The Philosophers' Cocoon

What to do when credit isn't given?

I came across a social media post today on an issue that I've heard people raise serious concerns about before, and which once again speaks to philosophers' problematic citation practices (for more, see here, here, here, and here). Although it's not my place to share who told the story or who the story involves, the general story is (in my experience) a disturbingly familiar one:

1. Philosopher A defends an argument X in year Y.
2. A much more famous philosopher B defends a similar argument several years later.
3. Other philosophers routinely cite B's work, and refer to argument X as "Philosopher B's argument."

In other words, the first person who came up with the argument is not given credit for it in the literature, but instead the credit is given to a more famous philosopher who also came up with the argument later. In the present case, I might add that philosopher A was a junior woman in the profession (and published argument X in a very highly-ranked journal), whereas Philosopher B is a senior male in the profession--both of which seem to me quite relevant given recent discussions of citation data. In the present case, Philosopher A not receiving due credit for the idea cannot even be chalked up to A publishing the argument in an obscure journal (which, for the record, I think is a poor excuse to not give someone credit). No, Philosopher A published the argument in a top-ranked journal and yet has still been systematically deprived of credit for the argument.

Unfortunately, although this is only my impression, from stories that I have heard from a variety of different people this sort of thing--a person publishing an original argument or theory not getting due credit in the literature--does not appear uncommon at all. In fact, it appears to happen quite a lot. I've just heard too many stories of it happening, and indeed, have personally encountered something  similar recently.

Although this isn't merely a problem in philosophy--the sciences also have a sordid history of some people being deprived of due credit (e.g. Charles Darwin getting all the credit for the theory of evolution when Alfred Russel Wallace published on it first, Rosalind Franklin getting cheated out of credit for discovering the DNA double-helix, etc)--it clearly does seem to be a problem in philosophy, and a problem that something should be done about. But what? What can we do? What should we do? 

A frank discussion on whether to go to grad school

Although I don't agree with him on much, I found this post by Jason Brennan a refreshingly frank--and accurate--discussion on the pro's and con's of grad school, what it takes to succeed in grad school, the many different ways and points that a grad school experience can unexpectedly go off the rails, and what life in the academy is like post-grad school. A must-read, in my opinion, for anyone considering a PhD in philosophy.

Some thoughts on Healy and Bloom's citation data

Kieran Healy and his student Nick Bloom have presented some striking results of citation-data across 2,100 articles published in Nous, Philosophical Review, Mind, and Journal of Philosophy between 1993 and 2013. A lot of the data on gender are particularly striking--namely:

1. Only 12.5% of articles published in those journals were by women.
2. On the average, articles by women are not cited less often than articles by men, but
3. The top 1% cited articles by men are cited far more often than the top 1% cited articles by women.

Healey then suggests that (3) is worrisome because it indicates that men are disproportionately treated as "agenda setters" in the discipline:

The key question is, who gets to be a focal point for discussion? Successful, highly-cited articles don’t simply accrue status rewards in the abstract (or just actual money rewards for their authors). They also become centers of gravity that define what a field is about...But the agenda for the discussion is set by a much smaller panel of people up on the stage—people who started out as audience members. Most of academic life has this structure, from departmental talks to conference panels and plenaries to journal exchanges. A key issue then becomes how work gets selected for attention up on the stage, who gets engaged with from the stage, so to speak, and how this process plays out as new audience members come in the door.

I think this is an important issue worth discussing, and think Healy is to be commended for painstaking collecting, analyzing, and presenting this data. But I also think Healy's data and analysis reveals a bunch of other broader issues that are worth discussing too. For example, Healy writes: 

On the average hardly anyone is getting cited, be they man or woman. If you look at the top half of Figure 5, you can see that above 75 citations or so there aren’t any red dots. By definition very few people make it to the upper end of the distribution.

I've written before about how poor I think citations practices in philosophy compared to other fields (see here, here, and here), and want to suggest that it is how philosophers (idiosyncratically) think about the purpose of citations that is plausibly responsible for the gender disparities Healey discusses--and which must be corrected for if those disparities are to be corrected.

Healey implies that in order to correct for the gender gap in the "agenda setting" top-1% of cited articles, we need to think carefully about who is regarded as "agenda setting" (i.e. not just men!). This may be the right way to solve the problem--but I doubt it. The problem, I think, is in regarding the purpose of citations as "recognizing agenda-setting research." My wife works in a STEM field in which there appear to be no significant gender disparities. In her field, men and women alike are cited alike like crazy. Why? Answer: because people don't regard citations as an "honorific"--as recognition of "good, agenda-setting work." No, in her field, one is expected to cite all recent work on a given topic. Obviously, since one is expected to cite all work, opportunities for gender-discrimination are minimized. If one fails to cite a recent article--by man, woman, etc.--a journal reviewer will call you out on it, and tell you to cite it.

Whenever I have discussed citation-practices, however, people have chimed in and said that the purpose of citing work is to "cite good work." Ah, but that's the problem. Once that's how you conceive the purpose of citations, it open the flood-gates to implicit biases. If people have implicit biases that lead them to judge work by men more favorably than work by women, then the "cite good work" approach to citation practices will predictably result in the very disparities that Healey is suggesting are problematic.

Which presents the question: are implicit biases easier to change, or are citation practices? I'll leave it to you to think about and discuss, but I will say this: the literature on implicit bias seems to me to suggest that implicit bias is extremely difficult to combat--and so, I would suggest (yet again), the right answer is: we need to change how philosophers think about the purpose of citations in general, and change citation practices away from the "cite work you think is good and influences you" to "cite all recent work on the issue, regardless of whether you like it."

Reader query on publishing persistence

A reader writes:

I came across a post on New APPS in which Jon Cogburn mentions that his highest placed publication, which finally appeared in Australasian, was rejected 7 times.  I began to wonder just how common this is.  As a young scholar, it could be helpful to know just what others experiences are.  Do other philosophers eventually publish in highly ranked journals after a long series of rejections?  

In the comments to that old blog post, someone asks the question I have in mind:

 "Stories of persistence are good for the profession. Many thanks. I would be intrigued to see the back-history of papers, anonymously done. It could take the form of: My paper at journal A was previously rejected at journals B, C, D, E, F. and G, after minor/moderate/substantial revisions. I'll start: My paper at British Journal for the History of Philosophy was previously rejected first at the Journal of the History of Philosophy and then at The Review of Metaphysics after moderate revisions. This exercise might also be helpful in viewing how successful authors rank journals."

Unfortunately no one responded to this post.  I thought the Cocoon would be a perfect place to have such a discussion, since so many of its readers are also probably struggling to make in into journals (of whatever kind), and wondering just how many rejections  successful papers usually receive.  

So I was wondering if you would be willing to start a thread on this topic on the Cocoon.  

I think this is a great query, and am curious to hear what readers' experiences have been. Do you have a story of persistence you are willing to share? If so, I imagine many readers would be interested!

For my part, I have one story I'm sort of proud of, and in any case learned a lot from. My article, "First Steps Toward a Nonideal Theory of Justice", was rejected--in one variant or another (and there were many!)--by well over 15 journals over about 6 years before landing at Ethics & Global Politics. Although its final destination may not impress (E&GP is a new, relatively unknown journal), it's still one of the papers I'm most proud of. I previously had revise-and-resubmits on it from two highly ranked journals, but, I am sad to say, I totally mucked them up. In any case, although I almost gave up on it at one point, and although I worry sometimes it will be ignored in the literature due to not ending up in a name journal, I am all-things-considered glad for the entire process and the end-result. Truth be told, it became clear to me in retrospect the paper was never "ready" until E&GP. I struggled to get the argument right for years, and it was only thanks to some truly awesome comments from two reviewers at E&GP that (in my view) I finally got the argument right (or, as right as it can be). And that's what matters--or should matter?--in the end, right? At least, that's what I'm inclined to think. I'm actually glad the earlier versions hadn't been accepted by the better journals, as I think it's a far better paper now, regardless of where it ended up. 

Anyway, that's my story. Do you have a story of your own you'd like to share?

The Publishing Process

How often do all of you submit to a journal without presenting at a conference first? The reason I ask is because I've been having trouble finding suitable conferences on the phil listserv for political philosophy. I'm still in grad school so I could have my advisers look at my papers, but would that be sufficient?

"Is there Philosophy in India?" and what this question tells us about "Philosophy" in general, an essay by Ankur Barua

After many years, I am sort of fed up with having to answer the question above, and this is also why I had not read the essay by Barua (bearing the title Is there 'Philosophy' in India? An Exercise in Meta-Philosophy and available here) until he recommended it to me. In fact, the article tells more about what it means to ask the question, than about the answer (which is a straightforward "yes").

First, the question bears on the distinction between faith and reason and theology and philosophy (and the consequent dismissal of Indian philosophy as a quest for liberation, mystical etc.):

[There is an] often-heard criticism that classical Indian thought cannot be characterised as an intellctually acceptable branch of 'academic philosophy' becayse it is entangled with 'religion' (p. 14).

And already on the first page, Barua speaks of the parallel condemnation of the medieval Scholasticism and of thinkers like Thomas Aquinas:

The Schoolmen are not 'philosophers' because they are Churchmen whose point of departure is a specific Christian world-view, and hence thier learned treatises are to be cognised, as David Hume famously put it, to the withering flames of logical analysis.

Thus,

Anglophone philosophy's rejection of its internal other, medieval Scholasticism, is paralleled by its suspicion of its external other, Indian darśana ---both are supposed to be fatally implicated in Metaphysics, Authority and Tradition (pp. 14--15).

This conclusion supports the more general point that "philosophy is not a natural kind" (p. 6) and that, thus,

Any definition is controversial and already embodies a philosophic attitude (Russell 1975:7, quoted at p. 7).

In this sense, the question at the title of this post opens an exercise in meta-philosophy ("What do we expect 'philosophy' to mean?"). As for the possiblity of detecting "philosophy" in India,

as it often happens with the translation of terms which are richly woven into one specific cultural universe into those of another cultural universe, we may argue that terms such as darśana and ānvīkṣikī are 'not the same, and yet not another' from philosophia (p. 27).

But this by no means means that one should refrain from using the word "philosophy" while speaking of Indian schools and discussions. On the one hand, as shown by Barua, the soteriological commitment of several Indian schools does not mean that they did not engage in philosophical arguments about the issues deriving from such a commitment (e.g., the nature of reality and of the self). On the other (at last, in the present writer opinion),

As for western philosophers themselves, in the wake of Kuhn and other thinkers who have developed various froms of social epistemology, they have become less shy of speaking of authoritative testimony (pp. 27--28).

As for the sociality of the scientific enterprise, this article focusing on the Western scenario by Dominik Wujastyk is also worth mentioning. Beside the above, Barua's essay also deals with several instances of debates both in India and in the West. Barua refers to J. Ganeri's point that we have to "rescu[e] a story suppressed by Orientalism --- the story of reason in a land too often defined as reason's Other" (Ganeri 2001: 4, quoted at p. 26). Nonetheless, whereas Ganeri and Matilal dealt with the accusation that Indian thought is just mysticism by showing its rigour, Barua recurs to Hadot and shows that also in the West philosophy does not need to be disinterested and pure theoresis. Section "C" is in fact a long discussion of Augustine's conception of time and of how his philosophical reflections are not "an exercise in idle speculation but are closely related to his exegetical struggles with the Biblical text" (p. 12).

A further, personal comment: Some time ago, a friend has been interviewed for a leader position in an institute for Asian thought. She said she would like the institute to have a "philosophical focus" and one of the people in the committee (who does not work on philosophy) rebutted that using the word "philosophy" could be suspected of a "colonialist attitude", since "philosophy" is a Western concept. I am sure this objection was well-meant, but I am suspicious of its consequences, namely the implicit statement that only Westerners are able to think philosophically. While thinking we are fair and diversity-aware, we are in fact delegitimizing centuries of philosophical elaborations by refusing to call them "philosophy" just because they happened to take place East of Suez.

(cross-posted on my personal blog)

Some thoughts on conferences

In the comments section of my post, "Promoting meritocratic practices", Scott Clifton writes:

One of my worries about conferences is different, but this may be a good place to discuss it. Rather than conferences being cliquey (some of which undoubtedly are), my worry is that many conferences rely on the participation of junior people who may receive no job market benefits as a result. Here I am thinking of conferences strictly in terms of benefits that presenters may receive and not what benefits presenters may confer to others. I have multiple conference presentations, including three at the APA and several at specialty conferences. This has netted me virtually no job market success, in part, I suspect, because conference presentations have turned out to be valueless on a CV. (I also have multiple pubs, which have also not gotten me very far in the job hunt.) But if conference presentations have no intrinsic worth on a CV, then all of the value lies in the network possibilities and feedback from audiences, which is a crap shoot. Some conferences (especially specialty conferences, which are comprised of people working in the same area) do not present opportunities for networking, since the people who will be on hiring committees were not in attendance at the conference or are inaccessible, even if they are there. And audience feedback can be anything from helpful to worthless to harmful. Yet, many conferences rely on there being submissions from junior people. Add to this the considerable travel costs associated with going to conferences and it looks like focusing on conference activity is a bad gamble for those who need a job. So, on the one hand, presenting at a conference might be without practical value for junior presenters, while, on the other hand, these conferences rely heavily on junior people submitting and presenting. Conferences then become part of the adjunctification of the discipline--relying on those who are giving cheap labor without significant return on the labor. A simple solution would be to weight more heavily conference presentations when it comes to job searches--especially "prestigious" conferences, like the APA. Until this happens, junior people should think deeply about whether they want to perpetuate this phenomenon by submitting papers to conferences. 

Because I think Scott's comment raises several issues worth discussing, I thought I would dedicate the present post to discussing it (I'd like to thank Scott for agreeing to have the comment featured and discussed).

My first question is whether readers share Scott's experiences about conferences--namely, that they not very useful for junior people, particularly in terms of the job-market. For my part, I've always (rightly or wrongly) felt like conferences are excellent opportunities for:

1. Practice formally presenting your work in front of an audience.
2. Practice talking informally about your work, and philosophy more generally.
3. Getting useful feedback on your work for the purpose of publishing.
4. Learning more about what kinds of things other people are working on.
5. Getting to know other people in the discipline (i.e. "networking" if you want to call it that, but friendships too).

Setting aside their intrinsic value, all of these things seem to me useful for early-career people, including the job market. (1)&(2)--practice formally and informally discussing your work--seem to me very useful for developing interview and job-talk skills. Similarly, (3)--conference-feedback--has always seemed to me very useful for revising work for publication. I've rarely--if ever--felt like conference feedback was useless or harmful. I tend to think one can almost always take something away from conference feedback, even the most vicious and obtuse/confused kind. After all, I think to myself, if one person at a conference viciously attacks or misunderstands my paper, it's likely that journal referees will respond similarly (in which case the vicious conference attack/misunderstanding can help me revise the paper to avoid a similar fate with reviewers!).

Next, I tend to think (4)--learning about what other people are working on--is not only, but can also be useful in terms of knowing what's going on in the discipline, which in turn may be relevant at on-campus interviews (since people on search committees may want to talk about their work, which may hook up with stuff you've encountered at conferences!). Finally, (5)--getting to know people--even if, as Scott notes, there are no search committee members at the conference--can still be fun for its own sake and also job-market-useful in other ways: you never know who you might strike up a conversation with at conference! Maybe you'll meet and have a good conversation with someone who'll write you a recommendation letter someday. Or, maybe you'll just meet someone who likes your paper, mentions it to a friend of theirs, who maybe will mention it to a friend of theirs, etc.--"getting your name out there", so to speak. Anyway, although I don't consider myself much of a networker, I've seen people get pretty far these ways.

All that being said, I think Scott's more general worry about conferences is worth talking about more. Because conferences are expensive to attend, not everyone has the same opportunities to attend them and enjoy whatever benefits they do confer. People in stable, well-paying positions can typically afford to attend a lot of conferences, whereas grad students and people in part-time, low-paying positions may not. This, in turn may contribute, as Scott puts it, to the "adjunctification" of the discipline. If conferences are useful but people in part-time/low-paying positions cannot attend many of them, then that may put them at significant professional disadvantage. Which raises the questions: should something be done about this? If so, what?

I would like to suggest that professional philosophy conferences should generally try to set aside some slots for "Skype" presentations, for those who cannot afford to travel. We have done precisely this at our two annual Philosophers' Cocoon Philosophy Conferences...and, in all honesty--with just a few glitches--they have worked like a charm! They gave junior people who could not afford to travel the opportunity to present their work, and logistically they worked very well: there were few problems, and on the whole the sessions weren't very different than in-person presentations. Skype participants and audience members could hear, and see, each other fine, and the Q&A sessions were great. [Note: as I write this, I have just heard that an acquaintance who presented at the APA via Skype encountered serious technical issues. I suspect such problems are more common at hotel-based conferences such as the APA].

What do you all think?

Why Lin's "notes" are an important service

Yesterday, I critiqued Hanti Lin's, "Notes on Doing a PhD and Getting a Job in Philosophy." Today, I'd like to highlight something that I think is really important about Lin's notes, and then open up a discussion on the thing I think is important.

One of the things that prospective graduate students have the most difficult time doing is knowing in advance what seeking a PhD will be like. In my day, almost everyone entered into grad school terribly naive. We all expected to not only finish, but finish in 5 years, and then secure a tenure-track job. Why did we think this? Well, because I'm an old man. Okay, I'm only 38, but I actually started grad school in Syracuse in 1999 (before transferring to Arizona in 2001). Back in those days, realistic information about grad school was super hard to come by. It wasn't floating around the internet. Ahem...the internet was still pretty new then (gosh, it's hard to say that!:).

So, the realities of seeking a PhD in philosophy came as a huge surprise to many of us. Many of the very bright people I knew never finished, and I struggled far more than I ever imagined. On the whole, grad school was not at all what I expected. It wasn't the linear path to success that I'd assumed it would be. It was unexpected potholes, personal and philosophical crises, fears I would never come up with  dissertation, fears I would never finish, fears I would never get a job. You get the picture.

Although I think elements of Lin's "notes" paint too linear of a picture (viz. "this is all you have to do to get a PhD and get a job")--Lin also presents a lot of his advice "assuming you will finish in 5 years (an unrealistic expectation, given statistics showing a median completion time of 7-10 years!)--I think Lin has done potential graduate students a real service by showing just how professionalized academic philosophy has become. Thanks to Lin's notes--as well as to recent conversations I've had with graduate students--it is very clear what graduate school and the job market now involve. Allow me to explain.

When I started graduate school, here was the story. You took classes. You wrote term-papers. You took comprehensive examinations. You came up with a dissertation idea. You wrote a dissertation. And that was all. I'm really not kidding. Grad school was almost entirely just about philosophy. We weren't told to try to publish papers. In fact, we were actually told not to--that grad school is a time to learn how to do philosophy; that publishing is something one did after the dissertation--that is, after getting a job. Aside from just doing philosophy, there wasn't much in the way of professionalization. "Professionalization" was just doing philosophy.

Then, about 2/3 of the way through my graduate school experience, everything changed. I seem to recall it happening sometime around the 2007-8 financial crisis, if not a bit before--but it all happened pretty quickly. My grad program developed professionalization seminars. Grad students started publishing. Grad students had to start publishing to get jobs. And network. Etc. In other words, the reality that Lin's notes describe came about. Getting a PhD in philosophy all of a sudden became about a whole lot more than writing term-papers, writing dissertations, etc. It increasingly came to be a matter of strategizing one's career--a matter of doing the right things, at the right time, in the right order, from very early on in grad school. For better or for worse, it is the reality now. And I think Lin's "notes" do prospective students a great service by showing them this. Finally, perhaps Lin's notes can stimulate greater discussion on the entire trend of professionalization--on whether this is the direction we want to keep heading in as a profession (though, for what it is worth, I doubt there is much we can do about it).

Reader query on networking

A reader writes,

I had a question that I'm not sure has been addressed [on the Cocoon]. One of the pieces of advice given in Lin's article you've referenced is, "Good academic reputation. Benchmark: there exist people whom you haven’t met before, but who have known your name and had rough ideas about your work." Something this brings to mind is developing networks among other scholars in your area of specialization or on the particular problems on which you work. I am a near-PhD (my dissertation has been approved and will be submitted in the next couple of weeks) and my advisor has suggested other scholars to contact since they work on similar topics. This is a wonderful idea, but I realize I have no clue of how to introduce myself in that context via email. What would you, or your readers, suggest as a proper way of initial introducing yourself in such a situation? 

Great question! I was given similar advice after I received my first job, and I too was unsure of how to properly go about it--and, in fact, I'm sad to say, I put off actually doing it for another year or two. One good thing to do, if you have the resources, is to just start going to more specialist conferences in your area, as these are great places to meet people working in your area. Another thing you can do, however--and I've done it myself with varying levels of success--is to simply email people whose work you're interested in, tell them you admire their work (briefly demonstrating in your email that you do in fact know their work), and sort of feel out whether they're willing and interested to converse on the topic over email, swap working papers, read a draft of a paper of yours that you're hoping to publish, etc. Finally, I would really suggest developing a greater online presence. I've been a contributor at various blogs--Brains, Flickers of Freedom, Experimental Philosophy, and Public Reason--for a number of years (since just after graduate school), and they've provided excellent opportunities to get to know people.

What do you all think? Do you have any suggestions/experience in this area that you've found helpful? If so, I'm sure this reader, and other readers with similar questions, would be interested to hear of it!

On Lin's "Doing a PhD and Getting a Job in Philosophy"

Hanti Lin's, "Notes on Doing a PhD and Getting a Job in Philosophy", has been going around on social media the past day or so, and is now receiving attention at Daily Nous. I appreciate Lin's desire to help and provide good advice--and I also appreciate Lin's being explicit that his advice should be taken with a grain of salt and weighed against the advice of others. That being said, I believe there are good grounds for skepticism about a lot of his advice. Allow me to explain.

I want to begin by saying that, on the face of it, Lin's advice is good advice for landing an R1 research job. Indeed, I think it is worth noting that Lin is currently Assistant Professor at UC-Davis. In terms of landing jobs like these, Lin's advice generally strikes me as sound. Consider for instance Lin's section entitled, "What do I need on the job market?", which reads:

1. Good papers published in good journals even before you finish your PhD, and consistent productivity after you get your PhD.
2. Good academic reputation. Benchmark: there exist people whom you haven’t met before, but who have known your name and had rough ideas about your work.
3. Good letters of recommendation from good philosophers.

• No more. Everything else I am going to mention in this note is about steps toward getting the above three. And you want to think hard about this question: to get those three, are there alternative steps that will work better to you.

I don't think there is much doubt that these are the primary (if not only) things search committees are looking for at R1 jobs. Committees at R1 departments are looking for awesome researchers, and Lin's tips here speak to that. Similarly, consider Lin's advice for how to behave during on-campus interviews:

• Be able to switch between two modes:

• Defence mode: defend your ideas until you die. People want to know if you are a good researcher.
• Friend mode: be open minded and willing to listen to other people’s opinions. People want to know if you can be a good friend and a good colleague, who might be around for the next 30 years if you get tenured.

• Defence mode during job talk and Q&A.
• Friend mode during lunch and dinner.
• When meeting with faculty members in their offices: well... something between these two modes.
• When meeting with the dean: explain how your work is related to other departments (and, possibly, the dean’s department).

Here too, this advice seems pretty reasonable...for R1 departments. R1 departments want to see how brilliant you are in discussing your research (viz. "defense mode"), and less so, what kind of colleague you will be ("friend mode"). Similarly, deans at R1 schools want to know how you'll contribute to the research standing of the university. Etc.

But R1 jobs are not the only jobs there are--nor are they even the vast majority of jobs. Although I haven't carefully broken down the distribution of jobs advertised on this year's job market, I know from having been on the market that precious few jobs this year were top-flight R1 jobs. The vast majority of jobs I applied to, for instance--and I applied to over 100--were at smaller, teaching-oriented schools. Which raises the question: are search committees at these schools looking for the things Lin lists?

The evidence here, I believe, is pretty clear: the answer is no. First, I have carefully compiled job market numbers the past several years, including the publication records of new hires--and surprise, surprise, here are the lessons I drew from the actual data:

Lesson#1: If you want an R1 job, you must either have at least one top-20 journal publication or have no publications at all but come from a Leiter-awesome department.

Lesson#2: Non-top-20 journal publications DO NOT harm you, either in the case of R1 jobs or teaching jobs.

Lesson#3: If you want a job at a teaching university, you do not need any top-20 journal publications.

Lesson#4: If you want a job at a teaching university, non-top-20 journal publications appear to help you.

Second, these lessons are also supported by my own first-hand and third-hand experience. This year alone, I know of more than a few candidates who scored a high number of interviews, fly-outs, and offers who--contrary to Lin's advice--had no publications in "good journals", but many publications in lower-ranked journals. I have also personally corresponded with committee members at smaller, teaching-centered institutions the past several years who have told me, explicitly, that they are scared off from candidates with R1-type publishing records (i.e. a bunch of publications in top-flight journals). Finally, of course, Lin's advice doesn't so much as mention teaching--and I can tell you for certain that departments and deans at teaching institutions are looking for great teachers and people that will fit into the college's vision of itself as a student-centered institution.

Similarly, consider Lin's advice to go into "defense" mode during job talks. While this may be right for a high-powered talk at an R1 school, I've once again heard from more than a few search committee members at smaller schools that they are primarily looking at seeing how collegially you handle yourself during the talk--i.e. whether you get defensive or combative during the talk. Being defensive/combative may work in R1 departments (where this sort of thing is expected), but at teaching institutions? There are plenty of reasons to think not. Remember, teaching institutions want to know what kind of teacher you will be, whether students will like you, whether you fit the college's vision, etc. 

I also have concerns about Lin's advice on conferences. Lin writes:

    The main job-hunting-related purposes of presenting a paper in a conference are:

• to impress people,
• to earn your reputation,
• to find people to write recommendation letters for you.

Here is one problem I have. Trying to impress people can be self-defeating. Those of us who have been around long enough have seen--and, in some cases, exemplified--this error: the person who is plainly out to impress people comes off as insecure, aggressive, etc. In my experience, the best way to "impress people" is to actually not have these as your explicit aims. Instead, you'll tend to impress people, earn a good reputation, etc., by actually just trying to be a constructive member of the conference--providing helpful feedback, accepting critiques of your work as something to learn from, etc. Further, or so I've found, there's another thing that Lin leaves out--using feedback at conferences to improve your work--that is absolutely crucial for job-market success. Several of my early publications, for instance, might not have ever happened if I hadn't accepted and learned from feedback I received at conferences. So, I would say, no: the aims Lin lists shouldn't be your main aims at conferences. They are good ends--but the means for achieving them are these: work on being a good paper presenter, discussant, during the conference. And yes, be social. If you do all those things for their own sake, chances are you'll come off far better--vis-a-vis Lin's own stated ends--than the person who's clearly out trying to impress people.

Anyway, I could go on--but I suppose you get the picture by now. I may not be right about all this, but I thought it might be worthwhile expressing some areas of disagreement with Lin's advice, and the evidence I think there is for very different conclusions.

Improving avenues for philosophical career development

I happened to look at the APA website today--specifically, at the APA's Mission Statement and Principal Activities. Among its principal activities, the APA lists "Career Development." Under this heading, it lists:

1. PhilJobs: Jobs for Philosophers
2. The APA's fair equality of opportunity statement,
3. The APA's resources for academic job candidates, and finally,
4. "information about careers outside the academy".

I want to suggest that the APA, and graduate departments, could do--and should do--a whole lot more when it comes to (4).

There is currently a discussion going on over at The Smoker on whether it's worthwhile to pursue a graduate degree in philosophy. An anonymous undergraduate wrote:

This is off-topic but here goes-- I'm a senior undergraduate philosophy major at what is apparently, according to the philosophical gourmet report, one of the top 15 philosophy programs in the English-speaking world. I am extremely passionate about philosophy and would be perfectly happy spending the rest of my days reading, writing, and teaching philosophy. I have a good GPA, transcript, GRE scores, etc., and could presumably get into a good grad program if I applied. That being said, I'm well aware of how tough the job market is for young academics, particularly for philosophers (especially after recently stumbling upon and reading through this insightful blog). Despite my passion for philosophy, I'm not sure if I'm willing to risk the stress and dissatisfaction of un/partial employment. It seems safe to assume that the people engaging with this blog are also extremely passionate about philosophy. Any thoughts or advice for a young, potentially-aspiring philosopher?

The response to this query was overwhelmingly negative--and in my experience this is not uncommon. I've encountered more professional philosophers who say they tell their undergraduates to avoid graduate school in philosophy like the plague than I can count. And, why I don't entirely agree with that advice, I'm sympathetic. My own career in philosophy has been a bumpy road indeed, one that almost came to a bitter end more than a few times.

All of this raises the question, however, of whether we could do better as a profession. It's a real shame, I think, that so many of us feel the need to deter bright, interested, and passionate people from pursuing philosophy on the grounds that it is most likely career suicide. Now, of course, there is unfortunately little that we can apparently do to "fix" the academic job market. Although I think we could probably do more than we do to make philosophy relevant and marketable within the academy, this is tough to accomplish (anyone who has tried to market philosophy better in a university probably knows what I'm talking about!). But, are there other things we could do? I think there are.

My wife is a PhD student in industrial-organizational psychology. One of things that in all honesty makes me a bit jealous of her career choice is that in her field, PhD students can go into two different directions: academia or applied-work. Programs in her field--and indeed the field as a whole--prioritize their students making connections and working outside of academia while completing their research. Now, of course, this is easier to do in a field with obvious applications in industry. But, I want to suggest, (A) there are significant areas of philosophy (e.g. moral and political philosophy, philosophy of science, logic, etc.) that have applied features that programs and our field as a whole could develop to our common benefit (side-work/internships at political think-tanks, etc.), and (B) regardless of that, our professional organization, the APA, could do a whole lot more in terms of empowering career development opportunities outside of the academy. Such as, you ask?

Consider, for instance, Helen De Cruz's recent three-part series at NewAPPS interviewing philosophers working outside of academia. Given recent estimates that 70% of all jobs are obtained through networking, one thing that the APA could do is set up a career-networking system for people with MA's and PhD's in philosophy! If I had left academia and found employment in some other industry, for instance, I sure as heck would do everything I could to lend a hand to a fellow philosopher in need of work befitting their skills and education. And I suspect many others in a similar position would do the same. As such, given the fascinatingly diverse set of careers Helen's sample reported being in, if the APA put some real into a networking service of some sort, it might dramatically improve the opportunity and ability for academic philosophers to move into a variety of industries. Not only that, by forging connections among previously-academic philosophers, it might help produce new applied, philosophically relevant industries (e.g. philosophical think-tanks, etc.--one can only imagine what kinds of innovative business or non-profit ideas that groups of philosophers might have when brought together outside of the academy!).

Anyway, these are just some ideas--but, or so it seems to me, they are the kinds of ideas our discipline, graduate programs, and the APA should think more about. What do you think?

Promoting meritocratic practices

Justin Weinberg wrote an interesting post today at Daily Nous on "invite-only and clique-y conferences." The post was a response to a bunch of questions that have arisen recently on journal practices, networking, and merit. Basically, a lot of people--myself included--have worries about how meritocratic our discipline is (or, rather, isn't). There have, for instance, been some disturbing revelations recently about journal practices--about how some journals do not appear to respect anonymized review, engage in favoritism, etc. A new study just came out showing prestige bias in hiring. Finally--and this is the subject of Justin's post--some have suggested that certain conferences provide an unfair leg-up to friends of people in important places.

I have to confess that I'm a bit surprised that Justin's post hasn't generated a bit more uptake (it has only received four comments). In part, I'm surprised because (A) I find Justin's analysis puzzling, and (B) the issue seems to me to be an important one. Let me begin with (A). Justin writes:

My view  is that conferences are sufficiently different from journals, such that the reasons for wanting nearly all professional journals to work via anonymous review do not cleanly apply to conferences. Rather, when it comes to conferences, all that is needed is a sufficient number of high quality conferences so that everyone has a decent shot at going to “enough.” This can be accomplished by having some conferences that operate largely according to anonymous review, such as the American Philosophical Association (APA) meetings and others, but can also be accomplished by increasing the number of conferences, even ones that are invite-only or do not use anonymous review.

Justin then gives several grounds in support of his view. He writes:

1. Access to publishing opportunities in a journal is much more important for a philosopher’s career than opportunities to present papers at conferences, and so it is much more important that access to publishing in journals not be denied to those who don’t know the right people.
2. There are many conferences—more and more high quality ones each year, it seems, and they are easier to put on compared to starting a new journal. So, if the proliferation of new opportunities mitigates the unfairness of access to existing opportunities, then such mitigation is easier when it comes to conferences than journals.
3. Journals just need a good paper from you. At conferences you are there for more than just your paper. You are there as a speaker. You are there as a listener and commenter and questioner in other people’s sessions. You are there to talk philosophy outside the sessions, during meals or other events. To some extent, you are there to be social. In general, you are there to help the conference be a worthwhile experience for those involved. Anonymous reviews of papers tell conference organizers only about the quality of your paper. The importance of the various roles you’ll play at a conference besides “author of paper” varies according to the aims of the organizers, but it does not seem unreasonable for the organizers, to some extent, to deviate from strict anonymous review in order to achieve such aims.

Okay, but here are my concerns.

My concern with rationale (1) is that I think--properly understood--it is internally inconsistent. Journal publications are surely intrinsically more important for a person's career success than conference presentations. But here is the problem: networking at conferences may substantially increase one's publishing prospects--and in several ways. First, you may get feedback from really sharp, top-flight people. Second, those people may well turn out to be your reviewers should you submit to a top journal (and, as recent discussions of journal practices have made plain, there are few, if any, widely accepted practices for disclosing/preventing conflicts of interest). So, if the first part of Justin's rationale is correct--if publications are super-important--then the latter half (conference presentations are not so important) is false. Presenting work at top-flight conferences with a really sharp, in-group of people may (may!) substantially increase one's access to the former (publishing)!

My concern with (2) is a bit different. Justin's claim here is that as long as there are plenty of conferences to go around, there's no real harm, no foul with in-group conferences. But now consider an analogy. Suppose you worked at a corporation and although there were a good number of career-advancement opportunities, there were nevertheless special annual "workshops" for sons, daughters, and friends of The Boss. And suppose that on top of that, those sons, daughters, and loved ones tended to get promoted more often. I take it the run-of-the-mill employee wouldn't say, "Ah, well that's okay. There are plenty of opportunities for others!" At least, I hope they wouldn't say that. Favoritism is favoritism--and, I want to say, in a professional context we should aim to minimize it. Insofar as we work in a competitive environment--one where there are nowhere near enough jobs for qualified applicants--I want to suggest we have a duty to one another, and particularly those in vulnerable career positions, to aim to promote meritocratic practices where we can. And, I submit, we should do it everywhere: with journal practices, conference practices, etc.

My concerns about Justin's third rationale are similar. That rationale, again, is that, "The importance of the various roles you’ll play at a conference besides “author of paper” varies according to the aims of the organizers, but it does not seem unreasonable for the organizers, to some extent, to deviate from strict anonymous review in order to achieve such aims." Fair enough--but I'm not sure how being friends with people and having in-group connections is reasonable given the many ways in which our discipline already fails to approximate a meritocracy. 

More broadly, I want to say that given (1) how competitive academia is, (2) how many people are in vulnerable career positions, and (3) recent revelations about how non-meritocratic academia appears to be, we have professional obligations to take active steps to combat favoritism and conflicts of interest wherever these things arise: in journal review processes, in hiring, and yes, in terms of conferences.

Or so say I. What say you? I'm happy to reconsider my position...if you have a good argument! :)

New beginnings

I am happy to report that I have accepted a tenure-track position at the University of Tampa. It has been a long road, and I would just like to thank anyone and everyone who has lent their help and support over the years. I am very grateful. 

Academia is not a meritocracy

No kidding. But seriously,  a new study apparently demonstrates it:

Aaron Clauset, Sam Arbesmann and Daniel Larremore have a new article in Science Advances crunching the data on academic career paths in computer science, business and history. Their main findings are twofold. First, academics’ career success largely depends on the prestige of the department where they did their PhD. Second, the system is so skewed in favor of academics who came from prestigious departments that it’s really hard to explain this by just saying that they are better than people who went to less prestigious departments. The evidence suggests “a specific and significant preference for hiring faculty with prestigious doctorates” even aside from differences in their productivity (which are also more skewed than one would expect if the differences were based on merit alone). The system is also significantly skewed against women in both computer science and business, although there’s no evidence that they’re discriminated against in history.

Is theology comparable? —CfP

Recently a few articles and posts (see here, here and here) have raised the issue of whether philosophy of religion is not really little more than Christian apologetics. A straightforward answer (see Tim's comment here) would be that it is not, but an output of the question is what it means for philosophy of religion (and theology) not to be confined to Christianity only. On the one hand, in fact, one might say that to be "apologetic" is not a bad thing, insofar as it really amounts to taking problems at heart and creating sound arguments about difficult issues (I, for one, am inclined to think that little or no philosophical, mathematical and logical problem at all would have been solved if it were not for one's determination to take it at heart and consider all possible solutions). On the other, makes it at all sense to look beyond the precinct of the religion(s) we know best while working on a given theological or philosophical issue?
This range of questions lies at the basis of this panel. A legitimate answer to the questions mentioned above could be that one should focus on one religion only and that all comparison might be misleading ---and it would be interesting to see why this is the case. Another possibly legitimate answer would be to show that theological topics can be better understood once perceived from a different point of view, as it frequently happens with other philosophical categories. If the latter is the case, this should lead to the result that, e.g., the relationship between God's Wisdom (the OT Sapientia) and the second person of the Godhead (are they ontologically identical or is one a property of the other? If the former, should this mean that God is not like an (Aristotelian) substance but rather like an action?…) could be better understood or throw light on the relationship between God and his Potency in Śrīvaiṣṇavism (Śrīvaiṣṇavas also claim to be strictly monotheistics, although they admit the presence of God's Potency beside God Himself). Please note that a sheer juxtaposition of two topics does not make a comparison. We do not expect contributors to be able to shape a comparative contribution themselves, but we expect them to be open for a comparative discussion.

Just as an example, let me attempt to sketch a discussion about God as person which can be rooted in more than one tradition:
Is God a person? If yes, is S/He a person in the same way as we are such? And what does ``being a person'' imply? Do persons need to correspond to a substrate? Does this substrate coincide with their body? And is such a body a material abode or rather the substrate of experience?
The problem can be developed in different ways, ranging from the co-existence of three persons in one God in Christianity (in which sense are they distinct? In which sense are they the same?) to similar problems in other theologies (e.g., the role of God's personality in Indian theology). Further, is God's personality an essential part of Him/Her or does it only regard the devotional level?

Each discussion within the panel (although not necessarily each paper) will cross through geographical boundaries (as usual in the Coffee Break Conference model), showing how philosophical (and theological) problems can be debated together from different perspectives. Participants are encouraged to focus on the philosophical significance of the ideas at stake, rather than on a sheer description of a narrow topic.

Practical issues
The panel will take place within the next Coffee Break Conference, "Sapienza" University of Rome (Italy), 17--19 September 2015. For more on the CBCs in general, see here and here.

Deadline for submitting abstracts (to me): 31st of March 2015.

Travel costs cannot be covered, accommodation will be provided, either at a hotel (in which case, you will be asked to contribute part of the costs) or at one of the organisers' place. Lunches and coffee breaks and conference materials are included.

Schliesser on blundering on the job market and finding one's academic voice

I thought I might draw readers' attention to this poignant post by Eric Schliesser relating his struggles and personal growth while on the job market. I, for one, always appreciate posts like this, in part because they can remind us that those of us who face career struggles are not alone, and in part because they can help remind us that struggles can be opportunities for personal growth--but also because it is not easy to share one's personal struggles publicly.

How do you teach students what an argument is?

Thanks to Marcus for allowing me to be a contributor here - I've read and benefited from this blog as a grad student, a job seeker, and now as a junior faculty member.

I've been thinking a lot about teaching recently, and found myself having trouble with a pretty fundamental question: How should I be teaching my students what a philosophical argument is?

Up until this year (my first in my new job), I think I more or less subscribed to the view that an understanding of philosophical argument is best absorbed gradually. I would point out arguments in the readings as they arose, occasionally putting them up on the board in premise-conclusion form, and explain just as much of the theory as I figured we needed at the time. Last semester, however, it became clear that students in my intro class were struggling to understand some of the basic principles I'd assumed we were all working with. Their papers often displayed a rather hazy grasp of the relations between premises and conclusions, and very few students really seemed to have a solid understanding of how arguments function. Many of the papers were excellent in other respects (understanding the text, coming up with good objections and examples, etc.), and overall I was delighted with how the class went, but I felt like in this particular respect I was letting my students down. If you come out of a philosophy 101 class with nothing else, surely at least you ought to have learned what an argument is?

This semester, I resolved to do things differently. I set aside two entire class sessions at the beginning of term to discuss the basic principles of philosophical argument. I produced a handout introducing students to basic concepts like "premise", "conclusion", and "validity"; we worked through simple exercises in small groups and as a class; we used Peter Singer's 'Famine, Affluence, and Morality' as an example of a philosophical paper whose argumentative structure is brought out fairly explicitly. Some students really seemed to get the hang of it, but I'm still not convinced that the majority felt confident with the basic concepts even after all of that. On reflection, though, I wasn't surprised. My students are a pretty smart bunch, but understanding how philosophical arguments work is hard. Maybe if we spent half the semester on it, I found myself thinking, we could really crack it, but then we'd be missing out on a lot of the other stuff that you ought to be doing in an intro class, like grappling with a bunch of fun philosophical problems. And here's the thing: I think that you can get a lot out of a philosophy class without ever really understanding what validity is. You don't really need to be able to condense philosophical prose into numbered premises in order to think about whether you might be a brain in a vat. At the same time, though, I can't shake the feeling that if I don't at least give my 101 students the opportunity to learn the basic principles of philosophical argument, I'm not doing my job.

So, on that note of genuine ambivalence, I want to throw this one open. How do you teach your students what an argument is? Do you teach your students what an argument is? I'm thinking mainly about intro classes here, but really I'm interested in anything you do to try to teach this stuff, and how well you think it's working.

(I know there are resources out there, and I've tried a few of them myself, but if there's anything you've found particularly helpful, that would be great to know too.)

Balance Series, Part 6: Taking Incompletes

Receiving a course grade of Incomplete as an undergraduate is very rare. Usually, this grade is only given to students who are unable to complete all the requirements of the course due to serious and unusual circumstances (e.g., a medical emergency).

Grades of Incomplete are far more common at the graduate level and are not reserved for accommodating students in dire circumstances. I have a fairly limited understanding of how often the typical graduate student actually takes Incompletes. I know some who took multiple Incompletes in almost every semester in which they took graduate courses; I know others who never took an Incomplete.

Aside from the general recommendation to avoid taking incompletes, I was never given much explicit advice about them, but I tried to abide by the following rules:

1. Do not take an Incomplete in the Fall.
2. Do not have multiple Incompletes on your record at once.

In my experience, it's extremely difficult to get substantial work done during Winter Break, and the Spring semester inundates graduate students with lots of new tasks and responsibilities. The result is that an Incomplete taken in the Fall will often not be cleared until the following summer, and by then, your knowledge of the material may have faded. You might have to reread extensive bits of the relevant literature to reignite your paper idea. Rule 1 was my way of avoiding this scenario.

Rule 2 stemmed from two considerations. First, it's psychologically distressing to have an Incomplete. It's a serious burden to have a big project lurking in the background that was supposed to already be done. (I've certainly never heard of a graduate student who was happy to have an Incomplete.) Having more than one is even more onerous. Eventually, the psychological weight of those to-be-completed tasks can become almost paralyzing. Or so it seems at least: I imagine that this is what happens when you hear horror stories of a grad student with 6 Incompletes. In any case, the psychological burden of Incompletes seemed like something that I ought to minimize.

The second reason for Rule 2 stems from my view that one of the central functions of progressing through graduate school in philosophy (at least for those who seek academic employment) is to cultivate the habits, skills, and dispositions that will translate to success as a professional academic philosopher. Taking Incompletes often, which involves a failure to meet a deadline for a particular task, did not strike me as a habit that I ought to be cultivating in myself, so Rule 2 was designed to reduce the frequency with which I took Incompletes.

Ultimately, I took 2 Incompletes as a graduate student: both were taken in Spring courses, and they were taken a year apart. I survived the coursework process without causing too many complications by taking Incompletes. However, I'm curious whether others were given similar advice about taking (or avoiding) Incompletes or whether they have advice to offer that differs from the two rules that I followed. What say you, fellow philosophers?

Who are our readers?

I've never done a poll on the Cocoon before, but in thinking about future posts I thought it might be good to get a clearer idea of the composition of our readership. So, then, what's your current career-stage? [Note: poll updated w/new category on 2/10/2015. Thanks to Justin Caoutte for the pointer!]

QuestionPro

New Contributor: Mark Hopwood

I am happy to welcome our newest contributor, Mark Hopwood, to the Cocoon. Mark received his PhD in 2014 from the University of Chicago and is now Assistant Professor at Sewanee: The University of the South. He works mainly in ethics, with interests in political philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and 20th century continental philosophy.

Welcome!

What it's (not?) like to be a fish

An interesting article by a neurobiologist over at Scientia Salon.

Recent work by Cocooners (January 2015)

Almost forgot last month's update! The following papers were either published or uploaded to philpapers by Cocoon contributors during the month of January:

Clayton Littlejohn (forthcoming). How and Why Knowledge is First. In A. Carter, E. Gordon & B. Jarvis (eds.), Knowledge First. Oxford University Press.

Moti Mizrahi (forthcoming). On Appeals to Intuition: A Reply to Muñoz-Suárez. The Reasoner.

Meg Wallace (forthcoming). Rearming the Slingshot? Acta Analytica:1-10.

Anyone I missed? If so, let me know and I'll update the list!

Trakakis' "Theodicy: The Solution to the Problem of Evil, or Part of the Problem?"

Just a quick follow-up to my recent post, "Vicious Philosophical Reasoning?". In response to my post, Keith DeRose brought to my attention Nick Trakakis' recent article, "Theodicy: The Solution to the Problem of Evil, or Part of the Problem?". I definitely recommend reading it. Here are a few choice excerpts that spoke to me, beginning with several amazing passages by D.Z. Phillips and Kenneth Surin:

It is true that sometimes considering a matter further is a sign of reasonableness and maturity. But this cannot be stated absolutely, since at other times readiness to be open-minded about matters is a sign of a corrupt mind. There are screams and screams, and to ask of what use are the screams of the innocent, as Swinburne’s defense would have us do, is to embark on a speculation we should not even contemplate. We have our reasons, final human reasons, for putting a moral full stop at many places. (Phillips 2004, p. 115)

Theodicy, by its very nature, involves the application of the principles of reason to a cluster of problems which are essentially such that they cannot be resolved by the mere application of rational principles. Evil and suffering in their innermost depths are fundamentally mysterious; they confound the human mind. And yet the goal of theodicy is, somehow, to render them comprehensible, explicable. (Surin 1986, pp. 52-3)

Given the nature of many of the evils human beings undergo, it would make little sense to speak of compensations for them after death. It does not even make sense to speak of compensation, in this life, with respect to many of our losses – the loss of a child, the end of a friendship, various forms of injustice which create harm, a harm done to someone who dies before any restitution can be made and so on. In some of these circumstances, the law decrees financial compensation, but one almost always hears those who receive it say, ‘Nothing, of course, can compensate for…’ Faced with this undeniable fact the picture cannot change by changing the landscape from an earthly to a heavenly one. (Phillips 2004, pp. 85-86).

And finally Trakakis:

Some theodicies, I concede, do appear to create hope and meaning even in situations where there seemed to be none. But such hope and meaning is, I claim, illusory. For the kind of meaning theodicies offer does not help us make moral sense of tragedy and misfortune, but rather (as argued earlier) provides a picture of suffering that has all manner of morally (and socially) unwelcome consequences, such as undermining our moral practices, failing to countenance the full depth of evil, and treating the sufferer as a mere means to some divine end, usually an end that the sufferer has not themselves chosen or endorsed. People in the midst of great adversity often sense this, and that is indeed why, in many cases, offering a theodicy to someone who is undergoing some terrible suffering has the counter-productive effect of adding to that person’s woes, or at least bringing them little or no comfort. 

In attempting to make sense of the realities of evil and suffering, theodicists inculcate a sense of detachment both in themselves and in their readers. They never stop to ask, however, whether we should, or even could, be detached from the stark realities of evil in the ways they propose. No question is ever raised as to whether there might be some moral danger involved in promoting a strategy of detachment...

Thus, the distancing strategies promoted by those who approach theodicy as a purely theoretical undertaking only add to the evils of the world, rather than illuminating or counteracting them.

Kenneth Surin, similarly, argues that the theoretical pursuit of theodicy can have disastrous moral consequences, not only for writers and readers of theodicies, but for society at large. To view theodicy as an exclusively academic undertaking, notes Surin, "…is already to possess the perspective on good and evil which Max Weber found to be characteristic of modern times; namely, an essentially bureaucratic view of the nature of good and evil. [Surin explains by way of a footnote that, ‘It is typical of the bureaucratic view of good and evil that it regards them in an abstract way, as something involving roles of office, administrative procedures, protocols, etc., but rarely personal guilt and responsibility. The evil bureaucrat par excellence, who rendered evil “banal”, was of course Adolf Eichmann.’] If this is in fact the case, then to regard theodicy as a purely intellectual exercise is to provide – albeit unwittingly – a tacit sanction for the evil that exists on our appalling planet." (Trakakis 2014, pp. 183-4).

Or, as Trakakis' epigraph states, "No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of the burning children." – Rabbi Greenberg (1989: 315)

• Greenberg, I. (1989). Cloud of smoke, pillar of fire. In Roth and Berenbaum (Eds.), Holocaust: Religious and philosophical implications. pp. 305–345
• Phillips, D. Z. (2004). The problem of evil and the problem of God. London: SCM Press
• Surin, K. (1986). Theology and the problem of evil. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

More news on the interviews-are-worse-than-useless front

I've written before on the topic of interviews: namely, on how decades of empirical research shows that:

1. Interviewers' judgments of candidates are worse predictors of job success than purely algorithmic procedures using quantitative data alone, most likely because
2. Judgments of interview performance tend to track characteristics of job candidates (such as attractiveness, weight, height, gender, race, speech style, and personality traits) that are either entirely unrelated or poorly related to successful job performance, and
3. Judgments of interview performance fail to reliably track interview behaviors (such as lying) that predictably confound interviewer judgments of candidate quality.
4. And yes, videoconference interviews have substantial bias-effects of their own.

Now we have a fun new result: "vocal fry" hurts women job applicants . All this evidence...and yet the world simply continues to turn...

CFA: Summer Program for Women in Philosophy

The Philosophy Department at the University of California, San Diego is pleased to announce a call for applications for the 2015 Summer Program for Women in Philosophy, which will be held at UCSD from July 26 to August 8, 2015. The two-week program will feature two intensive courses and a variety of workshops, all geared towards providing an engaging philosophical learning experience and preparation for applying to graduate school in philosophy. Participants will be provided with housing and meals, will have transportation costs covered, will have all course and workshop materials provided, and will receive a $600 stipend. Applications are due March 1, and participants will be notified by April 15. This year's instructors are Anne Eaton (University of Illinois, Chicago) and Julie Walsh (Université du Québec à Montréal).

Anyone who's interested can visit our website (spwp.ucsd.edu) or our Facebook page (facebook.com/ucsdspwp).

Anonymous Submission: Tailoring a philosophy paper to the journal market

By Anonymous 

 

Most of my work is in specialist journals, only a minority is in general journals. One reason for this is that the top "general" journals in philosophy aren't general at all, but in reality focus on a few select topics in epistemology, metaphilosophy, philosophy of mind and a handful of other specializations.

 

As I was on the market last year, I felt increasingly pressure to publish in a "top" general philosophy journal. So I did what Brian Wilson did when he wrote Pet Sounds. Pet Sounds is heralded as an artistically accomplished album, but it was specifically written by Brian Wilson to make the Beach Boys more artistically respectable. Similarly, I wrote a paper on a topic that is of current interest in general philosophy journals. I sent it to a top-10 journal where it was accepted after a brief and very competent review process.

 

I am wondering whether more philosophers take this "Pet sounds" approach to picking topics to write about, and whether this is in any way problematic. I enjoyed writing the paper, I have an interest in the topic, and I learned a lot from the research. That being said, if the topic wasn't one that was considered of "central philosophical importance", I probably wouldn't have written about it. There are topics I personally find of greater philosophical interest, but they are harder to get published. This, of course, influences what philosophers write about and that worries me too.

Guest Post: Playing Outside of Your Wheelhouse

by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc (cross-posted at A Philosopher's Take)

Anyone who has been following the Grinworthy Quotes series here on A Philosopher’s Take will likely have noticed that I’ve been reading a fair amount of medieval philosophy recently. Some readers may also be aware that I usually work on philosophy of mathematics, logic and metaphysics. In working on medieval philosophy, and in particular medieval ethics and political philosophy, I have been playing outside my wheelhouse.

For those unfamiliar with the  term, according to my Oxford American dictionary, a wheelhouse is a shelter for the person at the wheel of a boat or ship, which is not at all what I mean in this context. Rather, I think of my wheelhouse as the philosophical space where I am comfortable in virtue of being somewhat of an expert.

I bring this up because I think it is important for us as philosophers (and undoubtably in other disciplines and jobs as well) to work on projects that fall outside of our respective wheelhouses.

Of course, in the current job climate it is difficult, and probably undesirable to be a true polymath, but it is just as bad, in my opinion, to only focus on one narrow sub-discipline. I have a few reasons for thinking this. First, it is likely that you will find a different approach, idea or way of thinking that you will be able to fruitfully apply to your primary research.

Second, there are practical considerations. We all need to have conversations with philosophers outside of our ‘areas’, and it’s nice to be able to engage on common ground, even if that ground doesn’t happen to be in either person’s wheelhouse. Similar considerations apply to talks and conferences. Furthermore, the more areas and debates you are familiar with, the wider variety of classes you will feel comfortable teaching, which will both be helpful on the job market, and help alleviate the boredom caused by teaching Logic I over and over again.

Third, and most importantly, it can be fun. It turns out that I very much enjoy reading medieval philosophy. I also enjoy doing (read ‘writing’) history of philosophy. Searching for quotations from obscure texts, and engaging in textual analysis is very rewarding for me.

Now I’m not suggesting that everyone should run to the bookstore to buy a copy of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed (I doubt they’ll have it anyway, though it is fun if you can find it). Different people enjoy different things. If you work mainly on problems that have directly to do with people—applied ethics, say—you might find doing some analytic metaphysics refreshing.  If you usually do philosophy of science, you might enjoy taking a break from scientific case studies to try and figure out what you think truth acually is.

So next time you end up taking a class outside of you’re area of expertise, don’t try to wedge your own research into a seminar paper; do something different. Or, if you’re passed the point of doing coursework, next time you see a call for papers for a conference outside of your area that sounds interesting (especially if it’s somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit) try to write 10–15 pages on that topic, you might just find you like it. Even if you don’t, we will all end up doing better philosophy if we sometimes decide to play outside our wheelhouses.