The Philosophers' Cocoon

Reader query on pursuing a PhD in the UK

In response to our most recent "how can we help you?" post, 'Potential PhD' wrote in:

I'm applying for a PhD, but now starting to wonder whether I really want to do it. To provide some background/context, I'm in the UK, so doing the PhD would mean writing the thesis without having any taught courses. I already have a master's, which I graduated from last year. The PhD would start next September, but if I want to apply for funding, I need to submit my PhD application, including research proposal, by January.

I love philosophy. I think there are lots of reasons why we need more philosophy in the world (or perhaps not more philosophy as such, but more public philosophy). I understand that academic jobs are incredibly difficult to get, and I don't have my heart set on going down that path. However, I do want to be a philosopher, i.e. devote a significant amount of my time to productive philosophical activity, even if that doesn't mean becoming an academic, or even doing something philosophy-related for a living. For that reason, and also for my own satisfaction, I want to become the best philosopher I can be, and a PhD seems like the obvious way to improve my skills.

On the other hand, I'm not sure if I want to spend three years focusing on one narrow topic, and if I don't really plan on becoming an academic, I'm wondering whether it's worth doing that. Though I'm not equally interested in all areas of philosophy, there are lots of issues I'd be interested in working on, and I don't want to become a narrow specialist if I don't need to. Or is spending that much time working through one problem the best way to improve my philosophy skills? The advice I've been given about the research proposal is that, although it's provisional and they understand that the project will evolve, it needs to be as specific as "I'm going to argue that P" with an explanation of how I will defend P that situates it in a significant body of literature.

Realistically, then, I need to do something related to my master's dissertation because that's where I know the literature the best. I'm also under the impression that that's what's expected. I'm still interested in my dissertation topic, and I've made contact with a potential supervisor who is keen to work with me on it.

However, I feel very ambivalent about the topic on a personal level, because it's about a demographic group that I belong to, and I don't want to fall in to the trap where people think that, because I belong to group x, I must work on issues pertaining to x. Some people (not academic philosophers specifically) have told me that x would be the particular thing I'd have interesting things to say about, and I do resent that a little because I don't want my life or identity to be reduced to it. I have other interests, too. I thought about steering it away from how the problem of y applies to group x and just focusing on the problem of y in general; I brought up this ambivalence with my potential supervisor, who said that writing about group x might help me to get funding.

Apart from issues with the topic, I'm not sure anymore whether it's worth the costs (not just financial) for someone who isn't necessarily aiming to become an academic. I might try to get into a non-academic role within a university, and I'd thought that becoming a student again might help me to get some more relevant work experience as it would open up opportunities for casual/part-time work that's only available to students. I did a little of that sort of work as an undergraduate, but during my master's I didn't have the time or energy for anything but my degree, so now I'm thinking a PhD might be the same way. Also, although I'm not in full-time employment, I have a few interesting projects on the horizon (not philosophy or university-related) and I don't know where they might lead, but if something good came of them I might have to turn them down if I wanted to do the PhD. I could do the PhD part-time, but I'd guess that dragging it out like that would make it very easy to become demotivated.

I know you can't make my decision for me, but any help with working through these issues would be very much appreciated.

Potential PhD raises a number of questions here, including:

1. Should they pursue a PhD given that they (A) love philosophy, and (B) want to become a better philosopher, but (C) do not currently have their heart set on being an academic, and (D) are not sure they want to specialize in some narrow philosophical area?
2. Should they pursue a PhD in the UK?
3. Should they focus on an issue related to their demographic group for the sake of better funding/job-opportunities?
4. Are the costs (including financial costs) of doing a PhD worth it, when they have other opportunities available?
5. Should they pursue a PhD part-time?

As I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer these questions, let me make a few brief remarks and then open up things for discussion.

Analytical Philosophy of Religion with Indian categories

As part of my attempts to go beyond my confort zone, Wednesday and Thursday last week I enjoyed two days of full immersion in the Analytical Philosophy of Religion. In fact, the conference I was attending was about the ontological status of relations from the perspective of Analytical Philosophy of Religion and most speakers started their talk saying that they were not experts in the one or in the other field. I was neither nor, which made me the sub-ideal target for all talks ---and yet one who could learn a lot from all.

A few random remarks:

1. "God" is an ambiguous term, in fact so ambiguous that I wonder why does not each study about philosophy of religion start with a discussion of what the author means by this word. I pragmatically distinguish (for instance, in my teaching) between god as devatā 'deity' (a superhuman being which is better than a human one, but only insofar as s/he has the same qualities of a human being in higher degree, like the Greek and Roman deities of mythology), god as īśvara 'Lord' (the omniscient and omnipotent being of rational theology), god as brahman 'impersonal being' (the impersonal Absolute of most monisms, including Bradley's one discussed by Guido Bonino) and god as bhagavat 'personal God' (the personal God one directly relates to in prayers, without necessarily caring for His/Her omnipotence or omniscience, but rather focusing on Him/Her as spouse, parent, child, etc.). Within this classification, Analytical Philosophy of Religion appears to focus on the īśvara aspect of God.
2. It is perhaps self-evident that this approach enables one to discuss logically about God and His/Her attributes. God is not a person one is in relation with (who could have whimsical desires etc.), but rather a perfect being who needs to be logically consistent. The only logical problem relates to God's alterity, so that one could wonder how far can human logic reach before crashing against its boundaries. Nonetheless, unlike in the case of God as bhagavat, one needs not worry too much about His/Her lying completely outside the realm of thinkability. The mysterium can be understood as a challenge to think deeper something which, at a certain point (in the liberated state) we will all be able to grasp.
3. Consequently, I could listen to several interesting discussions on God's temporality (does His/Her omnipotence include His/Her producing effects which are temporal, or is rather His/Her own activity itself which is temporal?) and on God's knowability (having said that God is not fully knowable by living human beings, the purpose of rational theology (continued in analytical philosophy of religion) is to find out whether what we can know about Him/Her is consistent with what we know through revelation).
4. The main topic of the conference was, however, God's being and its relation to His/Her qualities. Does God have wisdom? Or is wisdom (part of) God? The first definition leads to several problems, well-known to scholars of Sanskrit philosophy, insofar as one could always conceive a substance without its qualities (e.g., the soul in the state of liberation according to Nyāya) and, consequently, God's relation to His/Her wisdom would end up being adventitious. By contrast, the second solution leads to a different problem: How can one conceive of God as "being" wisdom? Marco Damonte suggested using Frege's distinction between sense and reference: All Divine attributes have the same referent (God), but different senses.
5. Summing up, it seems that the believers in a bhagavat do not gain so much out of their readings of rational theology or analytic philosophy of religion. This is, in Mario Micheletti's words "not foundational": one can believe even without theology (and, one might add, vice versa: one can enjoy theological thinking even without believing). Nonetheless, rational theology can persuade believers that what they believe can be rationally believed (and it plays a very important role in the metaphysical and philosophical discourse).

Long story short, I am very grateful to the organisers, Daniele Bertini and Damiano Migliorini. My only suggestion for a further improvement would be to allow for even more time for discussion (perhaps with the help of some leading questions by the organisers themselves?), especially insofar as their audacity in putting together physicists, theologians and historians of philosophy made the attempt to find a common language even more challenging than usual.

(cross-posted, with minor modifications, on my personal blog and on the Indian Philosophy Blog, where you can also read a few interesting comments)

Productive in Pedagogy: Some Advice for Instructors, Especially Grad Students

By JG

Recently there was a bit of a dust up over at Daily Nous about a guest post by Jason Brennan on productivity in publishing, with a response by David Enoch. Jason’s advice is actually pretty good, as far as it goes, and its better after he clarifies a few things in the comments on both posts (this is one of the few times I can remember learning something in blog comments, when the debate got more sophisticated as things went on).

However, as Jason notes, his advice is pretty restricted in scope, to grad students who want to publish a lot and are on track for jobs where publishing a lot is the most (only?) important thing. Most of us aren’t in that position, which means his advice is of somewhat limited value (I'll leave to one side the debate about whether we should want to be in that position, though you won't have to do much detective work to see what I think about that).

So, I thought I’d write a companion piece inspired by Jason’s post, about how to be productive in a teaching-centered position.

Reader query on addressing job ads in cover letters

UPDATED

In response to our most recent "how can we help you?" post, anon job seeker asked:

Two questions. First, should one use the letterhead from your institution if you have a position (for graduate students, I think the answer is yes)? Second, one piece of advice I have heard is to hit every part of the job ad in your cover letter. Does that include service? To what degree?

Good questions, so let me address each in turn and then open things up for discussion!

Open job-market threads permalink

Following philgrad's suggestion, I have now placed a permalink to the Cocoon's open job-market threads on the right sidebar of the blog (the permalink is also here). 

Diversity in philosophy syllabi surveys - invitation to participate

I am inviting philosophers of all academic ranks who teach undergraduate courses in ethics, political philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language to complete a survey to study diversity in philosophy syllabi.

There has recently been a lot of discussion on diversity in philosophy syllabi, which is broadly understood as work by philosophers who are underrepresented. For example, a diverse syllabus might feature work in non-western philosophy, or work by women philosophers, or work in approaches that are non-dominant in philosophy (e.g., feminist philosophy, or the philosophy of disability), but there is no clear-cut definition of what diversity means; for instance whether work by non-native speakers of English should also be considered as adding to a syllabus’ diversity.

The aim of this study is to get a sense of what diversity in philosophy syllabi means for philosophy teachers, what obstacles philosophers face to make a diverse syllabus, and what they do to make their syllabi more diverse. Even if you think your syllabus is not diverse, I am interested in learning about your views of what makes a syllabus diverse and what diversity means.The survey consists of a mixture of open and multiple-choice questions.

It is up to you how much you fill out in the open questions. It will examine both your general views on diversity in philosophy, and more specifically for ethics, political philosophy or epistemology (depending which of these courses you teach).I will make a summary of the findings available on the Philosophers’ Cocoon, a philosophy blog and will submit the findings to a peer-reviewed journal.

http://rug.eu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_e9iFgelnoz5u0F7

Open job-market thread

Seeing as a few readers have already said they would find an open job-market thread helpful, I've decided to open one here. Please feel free to exchange information in the comment-section below about anything job-market related (including jobs, interviews, etc.), the sole constraint being that all comments must cohere with the Cocoon's safe and supportive mission.

As always, I will do my best to moderate reasonably. If I or other commenters have concerns about any comments plausibly running afoul of the blog's mission, I will do my best to respond reasonably (up to and including discussing any issues thereof in private with commenters who either leave their email address or contact me directly). Hopefully, though, there will be no need for any of that. Just try to be cool to each other! I know all too well how tough the job market is. The Cocoon is a place to help each other. :)

Anonymized peer-review and timely moral and political discussion

Readers may (or may not) have noticed that I haven't had anything to say about recent political events on the Cocoon. This isn't because I have nothing to say. Far from it. I have a lot of thoughts I would like to share. The problem is that most of them are under anonymized peer-review. Which brings me to several questions I initially broached last summer:

1. Does anonymized peer-review stifle timely moral and political discussion?
2. What are our obligations as authors and human beings vis-a-vis anonymized review in turbulent political times?
3. Should anonymized review be replaced by the more open form of public review practiced in math and science?

I want to open up all three of these questions for discussion, but let me say a few words first.

On the first question, I do not know of any clear evidence--besides my own anecdotal experience--of whether anonymized review stifles timely moral and political discussion. However, what I do have is my own experience, and I can clearly and strongly say that I have withheld (and continue to withhold at this very moment) moral and political arguments from public discussion because of anonymized review. Because I don't want to break anonymized review right now, I won't detail exactly how this is the case. What I will say instead is that it has been incredibly frustrating--indeed positively depressing--to feel like I have things to say as a moral and political philosopher but cannot say them, at least not without violating the professional obligations I have to the places I've submitted my work to (which require anonymized review). While I don't pretend that the arguments I have withheld from public discussion would "change the world" or anything like that (indeed, they might be horribly mistaken!), the very fact that I have felt like I have to withhold these arguments for months on end distresses me greatly. As we see in world events today, things can happen very fast: few predicted the Brexit vote, and even fewer the Trump election, and the consequences of these votes will probably play out quickly as well (as evidenced by how much has already happened in both cases). Peer-review, on the other hand, is dreadfully slow. A single paper can bounce around at journals for months or even years. Supposing it is a paper on moral or political philosophy (and relevant world events), whatever moral or political points the paper makes--and might have contributed to timely public discussion--may be withheld from public discussion until well after relevant world events (elections, political decisions, etc.) have unfolded. 

This brings me to my second question. What are our obligations as professionals and human beings in this sort of circumstance? On the one hand, some might suggest that if one is a philosopher and one has written on an issue of great moral or political immediacy, one's moral duties as a human being should take precedence over one's professional duties: one should bypass anonymized peer-review, post the work publicly as soon as possible, and contribute to public debate. Alas, I don't think things are this simple. For, on the other hand, given current norms in our profession--in which most papers do not appear to be widely read, cited, or engaged with unless they appear in top-ranked journals--an author in this position faces a dilemma, particularly if they are not at a prestigious institution. If they post the paper publicly (without it passing peer-review and appearing in a well-regarded journal), no one may read or engage with it--and, by posting it publicly, they compromise the very anonymized review-process that their paper needs to pass to end up in a journal where it may get read and engaged with! This horn of the dilemma incentivizes the author to fall on the other horn: they can place the paper under anonymized review and wait for the process to play out. But this just brings us back to our initial problem: namely, that by putting the work under anonymized review and respecting the anonymity of the process, the author withholds their ideas and arguments from public discussion for months, even years--undermining timely and open moral and political discourse.

All of which brings me to the third question: should anonymized review be replaced by the more open form of public review practiced in math and science? I have already argued many times that it should. The time and place for "anonymized" review is past. In the internet age, "anonymized" peer-review is not so anonymous anyway--indeed there are many ways that anonymized review is routinely compromised. So, why do we keep on keeping on with the same old review process? Academic math and physics have demonstrated that a different, more timely public review process can work--one where professional norms are to post work publicly before submitting to journals. 

In closing, I want to be clear that I don't begrudge any of the places I have submitted my work to for requiring anonymized peer-review at the present moment. I understand it is our current system, and so I have worked within it, waiting patiently (at least as patiently as I can) for the system to work. All I mean to suggest once again is that--for many reasons--we may want to rethink our discipline's publishing norms and practices. We live in a fast-moving world, and I think philosophers should move with it. We should want norms and practices that incentivize philosophers to engage openly in timely moral and political debate, not stifle it--and I fear (once again, from personal experience) that our current norms and practices may do the latter.

But I am only one voice, and as always I may be wrong. What do you think?

Job market open thread?

For a number of years now, the Smoker has held open job-market threads where people can share information about the academic job-market and otherwise commiserate on issues relating to it (particular jobs, etc.). However, the Smoker now appears to be moribund (with no new posts for the past 5 months), and at least one commenter over there has requested the thread to be hosted elsewhere. Given that the Cocoon focuses on early-career issues (including the job market), is this something readers would like to see hosted here? No worries if not, but I thought I would check! 

Should the Cocoon be a politics-free zone?

In response to the reader query I posted yesterday where a logician asked the community what they can do politically, an anonymous reader 'KZC' wrote:

I don't mean to be trollish, but it should come as no surprise that among the most alienated, lonely, and frankly, silenced people on today's college campuses are conservative faculty members. Perhaps it might be more appropriate to save this blog as a place free of politics. This space should be welcoming even to those who are constantly reminded that their deplorableness needs to be mitigated and something must be done about them.

Although I responded to the comment with some personal thoughts of my own--explaining that these are issues I have struggled with for a long time as blog owner and moderator--the Cocoon is above all a group blog. As such, I thought it might be worth opening up this issue for discussion. Should the Cocoon be a politics-free zone? Or, should we commit ourselves to welcoming discussions of politics, provided individuals of different political persuasions--liberals and conservatives alike--are permitted and encouraged to present and discuss their views in a respectful manner consistent with the blog's mission? I'm inclined to support the latter, but what do you all think?

Reader query on what a logician can do

In response to Helen's post, "Battling the feeling of futility in a Brexit/Trump world", an anonymous reader submitted the following query:

I'm a logician. I'm also deeply troubled by the results of the election. And I want to do something about it.

Here are four options that come to mind, a few beers in:

(1) I can give a few of my meager dollars to, say, Black Lives Matter, or to Planned Parenthood.

(2) I can volunteer my time teaching community education courses in the belief that better-educated humans will make better decisions in the future.

(3) I can say something in my classes about how I'm troubled. I can hope that the social capital I've built up over the semester will translate into this making some kind of impact on my students.

(4) I can write something. I could try to make it appropriate for an editorial or blog post and hope that by saying something interesting and compelling, I might make a difference.

These are not mutually exclusive. They are not exhaustive. All have their selling points. All have their flaws. I'm assuming we're all, as trained philosophers, capable of seeing these. Let's try not to focus on those.

What I'm trying to ask is a selfish question. I am, as I said, a logician. What I want to know is what *I* should do. I have minimal training in moral and political philosophy. I submit that there are experts reading this blog who are in a better position than I am to answer the question of what my own personal political responsibility, role, etc. is. I further submit that these people, in virtue of being in said better position, can better answer the question of what I should do than I can. So I'm asking. What should I do? One of (1)-(4)? Something else altogether?

I suspect the answer is that I'm asking the wrong question. So be it. What question should I be asking? Please do let me know. I am, as I said, deeply troubled.

Battling the feeling of futility in a Brexit/Trump world

Months, what now seems aeons ago, a FB friend asked what we would rather have: a world of Clinton/Brexit, or a world of Trump/Remain. I could not imagine at the time that I would live in that brutal reversal of Leibniz, the world where both Trump and Brexit materialized. 

The lead-up to the referendum on whether the UK should leave the EU was very tense and acrimonious. The Leave campaign harped on about immigration from the EU and what a big problem immigrants were. The Remain campaign was silent about immigration, even though they could have brought up the economic and cultural benefits we immigrants bring to the economy. 

On the morning of 24 June, my husband told me Leave had won by a narrow margin - I dared not check myself. The feeling is hard to describe. I felt I got kicked in the stomach, and like everything I believed about the UK as being open, tolerant, was just a big sham. Working was impossible. I don’t know how I would have been able to grade papers or teach (24 June is outside of our term time). The Leave triumph got followed up by reports of hate crimes. A Polish man was beaten to death in the street for speaking Polish. The feeling of awfulness just stayed with me. 

American friends who came over for dinner said “We immediately thought when hearing the result, a Trump presidency is totally possible. It can happen. It’s scary”. And 5 months onward, they were right.

I know the demographics of the Leave voters and Trump voters are not the same. But the similarities are striking. So, looking at the US now, I see a repeat of what has happened here. I see lots of my American friends feeling angry, lost, unable to work, wanting to emigrate. The day after Trump won the presidential election, I had been working on a paper on prestige bias in philosophy. I think prestige bias in philosophy results in injustice, and shuts out people who are not middle-class and white. But as I was writing this paper, it suddenly felt so futile to write about problems in the profession of philosophy, given the magnitude of the political situation we are now faced with.

Part of this feeling of futility is that we are made to feel futile.  Academics are routinely dismissed as the out of touch elite, who somehow enabled this, or more charitably who were oblivious, living in a bubble. Leave campaigner Gove could not have been clearer: "People in this country have had enough of experts". We're out of touch with angry white voters. We're wrong in our cosmopolitanism and openness to diversity. As May would say, we're citizens of nowhere. So one important reason to battle the sense of futility is to counter the fake revolt led by elites who pretend not to be elites. Academics have a huge role to play in this. Bullshitters don't care about the truth, but we do (even if those truths are philosophical). We need to hold them accountable. 

How, concretely, do we continue to work? I don’t have answers. I am plodding on. I have started a petition to safeguard British education in the light of the Brexit vote (please sign – you don’t need to be a UK or an academic to do so), I organized a Daily Nous special section on Philosophers on Brexit, I wrote to my MP lots of times,  I joined a political party. I’ve written a couple of pieces for a large audience on free movement of people and on why MPs should have a say in the decision of whether the UK triggers the Article 50 procedure for exiting the EU. I am mindful of my students, some of whom are immigrants, others are people of colour, and what we can do to support them. Ultimately, our works and lives are not futile. I am convinced of that.

I am reminded of Sonia’s monologue all at the end of Uncle Vanya.

What can we do? We must live our lives. Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us.

So what are Cocoon readers doing when they despair about the political situation about them?

Reader query on moving from a research to teaching job

In response to our most recent, "How can we help you?" post, an anonymous reader wrote in:

Recently you had an interesting post with considerations about how best to place oneself on the teaching job market. I wonder if I might ask you and your readers for advice on a variation of this: moving from research to teaching. Let me explain. I went to graduate school with the hope of finding an obscure teaching job with little to no research expectations. I like learning philosophy and thinking, but I don't really have anything to say. I am not very creative or original. Moreover, I have found I loathe the culture of academic research, at least in philosophy. I did some teaching in graduate school and found it was the only part of the academic life that I really enjoyed. Nevertheless, taking the usual advice in graduate school about conferencing and publishing and the primacy of research etc., I focused on doing that. This landed me a research-oriented job, with light teaching duties and constant pressure to publish publish publish, conference, network, synergize, and then publish some more. This is not the job or the career I want, and I don't think I'm the right person for it. My question is, how can I present myself as a realistic candidate for non-research teaching jobs, given the prevailing norms of our discipline, and academia generally, which put such value on research? How might I overcome the suspicion generated by a desire for what is likely to be viewed as a serious "move down" in the world. But perhaps my perceptions are too tainted by the biases of my academic upbringing?

Another anonymous reader replied:

I would just be honest in your applications. Do not speak disparagingly about Research schools or your lack of creativity (which I doubt), but stress your interest and enthusiasm for teaching. I teach at a State School that values teaching but expects some research. We would jump at an applicant like you. We would be confident that you would meet the (rather low) research expectations, and it sounds like you genuinely care about teaching. That sounds like a colleague I would want! Indeed, other departments on campus have hired enthusiastic teachers who did not get tenure at Research schools.

I think this response is right: that all things being equal, teaching institutions would probably jump at the opportunity to hire a good, established researcher who wants to move to a more teaching-focused environment. But I would add two things. First, it's probably wise to try to move from a research to teaching job before receiving tenure. In my experience, teaching institutions rarely seem to make "lateral hires" after tenure (i.e. at the Associate or Professor levels). Almost all jobs at teaching institutions appear to be at the pre-tenure Assistant Professor level, so attempting to move to a teaching institution after tenure would likely involve having to give up tenure. Of course, if one is terribly unhappy in a tenured job, one might be willing to take such a step--but I imagine many wouldn't be. Second, insofar as teaching institutions like mine really value teaching, I think it's important not only to stress interest and enthusiasm in teaching but to show--in one's teaching dossier and website--that one really goes above and beyond as a teacher: that one is creative pedagogically and in the classroom, committed to students, and so on. 

What about you, the Cocoon's readers, especially those of you at teaching institutions? Do you have any suggestions/advice of your own?

Reader query on non-traditional routes into philosophy

In response to our most recent, "How can we help you?" post, Henry Lara writes:

It would be very helpful to hear from people that didn't go the traditional route into philosophy; people that got to philosophy later in life, after other careers, or just people that had a later start for whatever the reasons. I am about halfway through a masters (at a part-time pace), and I likely be on the older side of things should I manage to get a spot at a PHD program. I try to be realistic about my situation and chances, but it would be helpful to hear from somebody that's done it before.

Are there any readers who didn't go the traditional route into philosophy willing to share their experience?

Reader query on negotiating

In response to our newest "How can we help you?" post, Tom asked:

Quick question: is negotiating still a thing? I've had a number of flyout interviews (no offers from those; still happy with my postdocs), and all of them were extremely straightforward about negotiating being essentially impossible.

In response to my and Tim's responses that negotiating still is a thing, Tom added:

So, ok, I realize if I'm the hottest thing out there and manage to magically get several offers, then I can probably do some negotiating. But being frank, I'm not and I won't. So I'm actually curious if anyone here has recently gotten an offer at a non-R1 school recently and actually done some negotiating. Like I said, I've had several flyouts -- both at midsized regional state schools -- where it was made clear from the dean on down that there was precisely zero room for negotiating. None. Like there were comments along the lines of "Don't ask, because we can't give it and it's just awkward for everyone. Be glad there's a position to offer at all, we had to beg and plead for it in the first place." (It wasn't stated this bluntly, but that was the content being communicated.)

This could be either (a) a fluke, and I had a weird experience with a few weird schools, (b) a bluff on the part of the folks at these schools, or (c) a new fact of life. Marcus, Tim, where are you guys on this? Anyone else out there have further confirming or refuting evidence?

I think these are good follow-up questions by Tim. Do any of our readers have any recent experience with these matters? Specifically:

Reader query about career stability and children

In response to our newest "How can we help you?" post, Karl asks: "When is a job stable enough to start thinking about children?" I think this is a fantastic question, and surprisingly one that I don't think we've ever discussed at the Cocoon before. In fact, Karl's question is one that my spouse and I have been jointly asking together on and off (without a very good answer to) for the past several years--so I am very much interested to hear what people think!

It occurred to me, after reading Karl's question, that I have known people who had children at different stages of their academic career: as grad students, temporary faculty (e.g. adjuncts, postdocs, etc), untenured tenure-track faculty, and tenured faculty. Unfortunately, it also occurred that I've never asked any of them how it was having children at that career stage (probably because, in every context, I assumed it would be rude to ask). Perhaps, though, the Cocoon is a better place to ask those who are willing to share.

Here, then, is one query for readers: If you had (or have) children while pursuing a career in academic philosophy (and you are willing to share your experience), how would you answer Karl's question? When, given your own experience, is a "job stable enough to start thinking about having children"?

And here is another--both for those who have had children, as well as those who have not: What do you think is relevant to answering Karl's question? That is, how should one go about deciding whether one's job is "stable enough" to have children?

Thanks in advance to those willing to share their thoughts and/or experience!

How can the Cocoon help you?

I'm knee-deep in grading midterms and term-papers, the job-market is in full swing, and it's been a while since we've had a, "How can we help you?" post, so I figured now might be a good time for one!

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, these posts are a prompt for you, the Cocoon's readers, to pose questions to the community in the comments section on anything you would like help with (anything at all consistent with the blog's mission). You can ask questions about publishing, teaching, the profession, and of course the academic and non-academic job-markets. I will then select questions posed and write short posts on them to open up independent comment threads on each question posed.

Given that the academic job-market is now in full-swing, feel free to ask the Cocoon community questions about:

• Skype and phone interviews
• On-campus visits
• Negotiating
• Etc.

We're here to help, so fire away!

Recent work by Cocooners (October 2016)

The following works were either published or posted to philpapers by Cocoon contributors during the month of October:

J. Green (forthcoming). Book Review: Breaking Democracys Spell, by John Dunn. [REVIEW] Political Theory.

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