The Philosophers' Cocoon

Catch up with (and submit to!) 'New Work in Philosophy'

Readers may recall that Barry Maguire (University of Edinburgh) and I launched a Substack newsletter, New Work in Philosophy, last December. As NWP's About page notes,

NWP ... feature[s] short, accessible blog posts, videos, and other multimedia (such as pictures, audio recordings, elaborate argument maps, etc.) in which philosophers promote, discuss, and disseminate their new(ish) work (published articles and books), or the work of others (including article and book reviews, etc.).

We've had a wonderful array of posts so far, and have an associated YouTube Channel that you can subscribe to that features videos that have appeared at NWP.

Also, following a suggestion by a reader here at the Cocoon, I've now categorized NWP posts by areas of research. Thus far, you can sort posts by:

• Aesthetics
• Artificial Intelligence
• Epistemology
• Ethics
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Philosophy
• Metaphilosophy
• Metaphysics
• Philosophy of Disability
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Race
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Science
• Popular Philosophy
• Social-Political Philosophy

We'll continue adding new categories on an ongoing basis. 

NWP seems to be flourishing so far, with nearly 1,900 subscribers (subscriptions are free). Although I don't have any firm numbers, it looks at least anecdotally like our readership is about 50% academic and 50% members of the general public.

So, if you enjoy NWP and have any recent or forthcoming publications in philosophy (broadly construed), or if you would like to draw attention to someone else's recent work, please do not hesitate to email a 'pitch' to either Barry or myself.

You can either approach us with a completed contribution (a blog post, video, audio recording, podcast, multimedia post, etc.), or simply to inquire. We're committed at NWP to featuring a diverse variety of work, so we hope you consider sharing yours.

Here are a few more details from NWP's About page,

We welcome unsolicited submissions from any professional philosopher (PhD students or beyond) or anyone who has published philosophy in legitimate peer-reviewed venues.

We particularly encourage submissions from junior philosophers and underrepresented groups in the profession, as well as postdocs, VAPs, and full or part-time faculty from a diverse variety of institutions.

Also, in addition to posting contributions by authors on their own work and the work of others (e.g. book/article reviews), we would like to encourage:

1. 1. Submissions by established (or somewhat established) philosophers that discuss/recommend new work by less/un-established philosophers who aren’t their colleagues or students.

   2. That readers draw our attention to other Substack pages with professional philosophical content, including their own. Substack has a nifty “recommend” feature, and we hope to draw amplify the work of other professional philosophers on Substack, as well.

Please email [email protected] or [email protected] to pitch a post or draw our attention to another Substack in professional philosophy that you would like to recommend.

Depending on the number and types of pitches that we receive, we reserve the right to curate which pitches to accept (at any stage of the pitching/submission process), so as to best advance the mission outlined above.

Hope some of you decide to submit contributions!

New Work in Philosophy (NWP) Roundup

This is just a quick roundup of this week's posts over at New Work in Philosophy. This week NWP featured:

• Matilda Carter (University of Glasgow), "Minority Minds: Mental Disability and the Presumption of Value Neutrality" (Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2022)
• Hrishikesh Joshi (Bowling Green State University), “The Epistemic Significance of Social Pressure” (Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2022)
• Jeffrey Kaplan (University of North Carolina at Greensboro), "A New Problem for Rules" (Forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research) (video)
• Charlotte Knowles (University of Groningen), "Beyond Adaptive Preferences: Rethinking Women's Complicity in their own Subordination" (European Journal of Philosophy, 2022)
• Paul Schofield (Bates College) on recent work of Jack Samuel (NYU Law Student)

You can also visit NWP's full archive of posts, and our YouTube Channel and Playlist. Also, if you have recent or forthcoming peer-reviewed work that you'd like to share more widely, please do consider emailing us with a pitch. NWP currently has nearly 1,100 subscribers, and we feature new posts on a rolling basis as they come in.

As our About page notes, 

We welcome unsolicited submissions from any professional philosopher (PhD students or beyond) or anyone who has published philosophy in legitimate peer-reviewed venues.

We particularly encourage submissions from junior philosophers and underrepresented groups in the profession, as well as postdocs, VAPs, and full or part-time faculty from a diverse variety of institutions.

Also, in addition to posting contributions by authors on their own work and the work of others (e.g. book/article reviews), we would like to encourage:

1. 1. Submissions by established (or somewhat established) philosophers that discuss/recommend new work by less/un-established philosophers who aren’t their colleagues or students.

   2. That readers draw our attention to other Substack pages with professional philosophical content, including their own. Substack has a nifty “recommend” feature, and we hope to draw amplify the work of other professional philosophers on Substack, as well.

Please email [email protected] or [email protected] to pitch a post or draw our attention to another Substack in professional philosophy that you would like to recommend.

New Work in Philosophy YouTube Channel

Barry Maguire and I extend our sincere thanks to everyone for supporting New Work in Philosophy's recent launch. It’s been amazing to see the creativity in the pieces that our first batch of authors put together, and we are grateful for the positive response that we’ve received from readers.

We are going to take a short break for the holidays, before returning with new posts in the New Year. In the meantime, we’re delighted to announce the launch of NWP’s official YouTube Channel and playlist.

We hope that this can help to give the broader public a better sense of what philosophers nowadays are actually up to.

This Channel will feature all of NWP’s video contributions in a single venue that is easy to follow and share. We’re also happy to draw attention to other philosophy channels. So, if you know any you’d like to recommend, do let us know.

As always, if you are a philosopher with published work that you’d like to share, or would like to highlight someone else’s work, we’d like to once again encourage you to pitch a post. Your post could be anything: an accessible video introduction, a blog-style post, a prezi-based discussion, animation, etc. And it doesn't need to be a summary of the paper. It could be a broader pitch that motivates the point of the paper in the larger context of a new project, a McSweeney's parody of your own writing style, etc. The more interesting, the better. We also encourage submissions by established (or somewhat established) philosophers that discuss new work by less established philosophers.

NWP already has over 700 subscribers and is consistently receiving between 2,000-3,000 visits per weekday—so if you’d to share your work or highlight the work of someone else you think warrants more attention, just email us a pitch at [email protected] or [email protected].

Happy holidays, and hope to see you all at NWP in the New Year!

New post and features at 'New Work in Philosophy'

This is just a quick note that New Work in Philosophy has a new post up today by Berislav Marušić (University of Edinburgh). Do check it out!

Also, thanks to some helpful feedback that we received on NWP's launch yesterday, we have rolled out a new feature and point of emphasis:

1. In addition to posting contributions by authors on their own work and the work of others (e.g. book/article reviews), we encourage submissions by established (or somewhat established) philosophers that discuss/recommend new work by less/un-established philosophers who aren’t their colleagues or students. We also continue to encourage posts by or about the work of junior philosophers and underrepresented groups in the profession more generally.

2. We encourage readers to draw our attention to other Substack pages with professional philosophical content. Substack has a nifty “recommend” feature, so we will now feature an “Other Philosophy Substacks” button on this site’s top navigation bar. Recommendations will also go out to subscribers in a Substack Recommendation Digest (which can be unsubscribed from if you only want to receive notifications of original NWP posts).

Both new policies are intended to advance NWP’s aim of being an anti-elitist forum that highlights exciting new work by diverse philosophers at a wide variety of institutions, career stages, and employment situations.

So, if you'd like to pitch a piece about your own work, work by someone else that you would like to recommend or discuss, or another philosophy Substack, just let me know!

Introducing 'New Work in Philosophy: A multimedia newsletter'

I am excited to announce that Barry Maguire (University of Edinburgh) and I launched a Substack newsletter today, New Work in Philosophy.

The site aims to improve the dissemination and discussion of new published work in the field by featuring short, accessible posts (blog posts, short videos, prezi presentations, argument maps, etc.) about new books and articles in philosophy. The site also encourages professional discussion of posts modeled on a conference Q&A period (for the site's unique commenting and moderation policy, see here).

While we have commissioned a series of posts to launch the site, our aim is for the site to be an anti-elitist institution. We welcome unsolicited submissions from any professional philosopher (PhD students or beyond) or anyone who has previously published or presented philosophy in legitimate peer-reviewed venues.

We also particularly encourage submissions from junior philosophers and underrepresented groups in the profession, as well as postdocs, VAPs, and full or part-time faculty from a diverse variety of institutions.

The site's first four posts are now up:

1. An 8-minute video and lightboard presentation by Mark Schroeder (USC) on his paper, "Attributive Silencing."

2. A short blog post and 7-minute lecture by Wendy Salkin (Stanford University) on her paper "Democracy Within, Justice Without: The Duties of Informal Political Representatives" (Noûs, 2021).

3. A blog post by Sukaina Hirji (University of Pennsylvania) on her new paper, "Outrage and the Bounds of Empathy" (Philosophers Imprint, 2022).

4. A blog post by Farbod Akhlaghi (Christ's College, University of Cambridge) on his paper, "Non-Realist Cognitivism, Truthmaking, and Ontological Cheating" (Ethics, 2022).

If you would like to pitch a post, just email [email protected] or [email protected]. 

Your pitch could be anything: just a couple of sentences, a longer blog-style post, a video of any length, an argument map, a few powerpoint slides with commentary. Your pitch doesn't need to be an actual summary of your work. It could be a broader pitch that simply motivates the point of the paper in the larger context of a new project, or a zestier pitch that says more loosely what you hope the takeaway will be.

If you would like to subscribe to the newsletter, you can do so here, and the site's Twitter page is here if you'd like to follow. I also highly recommend downloading the Substack app from the App Store for ease of access.