Guest post by Carl Sachs, Marymount University
My graduate school mentor once said that one’s academic career is shaped like an hour-glass: one’s interest grows increasingly narrow as one progresses through graduate school, then broadens slowly afterwards. (Writing a dissertation is the neck, which is why it is so emotionally difficult.) For some of us, it is only after getting tenure that the focus can slowly broaden; others at more teaching-oriented schools can broaden more rapidly. This story is about why I changed research interests and how I did so in order to produce a publishable paper.
For the past several years (after completing my Ph.D.) my research has focused on Wilfrid Sellars and the so-called “Pittsburgh School of Philosophy.” (I use this term with some misgiving but it is becoming more widespread.) I was particularly interested in the question as to whether intentionality and normativity can be “naturalized.” The criticisms I received on my first book led me to realize that I needed a much more careful engagement with evolutionary theory, cognitive neuroscience, and animal ethology. Fortunately I was already on good terms with philosophers who work on those issues – some were old connections from graduate school, others were people I had met at conferences. In addition to my real-world intellectual community I had also cultivated an extensive professional network on social media. Hence I knew whom to ask for advice about how to proceed.
These conversations – some in real-life, and many online – led me deeper into philosophy of cognitive neuroscience. Much of this was entirely new to me (I never even read Fodor until last year!) and much I had not read carefully since my early years of graduate school. This led me to take a renewed interest in enactivism, which I had not read since an early encounter with The Embodied Mind (Varela et al., The MIT Press 1992) in college led me to Merleau-Ponty and Continental philosophy. The question I found myself asking was whether the debate about representations in philosophy of cognitive science rested on equivocation about the word “representation”. One night I was talking with a philosopher-friend over drinks and found myself saying, “what we really need is a distinction between how brains process information and how we use language.” To which my friend replied, “Congratulations, you’ve rediscovered Sellars’s distinction between picturing and signifying.”
This led to a renewed period of reading and writing which finally led to a very rough first draft about the contemporary relevance of Sellars for cognitive neuroscience. I asked my friends to vet the paper, which they did, and when I thought it was ready, I submitted it to a prestigious journal. My strategy was to submit it to a prestigious journal on the assumption that it would be rejected, then use the comments to revise it for a less prestigious journal.
Instead, the paper received a Revise and Resubmit – along with extensive comments indicating that I had even more to learn! The reviewers were immensely generous with their time and gave me reading lists with their comments, which led to even more reading and going deeper into both the history of philosophy of cognitive science (such as Ed Tolman’s work on cognitive maps) and contemporary philosophy of cognitive neuroscience (such as the debate between Hohwy and Clark about ‘moderate’ vs. ‘radical’ predictive processing). While at times the paper threatened to spiral out of control and become a book, my friends encouraged me to retain focus on responding to the reviewers’ objections.
When the paper received a second revise and resubmit, I felt both frustration (“what more do they want from me?”) and panic (“classes start next week!”). Once again, my friends who work in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of mind encouraged me to persevere – this time doing no more than the minimum necessary to respond to all objections and not add any more material. Though it took several complete weekends in a row, the paper was finally accepted and appeared online as “In Defense of Picturing: Sellars’s Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Neuroscience” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (October 2018).
The main thing I learned in writing this paper is that one shouldn’t be afraid to develop a new research interest (though there may be prudential considerations for not doing so, depending on one’s institution and stage of career). I found that there were many philosophers and cognitive scientists willing to respond to emails, read drafts, recommend articles, and meet in person. Their eagerness and encouragement kept me going, and I discovered a whole new research agenda at a time when I needed it. While there are real constraints on how far I can proceed with philosophy of cognitive science without getting another PhD or post-doc, I now have a new set of competencies that I can take into the next stage of my research – whatever it may be!
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