In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:
This is a fairly minor question, but I typically have used my personal email for academic business. If I'm sending an email internally (to my chair or the dean, and so on) I will use my university email address, but the university has made it annoying enough (so secure that it's a pain in the ass to check it and email from it) that otherwise I will simply use my personal email, to email with journals, professional organizations, casual notes to colleagues, and so on. I have my personal email on my CV. I also like doing that because I have changed institutions enough that it's irritating to re-do all my journal logins and so on.
Is this normal? Does it rub people the wrong way? I will sometimes get an email back from someone, an individual or an editor, and they will send it to my university email, even though I have only emailed from my personal address. It feels like a rebuke. After all, they had to look it up! But maybe I am reading too much into it. It makes me wonder if I am violating some norm here, by emailing about academic matters from a gmail account.
These may seem like minor questions (and in some ways they are), but my experience is that answering them wrongly can have unwanted consequences. Allow me to explain. I'm not personally rubbed the wrong way by someone using their personal email address, and I know many people who do. However, one reader submitted the following reply to the OP:
I think if your job is TT you should be using the university e-mail for all professional correspondence. Your work is supported by your institution. And, at the end of the day, if there is a problem with your professional behavior it will (rightLY9 come back to your institution. So once you've settled down you should use the uni address. Incidentally, I often have to contact people, and many I do not know, and I ONLY use uni addresses.
Indeed, some universities require faculty to use their university email for work purposes for this very reason, and I know faculty who have gotten in some real trouble for not realizing this was their university's policy. So, that's one thing. Another thing (at least in the US) is FERPA, a federal law relating to academic records. The OP doesn't say that they use their personal email for communication with students, but if they do, it could lead to problems--for example, if their personal email account is hacked and private student information somehow exposed (whereas if this happens with your university account, the university bears responsibility). Anyway, these are just a few things. The only other potential problem that I can think of (and which I have run into with other people before) is if they don't check their university email regularly. That can get you in trouble too. But anyway, I doubt that many people outside of your university care much, as long as they can get into contact with you.
Anyway, these are my thoughts. What are yours? (It might be good, for obvious reasons, to hear from people who have somehow run into problems doing what the OP does, if only to determine whether people have run into trouble).
Do philosophers typically think philosophy is real? As in: do you honestly believe the philosophical positions you hold, or believe that the field you work in is pursuing real things?
I've been in graduate school for five years, and always struggled with this question. I always assumed people knew philosophy was an intellectual flight of fancy and picked philosophical positions arbitrarily. I also have always assumed that philosophical issues are fantasy. But the people in my program seem to think that the positions they hold are actually right. Am I the outlier? Do other people have similar inclinations?
I think these are really good questions. Before I weigh in and open things up for discussion, here are three response comments that readers submitted:
PhD student: nope, you're not an outlier. Your fellow grad students need to grow up. Some people never do. - by Overseas Tenured
I would not have dedicated over a decade of my life, and many 60+ hr work weeks, to philosophy, if I thought "philosophy was an intellectual flight of fancy" or if I was "pick[ing] philosophical positions arbitrarily". There are, of course, some topics researched in philosophy that I might characterize as "intellectual flights of fancy", but I avoid those and work on what I take to be serious, important issues. I also try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and assume there's something in those others topics that is important that I'm missing. As far as I know, all of my friends take either their own work, or at least much of what they teach, reasonably seriously. Some may take it more seriously than others, and I know everyone at some point struggles with feeling like their work is actually worthless, but I don't know anyone who openly takes such an extreme and sweeping view of philosophy --- e.g., seeing their own work as a mere kind of game detached from reality or anything important, and also seeing basically all of philosophy that same way. Here are some questions addressed in philosophy: How do we have a just society? Is a specific policy X just and fair? Do animals feel pain and should we eat them? When is it appropriate to believe something based on the evidence? What makes something "fake news"? These (and variations of them) are all questions studied by philosophers. I would have thought they are all clearly important and asking about objective features of reality. - by Mike
Kieran Setiya's podcast "Five Questions" asks most (or all?) of the people he interviews whether they believe the philosophical positions they hold. So you can check out that podcast for various answers to that question. - by Daniel Weltman
My own position here is somewhere in the middle. On the one hand, I wouldn't do philosophy if I didn't think the questions we address are real, and if I didn't think there is something to the views that I defend. On the other hand, I very much appreciate skeptical concerns about traditional philosophical methods. As Jason Brennan argues in his 2010 article, 'Scepticism about philosophy', "Widespread disagreement shows that pursuing philosophy is not a reliable method of discovering true answers to philosophical questions. More likely than not, pursuing philosophy leads to false belief." I advance similar concerns here about traditional methods in moral philosophy. My own preferred answer to this kind of skeptical challenge is that philosophy should use better methods, drawing on science and the methods of the sciences, vis-a-vis natural philosophy. Which is why I think rising interest in metaphilosophy and experimental philosophy is especially valuable. Finally, as many have noted, I think it is impossible to avoid taking philosophical stances on things--for example, on what morality or justice are. We have to simply do our best, though again I think we should use better methods rather than worse ones.
But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? Do you side with PhD Student and Overseas Tenured in thinking of philosophy as little more than flight of fancy, or do you think philosophy is serious business? And, do you believe the views you defend? If so, how do you grapple with skepticism about philosophy's methods?