The Philosophers' Cocoon

Saturday sounds

40 ACLS Emerging Voices Fellowships

This is just a quick note that the American Council of Learned Societies has advertised 40 Emerging Voices Fellowships, :

At a time of economic downturn and uncertainty in academe, this program seeks to identify and assist a vanguard of scholars whose voices, perspectives, and broad visions will strengthen institutions of higher education and humanistic disciplines in the years to come.

The Emerging Voices Fellowship will allow recent PhDs in the humanities and related social sciences to take up one-year positions at select institutions in ACLS’s Research University Consortium beginning in August/September 2020. The program will provide a $60,000 stipend plus benefits, as well as $5,000 in research/ professional development funding, childcare or elder care costs, and access to ACLS professional development resources. Up to 40 fellowships will be available for a fall semester 2020 start date. We anticipate running a second competition this coming academic year for placements that will begin in fall 2021.

Looks like a great opportunity for philosophers in need of gainful academic employment in these tough times. Many thanks to Jake Wojtowicz for the pointer! H/t Krista Goff

Privately sharing an unused peer-review report?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, Erik Magnussen writes: 

I was recently asked to review a paper and was halfway through doing so when I realized that the author had revealed their identity through a footnote. I quickly contacted the editor to let them know that anonymity had been breached, was thanked for bringing it to their attention, and was subsequently let go as a reviewer (as I think I should have been).

My question is this: would it ever be appropriate to forward my comments to the author in this type of case, or would this be an inappropriate interference in the editorial process? I thought the paper made a valuable contribution to the debate that it centered on, and I had a number of ideas about how the author's argument could be improved, which I had started to outline in my report. These may still be of use to the author, and I'm wondering if there is any definitive reason to keep them to myself.

To be clear, I have not forwarded anything to the author, and don't really have plans to. But it made me wonder about the ethics of doing so, and I know that the community here will have some thoughts on this. Thanks!

My initial reaction here was that this seems like a straightforward case: once a reviewer assignment is over, you're sort of free to do whatever you like (provided you otherwise stay within the bounds of general professionalism). However, after thinking about it for about 5 more seconds, it occurred to that the prudent thing here is probably to ask the Editor in Chief of the journal that commissioned the review to see if they have any objection. This occurred to me in part because, in my experience, some journals have an explicit policy that the peer-review process is supposed to remain confidential, and you never how exactly how this requirement may be understood. Sure, it may be unlikely that the author you reach out to you tattles on you for it (particularly if, as in this case, you let them know that you liked the paper)--but, I guess in general, my general maxim on professional uncertainty is this: "If you are in any doubt, ask before you act!".

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Coming back from academic disillusionment

On Twitter, a well-known tenured faculty member at a Leiter top-10 program writes:

An exchange with a colleague yesterday left me feeling hopeless about my place in my dept and my profession. I hate my job so very much. If I didn't have a family to support I would quit today (years ago, actually). Has anyone come back from feeling this way about academia?

I am very curious to hear readers' answers. I will be honest: this is something that I have struggled with many times. Eight years ago, I shared my own tale of disillusionment during graduate school and how I found my way back. In brief, I came to grips with my disillusionment in two ways. First, I just tried to focus on enjoying the work I do, writing on things that truly interest me, trying to be a good teacher, and not worrying so much about what other people think of my work. Second, I tried to focus on developing better relationships with other people of good will in the profession--relationships that in the long-run have been very rewarding. Still, I will be honest: disillusionment remains something that I struggle with from time to time, as there are many things that about the profession that get me down from time to time.

But these are just some quick thoughts of mine. What are yours? Have you struggled with disillusionment in academic philosophy? If so, were you able to come back from it? How?  

Wise thoughts: Summaries of classic philosophical works in words of one syllable

Philosophy is notable for its jargon, so it is a good exercise to try to summarize its classic works in short texts of just one syllable. The past few days philosophers have provided such summaries, as a game in pandemic times, maybe inspired by this classic paper. It also makes for interesting pedagogy—trying to strip down the philosophy to its bare ideas, away from the jargon. Here follows a selection of summaries, reproduced with the author’s permission.

This list was compiled by Sophie Grace Chappell, Simon Kirchin, and Helen De Cruz. We may have missed some gems. Feel free to put them in comments. 

 

Zeno, by Nicholas Denyer

If you mean to go to a place, you must first get half of the way to that place. But if you are to go half of the way to that place, you must first get half of the way to half of the way to that place. And so on, and so on, and so on. In fact, you can't so much as start to go a place, since to start to go to a place means to do the first thing of all the things you need to do if you are to go to the place, and, as we have seen, there is no first thing.

 

Parmenides, by Sophie Grace Chappell

[Some warm up re "The steeds that bore me to the she God", but I'll skip all that]

IS is.

IS NOT is not.

You can think just what is there to think.

What is, is there for you to think it.

What is not, is not there for you to think it.

So don't; that is a path of thought not at all to be thought down.

Just one path is left, to which I point you: that it is, and that "is not" is not to be thought.

If there were change then IS NOT would oft be true. But IS NOT can't be true at all (see up there ^). So there is no change.

If there were two things X and Y then we would have to say "X IS NOT Y" and "Y IS NOT X". But we can’t say “is not” (see up there ^). So for all X and all Y, X IS Y. So there is just one thing. And it is It Is.

From here I get to the thought that What Is is round and the same depth and length on all sides. A globe, could be? Don't ask me how I got there.

And to what I call the way of tricks and shades, on which I have some stray thoughts on wombs, moons, and roots. Here too, don't ask me how I got there.

The end.

 

Plato’s Republic, by Ruth Groff

Be good and love the Good. You will like it. Nay, you will love it.

If there were no form of the Good, we could not speak of norms - of this one or of that one. In fact, we could not say what it is to *be* a norm that picks out good or bad at all, if there were no Good.

Those who have a say, &/or or sway, should be good for real, and wise. And they should try to help us all to be good for real, and wise. Which we all can be. What with how all of our souls can know and love the Good.

 

 

Alt-ac jobs: some simple things programs can do

In my previous post, I explained why I think philosophy grad programs should be motivated to help their students pursue non-academic lines of work. In brief, doing so is likely to be in the interest of grad programs in an increasingly tenuous higher education environment. Even before COVID appeared, university enrollments are expected to plummet around 15% in the next five years--and when the inevitable fiscal belt-tightening happens at universities, the humanities are likely to be the first to go. For better or worse, one way to increase our departments' survival odds is to increase the amount of outside funding we get from donors--and successful people in industry are the kind of people who make those kinds of donations.

In response to my post, there was some inevitable skepticism. For example, one reader wrote:

[T]hinking that philosophy graduate programs should train their students to do things other than academic philosophy would be like thinking that a program for electricians at a technical college should train their students to be something other than electricians.

Another reader then added: "I do not think people who work in philosophy departments are really qualified to help their students with most alternative careers." However, then Amanda gave what I take to be exactly the right response:

The comments about, "philosophy professors aren't qualified to do this," drive me batty. They aren't. But the point is they can and should be. This does NOT mean philosophy professors must become experts in tech and project management. All it means is that philosophy professors should make efforts to cultivate relationships with alum in working in tech and project management. Connections couldn't be more important re employment. So philosophy professors simply keeping in touch with former students in non-academic jobs is all they need to be qualified to "prepare students for the non-academic market." Of course philosophy professors are not going to give a lecture on project management. But what they can do is invite their former students to do that lecture (i.e. former students who are currently in project management). It really puzzles me why so many people think either (1) philosophy professors are incapable of this, or, (2) philosophy professors have no obligation to put effort into the non-academic market. Philosophy professors are capable, because it is as easy as just described, i.e. staying in touch with former students. 

Look at the Philosophers in Industry directory I've put together. It shows that former philosophy grad students can transition effectively into a diverse variety of careers. Philosophy programs are surely not in position to 'train their students' for all of these jobs. That's a fool's errand. Yet each and every time we have these types of conversations on the Cocoon, many readers seem to me to make the same mistake here...over and over and over again: the mistake of thinking that 'helping philosophy students find non-academic jobs' is a matter of training. The fact is, about 70% of job openings are never even publicly listed, and 85% of jobs are found through networking. This suggests that what philosophy grad programs should do is really quite simple. Let me explain.

Consider first what almost certainly tends to happen when students leave a philosophy grad program without a degree--say, because the student never finishes their dissertation. I can't recall where I came across the number, but I recall seeing somewhere that roughly 50% of PhD students never finish. How do departments treat these students upon and after they leave the program? Although it's been a while since I was in grad school, my sense is that the following tends to happen: the student leaves with little support--rather, they are simply "shown the door" and the department washes their hands of them. I've heard that something similar tends to happen with students who graduate but leave for non-academic careers. Often (or so I've heard), their professors express disappointment about the decision and send them on their way. If this is what does indeed tend to happen, then notice what isn't going on. There isn't any:

• Positive, supportive relationship with the student upon their leaving for non-academic work.
• Effort put into maintaining such a relationship with the student in the years and decades after they leave.
• Attempt to use the former-student's later-developed non-academic expertise, such as by inviting them to give talks in the department on how to transition into and succeed in the non-academic world.
• Attempt to list the person on the department's website as a successful non-academic.
• Attempt to host networking opportunities featuring former students, such as annual department events where former students in non-academic careers are invited to a department gathering (at, say, a restaurant) to catch up with professors and get to know current students.
• Etc.

Indeed, how many PhD program placement directors even have a list of former students who went into academic industry, let alone stay in touch with people on that list by phone or by inviting them to department events? Similarly, how many grad advisors (including dissertation advisors) do this with their own students? I don't have the answer, but I suspect the answer to both questions is probably: not many. If this is correct, these are all missed opportunities of the worst sort. I say, "of the worst sort", for three reasons. First, as Amanda notes, these sorts of things seem (A) fairly simple and easy to do, and (B) are likely to have the "most bang for your buck" in terms of actually helping students find non-academic work. The third problem here is equally bad: by failing to maintain good relationships with former students in industry, departments almost certainly shoot themselves in the foot in terms of gaining donations (for programs, endowed chairs, etc.). I mean, who would want to donate to a program or profession that ignominiously "showed them the door"? 

Now, I actually know of a (very highly-ranked) program or two that started doing some of the above. And who knows? Maybe more programs do these things than I know of. However, judging by the many conversations we've had here and interviews of non-academic philosophers I've read, it doesn't seem like many programs do any of the above. If so, then they are missed opportunities indeed, and ones that seem easily fixed--if only programs begin to realize why they should be motivated to change.

Saturday sounds

This relatively unknown band put on the single best live show I ever saw. They never quite made it, but for one night at least they were perfection:

Motivating PhD programs to focus on industry jobs

Following the Philosophers in Industry directory I'm working on, I had an interesting conversation the other day about what grad programs could do better in terms of helping to place their students in good non-academic jobs. I have been out of grad school for quite a while now, so I am not entirely sure what current practices are like. But when I was in grad school, the focus within the program was entirely on academic jobs. Like most PhD programs, mine had a placement director--and a very good one at that. Our placement director helped candidates workshop academic job-market materials, strategize, do mock interviews, and so on. Still, the focus was overwhelmingly on academic jobs. And while I have heard through the grapevine that some programs may be doing a better job focusing more on non-academic work, I suspect that many programs still probably focus primarily on the academic market. In my next two posts, I want to discuss two things:

1. Some steps grad programs might take to better support students pursuing non-academic work.
2. Why grad programs should be motivated to do so.

I want to focus on the second issue first, and here's why. Laying out a series of steps that grad programs might take in order to better place students in non-academic jobs isn't likely to be very effective if grad programs aren't motivated to change. And, on that note, one issue that I have heard may stand in the way of grad programs doing more when it comes to non-academic work is that grad faculty simply may not be motivated to change what they do. On the one hand, faculty in grad programs simply may not value their students leaving academia for non-academic industry jobs. Anecdotally, I have heard these sentiments to be quite common, with grad faculty sometimes expressing extreme disappointment or disregard toward students who let them know they plan to leave academia. On the other hand, grad faculty may not do much when it comes to helping students find non-academic work because they, the grad faculty, have never had a non-academic career themselves, leaving them at a bit of a loss about what they can do to help students find non-academic jobs.

Here, though, is what I think we should say to grad programs to better motivate them: in today's post-COVID environment, graduate programs are likely to need non-academic support in order to survive and flourish. Let me explain.

Leaving academia for industry: 7 years later

Zachary Ernst, former Associate Professor at University of Missouri-Columbia now working in the tech industry, has a really interesting new post at Medium entitled, "Leaving Academia for the Private Sector: Seven Years Later". (H/t Mark Barber) Here are few choice passages:

To my great surprise, I discovered that business is actually interesting! Coming up with the right strategy for growing the business, collecting the right data about the company’s performance, understanding the larger challenges in the market, evaluating the competition’s strengths and weaknesses, figuring out how to differentiate yourself from your more entrenched competitors — all of this turns out to be fascinating. In fact, I usually find it to be more interesting and challenging than my previous academic work in philosophy. Personally, I’m shocked to find myself reading articles from McKinsey & Company or the Harvard Business Review in my spare time. But I often do, and they’re just as interesting as anything in an academic journal....

My move out of academia has spared me the pain that faculty are enduring now that the financial state of the university system is spiraling downward....

I have literally never wished, for even one second, that I’d stayed in academia. My professional life is more interesting, more impactful, and more lucrative than it used to be. Based on the number of questions from current faculty I receive on a near-weekly basis, I expect that my own career trajectory will be much more common in the near future.

How to handle student evals alleging bias?

In our current "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I have a question about interpreting and incorporating instructor evaluations into my courses involving allegations of political bias. I am first year professor (tenure-track) teaching ethics and philosophy at a small public science and engineering school. My students are all undergrad scientists and engineers, which I am relatively well prepared for with my background. I've enjoyed teaching, and the Fall was hard but overall very good. One tricky thing has has arisen with my Spring 2020 evaluations is a small set of comments (5/45) noting and complaining about the "left-leaning bias" of my ethics courses. One was about my requiring of students to state and respect other pronouns, but the others where about content presented, readings, discussion questions, etc.

My institution takes these evals seriously, though the general expectation is for improvement and adaptation. I have good overall ratings (4.5/4), so this is more of a small aspect that I think might attract the attention of deans/admins (outside my dept.), especially at my technical (read: apolitcal, moderate) institution. While I do not think the students are wrong per se about the bias (at least given my own views), I am not quite sure how to understand these comments or what to do with them. (Not to mention that this was Corona semester!) Any advice?

This is a really interesting question. Because I'm not sure what is the best advice to give here, I'd like to just open things up to readers to chime in below. What do you all think?

Good things you've read recently?

Like many of the Cocoon's readers, or so I suspect, the COVID pandemic has taken a bit of a toll on me. Social distancing, teaching online, and worrying about loved ones have all left me exhausted, and so I've tried to fill my time with healthy distractions, such as recording music, reading for pleasure, and catching up on some television series and films I never got around to seeing. Anyway, one of my distractions has been to read a bit more widely in philosophy than I normally do, and it occurred to me that it might be fun to run a thread on the most interesting philosophy you've read recently, and why. I'll try to kick things off, and hope some of you choose to chime in with your own examples down in the comments section.

Although I don't normally read a whole lot in the philosophy of religion, one article that caught my eye recently is Dylan Balfour's, "Second‑personal theodicy: coming to know why God permits suffering by coming to know God himself", which is forthcoming in the International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion. Although I think it's only fitting to share Balfour's paper here, given that he's a first-year (!) PhD student at Edinburgh and this is a blog focusing on early-career philosophers, I really wanted to share his paper because I think it's great, displays a wonderful amount of epistemic integrity, addresses a problem that has always been very dear to my heart, and provides a solution to that problem that coheres pretty well with my own rather odd path through life. Let me first say a few things about Balfour's paper before I say why I personally find the answer he gives to the problem of evil oddly compelling.

Posting unpublished drafts: do journals care?

A reader writes in: "Do you know if putting a draft of a paper on academia.edu or researchgate (in hopes of getting feedback) prevents some journals from being willing to publish the paper?" This is a great question, one that I've wondered myself, including for posting unpublished drafts to philpapers/philarchive.

Does anyone know the answer? Any journal referees or editors care to weigh in? And have any authors run into any problems with this sort of thing? 

COVID grad school updates?

Early last month, I floated a tentative proposal for how grad programs might best serve their students during COVID, particularly given how bad the academic job-market is almost certainly going to be this fall. Are programs taking any such steps? For example, have announcements gone out to grad students letting them know they can stay in the program another year instead of defending their dissertation and going out on the market? Have students who are coming to the end of their promised funding (e.g. 5 years) been told they can get an extra year of funding? Are other steps being taken? Or is little being done? I'm very curious to hear what's going on, and if not much is being done, drawing attention to it.

Brennan on two types of grad students

In a recent Inside Higher Ed interview on his new book, Good Work If You Can Get It: How to Succeed in Academia, Jason Brennan states:

Anecdotally, there seem to be two types of grad students. Some treat their Ph.D. as an extension of college. They want graduate school to be a time to stew and develop. Others treat it more like an M.B.A. -- or, to use another metaphor, they act like athletes training for the Olympics. The latter think strategically. They try to ascertain what their CVs must look like when they go on the market to have the best chance of getting a job. They engage in backward induction, trying to determine what they need to do year by year to make their CVs look the right way when they enter the market. These students appear to be the most successful in terms of getting a job. For that reason, I suspect they are in the long run less stressed and happier, though admittedly I don’t know of survey evidence verifying that.

As I make clear in the book, I am not endorsing the way academia is. Indeed, I wrote an entire other book (Cracks in the Ivory Tower) on the bad business ethics practices of higher ed. But the current book is about succeeding in academia as it is, rather than how it should be...

I'm curious about Brennan's anecdotal claims here. First, do grad students who approach things strategically tend to fare better on the job-market and in their careers than grad students who treat graduate school as "a time to stew and develop"? Second, are the former "less stressed and happier" in the long run? Let me explain why I ask, and then ask readers to weigh in.

The methods of normative externalists

I came across this NDPR review of Brian Weatherson's new book, Normative Externalism, and wanted to share a few thoughts on the methods of normative reasons externalists. The thoughts that follow are prompted in part by the review, but also by a reaction to it that I came across on social media and previous work defending normative reasons externalism by Derek Parfit, TM Scanlon, and others.

For those of you not familiar with this literature, normative reasons externalism is, very roughly, the idea that the reasons we ought to do particular things are not 'mind-dependent.' That is, the reasons we should act (or believe, etc.) do not depend on what any particular person values or prefers--but rather, on features of the world outside of our minds. To take one example I've heard commonly given, a normative reasons externalist may say that when I step on your foot, the pain I cause you is a reason why I shouldn't keep stepping on it...regardless of whether I actually care.

I think normative reasons is a completely bizarre (and false) view--and, when I gave a paper at a recent interdisciplinary conference, every scientist in attendance seemed to be totally taken aback by it (they often said as much during their talks). From their perspective, it seemed just obvious that the reasons why someone should do something or other have to depend on whether the person has any psychological interest or values favoring the thing in question. I think those scientists are right, and want to briefly say why by discussing concerns I have about the methods of normative externalists.

Tenure standards at state schools?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I have a question about the tenure standards at state schools that focus on undergraduate teaching. It seems clear that research schools really emphasize publications and SLACs emphasize teaching (with ok publications). What about those state schools that only have undergraduate programs? The jobs at these schools require people to focus on teaching, and the workload is similar to (or heavier than) the SLACs. However, some of these schools are research universities. Is teaching still the main focus when one is considered for promotion at those schools?

Good questions. My sense is that it may vary quite a bit, as I've seen philosophy departments at some state schools whose faculty regularly publish in top-ranked journals (suggestive of high tenure standards), whereas I've seen departments at other state schools where the faculty seem to publish very little. But this sense is based on little more that visiting department webpages when I was a job-candidate. Any faculty at state schools with undergrad-only philosophy programs willing to chime in with some insight?

Saturday sounds

This one may amuse those familiar with Nelson Goodman's new riddle of induction ;)

APA webinar: Philosophers Beyond Academia

This is just a quick note that the American Philosophical Association is holding a member webinar, "Philosophers Beyond Academia: Experiences in Navigating Diverse Career Paths" on May 20th at 1:30pm EST.

Although those of you who are APA members probably received their announcement about this by email, I would like to add that I think it could be a very good idea for Cocoon readers who are APA members to attend. I for one am delighted that the APA is devoting more attention to non-academic careers, and suspect that the more successful events like this are, the more likely the APA will be to do more things like this going forward. This, it seems to me, is the kind of support for early-career job-marketeers that people have long been clamoring for--so if you agree, please do consider registering and attending!

Textbooks and teaching dossiers?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a curious reader writes:

I have a question about how to approach sample syllabus development when heading onto the job market. Obviously, in this day and age, it’s important to have all aspects your teaching dossier / other materials stand out. Take, for example, a sample syllabus for an introductory course (whether intro to philosophy or intro to some sub-discipline). One way to make your syllabus stand out might be to include readings that are non-standard and hence eye-catching. Maybe this means including readings on non-standard topics, or maybe it involves ensuring the inclusion of authors whose work is overlooked in many syllabi for similar courses. Whatever exactly is involved here, it seems like the important thing to do is to ensure that the readings you select all express your pedagogicTeal commitments in a way that will be clear to a search committee.

However, now say that you discover an excellent textbook. Using this textbook in lieu of a bunch of papers might make it look, to a search committee member, like you were lazy and didn’t want to curate your own list of readings. In fact, however, you might have several good pedagogical reasons for using this textbook. It may even be that you selected this textbook at the last minute, only after having spent painstaking hours developing your own list of readings. In such a situation, do you go with the carefully curated list, or do you go with the textbook? The textbook itself may include a carefully curated list, but it might still look lazy to use (you didn’t curate the list yourself, after all).

The reason this sort of thing strikes me as a worry is that I can’t think of places in your dossier where it would be appropriate to justify your use of the textbook. Do you say in a cover letter that, while you recognize that the use of a textbook may look lazy, you have reasons X Y and Z for using it? Do you say this on the sample syllabus itself? This puts you on the defensive, and could raise more suspicion than it assuages.

I figure that the textbook case is an instance of a more general worry: if you think you are making a pedagogically sound choice that might look worse to a search committee than some alternative, what do you do? How far should I go out of my way to look original, rather than simply doing what I think is right?

Interesting query. This is a tough one, I think. On the one hand, I'm not sure how closely many search committee members look at choices of texts. I mean, I think people who look closely at a teaching file may want to see whether the course is up to date and on the leading edge of things, such as covering diverse topics and authors. But, for all that, I'm not sure how much time search committees spend thinking about the particular book(s) one chooses for a course. On the other hand, my own experience is that a fair number of philosophers do think, at least in principle, that good philosophy pedagogy requires having students primarily read original sources. The obvious thing to do here, it seems to me--since the reader implied that their textbook does have a carefully curated list of readings--is to actually list those readings (authors & titles) in the course schedule. That seems to me the safe thing to do, while retaining one's pedagogical integrity. In any case, I do think it's important to present yourself as the teacher you are, as putting together a teaching dossier that doesn't reflect your actual approach to teaching is deceptive.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Should we teach life lessons?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

What are our duties as professors? We clearly have duties to teach the material well and to be decent human beings and all that entails. But I'm also wondering if we have duties, or at least the freedom, to teach moral/life lessons to students. I'm curious what you all think.

I have in mind the following kind of case, which is very common in my position. A non-philosophy student needs my upper-level class to graduate at the end of the semester. But they simply don't do the work. I send them personal emails, spread out over months, about how they're at risk of failing. They don't respond, or they do respond but don't do the work at the rate or level required to pass. Time passes and final grades are due. Suddenly they're asking for any chance to pass. I tell them that I have been warning them about the situation for months now. Do I have a duty to teach them a moral/life lesson here? I tend to think I do. This doesn't necessarily mean I fail them, though I sometimes do that. Other times I make them do twice as much work after the semester is over and give them a grade after it's completed.

My thought process is this: many of these students seem to think they're entitled to something they put no effort into, or that there's never a point when they won't be given another chance, or it's rational to do as little as possible and bet on the mercy of others. So in giving a lot of extra work, or failing them, I aim to do my part to disabuse them of these notions (and the extra work option still lets them graduate, thus neither delaying their careers nor costing them more tuition money).

For anyone who responds, please set aside circumstances related to COVID, depression, family stresses, etc. For one, this kind of situation isn't unique to COVID. Second, I not only grant those in special circumstances exceptions, but I also to try and suss out who is in special circumstances to begin with (e.g., by reaching out, contacting their advisor, etc.). Assume, for the sake of discussion, that the students I'm talking about are not these kinds of students.

This is a great query, and I'm very curious to hear what others think. I'll save my own remarks for the comments section below, as I'd really like to hear what others have to say before weighing in!

Tips for publishing books for a general readership?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, Ross Campbell writes:

I wish to write a book on philosophy but I'm not sure what topic would be a good one to get it published. I want to write a book about philosophy in a broad sense covering a range of different fields within the subject. Also it's a popular work aimed at the general reader. The title I have in mind is "Why Philosophy Matters: Asking the Big Questions". Does anyone know if this sounds like a good theme or not. I welcome your comments.

This is a pretty odd query. I doubt the world needs another "Why Philosophy Matters/Big Questions" book, or how receptive good presses would be to a proposal like that, unless it's from a very well-established person in the field. But, in any case, the reader's comment reminds me of some questions I've had myself about publishing popular books. In a recent guest-post, Emily Thomas (Durham) gave a few helpful tips on publishing books of this sort. But I'd like to hear more. For example, Thomas is an Associate Professor. In general, does one need to be at a more advanced stage of one's career for publishers to be receptive to proposal for popular books? When I was invited to meet with a couple of presses early in my career, the representatives told me outright that they were looking for a specialized research book from me, not a book for a general audience. Could this be because while research books sell to university libraries, books for a general readership don't--thus making it crucial (from the press's perspective) for the book to be written by established name likely to generate sales?

Also, what kinds of proposals do presses take seriously for popular books? I'm just curious to hear more from people who have published popular philosophy books (or tried to) how things work. Many thanks in advance to anyone who chimes in!

Should COVID spur peer-review reform?

Long-time readers of the Cocoon may recall that I have advocated for reform to our discipline's peer-review system for about eight years now. In brief, our current system of peer-review seems to serve no one well. As I argued here and an informal survey I carried out seemed to support, our current system of anonymized peer-review:

1. Overwhelms editors with too many submissions.
2. Irritates and overwhelms reviewers with too many 'half-baked' submissions.
3. Frustrates authors with long and inconsistent turnaround times, peer-review reports of dubious quality, etc.

In addition to each of these problems, our current publishing system almost certainly impedes the timely dissemination of new research. COVID-19 is a prime example of the problem here. To see why, consider the following offhand remark that Jacob Stegenga makes in a guest post at Daily Nous today:

So far in the lockdown—May whatever-it-is-today—I am not aware of a systematic piece written by a philosopher of science on the pandemic or the policy response (if you know of one, I would be grateful if anyone reading this would direct me to it). Of course, I do not mean a journal article—our journals move too slowly for this—but I mean something deeper and more impactful than what normally appears in social media or blogs.

This is particularly striking to me. Over the past two months as the COVID-19 pandemic has progressed, articles in medical journals have been rapidly published (see e.g. here and here). Yes, there have been some COVID-related articles published in a few niche ethics journals (primarily interdisciplinary ones). But, as Stegenga's post illustrates, philosophy has by and large lagged behind other fields in disseminating new research on this world-changing topic. How many philosophy articles on COVID are stuck in anonymized review right now, as this pandemic rages around us? One can only imagine. Are there dangers to the rapid dissemination of research? Sure, particularly when it comes (as we all know by now) to epidemiological modeling. That being said, our current system of anonymized review--in addition to all of its other problems--is systematically poorly designed for this moment and world-changing moments like it. Philosophy should be on the front end of COVID, examining the myriad questions it raises in philosophy of science, ethics, etc. And yet, so far at least (as Stegenga notes), we seem to be decidedly lagging behind other fields.

Is it possible to go outside of our current publishing system to disseminate research more quickly--for example, by posting papers to the philarchive or publishing public philosophy in The Atlantic, etc.? Of course it's possible. But why should philosophers have to choose between these options when other fields don't? In physics, everyone expects unpublished drafts to be posted to the ArXiv prior to journal review. The same is true in medicine with the MedRxiv. In philosophy, on the other hand, there are no clear norms here: it's unclear from author guidelines at journals whether editors or reviewers frown on authors posting unpublished drafts to the philarchive. Indeed, for my part, I mostly avoid posting unpublished drafts there for this very reason. Will a journal editor or reviewer think it violates anonymized review? I have no idea, so for the most part I just avoid it. But why should this be how things are in our profession, when other professions have been using a more public alternative for decades?

The way I see, the time for peer-review reform in philosophy is now. How could such reform be achieved? Here's one possibility: the APA could take a clear stance in favor of authors posting unpublished drafts on the philarchive, recommending that journal editors and reviewers not hold it against others. And here's another possibility: journal editors could come out and state clearly that their journal endorses the practice. These changes, I believe, would benefit us all. A clear disciplinary norm that says it's just fine for authors to post unpublished drafts on the philarchive would incentivize authors to do so, enabling them to get more feedback on their papers, plausibly lessening the number of 'half baked' papers submitted to journals, reducing the number of revise-and-resubmits authors have to go through, and disseminating new philosophical arguments more quickly. We don't live in the 18th century anymore, and shouldn't keep using a peer-review system designed for that era. We live in a vastly different era, one where philosophers could make more timely contributions to public debate...if only we finally got down to business on peer-review reform.

Or so say I. What say you?

A (strange) case of academic misconduct?

A reader (who is a well-established philosopher) writes in with a rather odd case:

A question, which I'd prefer you ask anonymously:

What should you do if you find your work being cited in [BS] dissertations?

The situation: I was feeling vain the other day, so I looked up my google scholar profile and saw that a couple of my papers had some new citations. So I went looking for where they were cited. 

What I found was a series of 'dissertations' that all cited my papers. I put 'dissertations' in quotes because they were, at best, jumbled collections of something just barely above word-salad. All of these dissertations came from the same [non-philosophy grad] program, all of them having some permutation of the same three faculty members as a committee. 

And they're just gibberish. Incoherently constructed, hundreds of pages long, they're nothing but long strings of vaguely sentence-shaped arrangements of words that never quite rise to the level of meaningfulness. 

What should I do? I'm lazy by nature, so my instinct is to ignore it. But I also feel like there's something sinister about this that I really don't *want* to ignore. On the other hand, I have no idea who to contact.

In general, I'm inclined to think that the standards of different academic disciplines are so heterogeneous that one should tend to 'let things go.' I mean, there are entire fields I've come across that seem to me (as a philosopher) to use 'nonsense methods.' While I actually think there is something deeply problematic about such fields, I don't think it's my place to 'contact anyone about it.' Rather, it seems to me that the thing to do is to argue in print that the methods in the fields in question are problematic--that or engage in something like the Sokal Hoax to display how problematic the relevant fields are (though this kind of stuff can get you in a lot of trouble if you're not careful).

European candidates without student evaluations

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

Reading one of the recent posts, I came across something I have wondered quite often. 'Teaching evaluations' seem to be quite a standard thing in the US and I have seen them as a requirement on postdoc offerings as well, but at least from my experience, they aren't really a thing here in Europe. We do have evaluations but often they are not really anything that is shared. Any ideas on what to do if I don't have any teaching evaluations and my university won't supply them for whatever reason, but I have taught or tutored courses?

Another reader replied:

If you cannot get teaching evaluations, have a senior colleague write a teaching letter. Ideally, they have seen you teach. When I taught in North America, and was on the market, I routinely asked senior colleagues to sit in on a lecture. They then review your teaching materials, and write a letter based on that.

This seems to me a good suggestion. However, I am curious whether there's anything else the original commenter can do. Although teaching observation letters are helpful, and I've known search committee members who seem pretty skeptical of the value of student evaluations, my experience is that people at teaching-focused institutions can care a good deal about evaluations--or at least having some general idea of what your students think of your performance.

Is there any way for European candidates to get a hold of their evaluations, even if they are not normally shared? (As a side note, why are evaluations collected at all if they're not shared with the faculty member?). Alternatively, how about conducting one's own informal evaluations? Early in my career, I did some of these mid-semester to see how my students thought things were going--and I've heard of other people doing similar things. Could people in the original commenter's position carry out their own end-of-semester evaluations and then report them as such in their job-materials?

I'm just throwing ideas out there. What does everyone think?

Writing advice to those new to publishing?

A reader writes in:

I'm new to the publishing side of the profession. I do have projects I'm working on. What I can tell I haven't developed is a sense of a reliable writing process.  

Do you (or other philosophers) get an idea and generally just start drafting the idea right away? Or do you spend time reading relevant litt first?

My worries are that I furiously write two pages worth of notes to get an idea down just to go read the literature to find out I've either been scooped (someone's already worked on that) or that it's actually just a terrible idea, and it feels like wasted time (and inspiration) to have banged out even the 2-3 pages of notes. So my temptation is to read. But then the reading feels unending. When did I read enough to feel justified that I can start writing this up?  

My advisor in grad school was and is a prolific writer. So I can't imagine that [they're] poring over a lot of articles before [they] just start throwing ideas on the page. But I'm also guessing [they're] not representative either since [their] output volume is a lot higher than anyone else in my old department. I'm trying to get a sense of reasonable expectations (averages maybe?) about how the process should go.

This is a great query, and I'm curious to hear what other readers think. However, here are some of my own quick reactions.

Saturday sounds

Becoming a more competitive candidate while TT

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Ed writes:

I'd be grateful to hear thoughts from you and others on what new assistant professors should do in their ~five years on the tenure clock to make themselves as competitive as possible for other positions at the widest range of institutions when going up for review at their home institution.

This is an interesting query because, as we've discussed many times before, there isn't just one academic job-market; there are multiple ones--roughly, the elite R1 market, R1 market more generally, R2 market, elite SLAC market, non-elite SLAC market, community college market, and so on. Bearing this in mind, I'm not entirely sure there is a way to make oneself "as competitive as possible for other positions at the widest range of institutions." Maybe having an excellent record across the board--in publishing, teaching, and service--will make you competitive across a wide array of institutions. But I'm not sure. When it comes to elite R1's, my understanding is that you basically have to be a 'star' to be competitive. At R1's more generally, I expect you just need to have a stellar publishing record. At elite SLACs, I suspect you probably have to have a stellar publishing record and a good record as a teacher. But non-elite SLACs, state schools, and community colleges? It's unclear to me how much a good publishing record matters.

Anyway, I guess my answer to the OP is: I don't really know! I suspect that, in general, it's important to stand out in some way: to have some kind of record of extraordinary achievement during your time on the tenure stream (in research for elite places, teaching and/or service for non-elite SLACs), etc. I also expect that having a strong record across the board is likely to make you an attractive candidate at many places. But, beyond these speculations, I have to confess that I don't have much of a feel for things here.

What do you all think, particularly those of you who have moved institutions successfully after tenure-review or who hired someone at that stage?

P2P Hypothesis interview at Borealism

The other week, the blog Borealism published a brief interview with David Kyle Johnson (Kings College) on how our lives would change if we discovered we are living in a computer simulation. Dr. Johnson kindly mentioned some of my work on The Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Simulation Hypothesis (see here, here, and here), which led in turn to the blog owner to send me a few follow-up questions. Borealism published my answers in part here, but here they are in full (I hope some of you find them interesting!):

1. Your theory maintains anchored in the idea that time flows subjectively and that the physical universe is a timelessly existing array of information which our consciousness is able to perceive as it chooses to perceive. In other words, that each person’s consciousness can read the physical information, akin to the laser of a CD player reading the information on the compact disc and playing it back to the observer. In your observations and experiences, how does the quantum world of collapsing wave functions and the observer effect work to support this hypothesis? 

Great question, and many thanks for taking an interest in my work and sharing it with your readers!

Let me begin by suggesting this video to any of your viewers who may be (understandably) unfamiliar with quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is an incredibly well-confirmed theory of fundamental physics. Indeed, every bizarre prediction it makes has so far been observed to be correct. Yet quantum mechanics paints a very strange picture of reality. Among other things, it entails that every particle in the universe is simultaneously in many places at once (quantum superposition), but that whenever we observe a particle, we will always find it in some particular place in space-time (wave-function collapse). As I note in my 2013 article, ‘A New Theory of Free Will’, Einstein thought this to be so absurd that he once scoffed, “Do you really think the moon isn’t there if you aren’t looking at it?” Perhaps the weirdest thing here is that according to the dominant interpretation of the equations of quantum mechanics—the Copenhagen interpretation—the superposition every particle is in never actually goes away or ‘collapses’. Rather, every particle is always in a superposition (many places at once), but observation makes the particle appear to ‘collapse’ to a single particular state.

My theory provides an elegant explanation of these phenomena. In a peer-to-peer networked computer simulation, each computer on the network is running its own unique simulation. So, for example, if we are playing a peer-to-peer networked internet game on 2,000 game consoles, there are in a sense ‘2,000 simulations’ running, each with its own ‘reality’. But at the same time, insofar as all of the computers on the network are interacting with each other—updating what they are simulating based on the data the other computers on the network give them—there is also in a sense just one simulation: the entire network.

This is how the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Hypothesis explains quantum superposition and wave-function collapse. Insofar as each simulation on the network has its own unique representation of where objects in the simulated environment are, unless there is absolutely perfect error-correction in real time (a computational impossibility), different computers on the network will have slightly different representations of where things in the environment are. Thus, at the level of the network as a whole, it is right to say that everything in the environment is always in a superposition: each particle in a 2,000-computer network will be represented in the network as being at something like 2,000 different places simultaneously. Yet, whenever any particular individual playing their game looks at the simulated world (on their computer), they will always observe things in one particular place or another: since their computer is one of the 2,000 computers running the simulation. So, in a P2P network, objects really are in a sense always in multiple places at once, but will always be observed by any observer to be at one particular place or other—exactly as the equations of quantum mechanics entail.

Query: moving academic jobs during COVID

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, Amanda writes: 

My friend is an academic but not a philosopher. He works in the social sciences. He is finishing up his fourth year as an assistant professor at a large state/regional university. His tenure odds look very promising. However, he applied to a few jobs this year because, (1) he wants to live closer to family, and,(2) he would rather work at a slac, his dream job is an elite slac.

Well, this year of all years, he was offered an interview, and then a job, at a research leaning slac that is a very good school, but not necessarily an elite slac. (it has an acceptance rate of about 30% .) This job is offering a 3/3 load and his current load is 4/4. The pay is about the same.

The "problem" he is having (I know, I know, cry him a river) is that with COVID, he is very hesitant to leave because, (1) for various reasons, his current school and department are in an unusually strong financial position, i.e., there are factors about his school and department that allowed them to manage the COVID crisis better than most. While he doesn't have any reason to believe that this other school is in financial trouble, they lack the special features of security that his current department has. He also is somewhat scared of even negotiating with his current department, insofar as they might (he imagines) be insulted that he isn't grateful for his job at a time like this, and he worries that maybe the administration will look happily upon any opportunity to get rid of a tenure track line. Lastly, he is not sure what his position will be re tenure at the other department. He is tempted to ask for a reduced tenure clock or even a tenured position, but supposing, say, they only give him two years off the tenure clock, what should he do? He is pretty sure that he would decline if they gave him no time toward tenure.

Any advice? He fears that if he takes the job, he will be throwing away too much security at a time where nothing is more valuable than security. On the other hand, if he declines, he risks throwing away a job that is pretty close to, and might be a great stepping stone toward, his dream job.

There has already been a fair amount of discussion in that thread, with a couple of commenters suggesting that it's a personal decision and that Amanda's friend should "ask a more senior person in his own department...who he trusts...for advice." However, I have to say that I'm much less sanguine. I've already seen at least one case in my social media feed of a  university that told their faculty 'everything's going to be okay', only to dramatically shift policy immediately after the end of the semester, furloughing faculty and staff, etc. Personally, I'd want to have a clear picture of the relative financial health of the two institutions before making any decision--and I would be very hesitant to leave a place I had good reason to believe to be financially stable over a place I had questions about.

In any case, before accepting a position, I would definitely want an answer to the 'tenure-clock' question, and make sure I get the answer down in writing in an official offer letter.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Side-gigs for philosophers?

In our recent thread on back-up career paths, M writes:

Not sure how selfish this sounds given that so many of us are unable to get jobs, but I wonder if it might be worth having a thread about side-gigs of philosophers-ways philosophers have of earning extra income. Salaries are not what we'd like them to be and many of us, FT and adjunct faculty, earn extra money to make ends meet. Any thoughts?

Although jobs of all kinds are scarce during the COVID pandemic, I think this is a great query. If I recall, philosophy grad students often have provisions in their contracts prohibiting them from taking outside employment (which, for the record, seems really unfair and counterproductive to me, as well as not at all in line with STEM grad programs!). But, in any case, side-gigs seem like the kind of thing one should pursue, not just for additional income but also for experience one can put on a resume in case one needs (or wants) to transition out of academia into a non-academic field.

Bearing this in mind, do any readers have any thoughts or experience here? Have any of you had 'side-gigs'? If so, were any of you able to leverage them in any way in transitioning out of academia into non-academic industry?

Reviewing book manuscripts

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I'd be interested to know how people approach [book] manuscript reviewing. While publishers (in my experience) offer $100-200 to review a manuscript, the time commitment can be anywhere from ~5 hours to several days depending on the level of involvement of the reviewer. How long do people spend reviewing a manuscript (does this depend on the remuneration offered?) and what kinds of comments do they give (or what kinds of comments are expected and helpful)? I'd like to get a better picture of what is appropriate, as I have a good sense of how to review articles but not manuscripts.

An author responded:

You are not being paid to review a book manuscript. You are being given an honorarium, a small token of their appreciation. Keep in mind, if the press does not publish the manuscript, the whole process has cost them a lot. They have others to pay, etc.

The original commenter then responded:

Given that, what kinds of feedback do you think it's best to receive and give? I imagine line edits are too extreme, but that authors/publishers expect something more than a summation of the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript. I could be wrong on this assumption though, so any help would be appreciated.

As someone who has both reviewed a number of book manuscripts and been the recipient of reviews, here's my own answer: I think the question of what kind of feedback it's best to receive and give depends primarily on the manuscript itself. Here's what I do:

1. I give the manuscript a quick read-through.
2. If it does not seem to me promising enough to warrant a contract, then I will quickly explain why (presses usually give reviewers forms with a series of questions to answer).
3. If it does seem to me promising enough to warrant a contract, then I will again quickly explain why, but then give the manuscript a close read, adding any feedback that I think would substantially improve the manuscript (including pointing out any serious mistakes).

When it comes to type-3 cases (where I think a contract is warranted), how much time I put in and the kind of feedback I provide depends on (A) how much time I have, and (B) how good of shape the manuscript is in. If the manuscript is in really good shape, then I may not feel the need to give detailed feedback (beyond any things that clearly stick out to me as things that need addressing). On the other hand, if manuscript is promising but really needs substantial work, I'll explain in fair detail why--much as I would in reviewing a journal article. 

As a quick autobiographical note, my reviews for journal articles are normally between 1-3 pages long, my reviews of book manuscripts normally similar in length, and the reviews I have received for book manuscripts I submitted generally similar in length as well. So, this seems to me about what to shoot for: something like the length and detail of a standard journal article review. Alas, I would say this can take anywhere from several hours to a few days, depending on the case. So unfortunately, my advice here doesn't really go beyond where the original commenter started.

Five Questions podcast (by Kieran Setiya)

This new podcast looks pretty cool. The first episode, five questions for David Velleman (NYU & JHU), is now up!

Self-referencing and anonymized review

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes in:

There's about six published analyses of concept X, one of them by me. I want to write a paper saying something like the following: "Everyone agrees that Y is a case of X. But all these conceptual analyses except mine fail to capture that fact. So mine's the best."

(There's more to the paper than this, but this is the part that raises some problems for me).

My question is, what would it look like to remove identifying references from such a paper? Should I cite my paper on the concept of X, but call it [Removed for anonymous review], or should I refer to myself in the third person?

The former is what I feel pulled to do, since that's what I normally do. But I guess why I'm confused is that in all my other cases of self-citation, the citation was pretty offhand and I said so little about the paper that it would be very difficult to know which paper I was actually talking about. But that won't be the case here, and there would be pages and pages of, "As [Redacted] has argued...", "[Redacted]'s view would predict that ...", and so on.

This is a great query. As a lot of my own research builds on previous things I've published, this is an issue that I struggled with for a long while, and I found out the hard way the best way to go about it. In brief, the general consensus on this seems to be: don't use '[Redacted]'; instead, cite yourself in the third-person. I say this is the general consensus for two reasons: 

1. I've been a part of several social media threads where this was the dominant answer.
2. I was called out by referees, and seemingly had papers rejected, for using the '[redacted]' approach.

Why do people oppose the latter approach? Two pretty good reasons were given: (A) the '[redacted]' approach openly signals that the author of the paper has already published, conveying to a reviewer that they may already be a recognized figure in the field, and (B) it can be pretty easy to determine who the author is likely to be, especially if (as is the case in the OP) the author is the sole person who defended a particular account, or otherwise one of few authors who has. Both (A) and (B) seem problematic, as they can induce reviewer biases that anonymized review is designed to preclude or mitigate. In contrast, citing yourself in the third-person leaves it a mystery whether you are the person who defended the view in question. Sure, the reviewer might wonder whether you are them--but there's no way for them to really know, whereas '[redacted]' is a clear signal that indeed you are the person who published the previous work.

Anyway, this is my take. What do you all think, particularly those of you who serve as journal reviewers or editors?

Virtue and Meaning: an Interview with David McPherson

Ethical Theory Review, Bradford Cokelet's (University of Kansas) new podcast interviewing authors of recent and forthcoming books in moral and practical philosophy, has its first interview up here, which you can listen to online or on Spotify. The interview is with David McPherson (Creighton). Here's a quick description of the interview:

We discuss [McPherson's] new book, Virtue and Meaning, which develops and defends a new theory of human nature – the human being as the meaning seeking creature – and explores its implications for ethical theory.  We discuss David's criticism of Aristotelian Naturalists such as Foot, Hursthouse, and MacIntyre, his alternative account of moral virtue and the good life, and his view that Aristotelian moral philosophers need to develop accounts of the cosmic meaning of human life and of human spirituality.

Dossier tips for the COVID-era job-market?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a VAP writes:

How should job-market candidates next year deal with the effects of COVID-19 in their documents?

For example, I suspect teaching evaluations for this term will be all over the place: some will have remarkably good evals, I bet; but many will have terrible ones (the transition might have gone poorly, communication expectations weren't met, etc.) Should instructors issue some sort of caveat? (I mean, obviously everyone will know that COVID happened; but is it worth making this explicit?) Or should we omit these evals altogether?

A related issue concerns syllabi: I would typically put my syllabus in my dossier among the others for courses I've taught. But now I have this weird, ad-hoc syllabus-within-a-syllabus that attends to all the issues that have arisen from COVID-19, including adjusted expectations, new assignments, etc. I think this showcases important skills and highlights innovative approaches to teaching, etc. etc. But I am curious as to its relevance (in the eyes of search committees) going forward.

Any thoughts on these and other issues would be useful. (And yes, I'm aware the market will be a ghost town next year. But many of us are surely going to prepare for it all the same, so we might as well start thinking about some of these things now.)

Good questions, and I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks. Here are a few of my own reactions.

So You Think You Want a Tenure-Track Job? (Guest post by Liz Swan)

By Liz Swan (Real Estate Broker & Lecturer in Writing and Rhetoric, UC Boulder)

[This was originally posted at ChronicleVitae in 2016. Many thanks to Liz for allowing me to re-post it]

I wanted one, too. Badly. In fact, in 2010, I wrote an article for The Chronicle called “Message in a Bottle” in which I likened a Ph.D. sending out countless applications for tenure-track jobs to a castaway on a remote island, tossing messages out to sea in hopes of being rescued. But then, miraculously, three years later, I was offered a tenure-track job, and took it.

Exactly one year after accepting the position, I resigned from my first — and very likely, last — tenure-track job and eagerly coordinated my family’s return to Colorado. Here’s what I learned in the process, some of which I hope will be helpful to those currently in the depressing throes of bottled message tossing.

Loss of perspective. Being on the academic job market year after year — in my case, five years — means getting whatever employment you can along the way while holding out hope for a tenure-track position that may or may not come through. It’s akin to skiing downhill with no idea of how you’re going to stop at the bottom without crashing into a bunch of people. Weird analogy, maybe, but what I mean is that battling it out on the academic market year after year builds such a momentum, and you become so singularly focused on getting the job, that you lose all perspective. You don’t think about what it will actually be like when you do get it, and whether it will in fact satisfy your career needs and desires, not to mention be in the best interest of other people in your life like a partner and dependents. The pursuit itself is so all-consuming that it takes on a dangerous life of its own, everything else be damned.

 

Setting Boundaries: Personal & Professional (Guest post by MAP)

The following is a guest post by Elise Woodard (Michigan), Carolina Flores (Rutgers), Milana Kostic (UCSD), Angela Sun (Michigan), and Jingyi Wu (UC Irvine), graduate students who comprise the organizing team of Minorities and Philosophy (MAP). 

‘Boundaries’ has become a buzzword in academia. We often hear about the importance of setting boundaries and cultivating work-life balance, yet many of us still struggle to set boundaries effectively and confidently. Moreover, the language of boundaries is often not subject to explicit scrutiny, yet like other buzzwords such as ‘self-care,’ it is liable to be co-opted or misunderstood. 

At our Central APA session, Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) attempted to open up the conversation about how to set boundaries and how to talk about them. Here we share some tips on how to set, communicate, and think about boundaries in a salutary and non-individualistic way.

Tips for transitioning into tech industries?

A reader writes in:

As an academic philosopher considering leaving the field, I've found your recent alt-ac posts, and the resources posted, very valuable. One possible trajectory I would be interested in learning more about, if this is possible, is the tech trajectory. In other words, suppose one has a doctoral degree in philosophy, but now, all the terrible things about the present considered, one wants to do something quantitative in the tech or adjacent industries. What does that path look like? How does one start to build credentials or the equivalent?

Great question! It's interesting to see that quite a lot of people in my new Philosophers in Industry directory are in tech. I think it would be great to have a guest-post or two on this from people who transitioned into tech fields. Any readers out there interested in contributing a guest post? If so, please just email me at [email protected]. In the meantime, I encourage any readers with experience in tech to post any tips they have in the comment section below!

Saturday sounds

Now that it's getting close to summer, I'm going to restart one of my favorite summer traditions: sharing some music I dig. I think this one may be one of the finest dream pop songs ever written (the lyrics are wonderful too). Put on some headphones and enjoy!