The Philosophers' Cocoon

A puzzle regarding anonymized review revisited

A few weeks ago I discussed some puzzles regarding anonymized peer-review, once again raising the question of whether academic philosophy might be better off adopting the peer-review practices in physics and mathematics. In physics and mathematics, it is common practice to everyone uploading non-anomymized papers to a public ArXiv prior to journal submission. Once papers are made public, they are then publicly discussed/vetted by other members of the profession. While this model "compromises" anonymized review [as everyone knows who wrote a given paper before it is submitted to a journal], the model has many virtues that I believe may outweigh traditional anonymized review. First, the public model lends itself to much faster dissemination of new information/new findings, as no one has to "withhold" new research from public presentation for months or even years for the sake of anonymized review. Second, the public model also arguably counteracts bias and chance better than traditional anonymized review--for whereas traditional anonymized review places publication decisions in the hands of the very few [and a paper can bounce around until one gets luck with the "right" reviewers], the public vetting process in math and physics enables large numbers of people to make public arguments as to a given paper's merits and/or deficiencies. As a follower of contemporary physics, my impression is that this works incredibly well: when a new paper is posted to the ArXiv, people publicly debate its merits, and it typically becomes very clear publicly whether the paper is good, bad, groundbreaking, etc. 

Today, though, I want to reflect a bit more on a couple of concerns about traditional anonymized review that I only briefly alluded to in my earlier post: the issue of information dissemination. In particular, I want to suggest that traditional anonymized review in philosophy might have pernicious effects on public debate, incentivizing authors to hide arguments from public view during critical periods of intense public debate.

On Publications, The CV, and "Purgatory Pubs"

By Justin Caouette

This post is somewhat related to the last couple of posts by Marcus regarding the CV (see here and here) and it's also related to the job market bootcamp that he and Helen run) but it's a bit narrow which is why I thought a new post would be apt.

I've been curious about when to put certain publications on the dossier, so, any advice from the community at large will be helpful here.

I have been commissioned to write a total of 5 book chapters over the next year. Some of them I have already signed contracts for while others I have not (just waiting on the paperwork). For some of these chapters I have written extensive abstracts while others I have written no abstract at all. And still others I have completed drafts and have even discussed the content and made changes in light of comments from fellow philosophers and in one case an editor. Okay, so here's my question: when do I put these papers on the CV? Here are the options I have considered and I have ended up endorsing one of them (option 2) , but I'm not so sure this is the best practice, so, let me know if I have done the right thing, or, if another option, one not considered here, seems a bit better.

Notes from both sides of the market, part 2: organizing one's CV

In my post on putting together one's actual CV in last year's Job-Market Boot Camp series, I discussed the overall organization and content of a well-designed CV. One thing that I did not say very much about, however--and which I have heard many people raise questions about--is whether it is a good idea to have different versions of one's CV for different types of institutions. For instance, as 'Tom' asks in the comments section of my first post in the present series:

Here's a question I (and probably many others) have had about Ye olde cv: people sometimes talk about *presenting themselves as* a researcher or as a teacher, and talk about it as if it's something one does starting with one's cv. This confuses me. My cv lists all my teaching experience and all my research experience. Is presenting myself as a researcher a matter of the order teaching/research occur on the cv? Is there something else I do on my cv that committee members read as me presenting myself this way or that way?

In last year's post, I wrote very briefly about this:

General organization of the CV: I've heard from some people that after listing your AOS/AOC, education, you may want to organize your CV according to the job-type you're applying for--for instance, research first then teaching for research jobs, but the other way around for teaching jobs. I don't know anyone who has tried this, but I will say this: I always put my research first, have been a productive researcher, and it did not seem to harm my chances at all with teaching schools (the vast majority of my interviews over the past few years were at teaching schools, including a few community colleges). 

Interestingly, no one commented on or raised questions about these remarks--which leaves the question relatively open: is it a good idea to "frame" one's CV differently for different jobs? I'm really curious to hear readers' experiences here.

Sunday Sounds

 

Notes from both sides of the market, part 1: building a strong CV

Last year, Helen and I ran a "Job Market Boot Camp" series offering current and future job candidates in academic philosophy advice on a variety of issues. Reading through the series again this morning, I still stand by the advice we offered. However, it also occurred to me that since running the series, I have had some career experiences that might warrant revisiting some of the topics in the series to potentially add some relevant information to advice previously given. In particular, I have worked at a mid-sized liberal arts [MLAC] university for about seven years now, and served on my first search committee last year. Although I do not think it is appropriate to share anything about how I or my committee deliberated [or what "I look for" in a job-candidate], I think my overall career experience may have provided me with some additional general information that job-candidates may find helpful.

So, what I hope to do in this new series is to simply revisit the topics Helen and I covered in the boot camp, adding information and suggestions that I believe candidates may find potentially relevant/helpful. As always, I want to emphasize that the suggestions I give in the series is just that: my suggestions, not necessarily the best or "correct" suggestions. As with most things, people will presumably disagree on what job-market advice is good. All I can promise to do--and, I think, all anyone can really do, given that there are few clear facts [viz. scientific study] regarding what makes candidates competitive/successful on the philosophy job market--is provide concrete evidence for the suggestions I provide.

As in the Boot Camp, I will begin today by discussing the issue of building a competitive CV. In last year's post, I focused primarily (though not exclusively) on publications, arguing that my evidence suggests that all legitimately peer-reviewed publications--not just publications in highly-ranked journals, but lower-ranked journals as well [though not "vanity" journals]--can improve one's competitiveness on the market. I will return to and add to some of the evidence for this conclusion below. However, my post last year focused only a little bit on other aspects of the CV, such as teaching experience, university service, and letters of recommendation. In today's post, I will spend most of my time adding to the previous suggestions I made on those issues.

Second call for volunteer reviewers

I'd like to thank everyone who responded to my first call for volunteer reviewers for this year's Philosophers' Cocoon Philosophy Conference. Your help reviewing papers has been invaluable, and I am very grateful! Alas, I still have some papers that I need to review, and am hoping a few more people might be willing to chip in to evaluate a paper or two. As of today, I still have unreviewed papers on the following topics:

• Induction
• Feminist philosophy Reviewers found
• Moral philosophy [contractualism]
• Racism
• Emergence [in biology and philosophy of science]
• Non-cognitivism in metaethics Reviewers found
• Thomas Reid
• Epicureanism
• Transformative Experience

If you have any background in any of these areas and might be willing to give a paper a quick look, all I am looking for is a recommendation [viz. "thumbs up/include" or "thumbs down/don't include"], relative to the conference's primary aims [of being a "workshop"-type conference where early-career philosophers, e.g. grad students and early-career faculty, seek to help each other improve promising professional-level work]. If you're interested and willing, please just email me at marvan@ut.edu -- again, I'd be very appreciative for your help!

Reader query: Following my passion or writing strategically?

An anonymous Cocoon reader asks the following:

I’m a postdoc so I do not have a permanent or tenure-track job yet, and I am wondering about publication strategies. I’ve noticed that there are some "hot topics" in philosophy that seem to get a lot of airplay in general high-prestige philosophy journals. Given that publications in such journals matter for job applications, my question is to what extent I should redirect my research to write on these topics. Or do you think I should rather write on topics that I care deeply about, even though these topics aren’t the most easy to get published? 

I thought this is a great question and I would be interested to hear what readers think. My sense for this stage of career is that a mixed strategy is best. If you notice that a topic is trending in philosophy journals, and you have an idea of an original contribution in that field, I would recommend to go for it, write that paper up, and submit it to high-prestige journals that have a publication history on the topic. 

But I would recommend against abandoning the philosophical topics one cares deeply about because they would not be marketable. There is a danger that one sacrifices too much in the pursuit of a permanent position, and abandoning the things that led one to be passionate about philosophy to begin with seems a sacrifice too much. In the quest for a permanent job, it is important not to lose the joy of philosophy.

Moreover, the deliberate redirection of one's own interests to make them more marketable sounds like an instance of what Kristie Dotson has termed "testimonial smothering", whereby a testifier truncates her own testimony to those things that others are willing and able to hear. It is concerning that topics such as philosophy of race or feminist philosophy, or philosophy from non-western traditions hardly get any airplay at all in general journals, and do not routinely form part of strong graduate programs. If specialists in such fields deliberately smother their own testimony, that exacerbates the problem and we risk increasing insularity and decreasing connection with other fields and society at large. So there is also an ethical dimension to our publication choices. 

What strategies have readers tried to grapple with this problem?

Mentoring program: second call for signups!

I am happy to report that Helen and I have now matched a good number of the mentors and mentees that have signed up so far for this year's run of our Job-Market Mentoring Program. Currently, we have around a half-dozen mentees and a half-dozen mentors we have not yet matched, as there aren't any clear matches between their respective research areas, job-market needs/specialties, etc. So, in the hope of arranging some better matches and helping a larger number of candidates in need, Helen and I would like to extend this second call for signups. If you are a job-candidate in need or a tenure-track or tenured faculty member who might be willing to devote some time to helping a job-candidate in need, please do sign up here!

Placement-director submission: a job-market quandary

A reader wrote in today with the following query:

I am a first-year placement director at [redacted]. I recently got a question from one of my graduate students, and while I have pretty strong leanings about the answer, I'm wondering if you might float it to your readers to get more feedback. I looked around through the archives and didn't see this question discussed, but I very well could have missed it. 

The student in question has not had any success on the job market for the last couple of years, and he has now completely exhausted his funding from the university. This year, he has a shot at a one-year position that is a 4/4 with little research support and low pay and is located on the opposite side of the country. Taking into account moving expenses, the loss of his wife's job and time it would take to find a new one, and his salary, this would be a net loss financially. Further, it would inhibit his ability to improve his CV for the next go-round on the job market.

His question was this: how much worse off would he be on the job market next year if he did not take a philosophy position this year, instead using the time to work on getting pieces of his dissertation published, presenting at conferences, etc., versus taking a VAP or adjunct position? My sense is that it would be much harder to get a long-term (or even a cushier short-term) position after being "out" of philosophy for even a short period of time. But I could be wrong!

I will be curious to see what readers think--especially, any readers who have served on search-committees: so, if you have served on a search-committee, please do weigh in!

How do you get things done?

In my experience, one thing early-career academics [and some non-early-career people] often struggle with is getting things done. In fact, I had serious problems here in the past myself. In graduate school, after I completed my comprehensive exams I got basically nothing of any consequence done for about two years. It wasn't for lack of trying. I did "work" just about every day: reading, writing [or, at least, attempting to, often unfruitfully], etc. I just struggled actually getting stuff accomplished. And my problems did not end when I finished my degree. In my first year at my first job [at UBC], I remember spending my entire first semester messing around with a couple of paper drafts for months on end, never finishing either of them. I was wasting a ridiculous amount of time, but, for all that, I just didn't know a better to approach things.

My wife, who is an early-career academic in another field [and who happily encouraged me to mention her in this post], reminded me of these issues when she approached me yesterday asking how I manage to get things done. You see, right now she is struggling with many of the same things I struggled with early on in my career: getting papers drafted or revised in a reasonable amount of time while studying for her comprehensive exams and doing all of the other things she needs to do [respond to emails, meet with collaborators, etc.]. My wife approached me with her question because, whatever limitations I have [and, as with most people, I admittedly have very many], not getting stuff done is no longer one of them. I get stuff done now--I get papers drafted and revised quickly, and manage to get all of the other things I need to get done [teaching, assessment duties, volunteer work, etc.]--without missing deadlines. This isn't meant to be self-congratulatory.  It's simply a descriptive fact: I used to struggle mightily to get things done, and I don't anymore. As I explained here, I recognize that in sharing my perspective there is always a risk that saying things like this may come across as self-congratulatory--but, for all that, my sincere aim in sharing is to try to be helpful. I hope readers take my remarks in that spirit. I don't "know it all" by any means, but what I can do is share some of my struggles and experiences grappling with them, in the hope that my remarks can potentially help others facing similar struggles. 

Anyway, because I used to struggle with these issues, and know there are others out there who probably struggle with them as well, I thought it might be a good idea if we shared with each other some of our strategies for getting things done. I will begin by sharing mine, and hope some of you share some of your strategies as well. As always, I do not suppose that "my ways are the right ways." I fully recognize that we are all different, and that what works for one person might not work for another. Still, be that as it may, I think it may be useful to share our strategies with each other--as, from experience, I can say that simply trying to find effective strategies through little more than personal trial and error isn't...well, all that effective. Sharing our strategies with each other may, at the very least, help us see how other people do things, and perhaps try out their strategies to see if they are useful in our own case. In any case, this is my hope!

I will begin by sharing a general macro-level strategy for getting things done that I have found very useful, and then turn to some much more specific micro-level strategies. The macro-level strategy is simply this: I have found that, for me, the single most important strategy for getting things done is having effective daily routines. Allow me to explain.

Some puzzles regarding anonymized review

A number of philosophers in my social media feeds have raised questions recently about anonymized journal reviewing: specifically, about cases where they suspect the identify of the paper's author, given the author's manner of citations--specifically, the manner in which it appears that the author may be citing themselves throughout their manuscript. The standard case of this is something like the following:

One gets asked to review a paper. The paper repeatedly cites a not-very-well-known author X, placing that author's previous work at the center of the paper under submission, developing X's previous work in new directions. Since X is not very well-known, it seems likely to the reviewer/potential-reviewer that X is the author of the current paper. 

A number of different people in my social media feeds have recently raised cases like this, asking social media friends what they should do. Should they decline to review? Should they alert the editor that anonymized review has potentially been compromised, and let the editor decide? Etc. Although there have been disagreements in my feeds about what the right answer to these questions are, the most popular answers seem to be that reviewers in this kind of situation should either go ahead with the review if they are not certain who the author is, or alternatively, let the journal editor[s] know of the situation and let the editor decide. These both seem like reasonable answers to me, especially the latter--as reviewers are tasked with reviewing manuscripts by the journal editors [who therefore, it seems to me, should be consulted if there is any doubt].

However, I'd like to step back from these questions to some broader questions about how anonymized review can be compromised, and what ought to be done to "protect" anonymized review. As readers will see, I think there are some very serious puzzles to grapple with here that seem to me inadequately addressed at present--and indeed, I am not sure that anonymized review can be protected in a way that is either [A] effective, and/or [B] fair to authors. Let me explain.

Saturday Sounds

It's summertime, which [as in past years] means it's music time! As longtime readers of the Cocoon may [or may not] know, I used to be a musician -- so I like to share music I like from time to time. Today I'm going to share a few songs by my favorite Swedish group [well, besides the obvious]: the band Kent, who just released their final album after 26 years together. Enjoy!

  

 

 

 

Reader submission on economic diversity

An anonymous early-career reader submitted the following post:

Three Tips for Departments Interested in Economically Diverse Graduate Students

1. Departments interested in having a socioeconomically diverse graduate student population should work with the APA to develop a thorough guide to admissions and send it out to every Philosophy department they can reach. Sharp undergrads from poor backgrounds are far more likely to be at a state school close to home. These departments are much more likely to be outside the mainstream of philosophy and be unable to offer helpful advice to applicants. For example, I thought (wrongly) that the GRE mattered. I spent hours with my mom quizzing me on vocabulary and spent hundreds on test prep materials. When I scored in the 99th percentile I was thrilled and thought surely some programs would be impressed. I wish I had known that all those resources would have been better spent elsewhere. By the way, as an undergrad at a state school, I found the PGR very useful, as I didn’t have access to faculty that were plugged in to the culture of the profession in the same way that faculty at top research departments would be. Hopefully this guide would be true to the process and not mindless platitudes.

2. Graduate schools should either abandon the GRE (since many ad comms will bend over backwards to say it doesn't matter in decisions), or at least not require an official score report until an applicant is provisionally admitted. That's an enormous expense for underprivileged applicants. I happen to think, however, that the GRE is the one level playing field for poor undergraduates. Underprivileged students will be far less likely to have letters from famous philosophers, extensive feedback on their writing, or inflated grades. The one uncorrupted component of the process might well be the GRE. Maybe the quantitative section shouldn’t be taken too seriously, but the verbal section really should count for a lot. I know many faculty are keen to prioritize their own “expert” judgments over objective metrics, but surely we understand that this is one of the ways in which bias in favor of privileged applicants operates.

3. Admissions should omit the institutional affiliation and the names of the letter writers until the later rounds of the process. This way, at least, reasonable applicants from state schools can survive, and no one can squeak in based on pedigree alone. Now, here is an admittedly radical suggestion: reserve a spot for an applicant coming from a less prestigious school. I guarantee that there are enough excellent applicants that a good program could get a phenomenal student coming from a state school. Many state school students go to terminal MA programs as they aren’t able to get into a PhD the first time around. My own impression is that the well regarded MA programs are a goldmine of excellent applicants, many from non-prestigious backgrounds. It does seem odd to me that the US has not adopted the standard of the UK in making an MA a prerequisite for a PhD. 

Mentoring program update, announcement & clarification

This is just a quick update on the Cocoon's Job-Market Mentoring Program, as well as an announcement and request [see below]. I am happy to report that since the program's relaunch a little over a week ago, Helen and I have matched seven mentor-mentee pairs. We are currently attempting to make one or two matches per day, so if you have signed up and have not been matched yet, know that we have not forgotten about you and are doing our best to find you a suitable match!

So much for the update. Now for the request. ;) As was the case last year, we currently have significantly more mentees in need signed up for the program than we do potential mentors. Accordingly, we would like to ask again for potential mentors to please sign up here for the program. We can really use all the help we can get, and there are mentee candidates signed up who are very much in need. More specifically, we could really use mentors who have some personal and/or professional background in the following areas [respectively]:

• Continental philosophy
• Ancient philosophy
• Low socioeconomic [SES] personal background
• Epistemology and philosophy of science
• LGBT*Q 
• Philosophy of time [x2 candidates in need]
• Logic and philosophy of math
• Ethics
• Political philosophy

Finally, as we do not currently have any women philosophers signed up as potential mentees, Helen and I would like to clarify that women candidates are encouraged to apply to our program. Although our mentoring program webpage states that the program is for, "all those in need who cannot utilize the Mentoring Program for Women in Philosophy", the webpage also states that our program is, "open to job-candidates of any gender", and that we simply, "encourage women candidates to approach The Job Candidate Mentoring Program for Women in Philosophy first, as our program is intended to complement rather than compete with that program." So, if you are a woman in need of job-market mentorship, please do sign up for our program. All we ask is that you check with the Mentoring Program for Women first to see if they have any open slots. Thanks again to all of the mentors who have signed up so far. Helen and I are very grateful for your help, as I suspect are the candidates you are helping!

On learning not to rely on a "win" to make us feel good

In the article Getting out of a hole, the pseudonymous blogger Acclimatrix writes about the challenges of being in a low point in their pre-tenure life. One particular bit caught my attention

The hardest part about being in a hole is that you feel like you, really need a “win” to get out.  The win is like a rope; it’s a quick exit from a dark, lonely place. That line of thinking is a trap, though, because the rope is totally outside your control. That “win” — a funded proposal, an award, a new relationship, or some other really great news — may never come, but that doesn’t mean you should give up. The only surefire way to get out of a hole is to climb out. Ropes are great, but you don’t need them. A little boost or an outstretched hand from a friend or loved one helps. But sometimes, it’s just going to be a long, tough, slog of indeterminate duration. Come up with a playlist of Power Songs and get to work.

I recognise this feeling. I am not in a hole by any means - I love my job and I feel privileged to have a permanent position. I enjoy the town I live in, have friends, hobbies, a family, supportive colleagues and nice students.

Still, a new job comes with its challenges and one of those is to find new routines and to balance research with teaching and administration. I applied for four grants this past year: one was a European Research Council grant with a ridiculous amount of funding for a project in the philosophy of cognitive science.  I knew the odds were very low, going into it. I knew that as a matter of fact, centuries of research time are wasted each year on unfunded proposals. But I led myself to believe that with my current track record, I stood a chance and that the project had merit. My application - 60 pages in total, most of these single-spaced - took the same amount of work I would have put into 3 substantial articles, and it was not funded.  

I also applied for a smaller research grant, which would have allowed me to explore the philosophy of fiction. I was hopeful. The grant awarders sounded enthusiastic about my proposal, I had got all the external funding I would need to carry the outreach part of it out, and I was shortlisted (one of 50 shortlisted) from over 300 applicants. Unfortunately, mine was not among the 21 awarded proposals. I did receive two other, smaller grants I applied for, one to organise a workshop on fiction writing for philosophers from the British Society of Aesthetics, and one for a prize competition for a philosophical short story from the APA Berry Fund. Moral of the story is, I guess, apply for many grants if you expect to get some, and expect to pour in a lot of effort for nothing.

A Dissertation Retrospective

Hey ya'll. Sorry for the radio silence. I've been rushing to finish my dissertation so I can start a new gig in the Fall, and its been all consuming. I'll be designing some new courses from scratch later this summer, at which point I plan to continue the syllabus design series. But in the meantime, since all I'm thinking about lately is my dissertation, I thought I'd share my impressions of the process. So join me after the break for a look back...

New contributor: "Aubrey Procter"

I am happy to welcome the Cocoon's newest contributor, "Aubrey Procter" [pseudonym]. Aubrey is an assistant professor of philosophy at an American university who has published a book and several articles and book chapters. Welcome aboard!

Tenenbaum on our duties to grad students

Sergio Tenenbaum has an interesting guest post today at Daily Nous on our duties to actual and possible graduate students. Toward the end of the post, he lists what he believes to be some of the "less obvious ones in an admittedly dogmatic fashion" [my boldface-explained below]:

1. We should be extremely open with prospective students visiting our department (we have not only the negative duty of not lying but also positive duties of disclosure, such as informing students if it is unlikely that they’ll be able to work with someone in their field, and even letting them know if we think that they should choose another program).
2. Faculty should typically accept every request to supervise as long as they are competent and not oversubscribed (and the threshold for “oversubscribed” should be a number that toddlers cannot count to).
3. Graduate departments should fund conference travel for students and ensure that graduate students interact with visiting speakers.
4. Sabbaticals, leaves, etc. should not interfere with graduate supervision (I think this is obvious, but since there is an explicit rule to this effect in my department (while we have no explicit rules, for instance, forbidding us from hitting our students), I decided to list it here anyway).
5. Graduate departments should put a special effort into helping students prepare their applications for teaching jobs. Most faculty in PhD programs have never been on a search committee for a teaching job. Departments could bring in people from teaching institutions to help.
6. Recognizing that many graduates will end up in non-academic careers, graduate departments should support non-academic career-planning, for example by connecting students with earlier graduates who have made successful transitions from the doctoral program to positions outside academia.

I'm on board with most--and perhaps all--of these, but like a few other commenters at Daily Nous, I would like to say a few things about [2].

Before I get to that though, and as a preliminary to lead into my discussion of [2], I would like to comment on another part of Tenenbaum's post--the part where he reports grappling as a graduate student, retrospectively, with his decision to enter grad school. Tenenbaum writes:

A brief interlude: a blogging trilemma, and looking forward

Long time readers of the Cocoon may [or may not?] have noticed that I have been posting less often the past few months. Because it has always been my aim to be open and honest here--and because, as I will explain below, I have been struggling with a kind of blogging trilemma--I would like to share where I am at, and how I hope to proceed.

The truth is, the past several months I have found it difficult to [A] compose new posts that don't go over ground I've amply gone over before, which [B] I think would be of interest to the blog's target audience [e.g. early-career philosophers], while also [C] hitting the "right notes." Let me explain. Perhaps part of the problem I am facing is that I have been blogging for three years. Like all people, my realm of experience is unfortunately narrow--restricted to my own life and perspective in the discipline. Indeed, over the past several years I have blogged about the things I've experienced: my time on the job-market, learning how to publish and teach effectively, my philosophical views, and thoughts on various aspects of the profession, etc. But, of course, over a long-ish period of time, it is not unnatural for it to become increasingly difficult to find new features of one's life and perspective to talk about--and, although I'm sure I sometimes don't avoid it, I hate to "sound like a broken record", commenting on the same things over and over again.

However, when I introspect, I don't think that is the heart of the issue I am dealing with. When I introspect, at least, the difficult I am having composing new posts seems to me to be more the result of my career-stage. When I began this blog four years ago [in 2012], I was squarely an early-career philosopher: I had been out of graduate school for several years, was very much struggling on the job-market, struggling to learn how to publish, struggling to find my feet at a teacher, and so on. Hence, blogging for a safe and supportive blog for early-career philosophers came quite naturally: all I had to do is blog about the things I was struggling with. I was, so to speak, "in the heart of it." Now, however, I am increasingly finding myself in a different position--closer to a "mid-career" philosopher than an early-career one. For although I am still untenured, I have now been out of graduate school for eight years and just passed my three-year/mid-tenure review [thanks to a reduced tenure-clock]. Consequently, although I am still grappling with many struggles--both as a human being and as a philosopher--the things I am grappling with are very different than the squarely "early-career" struggles I was grappling with just a few years ago. 

My experience, as I will now explain, is that this has made it more difficult to blog on topics directly of interest to this blog's intended audience [early-career philosophers]--at least in a way that I am psychologically and morally at ease with. Allow me to explain.

Call for volunteer reviewers

UPDATED

I am beginning to review submissions for this year's Philosophers' Cocoon Philosophy Conference, and am hoping some of the Cocoon's readership might be willing to chip in to review some papers! Some of the paper areas include:

• wellbeing
• neuroethics
• personal identity
• the problem of induction
• friendship
• logic
• epistemology
• feminist philosophy
• cognitive science
• religious faith
• reflective equilibrium
• A-theory of time
• hard problem of consciousness
• reasons
• universals and particulars
• racism
• emergence
• moral realism
• divine simplicity
• markets for organs
• Heidegger
• religious experience
• epistemic modals
• philosophy of emotions
• grounding
• noncognitivist semantics
• Thomas Reid
• the nature of physicalism
• knowledge attributions
• Humean theory of motivation
• Epicureanism
• visual content
• Quine and Carnap
• political identity
• transformative experience
• the explanatory gap

If you're interested in quickly reading a paper on any of the above topics, please do let me know--I would be very grateful for your help. As an aside, I am only looking for a judgment [not detailed comments] on whether the paper is suitable for presentation at the conference, relative to [A] the conference's aim of improving papers, and [B] the fact that the conference is pitched at early-career philosophers [e.g. both early-career faculty and grad students]. In other words, reviewing a paper shouldn't take a great deal of time: a quick read and impression of the paper's suitability for the conference should suffice.

Anyway, if you're interested, please just email me at marvan@ut.edu along with the area of the paper you would like to read. Many thanks in advance to everyone who volunteers!

UPDATE: if you volunteer, the number of papers you review is up to you! If you only want to review one, that's great. If you want to do more, that's great too. Turnaround times are very flexible as well.

Dorsey on intuitive bedrock and the philosophical enterprise

Dale Dorsey (Kansas) has an interesting post up today at Daily Nous and OUP Blog concerning "intuitive bedrock and the philosophical enterprise." Dorsey writes,

Imagine a person who spends their entire life sitting on the couch watching and rewatching Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. He does nothing else, gains no education, no relationships with other people, no family, no friends. But he, nevertheless, loves his life, he values everything about it. He is constantly offered the opportunity to do something different, and never chooses to do so. Indeed, his choices are not the result of a lack of information or imagination—he understands perfectly well what it would like to do something else. But he so loves watching the movie that he is simply unconvinced that any alternative would be better for him.

Is this person leading a good life, at least for his own sake? Many are tempted to say “no”. After all, this life is not at all well-rounded, it maintains no knowledge or genuine appreciation of the beautiful, does not engage rational capacities (beyond, say, the bare minimum required to rewind a VHS tape). But others say “yes”. After all, what more is required for the good life for a person that they value it highly, perhaps under conditions of full information?

It seems we may have reached “intuitive bedrock”. In so many areas of inquiry (though, perhaps, not all), philosophical argument ends up bottoming out in a mere clash of intuitions, of considered judgments. But what happens now?

Because these considered judgments will help determine the content and structure of our philosophical theorizing...[it would appear that we]...need to settle which of these intuitions are the right ones.

To put my cards on the table, this seems like an impossible task. Indeed, it’s a task that seems (almost by definition) outside the bounds of philosophical argument...But there’s an alternative. Rather than seeing ourselves as answering the “big questions”, as it were, we see ourselves as exploring how to construct alternative theories, what such theories must take on board, their relations and interconnections without settling which account of the “big question” is the right one.

I think Dorsey may be right about one thing--namely, that if and when we truly reach "intuitive bedrock", there may be nothing left for philosophers to do than explore alternative theories, examining their relations and interconnections, etc. However, I also want to suggest that the [admittedly brief] picture he draws of how and when "intuitive bedrock" occurs gestures towards some important methodological lessons.

Recent Work by Cocooners [March-May 2016]

The following works by Cocoon contributors were either published or uploaded to philpapers during the months of March through May:

Marcus Arvan (2016). Rightness as Fairness: A Moral and Political Theory. Palgrave MacMillan.

Marcus Arvan, Errata - Rightness as Fairness: A Moral and Political Theory.

Wesley Buckwalter (2016). Intuition Fail: Philosophical Activity and the Limits of Expertise. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (2):378-410.

Anthony Carreras (forthcoming). Amicably Deceived. Philosophical Papers.

Jason Chen (2016). One Child: Do We Have a Right to More? Sarah Conly, 2016 New York, Oxford University Press 248 Pp., $26.81. [REVIEW] Journal of Applied Philosophy 33 (2):n/a-n/a.

Trevor Hedberg (2016). Optimizing Hope: A Response to Nolt. In Andrew Brei (ed.), Ecology, Ethics, and Hope. Rowman & Littlefield 65-82.

Moti Mizrahi (2016). Why Be an Intellectually Humble Philosopher? Axiomathes 26 (2):205-218.

Moti Mizrahi (2016). Why Gettier Cases Are Misleading. Logos and Episteme 7 (1):31-44.

Anyone I missed? Just let me know and I will update the list!