Our books






Become a Fan

« Priorities and strategies after early tenure? | Main | Philosophy of religion journal rankings? »

07/11/2022

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Michel

I agree entirely woth Marcus: let your writing guide the bulk of your reading. As you develop your own claims, it should become clear to you which kinds of articles you need to find and read--in other words, writing should help you to narrow the reading list and target particular topics.

But I also think you should make a little time to read philosophy stuff that interests you--i.e. papers from your PhilPapers feed whose titles or abstracts are intriguing, regardless of whether they pertain to your dissertation. Don't spend all day doing it, but an hour a workday or an article every few days will help keep you sane and engaged and excited.

non-tt faculty

SEP if one wants to know what the "hot topics" are, assuming that the articles are reasonably up to date; PhilPapers and the Philosophy Paperboy for new titles that look interesting and seem relevant; Google Scholar, especially "cited by" for potentially relevant and newly published papers; and papers cited by what one currently reads.

And I wholeheartedly agree that a) it's good to let writing guide reading, and b) cite properly, especially articles that appear in less prestigious journals as often those contributions are invisible (to many) and forgotten.

Balance

A good balance of reading, writing, and thinking are important. Robin Dembroff made a critique of some philosopher’s preoccupation of thinking over reading in their article “Cisgender Commonsense and Philosophy’s Transgender Trouble”. Perhaps setting a time limit for each and scheduling them each day. Annotate your readings with some kind of distinct color or mark of potential idea to work on. I like to use my Notes app on IPhone to jot down general ideas and make an outline for them. Then I go into detail with them and look up from relevant readings.

Gabe

It is common to think of the research process as the gathering of things to read and then reading those things. I've come to think that an essential part of the research process is figuring out what you don't need to read. I've often find myself thinking after completing a reading that I really didn't need to read that or half way through realizing as much. Try to eliminate what you don't need to read. Taking on this perspective explicitly can be helpful. So really taking advantage of abstracts and introductions can be useful. You can always go back and read the piece if you find your initial judgment was mistaken. Skimming is your friend, as well. You just have to skim the parts or pieces that deserve being skimmed given your purposes. You can always go back and read it more carefully when the time is right. Given your research aims each piece calls for a different approach:1) don't read it, 2) read it like it's the most important piece of philosophy ever written, 3) read it while taking notes or marking it up, 4) read it casually marking it when absolutely needed, 5) read it to just get a sense of what the piece is about, 6) read it very quickly, 7) skim it, 8) read the abstract and or introduction. With books, it's often helpful to read a book review to get a sense of whether or not you really need to read the book. Lots of strategies are available when there seems to be a lot of literature to read.

Jacob J Andrews

One thing that helped me is to develop an organized note taking system and to take notes on almost everything I read. That seems paradoxical: doesn't it mean you have less time to actually read? Well, yes. But it also means

1. You'll retain better of what you've already read and so have a better sense of what you should read next.
2. You'll train yourself to focus on the most important points of what you read and not waste time on what you don't need.
3. You'll do lots of incidental philosophical writing, which as Marcus noted will help you figure out what to read.
4. #3 will also make your writing go a lot faster. Pages and pages of my dissertation are patchworks of literature notes, emails to advisors, and Facebook comments that I was diligent to save to my note taking platform months or years earlier.

Daniel Weltman

I recommend Hypernomicon for taking the sorts of notes Jacob talks about. http://hypernomicon.org/

Jacob J Andrews

Daniel, that's really cool! I had never heard of Hypernomicon. I use Obsidian, which I like because everything is saved on your computer and in a nonproprietary format. It's wonderful but a bit of a DIY project to get it working just right for researchers. I'm going to explore Hypernomicon as something to recommend to other academics. Thank you!

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been saved. Comments are moderated and will not appear until approved by the author. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment

Comments are moderated, and will not appear until the author has approved them.

Your Information

(Name and email address are required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)

Job-market reporting thread

Current Job-Market Discussion Thread

Philosophers in Industry Directory

Categories

Subscribe to the Cocoon