The Philosophers' Cocoon

What is good publishing advice for graduate students?

In recent conversations with advanced graduate students (especially ABDs), I have learned that prestigious schools used to advise their students not to submit any papers for publication in grad school, calling this premature publishing, something that would not reflect well on the CV. However, recently, they've changed that advice and encourage those students to publish.

Some elite programs advise their students to only submit work to very prestigious journals (top-10, or even top-5): if you can't get into something of at least the level of Philosophical Studies, don't bother. Others propose that any good specialist or general journal publication is a plus on the CV. There is also different advice circulating about how many papers an ABD or newly-minted PhD should have on their CV. Is it true that one paper in a top-10 journal, or a couple of papers in good specialist or general journals would be enough to make one competitive? Would someone from an unranked program need more to stand a chance? 

In the light of all these different forms of advice: What do readers of this blog think is sound publishing advice? What advice would you give an advanced graduate student/ABD about publishing (or if you are a recent PhD, what advice would you wish you had gotten when in grad school)? Do you think the prestige of the school matters for publishing strategies? I'm interested to hear readers' thoughts, especially as I hope to be an advisor to PhD students in the near future!

Some good advice, but how well does it work?

In the comments section of a recent reader submission, "Advice for search committees", Anon writes,

All you can control is your work. So focus on your work. Throughout your career you will face many absurd interpersonal distractions and people who are enamored of the most trivial markers of status. Learning to ignore such people and their misaligned value system is crucial to leading a meaningful life as an academic. Even if there is a star system and gatekeepers, etc. people still do manage to publish good work. The only thing one can do if one does not want to buy into that is to try to do good work.

This was the attitude I tried to keep during my many years on the market, and in general it seems to me very good advice. In fact, I think it may be the single best piece of practical wisdom I ever received--and I should really give my father a shout-out on it, as it's one of the few lessons I remember him teaching me as a little boy, one that has always stuck with me [his words: "You cannot control what other people do. All you can do is control what you do."].

That being said, there is of course the question of how well the advice actually works in any given context. One of the most common things one hears about the philosophy job-market is that it is a "lottery", based more on chance than merit. Which raises some questions: namely, how much of a lottery is it? And, does hard work/improving one's work pay off? I was thinking it might be good if readers shared their experiences. Did hard work--and improving your work--pay off for you on the market, or not? How? What is/was your evidence? Did you get more interviews, on-campus visits, and/or offers after improving your work [e.g. publishing more, improving your teaching reviews]? Or, did you experience the opposite [i.e. no improvement in your performance on the market, no matter how much you publish, where you publish, etc.]?

I do hope readers are willing to share their experiences, as it might give others some clearer [albeit still anecdotal] evidence of whether, and if so how, hard work and improvement pay off. There have, after all, been questions raised on this blog about how long one should stay on the job market, when one should give up, etc. Perhaps different people sharing their experiences will give some further insight. All I ask is that commenters be honest! My own experience is that hard work and improvement can indeed pay off on the market--but that is only my experience. What's yours been?

The risks of anonymising (UPDATED)

How do you make your papers anonymous? I usually just delete my name, all I-references in connection with quotes from my previous articles and the name of the funding agency who finances my research. However, recently I have been asked by two different journal editors to be much more radical and to delete all acknowledgements and all references to my forthcoming articles.

This is fine, since in fact these are all hints which can be used while trying to understand who is the author of a given paper (the acknowledgements, for instance, may make a peer reviewer aware of the kind of people you know, and through that, of where you come from, etc. etc.). Moreover, referring to "Freschi forthcoming" may hint at the fact that you either are Freschi or know her good enough to receive her forthcoming articles (although perhaps nowadays it might just mean that you use Academia.edu).

Anyway, the weird part of the post is the following: I received a peer-review about one such article with the following complaint:

"Empty references like “XXX” belong to a very incomplete draft (i.e. p. 4, p.18, fn17, 19,20 & etc.)" 

This is obviously true, if only for the fact that such empty references are the result of the above efforts (i.e., I had to delete references to my own work) and not of any sloppiness on my part.

Thus, do not repeat my mistake and do as Roger suggested (here below), namely, instead of just deleting references to your work, write something like "[reference deleted for the sake of peer-review]", so that reviewers are immediately aware of what happened!

Avoiding a New-Faculty Trap

Beware, all ye who enter...

I remember receiving a bit of advice many years ago, prior to beginning my first faculty job. I don't recall who gave it (though I suspect it was my graduate advisor)--but it was very simple and, or so I am rapidly learning, very wise. The advice was just this: "Don't say yes to everything."

Although I have been in a full-time faculty position for over seven years, this is my first year in a tenure-track job. Like many people who find themselves in a new job (or so I expect), my initial inclination was to take on as much as I could--and so...you guessed it, I Said Yes to Everything. As far as I can tell through introspection, several things led me down the garden-path to this venerable New-Faculty Trap:

1. Excitement about being in a new job.
2. Overoptimism about how much I could take on.
3. A desire to show that, indeed, I was the right person to have hired.

Alas, I am now very much wishing I hadn't Said Yes to Everything. Things are not a disaster, by any means. But I will say the person who gave me the initial piece of advice was exactly right. Saying Yes to Everything is a New-Faculty Trap. And so, I figured, it might be helpful to pass the advice along.

Therefore, let it be said, to all those of you who will listen (as well as to those of you who won't): yes, you may be tempted; yes, you may be optimistic; and yes, you may want to show that you belong--but no, for your sake...and this really does deserve to be put in bold...don't say yes to everything. Pace yourself, taking on just a little bit more than you have before. You'll thank me later. :)

Publishing a book, part 5: the production process

In my previous post in this series, I examined some of unexpected difficulties one runs into after signing a book contract, at the revising stage: putting one's book into the publisher's 'house style' (which may involve learning an entirely new reference-style), keeping one's manuscript under one's contractual word-limit, selecting/commissioning a cover image, and the final "clearance review."

One final thing I forgot to mention are supplemental materials. One does not merely have to complete one's manuscript for the final clearance review. Along with it, I was surprised to learn that I had to submit (1) chapter abstracts for each chapter, (2) an author marketing form which requires you to put together a short book abstract, a slightly longer description for the book's back cover, a list of journals to send the book for reviews, and (3) a "permissions checklist" listing every quotation in the book, attesting whether the quotation is "fair use" or whether it requires copyright permission (which one has to secure for anything that does not fall under fair use). Although having to submit these other materials might not seem so bad, I found the entire process a bit like opening a new restaurant or musical play: no matter how well you plan ahead, it's a real scramble to get everything in line by one's deadline. 

In any case, after submitting the final manuscript, you might think the hard part is over. Unfortunately, or so I found the "fun" is just beginning. The production process--the stage of copy-editing, proofing, indexing, etc.--is far more intricate and time-consuming than with journal publishing. With journal articles, you basically just get sent your page proofs to check for errors. The production process for a book actually has three parts. Allow me to provide a summary of each, along with some of the challenges one runs into.

Publishing a book, part 4: after the contract

It's been a while since I've posted in my series on book publishing, but the closer I get to the end of the process, the more I'm reminded of just how different the process is from the journal publishing process--so I figured it might be a good idea to finally start completing the series. I hope readers find the series helpful.

My previous post in this series was on contracts: on what they involve, issues one should think about or negotiate prior to signing, and so on. Today's post will be on the "post-contract" stage: the stage during which one revises the manuscript for final submission, selects a cover image, etc. In some ways, I found this the most "normal"--or expected--stage of the process, as it mostly involves nuts-and-bolts type stuff (revising, formatting the manuscript, etc.). But still, as I will now explain, even these basic nuts-and-bolts issues can be more complex, and stressful, than one might naively expect.

House style

The first thing my publisher (Palgrave) sent me post-contract was a 28-page "house style" guide laying out their expectations about how the manuscript must be presented and formatted.

Cholbi's on attention books (do not) receive

In the comments section of my recent post, "Some questions about the book review process", Michael Cholbi writes,

A small point but something that's long bugged me: 'Important' books are often the target of review essays or symposia in journals in which the book authors get to respond to critics. But standard book reviews are the end of the discussion of that book -- the author has no voice with which to respond to the review. This seems to me an unjust way of augmenting the intellectual capital of those who typically already have plenty of it in our field.

As someone who has a book coming out soon, I couldn't help but find this comment worrisome. I expect that just about any author's biggest worries are (A) the book will be terribly received (i.e. receive bad reviews), or (B) it won't be received at all (i.e. no one will read or engage with it)--"falling still born from the press", as it were, to use David Hume's famous phrase about his own A Treatise of Human Nature (a book which, thank the gods, ended up ultimately receiving the attention it was well due). 

Anyway, these are of course the risks one runs as an author. One can only write the best book one can, and hope that it receives attention and is well-received (these are my own hopes as an author, at any rate!). Still, what interests me about Michael's comment is the question he raises as to whether our discipline does enough--as a professional discipline--to ensure that everyone is given a "fair shot" at their book receiving discussion. Michael seems to think not, suggesting that book symposia (in journals and/or conferences) should be more available to those with less "intellectual capital."

I'm curious what everyone thinks about this. Is Michael right? Are there not enough opportunities in our discipline for book authors--particularly "small time" authors not at top programs--to have their books engaged with and taken seriously? If so, what could/should be done (e.g. by journals, the APA, etc.) to improve/level the playing field? More book symposia at APA's? More freedom to organize book symposia at the APA? More room in journals for book symposia (particularly, let's say, in the new Journal of the APA)? I would be especially curious to see if there are any authors who are willing to chime in, either in favor of or against Michael's concerns.

I guess I'll close by saying that I don't think I have enough experience here to weigh in on one side or the other, but that I have a few friends in the discipline whose books have thus far seemed to enjoy a good amount of discussion. Still, these are only a few anecdotal examples. So, once again, I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks!

A reviewerly quadrilemma

Suppose you're asked to review an article for a journal on theory X, and you're competent with and know the literature on X. Next, suppose you think most of the literature on X is predicated on a particularly problematic philosophical method (e.g. intuition mongering), and that the only justified methodology in the area supports ~X (the methodology you support is consistent with a variety of other theories on the topic, but definitely not X). Suppose also that the methodology you find problematic (e.g. intuition mongering) has been criticized in the field (and pretty effectively refuted, in your own view), but many authors (including the author for the paper at hand) continue to use the method. Finally, suppose the paper you are asked to review defends a variant of X using the methodology you object to. What should you do?

Here are a few possible alternatives:

1. Decline to review the paper, on the basis that you cannot review it in an unbiased manner.
2. Review the paper, setting aside as far as you can your objections to the methodology the article presupposes.
3. Review the paper, making your objections to the methodology known to the author and editor, but otherwise set aside your objections to the methodology in making a recommendation.
4. Review the paper, taking the author to task for the problematic methodology they co-opt from the literature.

Which is the best option?

CFP: Marc Sanders Prize in Metaphysics

This is just a quick note that the submission deadline for the Marc Sanders Prize in Metaphysics is January 31, 2016. The full call for papers is here. Here's a brief description of the prize:

Sponsored by The Marc Sanders Foundation and administered by the editorial board of Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, this essay competition is open to scholars who are within fifteen (15) years of receiving a Ph.D. and to students who are currently enrolled in a graduate program. Independent scholars may also be eligible, and should contact Dean Zimmerman at dwzimmer@rci.rutgers.edu. The annual prize amount is $10,000. Winning essays will appear in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics.

(Thanks to Peter van Elswyk for the heads up!)

http://philevents.org/event/show/18707

Some questions about the book review process

I personally know a few authors who have received negative book reviews that, in their opinion, were not just negative but in some way(s) below an "appropriate scholarly standard." Now, presumably, no one likes to receive a negative review--and in some cases one may simply be upset at receiving one. Some book reviews, however, arguably are below an appropriate scholarly standard--for instance, by simply stating the reviewer's opinions/biases without much, or any, argumentation in support of their negative assertions. I have read reviews like this recently, where a reviewer boldly states, "This book is bad in respect X", but without any further justification for why anyone should actually believe the book is bad at X.

Now, of course, one way to respond to this issue is to simply trust readers--trust them, that is, to tell the difference between conscientious, well-reasoned reviews and less conscientious, poorly reasoned ones. And indeed, I've seen cases of this online--cases where someone shares a poorly reasoned book review on social media, and everyone basically agrees it is a terrible review.

Still, given the stakes involved--given that poor reviews could potentially undermine a person's case for tenure or promotion, not to mention their perception in the discipline--several questions come to my mind:

Long journeys part 7: Matt Drabek

I work in assessment design and content development for ACT, Inc., an educational and workforce assessment company. ACT is primarily known for its college readiness assessment (i.e., the ACT), which is the largest college readiness assessment in the United States. My work primarily concerns the assessment of critical thinking, graduate admissions (i.e., the GMAT test for business schools, for which ACT provides test content), and the assessment of workforce and career skills. Previously I worked full time as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at The University of Iowa, and I still occasionally teach philosophy courses there. It’s at Iowa where I received my philosophy PhD in 2012. I also maintain an active research program, attend philosophy and interdisciplinary conferences, and recently published a book, Classify and Label: The Unintended Marginalization of Social Groups.

My job market story begins 2011 and tentatively ends in 2014. Over the course of these four years on the market, I gradually transitioned from a fully committed academic to a more or less fully committed non-academic professional. I’ll say a bit about how that happened and the sort of transformation this involved.

In 2011 I was still a graduate student and went on the market with the well-known and ill-advised “spray and pray” strategy: I applied for over 150 positions, including all “AOS: open” ads. I landed 2 interviews, both for one year gigs far away from my Iowa City home. I came close to landing one of these positions, but in the end I struck out. This took an incredible personal toll, and I’m still not thrilled about giving the details. The short version is that the period of heavy stress that this caused led me to lose over one fourth of my body weight in about 2 months. During the worst period, I lost weight at a rate of one pound per day.

Recent work by Cocooners [September-October]

It just occurred to me that I haven't done one of these in a few months. The following are works either published or posted to philpapers by Cocoon contributors during the months of September and October:

Mark Alfano (2015). Response to Open Peer Commentaries on “Placebo Effects and Informed Consent. American Journal of Bioethics 15 (10):1-3.

Mark Alfano (ed.) (2015). Current Controversies in Virtue Theory. Routledge.

Justin Caouette (2015). Robust Alternatives, Blame, and the Tax Evasion Case. Southwest Philosophy Review 31 (2):27-32.

Helen De Cruz (2015). The Relevance of Hume's Natural History of Religion for Cognitive Science of Religion. Res Philosophica 92 (3):1-22.

Clayton Littlejohn (forthcoming). Evidence and its Limits. In Conor McHugh Jonathan Way & Daniel Whiting (eds.), Normativity: Epistemic and Practical. Oxford University Press.

Clayton Littlejohn (forthcoming). The Right in the Good: A Defense of Teleological Non-Consequentialism in Epistemology. In Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij Jeff Dunn (ed.), Epistemic Consequentialism. Oxford University Press.

Kristina Meshelski (forthcoming). Procedural Justice and Affirmative Action. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice:1-19.

Moti Mizrahi (2015). A Reply to Patton's "Incommensurability and the Bonfire of the Meta-Theories". Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 4 (10):51-53.

David R. Morrow & Anthony Weston (2015). A Workbook for Arguments, Second Edition: A Complete Course in Critical Thinking. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc..

Tuomas E. Tahko (2016). Armstrong on Truthmaking and Realism. In Francesco F. Calemi (ed.), Metaphysics and Scientific Realism: Essays in Honour of David Malet Armstrong. De Gruyter 207-218.

Shelley Tremain (2015). New Work on Foucault and Disability: An Introductory Note. Foucault Studies (19).

Shelley Tremain (2015). This is What a Historicist and Relativist Feminist Philosophy of Disability Looks Like. Foucault Studies (19).

John Turri & Wesley Buckwalter (forthcoming). Descartes’s Schism, Locke’s Reunion: Completing the Pragmatic Turn in Epistemology. American Philosophical Quarterly.

Anyone I missed?

Too tight to cite (updated once more)

By Moti Mizrahi

The other day I read yet another paper that does not cite my work. This time, the author (a well-known philosopher from a ranked PhD program) used an example I use in one of my papers to make an argument for an opposing conclusion. When I pointed this out on Twitter, the author responded to my tweet and said "I wasn’t aware of your work." "That’s precisely the problem," I replied.

As readers of the Philosophers’ Cocoon probably know, Marcus and I have been concerned about citation practices in Philosophy for quite some time. Marcus even had a guest post on the Daily Nous, urging professional philosophers to read and cite more.

Unfortunately, bibliometric data suggest that citation trends in Philosophy are getting much worse. For example, the percentage of cited philosophy articles (from the Scopus database) has declined dramatically since the early 2000, to the point where, in 2014, only 10% of philosophy articles were cited, as the following figure shows.

And the next figure shows that philosophy articles average less than five cites per article.

(As a philosopher of science, I take some comfort in the fact that HPS articles average between 15 and 20 cites per article.)

Clearly, there is a serious problem with citation in Philosophy. What should we do about it?

Update 1

In light of the comments made so far, I would like to make a few clarifications:

First, I am not accusing anyone. I am trying to point to disciplinary trends. I think we should all be concerned about these trends.

Second, the first chart shows the percentage of cited articles in a given year. The second chart shows how many times philosophy articles are cited, on average.

Third, I don't find these data surprising at all. In fact, they are consistent with Healy's citation analyses. However, readers are invited to follow the links and check out the data for themselves.

Update 2

Several commenters attribute the decline in citations to the fact that it takes time to read and cite articles. So it is not surprising, they claim, that recent articles aren’t cited (or are cited less than less recent ones).

Although that sounds plausible, it is not supported by the data. To see why, compare Philosophy to HPS. In HPS, recent articles are cited less but the decline is more recent than in Philosophy (2007 in Philosophy vs. 2010 in HPS) and, still, in 2014, between 30% and 40% of HPS articles were cited, whereas only 10% of Philosophy articles were cited.

Moreover, even though the number of articles published in Philosophy and HPS between 2012 and 2013 is roughly the same (approximately 3,000), HPS articles average between 15 and 20 cites, whereas Philosophy articles average less than 5 cites per article.

Update 3

Instead of posting speculations about and misinterpretations of the data, I urge people to go to the SJR website and check out the data for themselves. The fact that you don’t believe the data doesn’t mean that the data are faulty.

The first chart about Philosophy (not HPS) does not show that “the majority of papers get cited by someone.” It cannot possibly show that. Rather, it shows the percentage of cited philosophy articles in a given year.

The second chart about Philosophy (not HPS) does not show that “after a few years (how many?) the average citation rate for philosophy papers is somewhere between one and two.” It cannot possibly show that. Rather, it shows that, between 2012 and 2013, philosophy articles were cited less than 5 times, on average. Here is another graph that shows this.

 

When looking at these data, instead of thinking that Philosophy isn’t as bad as Religious Studies, I’d rather think about ways to make Philosophy as good as HPS. But maybe that’s just me.

Request for Submissions: New Series, "Notes from search committee members"

The Cocoon's recent Job-Market Boot Camp aimed to give candidates on the academic job-candidates helpful information about how to put themselves in the best position to succeed on the market. That being said, all jobs--and search committees--are different, and so it struck me today that it might be helpful if members of recent search committees shared their experiences, particularly their decisionmaking process and the process of their committees in reaching an initial list of interviewees.

So, I'd like to invite people who have served on search committees to submit stories to me--either openly or pseudonymously--at marvan@ut.edu recounting their experience. Although submitters should feel free to tell whatever story they see fit [provided it conforms to the Cocoon's mission], potential things to share might include:

Reader submission: advice for search committees

An anonymous reader writes in:

With decisions pending on who to interview for jobs this season, I’d urge members of search committees to bear in mind the following things:

1. At many top departments, it is part of the job description of faculty (officially or unofficially) to pull out all stops to get their supervisees jobs. There is often considerable pressure on them to do so (enforced by the chair, dean, and others). If they fail, this is a strike against them, professionaly. If they succeed, they are lauded (or, at the least, esteemed). Moreover, having forged relationships with their supervisees for 5+ years, they have often come to sympathise greatly with the cause of these particular individuals (a cause that is, naturally enough, in their minds, imperilled by the especially dire job market). As a result, it may be wise to take their phone calls, urging emails, or glowing letters of reference with a grain of salt. (The same, of course, often applies to many letter writers from non-top  departments.)

2. Given the number of places available in top ten grad programs, and the number of applicants, who got into which program in the first place was largely a matter of luck. So, it isn’t as though applicants from top ten programs are more likely to be “natural born geniuses” (if anything, they’re likely to be “natural born hard workers & effective networkers”). There are plenty of super smart people distributed throughout the entire top fifty programs. Keep in mind that many of those who got into top ten programs did so because they happened to be applying from prestigious undergrad programs, and/or have been mentored by famous philosophers, who (sometimes out of personal concern or pressure from department chairs) wrote them glowing letters or sent urging emails.

3. While it may be true that interviewing or hiring a top ten-program applicant will help your faculty, or you personally, build professional bridges with their famous advisers, this is—how shall I put this—an objectionable motivation to give someone an interview or hire them. And even if it will please your dean should you manage to hire someone from, say, Stanford, you and your department will be better off in the long-run hiring someone from a less well-known university who is a better philosopher. Also, if you really are purely self-interested, just think how grateful this person will be for your having given them a job (or a chance at a job) based on the quality of their work, rather than (consciously or unconsciously) their links with famous philosophers.

4. While publication success is surely some indication of philosophical ability, many referees for the top journals work at, or are closely connected to, the very institutions that many of these top ten applicants are coming out of (many are even supervisors, or friends of supervisors, of these applicants). Many, therefore, know the identities of grad students whose papers they are reviewing, and may already know the paper quite well (or even have helped shape it, through comments at seminars, email correspondences, etc.). Referees rarely disclose such connections, and when they do, journal editors often ask them to review the paper anyway, “trying their best to stay impartial”. It is, of course, extremely hard to stay impartial under these circumstances.

What’s the upshot? Obviously, I’m not suggesting one shouldn’t interview applicants from top ten programs. There are many brilliant young philosophers at these institutions. I’m merely saying: please bear in mind the above. And please read writing samples (!). And read them (as best you can) as if you didn't know who the author is, where they are applying from, and who they are connected with. 

The future of philosophy is in your hands. Happy hunting!

Best,

Employed But Concerned.

Day 2: The 3rd Annual Philosophers' Cocoon Philosophy Conference

The 3rd Annual Philosophers' Cocoon Philosophy Conference wrapped up yesterday afternoon, and I'd like to thank all of the participants for making it such a fun, constructive weekend!

Here are a few pictures from Day 2:

Speaker: Kathleen Whipple (University at Albany)

Day 1: The 3rd Annual Philosophers' Cocoon Philosophy Conference

I'm happy to report that, a few brief technical issues aside, this year's Philosophers' Cocoon Philosophy Conference kicked off yesterday with a diverse variety of great talks by early-career philosophers, and some wonderfully constructive, supportive Q&A sessions. 

Here are some pictures from the first day:

When should one give up? And what should we encourage?

The Cocoon's Long Journeys series and my post, "How can grad programs best prepare students for the long haul", gave rise to some animated and ongoing discussion about (a) whether we should discourage people from trying enter into the profession (i.e. discourage people from going to grad school in philosophy), (b) how long PhDs should stay on the market before giving up, (c) whether our Long Journeys series is wrongly encouraging people to stay on the market, and more broadly, (d) whether we should be encouraging people to stay on the market or give up.

As someone who received my BA all the way back in 1998, started grad school in 1999, received my Phd in 2008, and finally obtained a tenure track job in 2015 after 7 years on the market (and 16 years after starting graduate school), these issues resonate with me personally. There were many times--both during my struggles in grad school and my struggles as a Visiting Assistant Professor--when I regretted ever going into philosophy, and several times over the years I came very close to giving up (at one point, I looked very seriously into career opportunities outside of the academy). And of course, as recent discussions here and elsewhere indicate, I am far from alone. 

Some questions about Killoren's Extended Narrativity Hypothesis

In my previous post, I presented an account of moral status in terms of final value and direct obligations. About a year ago, another featured author, David Killoren, presented his "Extended Narrativity Hypothesis" (ENH) to acount for a the different obligations we have towards livestock and our pets (which he sums up elsewhere as a reformed "animal caste system") (see more details here and here). He wrote,

f the Extended Narrativity Hypothesis is true, then there are at least three categories of morally important beings, which I label as follows: self-actualized persons (including intellectually normal human beings) who possess non-fungible value in virtue of their self-narration of their own lives; persons-by-proxy (including pets) who possess non-fungible value in virtue of others' narration of their lives; and non-persons (including livestock) who do not possess any non-fungible value.

 

This three-way division of morally important beings can be used to explain why humans, livestock, and pets seem to belong to distinct moral categories. This is a big advantage for the Extended Narrativity Hypothesis, in my opinion

- See more at: http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2014/11/the-extended-narrativity.html#sthash.f8al4xOA.dpuf

f the Extended Narrativity Hypothesis is true, then there are at least three categories of morally important beings, which I label as follows: self-actualized persons (including intellectually normal human beings) who possess non-fungible value in virtue of their self-narration of their own lives; persons-by-proxy (including pets) who possess non-fungible value in virtue of others' narration of their lives; and non-persons (including livestock) who do not possess any non-fungible value.

 

This three-way division of morally important beings can be used to explain why humans, livestock, and pets seem to belong to distinct moral categories. This is a big advantage for the Extended Narrativity Hypothesis, in my opinion

- See more at: http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2014/11/the-extended-narrativity.html#sthash.f8al4xOA.dpuf

If the Extended Narrativity Hypothesis is true, then there are at least three categories of morally important beings, which I label as follows: self-actualized persons (including intellectually normal human beings) who possess non-fungible value in virtue of their self-narration of their own lives; persons-by-proxy (including pets) who possess non-fungible value in virtue of others' narration of their lives; and non-persons (including livestock) who do not possess any non-fungible value.  

This three-way division of morally important beings can be used to explain why humans, livestock, and pets seem to belong to distinct moral categories. This is a big advantage for the Extended Narrativity Hypothesis, in my opinion.

f the Extended Narrativity Hypothesis is true, then there are at least three categories of morally important beings, which I label as follows: self-actualized persons (including intellectually normal human beings) who possess non-fungible value in virtue of their self-narration of their own lives; persons-by-proxy (including pets) who possess non-fungible value in virtue of others' narration of their lives; and non-persons (including livestock) who do not possess any non-fungible value.

 

This three-way division of morally important beings can be used to explain why humans, livestock, and pets seem to belong to distinct moral categories. This is a big advantage for the Extended Narrativity Hypothesis, in my opinion

- See more at: http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2014/11/the-extended-narrativity.html#sthash.f8al4xOA.dpuf

f the Extended Narrativity Hypothesis is true, then there are at least three categories of morally important beings, which I label as follows: self-actualized persons (including intellectually normal human beings) who possess non-fungible value in virtue of their self-narration of their own lives; persons-by-proxy (including pets) who possess non-fungible value in virtue of others' narration of their lives; and non-persons (including livestock) who do not possess any non-fungible value.

 

This three-way division of morally important beings can be used to explain why humans, livestock, and pets seem to belong to distinct moral categories. This is a big advantage for the Extended Narrativity Hypothesis, in my opinion

- See more at: http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2014/11/the-extended-narrativity.html#sthash.f8al4xOA.dpuf

f the Extended Narrativity Hypothesis is true, then there are at least three categories of morally important beings, which I label as follows: self-actualized persons (including intellectually normal human beings) who possess non-fungible value in virtue of their self-narration of their own lives; persons-by-proxy (including pets) who possess non-fungible value in virtue of others' narration of their lives; and non-persons (including livestock) who do not possess any non-fungible value.

 

This three-way division of morally important beings can be used to explain why humans, livestock, and pets seem to belong to distinct moral categories. This is a big advantage for the Extended Narrativity Hypothesis, in my opinion

- See more at: http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2014/11/the-extended-narrativity.html#sthash.f8al4xOA.dpuf

In the wake of my previous post, I'd like to offer a reply to David. While I am very sympathetic to the attempt to account for different obligations based on other features than just an animal's intrinsic properties, and while the ENH seems to plausibly account for some widespread intuitions about pets and livestock, I take issue with the way David frames the kind of value grounding our obligations and with his argument for generally excluding livetsock from the realm of narrative value.

Easing Burden for Economically Disadvantaged Applicants

By Wesley Buckwalter

Applying to academic jobs can be prohibitively costly. The reality is that academics apply to hundreds of jobs throughout the long road to hiring and different stages of their career. It sounds small at first, but is incredibly wasteful, really adds up, and may prevent very good applicants from otherwise applying due to finances.

There have been several discussions about some very simple things that could improve the situation. Of course, many departments may not have the flexibility or freedom to alter their application procedures set in place at their university. But just in case there is some freedom, I thought I would summarize things searches can do to ease the financial burden for economically disadvantaged applicants:

Long journeys part 6: Martin Lenz

(This is the sixth installment of our series of philosophers who have been on the job market for a long time - submissions - anonymous or named, are still welcome - send your story to helenldecruz @ gmail.com). 

Since 2012, I have been an associate professor at the University of Groningen (NL).

After receiving my PhD it took me eleven years to get a permanent position. The reason why I think it might be interesting to share my story is that I had most of my education and job market experience in Germany, which is special in that most academics ‘encouraged’ to do a Habilitation after receiving their PhD.

The main part of the Habilitation consists in writing a second book, preferably in a somewhat different area of specialisation, and might take five or up to ten years. Until very recently, there has been no such thing as a proper tenure track model in the German speaking countries. This means that it was and still is quite the norm to live on fixed term positions as a postdoc (if one is lucky enough to get one of those) until being “habilitiert”. But having one of the various kinds of postdoc positions or obtaining the Habilitation is not a guarantee for anything and might just result in unemployment. In the German speaking countries, then, the real run on permanent positions begins after the Habilitation, for many people at an age between 35 and 40, when there is uncomfortably little room to go for realistic alternatives outside academia.

New contributor: Wesley Buckwalter

It is my pleasure to introduce the Cocoon's newest contributor, Wesley Buckwalter. Wesley received his PhD from the City University of New York Graduate Center, and is currently Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Waterloo.

Wesley specializes in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science, and his work examines a wide variety of phenomena--knowledge, belief, delusion, consciousness, luck, morality, etc.--"in light of pragmatic factors that arise in the course of practical reasoning and decision-making important for our everyday lives." 

Wesley has published a ton of great stuff, and is co-editor [with Justin Sytsma] of the forthcoming Blackwell Companion to Experimental Philosophy. His other publications include:

John Turri & Wesley Buckwalter (forthcoming). Descartes’s Schism, Locke’s Reunion: Completing the Pragmatic Turn in Epistemology. American Philosophical Quarterly.

Wesley Buckwalter & Jonathan Schaffer (2015). Knowledge, Stakes, and Mistakes. Noûs 49 (2):201–234.

Wesley Buckwalter (2014). Intuition Fail: Philosophical Activity and the Limits of Expertise. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (2).

James R. Beebe & Wesley Buckwalter (2010). The Epistemic Side-Effect Effect. Mind and Language 25 (4):474-498.

Welcome!

Request for submissions: new series, "real philosophy jobs"

One thing we have been trying to do at the Cocoon lately--in our Job-Market Boot Camp, Mentoring Program and Long Journeys series--is to provide job-candidates and other early-career people (e.g. grad students, people thinking of going to grad school, etc.) with information and other resources they might find helpful. 

As I briefly explained here, one of the things that I found the most surprising after grad school is just how dissimilar different types of academic jobs are. In grad school, most (and perhaps all) of one's professors have only worked at R1/research institutions. Consequently, much of the information one receives about the job-market--and one's general conception of what academic jobs are like--can be quite narrow. I, for one, pretty much assumed that academic jobs are generally sort of similar. Yes, I thought, you might teach a bit more at a teaching institution--but a faculty job is a faculty job, right? Alas, my experience once I was out of grad school a few years, had a couple of jobs, and talked to other people I met about their jobs, is that different types of jobs can be incredibly different--and in ways I wish I'd known as a grad student.

Job-Market Boot Camp, Part 24: The Diversity Statement

A reader writes in:

Coming from the UK system, I found the Job Market Boot Camp series you ran on the Philosophers’ Cocoon very helpful. For a recent job application I was asked to submit a document I hadn’t encountered before: a diversity statement. I was wondering if it might be worth a supplementary entry in the series.

Because I am presently on a search committee and not in a position to give advice on this issue, I thought it might be most helpful to open up the topic for community discussion. It would be most helpful, I expect, if past or present search committee members were to weigh in on what they look for in these statements. Thanks, in advance, to everyone who chimes in!

Long journeys part 5: Rebecca Bamford

(This is the fifth installment of our series of philosophers who have been on the job market for a long time - submissions - anonymous or named, are still welcome). 

I am currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy (tenure-track) in the Department of Philosophy & Political Science at Quinnipiac University. I received my PhD in 2004 from Durham University, in the UK. I had a one-year visiting position at the University of Bradford in 2003-04, after which I held an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Rhodes University in South Africa (2004-06), and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory University (2006-07), which brought my husband (who is not an academic) and I to the US. 

I went on the US job market in 2006, immediately after arriving at Emory, and with no idea what I was doing. Some Emory faculty kindly read over my materials and patiently explained some of the basic expectations surrounding the US academic job market. I got three offers, all for non-tenure-track, multiple year positions. In retrospect this was a huge stroke of luck: I had no teaching evaluations from US institutions available, my transcript (which uses the UK grading scale) looks to US eyes as though I failed everything (so much so that I ended up putting an explanation of the grading scale on the front of it), and had published/in press something like four articles, which looking back, was nowhere near enough. I accepted an offer from Hunter College, CUNY, to become what they call a “Substitute” Assistant Professor for a year, with the possibility of renewal for a second year.

I tried the job market again in 2007-08 (somewhat reluctantly, because I was enjoying my time at Hunter) and - knowing I had a four-semester limit on my CUNY contract - for a third time in 2008-09. The latter was, as we all know, a disastrous job market year because of the financial crisis. At pretty much the last minute, just as I was resigning myself to unemployment, I was recruited to a tenure-track job in a new interdisciplinary health sciences program at the University of Minnesota Rochester. I was grateful to get the position and learned a lot from my students and colleagues, but I decided to go on the job market again after three years in order to find a position where I could teach and do research focusing on philosophy. I was lucky enough to secure my current tenure-track job in the 2011-12 job market season.

In total, I moved institution five times between 2003 and 2012 - across three different continents - before finding a tenure-track position in philosophy. 

Potential email problems

For some reason, some of my emails have been ending up in people's "spam" folders recently. I am not quite sure what the problem is, but if anyone thinks they should have received an email from me, I would ask you to please check your spam folder. Among other things, I recently sent out a mass email to presenters at this week's upcoming Third Annual Philosophers' Cocoon Philosophy Conference, and am worried some people may not have received the email [which contained some very important information]. If you did not receive that email--particularly if you are presenting at the conference via Skype--please email me at marvan@ut.edu and/or send me a facebook message at your earliest convenience.

How can grad programs best prepare students for the long haul?

In the comments section of Dr. M's post in the Long Journeys series, Anon writes:

First, faculty don't really advise PhD. students about a larger research trajectory in their dissertation phase (or at least no one ever advised anyone at my school about that). I haven't been able to land a tenure track job yet, but if I had there's a good chance I wouldn't get tenure. I completely hit a wall after my dissertation and I realize in retrospect that while my project was good for a couple of very solid papers it wasn't a publishable book and there wasn't much to do after that. (I could have strung it along into another paper or two I think but I was sick of the topic myself). My point is that in the preliminary phase of the dissertation where I was narrowing my topic down no one even mentioned this as something to think about. If anything people urged a more modest and self-contained project so I could get some papers out of it, get it done, and get out. I'm not blaming the faculty; it's natural to focus a lot on getting your students the first job and forget what comes after it given how bad this market is. But grad students ought to think a bit more about the long term prospects of their research than I, or most of my cohort, did and if they don't their advisors ought to give them a hard nudge in that direction.