The Philosophers' Cocoon

Loving God for no reason

Why does a devotee love God? Because He is good, merciful, omniscient…? Or just out of love?

This seems to be one of the moot issues between the two currents within the form of Vaiṣṇavism later to be known as Śrīvaiṣṇavism, since the theologian Piḷḷai Lokācārya (13th c.) stresses that loving without reason is superior to loving with a reason, just like Sītā's ungrounded love for God's incarnation as Rāma is superior to that of Lakṣmaṇa, who loves Rāma for his good qualities (see Mumme 1988, p. 150).

Rāma between Lakṣmaṇa and Sītā (r.)

In fact, one might add, Lakṣmaṇa would stop loving Rāma if he were no longer good, or might even start loving someone else, if that other person had better qualities than Rāma. Thus, one who loves with reasons is like a mercenary who is ready to serve a new warlord. Similarly, one might further speculate, one who loves God for His qualities is in fact in love with the qualities, not with God as a person. By contrast, when one loves a person, even her defects seem attractive to one.

This all makes sense, perhaps even a lot of sense. Yet… this means that there is no intrinsic reason to say that loving God is better than loving a demonic being who demands from us that we kill and torture living beings. If we love the latter, we will encounter consequences among human beings, such as jail, and possibily also in the after-life, since God is more powerful than demonic beings and will punish the people whe are not His devotees. Yet, there is no reason whence loving God should in itself be a reason for distinguishing better people. In fact, theoretically there might even be people who love a saintly being who is even 'better' (more compassionate, for instance) than God. And yet, they would not be compensated for choosing the more morally perfect being, since God would only compensate His devotees…

What is then the alternative to mercenary love and indiscriminate love for whomsoever?

(cross-posted, with minor modifications, in my personal blog)

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 15: Where and When to Apply (Addendum)

Today's edition of our Boot Camp will be relatively brief. Now that we have finished discussing job-market materials (cover letters, CVs, etc), we come to the application process itself: specifically, how to find jobs to apply to, and importantly, when to apply. Although Helen De Cruz discussed some of these issues previously (specifically, whether one should apply ABD, how broadly one should cast one's net, timing the European job market, etc.), there are some additional issues I would like to briefly discuss here. 

Let us begin with how to find jobs. Everyone, I take it, knows about philjobs. It is probably the single best resource for finding jobs. Jobs appear on a rolling basis, one can search jobs by AOS, location, etc. But although it is a great resource, not all jobs appear there. In particular, not a lot of community college jobs do. If you want to find those jobs, the best place to look that I know of is HigherEd Jobs. Third, there is Vitae, which I found very difficult to use, but which advertised a few jobs that appeared nowhere else. Finally, there is the philos-l listserv, which you can sign up for.

MacAskill on whether one should become a philosopher

Will MacAskill, Research Fellow at Cambridge and soon-to-be Associate Professor at Oxford, has drawn my attention to several posts he has written at 80,000 Hours on seeking a career in philosophy, and says he would love feedback from the community. I encourage you all to check out:

• Career Profiles: Philosophy PhD
• I want to make a difference. Should I become a philosopher? (with a nice link to us!)
• Chances of Becoming a Philosopher

The third of these links is especially interesting, as it uses data collected by Carolyn Dicey Jennings on placement and attrition rates from eleven Leiter top-15 philosophy PhD programs from 2000-7 to calculate the probability of obtaining a tenure-track position in philosophy. The verdict? For those who finish the programs: a 77.27% probability. And when attrition is included: 59%. Sobering figures indeed.

On Two Types of Grade Inflation, and a Question

I assume we are well familiar with the phenomenon of grade inflation. Students these days expect good grades, and usually get them.  My experiences at several different universities suggest that in most courses, the average final grade is a B- or higher. My experience also suggests that this is often the result of instructors "going easy" on their students. For instance, a bad philosophy paper may be a given something like B- or C+, and only spectacularly bad papers are given a C or lower.

I have long been of the belief that we do our students no favors by going easy on them -- that it's an easy way out that some people choose to get good student reviews. I want to suggest, however, that not all forms of "grade inflation" are bad, and that there are forms of it that are probably morally and educationally desirable.  Allow me to explain.

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 14: Writing Samples

Apologies for the lengthy pause between the last entry in the Boot Camp and this one. It has been an incredibly busy summer, and truth be told, I've been a bit uncertain about what to say about the final component of the dossier: writing samples. How much can be said about them, after all, that most of us don't already know? (Your writing sample should be an awesome piece of philosophical research, didn't you know?;)

Or perhaps I missing something. Perhaps there are tips for writing sample of which I am unaware. If so, I encourage people who know them--placement directors and search-committee members in particular--to chime in! In any case, I will simply offer up a few suggestions and then open things up for discussion.

An interesting new blog

Justin at Daily Nous drew my attention today to a new anonymous group blog, "Against Professional Philosophy." I think it is well worth following, and, for what it is worth, am sympathetic to some of what its authors (one non-TT faculty member, one grad student, one tenured woman philosopher, and one previously tenured philosopher who left academia) have to say. Here is their Manifesto. And here is their self-introduction:

W, X, Y, and Z all share a deep love of real philosophy. By real philosophy, we mean synoptic, systematic, rational reflection on the individual and collective human condition, and on the natural world in which human and other conscious animals live, move, and have their being. Real philosophy fully includes the knowledge yielded by the natural and formal sciences; but, as we see it, real philosophy also goes significantly beneath and beyond the exact sciences, and non-reductively incorporates aesthetic, artistic, affective/emotional, ethical/moral, and, more generally, personal and practical insights that cannot be adequately captured or explained by the sciences. In a word, real philosophy is all about the nature, meaning, and value of individual and collective human existence in the natural cosmos, and how it is possible to know the philosophical limits of science, without also being anti-science. Finally, real philosophy is pursued by people working on individual or collective writing projects, or teaching projects, in the context of small, friendly circles of like-minded philosophers. Like-minded but not uncritical! Real philosophers read both intensively and also widely inside philosophy, and also widely outside of philosophy, critically discuss what they’ve read, write, mutually present and talk about their work, re-read, re-discuss, and then re-write, with the primary aim of producing work of originality and of the highest possible quality, given their own individual and collective abilities. They also seek to disseminate their work, through publication, teaching, or public conversation.

Attempting to solve one problem by creating others?

Daily Nous and Leiter Reports have linked today to this Inside HigherEd piece describing a new "accelerated PhD program" at UC Irvine. I'm not prepared to say that I think the new program is all-things-considered bad idea, but I do have some serious concerns about it.

Here's a brief overview:

Under the so-called 5+2 program, humanities graduate students at Irvine will receive additional funding designed to push them through course work and their dissertations within five years. Those who finish within that time frame are eligible to apply for an up to two-year, teaching-intensive postdoc.

Irvine’s 5+2 program, which two departments are set to pilot in the fall, works something like this: year one is a fellowship with course work, followed by a funded summer with attendance at a teaching institute. Year two is a teaching assistantship with course work, through which the student identifies an adviser and dissertation committee. If the student has made appropriate progress, he or she attends another funded summer teaching institute.

In year three, the student takes on another teaching assistantship, and completes his or her qualifying exams and prospectus (to be approved by a five-member advancement committee by spring). Successful students see another funded summer and attend a third summer teaching institute. There’s another teaching assistantship in year four in composition or the university’s signature freshman Humanities Core program for intended humanities majors and most honors students. There’s also dissertation research and writing. Those who’ve made satisfactory progress get another funded summer and attend a teaching seminar.

Choosing a journal for the paper you're working on - what is your publication strategy?

I'm currently revising a paper with a revise & resubmit decision, having good hopes it will be accepted eventually in this journal. It is a specialist journal, my favorite kind of journal to submit work to - reasonable waiting times, timely decisions, competent referees who take the time to read your work. Many of my papers in specialist journals get in at their first submission, and even when they're rejected, the comments are often useful to improve the paper.

What a difference with general journals - a much more haphazard process, where papers are away for at least 6 months, or in the more timely ones, 3 months but without any comments by editors or referees (I submitted once to Nous and once to Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and in each case I received a rejection after 3 months and no comments, with a note saying they can't comment on some individual papers to keep up their fast decision process). Not all my experiences with general philosophy journals have been negative. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Studies and dialectica have been wonderful (accepted papers), and I found the process at Philosophical Quarterly very good too, even though they rejected both papers I sent there. But still, my general experience is that specialist journals give better review times, more competent referees, and a higher probability of acceptance. So I prefer to submit to specialist journals. 

So you want to publish a book, part 3: soliciting interest

I'd like to continue my series on book publishing (see here and here) by devoting this short post to the topic of soliciting interest in your manuscript. Basically, there are two ways to solicit interest:

1. Submitting a full book-proposal
2. Meeting an acquisitions editor in person at the APA

Given that I have a bit of experience with both, allow me to briefly share my experiences and the processes involved with each.

Some Issues With Job Committees Requiring a 'PhD in Hand'

I hit the job market "softly' this past year. I applied to a total of 24 jobs/postdocs. I was unsuccessful this go around but I'm going to work hard this summer to be sure my CV is better and my job market materials are as good as they can be (thanks to Marcus and others for the extremely helpful Job Market Boot Camp Series). I'm hopeful given that I did make a couple of short lists for post-docs, but I digress. In a moment of venting frustration with the market I took to social media claiming that academic jobs are pretty damn hard to score (duh!). Anyway, many of those that chimed in with kind words of support (thanks) mentioned that I shouldn't be surprised given that I am only ABD. This got me to thinking how odd requiring a candidate to have the PhD in hand really is. Not only is it odd but it seems to stack the deck against folks who are not well off financially. This got me to thinking that requiring PhD in hand might not be conducive to being as inclusive as we could be as a discipline. Now, if one cares about being inclusive to folks that come from lower socio- economic status, which I think they should, then this should be a bit concerning. Thus, in this short post I'd like speak to why I find it odd, and then why it causes further problems for folks on the lower end of the socio-economic scale.

Rethinking philosophical norms?

A while back, I posted on how some editors of top-ranked philosophy journals and senior figures in the field think philosophy has become too "safe, and a little boring." As Akeel Bilgrami (editor of the Journal of Philosophy) reported:

Barry also asked whether I feel that submissions today are safe and a little boring. Well, let me tell you that a very distinguished philosopher...has been contemplating stepping down from the board because, as he puts it, the submissions are getting tedious and merely moving counters around...I was speaking to both Tim Scanlon and Sam Scheffler...and they were lamenting the fact that the recent papers in journals were too much in the business of commenting on each other's work, and not enough of stepping back from this clubby discussion, and presenting the issues on their own terms as matters of importance to consider quite apart from the latest move by someone in one's professional circle of philosophy. It's hard not to feel sometimes sympathy with that reaction too... 

APA Letter on Sexual Harassment

As many of you probably already know, the American Philosophical Association's Board of Officers posted this open letter today on sexual harassment in the profession. I encourage everyone to read it and also check out this article covering the letter at Inside Higher Ed. (Thanks to Amy Ferrer for drawing my attention to both!).

Congrats to Alfano!

I'd just like to congratulate our own Mark Alfano for his new position at the Delft University of Technology. Although Mark hasn't posted on the Cocoon for a while now, he contributed a number of posts in the Cocoon's early days, something I will always be thankful for. Congrats, Mark!

Dissertation groups and developing dissertation-writing skills

I would like to discuss in more depth some important issues raised by one of the two articles I commented on yesterday: Michael Collins' post, "Wilderness Group Tour: PhD dissertations and writing/support/accountablity groups." Collins' post examines two issues that I had ample experience with as a graduate student:

1. Dissertation "accountability" groups
2. Feeling completely unprepared to write a dissertation

Let me address the issue of dissertation groups first. Collins reports that he and some fellow grad students attempted to form several groups to work on dissertations together and hold each other accountable--but that they all fell apart. Collins suggests that one major reasons these groups "are not particularly effective and are often short-lived" is that the students comprising them simply aren't well-equipped to write disserations, and by extension aren't well-equipped to run dissertation writing groups. Collins' basic thought is that because, prior to dissertation writing, PhD students work in highly-structured ways (coursework, comp exams, etc.), they just aren't prepared for the unstructured nature of dissertation work (i.e. making your own deadlines, etc.). Collins then suggest that this is why dissertation groups fail ("This is one reason why accountability groups fail — they are attempts to reassert the structure of a graduate course, but everyone is  fumbling novice, and, in any case, courses, as we knew and experienced them, are not useful models for dissertation writing"). In short, Collins' thought is that dissertating students can't help each other very well because none of them are well-trained in the skills and habits it takes to write a dissertation--and so he thinks the real problem is that students aren't prepared well enough by their programs to write dissertations.

2nd CFP & Date Change: The 3rd Annual Philosophers' Cocoon Philosophy Conference

Due to an unforeseen scheduling conflict, the 3rd Annual Philosophers' Cocoon Philosophy Conference (PCPC) has been moved from November 14th-15th to Saturday and Sunday, November 7th-8th at the University of Tampa. That being said, I would like to remind everyone to submit a paper. The CFP is below.

On training grad students in philosophical writing: two opposing desiderata

I came across two interesting pieces today on philosophical writing: this piece at Daily Nous, whose author argues that grad programs should spend more time and resources on developing their students' abilities to write publishable work, and this piece by Eric Schwitzgabel at The Splintered Mind arguing that academic philosophers have too narrow of a view of what counts as valuable philosophical work, writing-style included.

While I am sympathetic with graduate students who want to be better prepared to publish and compete on the academic job market, achieve tenure, and so on, as I have argued before (and many other people have worried as well) academic philosophy may be becoming too professionalized, in ways that harm us all: both psychologically (in terms of our own well-being) and philosophically (by encouraging us to publish more, and more quickly, on increasingly small problems of interest to a select few specialists rather than engaging in boundary-pushing work on Big Problems). 

We Built This City on Student Loans: What "How Higher Education Was Destroyed in 5 Basic Steps" Leaves Out

Some of my philosopher facebook-friends approvingly linked yesterday to this article, "How Higher Education Was Destroyed in 5 Basic Steps", with several of them saying it is "spot on." I think it is not spot-on, and that it probable places the blame for the state of higher-education today in the wrong spot: on corporations and other powerful interests, as opposed to our past political and personal decisions. Although I do not think corporations and other powerful interests are blameless for the state of higher-education today (far from it), I believe that we need to take a more honest look at how we got to where we are today. Indeed, or so I argue below, it is only once we see what is arguably the true cause of our current situation that we may be in a better position to appreciate that the state of higher-education today is an inevitable tradeoff for achieving some social and political ideals that many of us espouse (myself included). None of what I say below should be taken to imply that I do not think that the situation of higher-education today is unproblematic, or that we should not aim to change it. It is to say, however, that we must appreciate that the situation we face has costs and benefits--and that it is not obvious the costs of the current situation of higher-education (despite being significant) are not outweighed by benefits (to us as educators and society more broadly). Allow me to explain.

Is philosophy set up to be a system of monologues? What could be done to increase engagement with new ideas

In a recent post focusing on the work of Avner Baz, I raised concerns about the extent to which philosophers engage each other's ideas. Baz is far from the only example of someone whose work I think has been unfairly neglected. Time and again, I read papers that (in my view) ignore a lot of really good recent work...usually work by less well-established scholars. Indeed, I just read another paper that came out yesterday--in a very good journal, on an issue that a lot of young scholars have published on--and the article only cited the most famous people in the topic's subfield. Since it is a subfield I happen to work in, this really frustrated me. Further, as Kieran Healy has shown with actual data (see also here), "hardly anyone is getting cited." By and large in philosophy, the same small cadre of people get cited again, and again, and again, while most everyone else's work languishes in relative obscurity.

I do not think this is a sign of healthy discipline. It makes philosophy seem less of a serious exchange and conscientious engagement and evaluation of ideas, and more of a feudal system of lords and serfs: 'lords' who dominate the philosophical landscape, and 'serfs' whose ideas are all but ignored. Moreover, as I have explained before, it seems epistemically bad, calling into question whether philosophy is actually moved forward by good arguments, as opposed to mere sociological forces (jumping on bandwagons started by a few esteemed figures, etc.).

Anyway, if you find yourself at all persuaded by me (as well as by Healy's data) that there is something wrong--that philosophers do not engage adequately with others' ideas, particularly the ideas of less well-established people--this raises the obvious question: what, if anything, could be done to improve the situation?

I've suggested one thing before: improve citation practices. As I have argued before (see here, here, and here), many philosophers appear to have bizarre and unjustifiable citation practices. They think citations exist to recognize "good work" or "work that influenced them", this despite the fact that in every other discipline on the planet, citations exist to simply recognize work that exists--and for good reason: practices of citing "good work" or "work that influences you" can lead to systematic failure to cite people, wrongly excluding them from the literature because you don't think their work is good. Philosophers' citation standards, in other words, invite bias--which is precisely why good disciplines have better standards: standards which require people to be recognized for their work regardless of "whether you think it's good" and regardless of "whether it influenced you." Indeed, if anything could explain (in my view) the appalling facts of the Healy data (the data showing that "hardly anyone is getting cited", even people who publish in top journals!), this is it. People aren't cited because--whether we recognize it or not--we tend to think someone's work is good when it is work by a Famous Person from an Awesome Department: something which leads only Famous People from Awesome Departments ever getting cited.

So, I think we must insist on better citation practices. But I think there is something else we could do too. One thing that has always puzzled me about philosophy is that, by and large, journals do not permit mere "replies" to people's work in other journals. Although most journals permit short replies to work in their own pages, very few journals allow you to publish a "reply" to a piece in another journal. There are, it seems to me, two problems with this. First, it disincentivizes writing reply pieces. If you know that you can only send a reply piece to one journal (the journal that published the original piece), why in the world would you waste your time writing one? If your reply gets rejected, you are out of luck! Although I published a couple of replies to start out my career, I have to say: this is why I don't write replies anymore. It's just not a very good "bet" or way to spend one's time. Second, by restricting replies to articles that appear in their own pages, our discipline dramatically restricts the total number of replies that are likely to appear in the literature (since, if a reply gets rejected by the journal in which the article first appeared, the reply can never come out anywhere).

This is terrible. It means that even if someone wants to engage with the work of another person, actually replying to their work, (1) they are unlikely to do so (they are disincentivized from doing it), and (2) even if they do it, the chances of their reply ever ending up published are slim (since there is only one journal that will ever consider the piece). What does this mean? It means, I think, something that many of us already feel (and, I would say, know): that philosophy often appears more like a series of monologues rather than a true "conversation." Instead of engaging with other people's work, article after article engages primarily with either (A) the work of Famous People, or else (B) nothing more than whatever interests the author themselves (something which, I think, is responsible for the plague of self-citations in philosophy. When I do searches on Google scholar, the only person who often cites a person's work is...the person themself). This is no good. Philosophy should not be a series of monologues. It should be a genuine, open, inclusive, and engaged conversation. And, for that reason, I want to propose, journals should stop only allowing "replies" to their own articles. Science journals don't do this, and neither should we. Journals should allow replies to articles in other journals. While this might not solve the problems I've mentioned above, it would plausibly help significantly. 

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 13: The Teaching Portfolio

Sorry for the slow week (on my part) around here: it's been a very hectic summer. In any case, I would like to continue our Job-Market Boot Camp by considering teaching portfolios. We've already talked about teaching statements, and obviously, the teaching statement should be the first page of your portfolio. However, we have not discussed the rest of the portfolio. So let us turn to it!

Let me start out by saying that I will be really curious to hear other people's views--search committee members and candidates--about what exactly should be in one's teaching portfolio. This is in part because, unlike other parts of one's dossier, there are so many possible things one could put in it! For instance, do people include copies of particular assignments distributed to students? Do people include multiple, full syllabi for different courses? I'm curious to see!

What does it take to get a drink in this place? The sociology of philosophy (again)

I've been thinking the past few days about a twitter exchange I encountered this past weekend. Basically, a philosopher I don't know was conversing with a philosopher I do know about the work of Avner Baz, someone whose work I have featured here before. Basically, the philosopher I don't know asked if anyone has actually engaged with Baz's work, as he considers Baz's work quite good. The philosopher I know then basically replied that, no, basically everyone has ignored Baz's work, including Timothy Williamson, whose work Baz specifically targets.

Job Market Boot Camp, Part 12: When and where to apply for tenure-track jobs

Soon the philosophy job market will be in full swing again. Where and when should you apply for jobs? Only to dream jobs or to anything that moves? Should you wait until your viva (doctoral defense) or can you already apply as an ABD (all but dissertation)?

I'll focus on the when and where to apply for jobs, focusing on tenure-track positions, and I'll start with the question of whether ABDs should apply for tenure track jobs.