comments section and I'll update the post.