The Philosophers' Cocoon

Social & academic initiatives for conversations regarding mental health?

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

There have been many posts about isolation, anxiety and mental health issues, and professional instability, all due to covid or not, and mostly between graduate students. Does anyone know of online social initiatives that are created to bring people together and have a conversation on this issues? Or of initiatives for people in academia who wish to just have a conversation with each other and might not have peers to do so at their uni?

This is an excellent and important query. In response to last week's thread on the question of whether it is a good idea or too risky to be open about one's mental health (particularly as an early-career scholar), Alex Bryant (PhD student, McMaster) posted a related thread on Twitter:

Thinking a lot this morning about a conversation I had with @biopoliticalph yesterday: It may be that there are many working philosophers who are in fact disabled are "in the closet," so to speak. But what changes will be made to make it viable for disabled philosophers to come out of the closet about disability (including those like bipolar)?

Salaries for TT & full time non-TT positions?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a 3rd year PhD student asks:

What are salaries like for tenure track positions? Full time non-TT positions? It occurred to me that in many cases, people might get super lucky to land a TT job and then get stuck with a mid range salary with nowhere to go. This thought makes it much easier for me to want to leave sooner than later.

These are great questions. We actually had a thread on this way back in 2013, but a lot could have changed between then and now, so I think discussing things again could be really helpful. Two readers submitted the following replies:

This is a good source for data on faculty salaries. You can also check out other higher ed pay: https://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/ - Submitted by Casey

I've seen starting salaries (for assistant professors in philosophy) anywhere from in the low 40s in low cost of living areas, to 90k at relatively prestigious universities in high cost of living areas. I would guess that the average is around 65k. There is a lot of variation here—I would also guess that the standard deviation is high. - Submitted by Salaries

Given that the OP appears to not only be concerned with starting salaries, but also with the prospect for salary levels as one's career progresses (they're concerned about 'a mid range salary with nowhere to go'), I think it could be good to hear from readers at different job-levels (e.g. Lecturer, Assistant Prof, Associate Prof., Full Prof.) at different kinds of institutions (R1s, R2s, liberal arts colleges and universities, and community colleges). 

What salary did you start at, and what's your salary now? Readers should of course feel free to report anonymously, but I expect it would be helpful if, in addition to your salary and institution-type, you share some general details about location (e.g. major West-coast/East-coast city in the US, small college town in mid-America, etc.), as well as whether your institution is a private or public school. It would also be good to hear from readers about two things: your starting salary when you accepted your first position, and your salary now (at whatever academic level you are currently at). Finally, I think it would be great to hear from readers in different parts of the world (i.e. different countries and continents) so that we can get a picture of how salaries of academic philosophers compare across the world more broadly.

Why we ought to collaborate with philosophers across the globe: a reply to Peter Singer

There has been quite some pushback against Peter Singer, who recently said in an interview in the New Yorker that he was not particularly interested in working together with African philosophers.  Because many people do not have a subscription to The New Yorker, I put the relevant part of the interview below: 

Daniel Gross: "A lot of your works cite white male academics who, for lack of a better phrase, take up a lot of space in intellectual conversations... Because so much of your work is fundamentally about equity, I wonder if that is something that’s on your radar."

Peter Singer: "That’s the manner in which I was educated, I suppose, and which still is very influential in the ideas that I’m involved with. I’ve certainly worked with a lot of philosophers who are not male, but they have been white generally. I’ve got a project now about the issue of global population, with Alex Ezeh, a demographer of Nigerian origin at Drexel University. I worked with Pascal Kasimba when I was at Monash University, who is of African descent, on a project relating to in-vitro fertilization. I have also co-authored things with people of Asian descent, with Yew-Kwang Ng, for instance. But, I have to say, I want to work with people whose ideas are, you know, at a level of discussion that I’m interested in, and that I’m progressing. If you’re thinking of the work of Africans, for example, I don’t know the work of many of them that is really in the same sort of—I’m not quite sure how to put this—participating in the same discussion as the people you’ve just mentioned." 

This is not an uncommon sentiment, though it is rarely expressed in this explicit manner (but then, most academics aren't interviewed and aren't asked this question!).

The sentiment is that philosophers from the global south are not really worth engaging with, because their work would not be at the same level as the more prestigious, well-known (mostly white and male) philosophers from wealthy countries.

I want to argue here that this view is mistaken, and also that not engaging with philosophers and philosophies from the global south presents a missed opportunity. I write this in response to Singer, but I also aim this discussion to the wider readership here. (For example, if you think that you are not subject to these ideas and you're at an American or British department, try to think of e.g., some philosophers working in Ghana or South Africa, two African countries with a vibrant philosophical history and tradition. It may be hard to do so!).

Giving less effort for less pay?

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

I make less now than when I started my tenure track job, controlling for inflation. I think it's my right to give less effort on this basis. For example, if my employer is only paying me 90% of what it used to, for the same work, then I can give 90% of the effort I used to (the 90% is more than sufficient to cover the job requirements).

Some of you might disagree, but that's not my question. My question is instead: is it ok, morally, for me to lower my teaching effort? On the one hand, I care about teaching and the students did nothing wrong in this case. On the other hand, I don't want to let my employer leverage my conscience to get me to work uncompensated (giving the same effort for less pay).

I lean towards its being OK. After all, you get what you pay for, and the students are paying for an education from an institution that underpays its faculty. And my 90% is still better than whatever effort the dead wood at the institution is giving.

This is an interesting question, and I'm curious what readers think. One reader submitted the following response:

Your contractual obligations do not change. Depending where you work, you might find if you scale back you are in violation of your contract. You can be fired. Of course your pay should not shrink! I am not crazy. But, know the law. For example, public employees cannot strike in New York. And to act as you suggest you are going to act may in fact constitute a breach of contract.

This doesn't seem to me to be quite right, at least not given what the OP is describing. Professors are only contractually obligated to fulfill their assigned duties, which in this case is simply teach their classes (and do so competently). Contracts don't state that a person must 'give 100% effort' (or whatever). Rather, university handbooks standardly contain provisions for what comprises merit in teaching, which are normally used for tenure and promotion purposes--which is a different issue. So let's return to the OP's main question, which is whether it is moral for them to give less effort in response to receiving less pay.

Peer-review: keep, change, or abolish?

Darrell Rowbottom (Lingnan University) has drawn my attention to a new paper of his forthcoming in British Journal for Philosophy of Science in which he defends pre-publication peer-review against a recent argument by Heesen and Bright for abolishing the practice altogether. Readers may recall that over the years, I've tried to stake out a middle ground in this debate: arguing for substantial changes to peer-review, but not its abolition. In brief, my own position has been that philosophy should probably transition toward the publication model practiced in math and physics, wherein it is standard practice to:

1. Upload draft papers to the ArXiv (a preprint server similar to the PhilArchive).
2. Share, discuss, and critique unpublished drafts openly (a kind of crowdsourced peer-review that weeds out bad papers and improves good papers before journal submission).
3. Submit papers for peer-review at journals only after steps 1 and 2.

Although this model to a large extent undermines anonymous review (as people then know who has posted which papers to the ArXiv), my own sense is that the system works well and might help resolve a number of problems with our current peer-review system (including but not limited to: too many half-baked papers being submitted to journals, journal editors and referees being overwhelmed by submissions, etc.). So, then, we really have three options for peer-review in philosophy:

• Option 1 - keep the status quo: stick with the anonymized peer-review system we have.
• Option 2 - abolition: abolish pre-publication peer-review at journals altogether.  
• Option 3 - reform: keep peer-review at journals, but adopt a practice of posting papers on online servers first so that they can be openly vetted (e.g. evaluated, criticized, etc.) before journal submission.

Which option do readers most support, and why - especially, let's say, after reading the papers by Rowbottom, Heesen and Bright? For some additional food for thought, readers may want to check out this story shared over at Daily Nous  by Nathan Salmón (UC Santa Barbara).

Getting into philosophy with a science PhD?

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

I'm a Ph.D. student in science and about to get my Ph.D. degree this year (so I won't just quit). But I am also interested in some lifetime metaphysical and epistemological questions and want to contribute to them. (It sounds arrogant, but let's firstly assume I have the potential.)

However, my goal is basically impossible without strict philosophical training, which I don't have. As far as I consider, there are two possible ways.

1) I spend another 4-5 years on another graduate program in philosophy;
2) Collaborate with philosophers working on relevant topics and contribute with my scientific skills primarily and get trained.

For the first option, since I don't have any academic background in philosophy, I don't know how hard it is to get a position. And if I do so, I nearly give up my potential scientific career, which I would rather not.

For the second option, I have no idea how to find philosophers that want to work with scientists.

Here, I ask for your consideration of the two possibilities. How difficult are they? How can I manage them? Or any other possibility you could suggest?

And after all, how should I evaluate whether I have the potential to make a contribution?

Good questions! Prof L. submitted the following reply:

Circulating unpublished work?

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

I have a rather silly question. Every once in a while, I hear that a paper has become quite popular prior to publication: the manuscript has been circulated and the work has been extensively discussed. I get that a paper becoming so popular requires a nice combination of luck and prestige in addition to a very nice paper. However, from the popular-prior-to-publication phenomenon I infer that there must be a tradition, in some philosophy circles at least, to circulate papers rather widely before publication. It just occurred to me that no one has ever sent me an unpublished work that is not the sender's own. So my question is, what are the norms for circulating papers where you work? Under what circumstances have others sent you a third person's unpublished papers? Under what circumstances would you be willing to have yours circulated, and how would you go about that?

These are excellent questions. I think the basic norms for circulating unpublished work are rooted in the author's consent. For example, suppose an author has posted the paper on their website, or on PhilPapers, or on SSRN, and so on. In all of these cases, absent some kind of disclaimer by their (such as the author writing 'Do not circulate or cite' on the paper or on their website), then I think it's fine to circulate the piece. The author has, after all, put it out there for circulation. This is very different, I think, than circulating an unpublished piece the author has sent you directly (e.g. by email). In this kind of case, I would think it wrong to circulate the unpublished work without asking. Sure, maybe the author should tell you when they send it to you, 'Please don't circulate this', but of course sometimes people can forget things like this--and the right thing to do in these cases, I think, is to play it safe out of respect for the author. For my part, I don't think I have ever once been sent an unpublished paper by anyone other than the author themselves--and my sense is that, when papers are widely circulated, they tend to be circulated either by the author or else shared widely from the author's website (where, again, the author has chosen to share them publicly).

Anyway, this is just my sense of the relevant norms, and they seem to me to be common sense. But what do you all think?

 

Why Low-Income Students Leave Academic Philosophy (Guest post by Rosa Vince & Anna V. Klieber)

By Rosa Vince & Anna V. Klieber (Phd Candidates - University of Sheffield)

In this piece we explain some of the barriers to succeeding in academia for people with less money. This is not a theoretical work; we explain some things that students with more money may overlook, and problems that simply may not occur to staff members and institutions. That said, if you are currently, or have recently been, a postgraduate student with limited financial resources, then much of this will already be familiar.

When speaking of ‘low-income’ students in the following, we mean those who do not have a financial ‘safety net’, and who do not have well-off family members to lend/give them money if they do not independently have enough money to pay their fees, rent, or other bills that might come up. This is in contrast to students who do not need to worry if their rent and bills will be met throughout and immediately after their degree - although talking to most academic philosophers, you might get the impression that students who do need to worry about these things don't exist.

This essay does not cover the advantages of private, public, and grammar schools or the advantages of having parents with a university education, though these issues are all important and intertwined. Further, while here we will first and foremost discuss material financial barriers to access, safety, and success in academia, it is important to note that a person's financial and class positions are not independent of other social categories like race, disability, gender or age. This means that the financial barriers described in the following can be worsened, reinforced, or caused, by existing structures of racism, sexism, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia or ageism in, and outside, academia.

In what follows, we will discuss the following aspects: Time, Activities, Health, Teaching Work and Volunteering, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committees, and summarize with some notes on Emotional Energy. This list isn’t exhaustive, but rather provides a discussion of a few very common financial barriers that block access, safety, and success in academia. 

Does the APA cost too much?

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

I've just signed up for a completely virtual meeting of the APA, to the tune of $190. I am completely regretting the fact that I agreed to be involved in one of the meetings, and have promised myself to always say 'no' to any future requests to be involved in the APA meeting in any respect.

Why do organizations and people continue to submit and go to this expensive meeting? Hasn't it outlived its usefulness? There are so many organizations and meetings without exorbitant fees going on throughout the year. $190 for a completely virtual meeting is highway robbery.

So this is more a plea then a question. With all this talk of justice in the profession, we've allowed this organization to prey upon philosophers even while itself offering less and less of value. However much people like seeing their grad school buddies, it's not worth the ridiculous fees. And even if someone has a great expense account (I'm not one of those people) is this the best way to spend it? Can't we, as a profession, move away from this hotel-conference model? This model has outgrown its usefulness, and has always been a burden on those without large expense accounts or disposable income. Can we adopt more collaborative, diffuse, and equitable methods of networking and meeting? Any thoughts/ideas?

Another reader submitted the following response:

On the one hand I agree with you. I spent a lot of money to attend the APA, and present at one of the group meetings, and we did not even have equipment in the room (this was probably the last REAL meeting). It was very disappointing. It cost me a lot, as I was coming from far away. On the other hand, in principle, the APA serves a very important function. It represents the profession. And this is essential in the USA, where other disciplines have organizations representing them. Now, unfortunately, the organization is dominated by people from elite schools, so it does not represent the profession as it really is. That is another issue. But, as someone later in their career, you do want such an organization, whether you go to their conferences or not.

Here are some of my own quick thoughts.

How to prevent peer-review problems?

A while back at Daily Nous, there was a thread on 'journal horror stories', one of which involved a single journal 'misplacing' a large number of manuscripts, claiming the papers were sent out to referees when this never occurred. Although this is an extreme and isolated case, the DN horror stories thread suggests that authors often run into less serious problems. This coheres with my experience on social media, where I often run into posts where people say things like, 'My paper has been under review at journal X for Y months. Should I email the editor to find out what's going on?'. Oftentimes, people express some trepidation about emailing editors, as they don't want to negatively influence the outcome. They just want to know what's going on with the paper.

Given that these kinds of situations give rise to stress for authors and extra work for editors (reading and responding to emails), I wonder whether something could be done to make things better. So here's an idea that I had: why not just improve journal submission portals (e.g. Editorial Manager) to give more information? Here's what I have in mind. When I log in as a reviewer at many journals, the software typically tells me when my review is due, as well as how many other referees there are. Why couldn't the journal submission software give similar information to authors, as in something like this:

Referee 1: review competed on 4/5/2021.

Referee 2: review due on 4/10/2021.

Referee 3: review 1 month overdue.

This could, obviously, give authors precisely the kind of information they want about where their paper is in the review process. Also, sometimes when a journal is taking a long time (say, 8 months or longer), authors want to know whether they should keep the paper under review or withdraw it. Given that this decision could turn on the likelihood that the paper will be rejected, why couldn't the submission software give the author information on what the referee recommended, as in:

Referee 1: review competed on 4/5/2021 (recommendation reject).

Given that journals typically require two 'accept' verdict to accept a paper, knowing that one reviewer recommended rejecting the paper could be important information for authors to have (and it's worth noting, again, that when reviewers log in they often have access to this kind of information - so why shouldn't authors?). Finally, it seems to me that this kind of system might help improve review times at slow journals. Given that it would inform authors when reviews are well overdue, authors could contact journal editors specifically when there is an overdue review holding up the process (which, or so I understand, is one of the main reasons for delays in the review process). This could then lead editors to address tardy reviewers more promptly, etc.

Finally, it seems to me that other forms of information could also be included in submission portals, such as information about securing reviewers in the first place, as in:

Referee 1: review requested 4/5/2021, awaiting reply.

What do you all think? Do you think it would be better for authors and editors for journal submission software to include more information like this?

Journal submission embargoes?

In one of our recent "how can we help you?" threads, a reader writes:

Can someone explain to me why, for the past two years at least, Nous and PPR have not accepted submissions for about 8 months out of 12? I'm a bit new to things, and this seems like, well, a rare practice. Also, if I'm honest, I guess I find it a bit frustrating as a junior person. I totally understand that reviewers are people and all of that; but I honestly just don't see why those two journals, out of all of them, have implemented this seemingly eccentric policy.

Another reader submitted the following reply:

[Y]es there is a reason. These journals get so many submissions that at one point they close down so that an even larger backlog does not accumulate.´ It is one way to deal with the problem. I published in Nous, around the time these embargoes were first introduced. How does it feel to publish in Nous? Fine. But I work in a sub-field where the main general philosophy journals are not the key place to publish. If you work in M&E it is probably more important to try to publish in such journals.

For a bit more context, the OP and other interested readers might want to peruse David Velleman's 2017 guest post at Daily Nous, 'The Publication Emergency.' It is, I think, an unfortunate situation that two of the highest-ranked generalist philosophy journals have submission embargoes - and I can't help but wonder whether the embargoes might be a bit self-defeating, in that there are presumably legions of people who wait each year until October 1st to submit papers the moment the embargoes are lifted (thus deluging those journals with submissions). But presumably those journals would have vastly more submissions were it not for the embargoes, so I don't know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Publishing philosophy without credentials?

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

I do not have an academic background in philosophy but nevertheless have ended up spending significant time working on a philosophy book for which has required vast amounts of research and reading. (I have worked with academics in the process to challenge my ideas & check I am not totally mad).

When published, I wonder if the academic audience will treat it as 'no-good' or not give it the time of day because it does not come from someone working in an institution. I am curious, is this likely or will it simply come to the quality of ideas?

This is a good question, and I am glad that someone asked! Allow me to share some thoughts before opening things for discussion.

How does 'networking' help?

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

I've been inspired by the discussion about ways to flourish in the profession as an introvert.

While many people have mentioned the importance of networking, I am wondering if people can share some concrete examples of the benefits from networking, especially for graduate students and junior faculty members.

I can see that networking could help a person find external members for their committee and have letters for the job market (grad student) or for promotion (junior faculty). I have a hard time seeing other benefits besides abstract things like knowing your name and knowing your work. For example, do people get invited to apply for some jobs or get invited to submit to a journal because of networking? Any other concrete examples?

These are great questions! I'd love to hear concrete examples not only from grad students and junior faculty, but also from senior faculty, including (for example) those who have served on search committees, edited books or special journal issues, etc. If you're a grad student or faculty member, do you know of any concrete examples of how 'networking' helped you? And, if you're a senior faculty member, do you know of concrete examples where it helped junior folk? 

Defending tenure at KU

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

I'm a grad student at KU's (University of Kansas) philosophy department. I'm not sure how widespread this news is, but I'd appreciate you guys sharing the following with your readers, if it meets the standards for content.

"The KU administration is moving forward with the optional KBOR (Kansas Board of Regents) Policy to suspend tenure protections here that would not only eject us from the AAU, it would threaten accreditation of all our programs and, in the process, significantly diminish the value of a KU degree. In the news, this issue is covered as professors upset at the prospect of losing our cushy jobs. It's not. There are already numerous ways to fire them and our salaries are part of the public record. We're speaking out in defense of KU's educational mission and its status as a leader amongst US universities. We're speaking out in defense of our students, who deserve to have the quality of their work reflected in the value of their diploma. Also, it'd be helpful if people would sign the petition. https://sites.google.com/view/kufacultydemands/solidarity-statement.

While the solidarity statement no longer appears to be available, I encourage readers to speak out in defense of tenure at KU in any way we reasonably can! More details are available here: 'The Fight for the University of Kansas' (Chronicle of Higher Ed).

Best practices for research support at SLACs?

In our December "how can we help you?" thread, Josh writes:

I would be very grateful to get some hive-mind wisdom on the topic of research policy at SLACs. I'm at a small, mission-driven university that is doing its best to take research seriously. We often "punch above our weight," as it were, but we don't have much in the way of clear policy that might offer needed (in my view) structural incentives for faculty research.

I'm wondering about "best practices" when it comes to such structural incentives, e.g., policies on course and/or administrative release for grant-holders, grant applicants, course buyouts, non-grant-holding researchers, sabbatical policies, etc. I'd be especially grateful for ideas from those at SLACs, but definitely all ideas welcome.

Great questions! I'm curious to hear from readers who work at SLACs both on what their university's policies are like, as well as what people think 'best practices' are. I think my university does some nice things to support research for full-time faculty. Although I may be forgetting some things (I don't know whether grant-holders can get course releases), I do know that we have the following:

1. Annual merit raises: for full-time faculty, which depend on teaching, research, and service performance, though one can choose to have research weighted up to 40% in one's annual score.
2. Internal grants: which are competitive, but which any full-time faculty can apply for annually.
3. Post pre-tenure review course releases: a one-time, one course offload that tenure-track faculty get after successfully passing their 3rd-year pre-tenure review.
4. Sabbaticals: which tenured faculty can apply for after 6 years, either for one semester at full pay or for one year at half-pay.
5. Travel funding: which one must apply for prior to every conference, but can enable one to travel to from between 1-3 conferences per year.

If you work at a SLAC, what are your university's research-related policies and incentives? And what do you think 'best practices' are?

An Inquiry about Writing One's Own Letters of Recommendation

I was recently reviewing Michael Huemer's arguments (from 2017) against the practice of soliciting letters of recommendation, and I recalled a phenomenon I learned about while in graduate school. Assuming these accounts were true, some faculty members in the profession are in the habit of making graduate students write their own letters of recommendation, which the faculty member then signs. (To be clear, no faculty members at my graduate program did this. These were accounts I heard from other early career members of the profession who I met at conferences or who visited my program as guest speakers.)

This practice, however common, has always struck me as problematic. First, it puts an even greater burden on graduate students in terms of job market preparation, and they are already going to commit hundreds of work hours to that task. Second, the faculty member is abdicating a professional responsibility that I think they're obligated to fulfill. Third, even if the faculty member reads the letter and signs off on it, it is unlikely that the ideas in the letter would be expressed in the same way and to the same degree as if the faculty member has written the letter themselves. Fourth, there will surely be cases where the faculty member will not read the letter carefully or will fail to raise criticisms of its content even when such criticisms would be appropriate, which means its content may not accurately reflect the faculty member's opinions.

However, it's been many years since I've heard any tales about this practice, and so far as I know, I have never worked with a faculty member who engaged in it. On that note, I want to ask the community two questions:

1. How common is this practice in 2020?
2. Is there some justification for doing this that I am unaware of?

Has being a philosopher met your expectations?

In celebration of World Philosophy Day, Daily Nous shared a thread today from way back in 2014 asking readers to share why they went into philosophy. The comments are a lot of fun to read, but they led me to wonder: has being a professional philosopher met their hopes or expectations, or not? I figured it could be informative to have a thread on this here at the Cocoon, as it might provide students who are now considering a career in philosophy some picture over whether such a career will be at all what they hope for or expect. I suppose I'll kick things off.

I went into philosophy for a couple of related reasons. When I was a teenager just starting college, I had no real passions. Yeah, there were things I was sort of into: baseball, music, poetry, English literature, and politics. But none of them were what I would call a real passion. I wasn't super motivated to put in the hard work to pursue any of the above. All that changed when I took my first philosophy class. Quite simply, I took to philosophy like a fish to water. I loved everything about it: reading it, writing it, thinking about it, the questions philosophers were concerned with, and so on. Second, I had an undergraduate mentor, Dan Dennett, who was extremely encouraging. In addition to being a fascinating and engaging person, he was really the first person in my life other than my parents who ever really gave me encouragement.

Anyway, I don't know quite what I hoped for or expected when entering philosophy. I guess I expected to love reading, thinking about and writing philosophy for a living, and that being a college professor would be gratifying (I always wanted to be the kind of mentor that Dan was for me). But, beyond that, I don't know what I expected. 

Has being a philosopher met my expectations? In two important ways, yes. I still love philosophy as much today as I did way back then at 17. I feel (and am) incredibly privileged to be able to think about and write on philosophical questions, I work on issues that I find important and meaningful, and from time to time teaching and mentoring is just as gratifying as I had hoped. Every now and then, I'll get an email from a student thanking me for how I affected their life, and in those moments it feels like I've done some real good for the world beyond myself. I also find conferences just wonderful: I love attending talks, learning about what other people are working on, presenting my own work, catching up with friends, and of course, debating philosophical arguments.

But, of course, a career in philosophy hasn't been all roses--not by a long shot. I never expected the academic job-market (which I spent seven years on) to be anything like the monumentally awful experience that it was (and I cannot overstate just how horrible of an experience it was). I also think it's a scandal that so many academic jobs are part-time, low-paying positions without benefits (though we've worked hard to change this at my university). I also never expected how brutal academic publishing would be: the long waits, near constant rejections (90+% rejection rates), and (from time to time) meanspirited comments of referees. While I still love philosophy tremendously, I really think one has to be a 'glutton for punishment', as it were, to have a career in the field. And that, I think, is sad. Oh, and grading is the worst. I also wasn't prepared, I think, for what I might call 'philosophical isolation.' I work in a small department whose faculty work in divergent areas, and our teaching and service loads are quite high. This might surprise some readers, but in over 11 years at my university, I think I can probably count the number of philosophical conversations I've had with colleagues on two hands. Nearly all of the philosophical conversation I have occurs with students or at conferences. We tried to put together a reading group of philosophers in the area a few years ago, and it worked well for a bit but sort of fell apart after a while. We’re just all so busy. And so generally  speaking, I do philosophy in isolation, and I really miss the kinds of philosophical conversations that I had all of the time in graduate school. 

Anyway, long story short: a career in philosophy both has and hasn't met the hopes and expectations I had when I initially set out pursuing it. It's been a far, far more difficult road than I ever expected. But I still love philosophy and teaching/mentoring students, and find it a meaningful life.

But this is just me. What about you?

Grappling with burnout (or worse)?

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

I haven't been able to get much work done in the last nine months on my research because of a problem that is new for me, and I wonder how typical it is for others in academics - emotional pain.

I'm an upper year PhD student who has their dissertation mostly complete. If I needed to, I (and my advisor) feel like I can wrap things up in a month. That has been the case for almost a year now. Also, I've been on the job 'market' since last year.

Every word I type about the thoughts I have on my area of research feels like a scab ripped from my mind. I feel relatively fine writing about anything else. Besides what I imagine are the typical anxiety about rejection and imposter syndrome, I'm feeling a lot of grief and sense of loss among other complicated stuff I cant put really well to words. I'm already not great at taking the time to dwell on writing material to polish things up. Now it's more than just an executive functioning/attention problem. Working on my research and material related to it in my job applications has become a sort of feeling management problem. It makes me wonder if I have a toxic relationship with academia, that this is something that will keep getting worse for me and I'm better off cutting ties with the profession, or whether its because of the context I'm in (covid and job searching despair), that I'm failing to see things objectively.

I've dealt with depression before and this feels different. It feels like grief and loss, less of an autonomous mood and more of a reaction to my world. Does this resonate with anyone here? Is this a sign I should take, that I'm 'burnt out' on philosophy? How does one successfully manage the emotional (instead of motivation) side of getting work done?

This post actually resonates with me a great deal, and I hope we can have a helpful and supportive discussion about the important issues it raises. Allow me to say a few brief things, and then invite readers to share their own experiences and any tips or advice they have for someone grappling with these kinds of issues.

On reading & engaging with others' work

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

I'm a grad student who is wishing that there was not so much pressure to publish in order to get jobs. I naively thought that grad school might be a time to just read things because they are interesting, and even (gasp!) take time off from writing altogether to focus on deepening one's understanding.

I acknowledge that sometimes reading widely and deeply does benefit one's own writing. At the same time, in my experience, many philosophers do quite well without being particularly well-read. Slightly more cynically, it seems that many philosophers can thrive as long as they read just enough to not look completely ignorant of what's come before.

My question is this: to some extent, is engaging with others' work best thought of as a duty to the profession? Even if there are not particular professional rewards, it seems like we might just owe it to each other and those who've come before to dedicate time to others' work.

I am very sympathetic with this reader's concerns. Back when I was in graduate school (2001-2008), publishing while in a graduate program seemed to be relatively rare. I only knew a few graduate students who published things, and I even recall it being something of a norm (at least in highly ranked programs) to encourage grad students not to publish. The general thought here was that it would be a mistake to 'publish before you're ready', and the point of graduate school--and the dissertation in particular--was to make you ready to publish. In other words, back then graduate school was fairly close to what this readers describes they 'naively thought' graduate school would be like. When did things change, and why?

State of the profession discussion

Over at Daily Nous, Caroline Dicey Jennings and Eric Schwitzgebel discuss the APA's new report, State of the Profession 1967–2017 and Beyond: Institutions and Faculty. I'm very glad that the APA put the report together, think it contains a wealth of important quantitative data, and am grateful to its drafters (Debra Nails and John Davenport) for all of the hard work it took to put it together. I encourage everyone to read it and take part in the discussion about it over at Daily Nous. However, here are two related things that I'm curious about:

1. What do you all think the state of the profession is qualitatively?
2. What (if anything) do you think should be done to improve the state of the profession?

I think it would be great to hear from readers here, both early-career and more senior people (to see, for example, if different groups see things similarly or differently). While I recognize that a thread like this can easily turn into a long list of grievances (which some might not consider particularly useful), I'm nevertheless inclined to think that it can be very important to have open discussions on the profession and how it might be improved--and I'm also inclined to think that the Cocoon can be a good place to host these kinds of discussions, given its supportive mission, moderating standards, focus on early-career people, and history of having good and productive discussions.

Anyway, please do feel free to weigh in on the above questions, taking as much care as possible to bear the Cocoon's mission in mind. On that note, let me suggest that it may be good to hear what people think is good about the profession (including ways the profession may have improved in recent years), in addition to any concerns or suggestions for how the profession could improve. I will moderate carefully, and hope we can have a good, productive, supportive discussion! 

Publication expectations post-tenure

I came across an interesting discussion on social media the other day on what publishing expectations are like after tenure. Although answers varied, if I recall correctly the most common answer was that to 'meet departmental expectations', tenured people at R1's are expected to publish something like 1 journal article per year in a good journal. Given that this is (or so I've heard) something like what people are expected to do to get tenure in the first place, this means that tenured faculty (at least at R1's) are expected to do something like 'keep up the same output' necessary for achieving tenure. 

To be clear, I don't get the impression that anything like this standard holds at all universities. At some teaching-oriented SLACs, for example, one needn't publish anything like 1 article per year to get tenure, and one certainty isn't expected to keep up that kind of rate after tenure (indeed, my sense is that at SLACs, research standards both prior to and after tenure can be nebulous). Still, I am curious: what does everyone out there make of the one-article-per-year standard post tenure?

My own reaction is that I found it rather disturbing. Why? Well, for a couple of reasons. First, by incentivizing people to 'keep up their output' post-tenure, it seems to me like it disincentivizes the kind of deep, broad, slow, careful, and systematic thinking that historically, at least, seems to have led to the most important kind of work in philosophy. For example, it took Kant twelve years to come up with the Critique of Pure Reason, and Rawls something like a decade to finish A Theory of Justice. Obviously, few philosophers will ever produce work as important or influential as these--but still, it seems to me that this is something that we should want tenure to do: give research the time to think deeply, broadly, and systematically rather than pump out article after article. And indeed, when I look at academic philosophy a few decades ago, that seems to me to have been how tenure worked. Second, it seems to me that the 'one-article-per-year' standard contributes substantially to the phenomenon of journals being overrun with too many submissions--something that in turn makes the entire review process worse for everyone (for editors, reviewers, and authors alike). 

Anyway, maybe I'm missing something, but that was my reaction. What do you all think? What are post-tenure research standards like at your institution? Do you think they are good ones, or do you think they should be changed? Why? 

Attitudes toward co-authored papers

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, a postdoc writes:

What are the general attitudes about co-authored papers? For example, is it to one's advantage to co-author with notable philosophers if the opportunity presents itself or are co-authored papers viewed less favorably than papers written solo?

We've covered this issue on a number of occasions before, but since it comes up often and raises interesting issues about the profession, I think it's good to repeatedly return to it. Generally speaking, the overall sentiment expressed before has been that there is a bias in philosophy against co-authored work because, as a third-party, nobody really knows how responsible each author is for its content. The paper itself may be great--but especially if you're an early career person and another much more notable philosopher's name is on it, people may wonder: was it mostly the notable person who is responsible for the paper? Is the less notable person 'riding on their coat-tails? My understanding is that these questions also appear in the sciences, but that there are conventions in the sciences for estimating who is responsible for what (viz. 1st author, 2nd author, 3rd author, and so on). But, in philosophy, my sense is that people generally think: the best indicator of someone's philosophical abilities is their capacity to produce strong solo-authored work.

Drop-In Discussion on Refereeing and Publishing Norms & XPhi

Joe Ulatowski (University of Waikato) has drawn my attention to this interesting looking drop-in Zoom session, to be held on September 17th, 2020 at 5:00PM EDT. A quick description:

At a recent XPhi Under Quarantine, participants discussed the possibility of drafting a public statement concerning norms for journals on publishing non-xphi articles that were about xphi, but that didn’t contain any studies.  So, e.g., someone wants to float a hypothesis about what philosophical expertise could consist in but has no data to back up the claim that philosophers actually work that way. Or a paper that sketches an idea for a study, but doesn’t actually do the study it sketches. Or if a non-x-phi paper involves an out-there kind of vignette, can one reasonably ask of an author to go run a study on it? 

Because participants had an interest in talking over these issues, we have decided to host a special edition of X-Phi Under Quarantine. We will host a drop-in discussion session to consider not just the questions outlined above but any such question concerning refereeing norms or publishing norms that affect work in xphi. We ask participants to be prepared to talk about the following questions:

• • What are the norms of refereeing papers in experimental philosophy?
  • Do these norms follow the strict norms of general philosophy journals? If they are different, how so?
  • Is it sufficient for a referee to recommend a paper be rejected because they just don’t believe the data?
  • How much should data & methods be reported on exactly the model of a social science journal, when it is being published in a philosophy journal, especially a general one? (I.e., not Mind & Language, where one can perhaps presume a certain comfort level with such things on the part of the audience)
  • Should general philosophy journals even be publishing methodologically ambitious x-phi? Do they have the refereeing and editorial bench to do it well? one thing we could look to do is make up some sort of database of x-phi-comfortable philosophers and scientists who are willing to serve as referees for such work.
  • Pre-registration? Making data publicly available? Other anti-QRP practices that should be made more widespread?
  • Publishing studies that are adequate empirically but don’t really have anything new to say philosophically? Should null results be published? Should replications be published?

This seems great, and it also drew my attention to the New XPhi Blog, which I wasn't aware of!

How do you decide when to review for journals?

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

I have been post phd for a few years now. At first, I thought it good to get some referee work under my belt. Now, I am getting a request to review at least once a month if not more. Today, I got two requests 15 minutes apart. My question is, how do people approach the decision whether to accept or reject a request to review? What are the considerations people take into account (besides fit to review)?

Great questions, and I'm very curious to hear what people think! As mentioned in the new thread, to make things more manageable on my end, I've asked readers not to respond in the comments section there--and so there are several comments that I have not approved. However, although I did not post them, I will still try to quote them anyway in new posts when relevant. So, on that note, Bryce responded:

A colleague once gave me this advice about reviewing: review as many papers per year as you submit. So maybe 1-3? The more you review, the more you will be asked for review. Just say no.

This is a rule of thumb that I have commonly heard too, and it seems to me a good one. As professionals, we should all do our part to contribute to what are, effectively, 'public goods' in the discipline. If you submit a lot of papers for others to review, then you should review a lot of papers. If, on the other hand, you submit few papers, then feel free to review more rarely. What does seem clearly wrong to me is to submit lots of papers and rarely review when asked. That's just free-riding. But let me add a few further thoughts.

Questions about journal responsiveness

In our August "how can we help you?" thread, one reader writes:

Have you ever withdrawn a submission from a journal due to a delay or a lack of responsiveness? What was the final straw?

And another writes:

Question about contacting journals and ghosting authors. I had a paper accepted for publication back in April In a top journal and was told I would be contacted by the journal press shortly after. A couple weeks went by without contact, so I dropped a kindly-worded follow up email to the managing editor, who said they would look into the matter and that I should expect an email soon (I.e., two weeks). Well, a month and a half goes by and still nada. I drop another kindly-worded email to the journal managing editor and still have yet to receive a response.

I know the process is glacially slow and I am deeply appreciative of all the work journal teams do. As a youngish, untenured prof, however, the silence is a bit unnerving. Some communication to the effect of, “We are backlogged and Covid slowed us down even further; you will be contacted some time in the next decade”, would help.
1. Is journal silence a common occurrence?
2. Suggestions about how to handle journal silence post-acceptance professionally?

While I wouldn't worry about journal silence in reader #2's case (once a paper is accepted, it's accepted - so don't worry!), there are I think some interesting questions to discuss here--among them:

• When does it make sense to withdraw a paper from a journal?
• How should authors and the profession more generally deal with non-responsive journals?

I'm not sure that I have any great tips here. When I was early-career (i.e. on the job market and pretenure), I took a lot of care to submit to journals with good reputations and turnaround times, which you can find out about here and here. Back then, I didn't have time to wait 6-12 months for journal rejections, so I vaguely recall withdrawing a few papers years ago when the review time was inordinately long and the journal was unresponsive. I'd usually send an email or two asking for an update, and if I didn't get a response after some amount of time I'd just send another email withdrawing the paper. But again, generally speaking, I just tried to stay away from those kinds of journals to begin with. What do you all think?

Giving philosophy its due?

A few weeks ago, a number of colleagues on social media shared the following piece, "Want a good job? Major in Philosophy", by Kristina Grob (University of South Carolina - Sumter). I think it's a great, concise summary of why philosophy isn't the kind of 'useless' degree many students and parents think it is, and in my experience information like this can really help attract majors. Just the other day, however, this piece appeared over at New Statesman arguing that it's "an offense against humanism" to try to rebrand higher education in terms of job-training. 

Like many philosophers I've spoken to, I suspect that giving students and parents information about how philosophy degrees can pay off is probably the best short-term way to 'sell the discipline': an important thing to do, I think, given the increasing number of philosophy programs and departments that are being shut down or threatened with closure. That being said, I really wonder whether it is the best long-term strategy, and for broadly the reasons the New Statesman piece points out: it plays right into the narrow set of values and priorities that philosophy and the humanities can get students to question--the latter of which is sort of the point of a liberal arts education: to develop well-cultivated citizens!

However, on that note, I'm inclined to think that the best kind of case for philosophy--at least in the longer-term--may be more than what the New Statesman piece mentions. The NS piece, after all, is not about philosophy per se, but rather higher education more generally. What does philosophy have to offer specifically, in addition to employability and personal cultivation? The answer, I'd like to suggest, is (broadly speaking) that the extent to which societies flourish or fail seems to be a matter of their animating philosophies.

Take for example ancient Athens. It was for a time the preeminent power in the Mediterranean, possessing nearly unparalleled wealth and power. And yet, as we see in Plato's dialogues and in the historical record (such as Pericles' infamous funeral oration), its citizens and political leaders became progressively corrupted by broadly the values that Thrasymachus defends in Book I and Socrates details in Book VIII of The Republic--the belief that justice is power ('might makes right')--as well as by the values that Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles all affirm in Gorgias: that the ability to speak persuasively (rhetoric) is the most important thing for young people to learn. The historical record here seems pretty clear: it was, broadly speaking, these philosophies that sowed the seeds of Athens' downfall. Athenians became so preoccupied with power and rhetorical ability that it enabled Pericles (whose rhetorical skills were legendary) to convince the populace that it would be a good idea to conquer Sparta--a completely unnecessary and reckless plan that set conditions for a plague (!) to decimate Athens, lose the war, and be taken over by the bloody tyranny of the Thirty Tyrants.

Why, then, should people value philosophy? Why should we fund it? Perhaps because in addition to making people good critical thinkers who can get jobs as well as cultivated people who can think about the 'big questions', we should care about it because philosophy really is socially important. Make no mistake about it: Nazism, slavery, colonialism, etc.--these were (and are) all philosophies, ones that have done untold damage. Philosophy, then, is not a luxury. Good philosophies can  improve civilizations, and bad philosophies can destroy them, leading to untold suffering. This, I think, is the deeper story we should be telling. It may well be a hopeless endeavor, of course, for broadly the reasons Socrates detailed in the Allegory of the Cave. But, for all that, I'm inclined to think this is the story we should tell: because it's a true one. Jobs are important. Personal cultivation is important too. But to focus on these things alone is, I believe, to vastly undersell the importance of what we philosophers do. History and the present alike make it all too clear: philosophy matters for the good of society and for the good of us all--and societies that fail to pay appropriate heed to this can and do pay a big price.  

Or so say I. What say you?

Contributing to society qua philosopher?

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

How can philosophers contribute to society at large? As a new grad student, I feel like I am missing the bigger picture on how philosophers can give back to society beyond teaching students.

I mean, the most obvious answer to this question is to do public philosophy--publishing well-reasoned, philosophical pieces on issues of public importance in highly visible venues (e.g. The Guardian, Slate, Aeon, etc.). Then of course you can volunteer for or otherwise work with public-facing organizations, ranging from think tanks to state or local UN Associations (the latter of which I did for several years, organizing public events and conferences in the Tampa Bay areas). But these are just a few ideas. I'd love to crowd-source more possibilities from readers in the comments section below!

Norms for answering emails?

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

I'd like to push the topic of norms for correspondence. My question is simple: Under what circumstances (if at all) is it acceptable not to reply to an email. I don't mean only requests to comments, but also various invitations to conferences, to contribute to an edited book, to give a lecture etc.

My view is that it is impolite not to answer such an email, even a weird one. It takes less than one minute to write "Sorry, I can't do that."

Good query. I've often been quite surprised here. For example, I've heard stories of philosophers who committed to contribute to an edited volume deciding later on to never respond to emails--essentially 'ghosting' the editor they had an agreement with. This seems to me profoundly unprofessional. Similarly, I've even heard that some journals routinely do this: ignoring repeated emails from authors to check in on the status of manuscripts after, say, 8 months of review. I find it astonishing that there are journals that do this kind of stuff. I don't understand why authors don't protest them by refusing to submit work.

I was always taught that basic norms of professionalism dictate responding to emails within 24 hours during the work week, so that's what I generally try to do (I do not normally respond on weekends). But there are some kinds of emails that I may not respond to at all, or only after some delay. For example, I constantly receive unsolicited requests to 'guest post' on the Cocoon by non-philosophers looking to see this or that product. I don't respond to these. And, of course, like many philosophers (or so I've heard) I sometimes receive emails from non-philosophers who claim to have solved every philosophical problem ever, asking me if I'd care to read their 400-page book. Generally speaking, I usually respond kindly to these kinds of queries, politely declining. But aside from these kinds of things, I try to get back to everyone who contacts me fairly promptly. 

But this is just what I think and do. What do you all think? What norms should one follow for correspondence? Under which circumstances is it acceptable to not reply to an email?

Norms for initiating correspondence?

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

I'd love to hear people's views about the norms for initiating correspondence with other philosophers. It's a big aspect of the sociology of our profession. Yet I've never seen it discussed, and I have a sense that people have conflicting views about when it's appropriate.

Here is one special case I'd love feedback about. A prominent figure in my subfield once encouraged me (and other early career folks) to feel free to reach out and email polished drafts of my work to philosophers I am writing about in my research, and to do so prior to submitting this work to journals. Sometimes nothing will come of it (and that's fine), but the recipient might well enjoy reading and guiding new work related to their research. The reasons given were that doing so would (1) help early career people to develop relationships and, I think more importantly, (2) likely improve the quality of our drafts. I have heard from some grad students at elite programs that something like this is standard advice.

I have tried this, and sometimes received pushback from the other end. One senior philosopher whom I reach out to in this way told me they wished I hadn't done so, since now they would be unable to "blindly" referee my paper in the event that they are asked to do so. I see the force of this response.

So: I'd appreciate help figuring out the relevant norms. When is initiating correspondence like this a good idea? How should we balance peer-reviewing considerations against the benefits of open correspondence?

I think these are great questions! One reader responded:

As long as you're not sending your paper to lots of folks, I don't think there is anything wrong with sending your work to someone you discuss - but as you note, there can be a lot of variation in how or whether people respond.

I think it is especially likely to be a good strategy when the work you discuss isn't that of a super-prominent faculty member - most philosophers would be delighted to provide feedback to someone who actually discusses their work.

My own experience is that initiating correspondence tends to go best if you have some previous interaction with a person, such as meeting and talking with them at a conference. I also with agree with the above response that trying to initiate correspondence tends to work better if the person you're trying to initiate conversation with isn't super prominent (as my sense is that prominent people get so many unsolicited emails that they can get pretty perturbed by it). Finally, however else you do it, my sense is that tact matters a lot--though, of course, specifying exactly what is tactful here is difficult.

Anyway, I don't have much advice to offer beyond this--but I expect there are probably some readers out there who do. So, then: when do you think initiating correspondence is a good idea? How should one balance peer-review considerations against it? And what norms are there or tips do you have that might be helpful to share?  

Can good publications offset grad program rank?

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

On the topic of "tippy top" schools, how much can good publications offset coming from a lower ranked school on the job market? I'm set to defend in the fall and my department isn't particularly notable. I have however been fortunate enough to get two publications in top tier journals. Should I keep aiming to publish at high ranked journals or I am better off submitting to mid-level journals where I may be more likely to accumulate publications?

I'd be very curious to hear what readers think, particularly those who have been involved in hiring. For my part, I have to sadly confess--as I have before--that I am skeptical that publishing in the highest ranked journals is a very good job-market strategy for candidates coming out of lower-ranked programs. Allow me to explain why.

Questions about suggesting reviewers

In our July "how can we help you?" thread, two readers asked questions about journals asking authors to suggest reviewers:

I work in philosophy of science, but recently I have started to submit papers in another subfield of philosophy. These are all journals with a good reputation. However, to my surprise, it seems that a pattern is being established: editors ask me to provide suggestions for possible reviewers. This never happened to me in philosophy of science. What's the best practice here? Naturally, I'd propose people I know (assuming they have not read the paper and they do not know I'm working on that specific topic), because I know that those people will take their job seriously. However, even if those people do not know that I'm writing that specific paper, they may recognize who I am. But this, I say, happens even in blind peer-reviewed, especially in highly specialized fields such as philosophy of science. Am I terribly wrong? - Posted by: Don't really know what to do

I have a question related to that of Don't really know what to do. Should a philosophy journal ask the author of a submission to suggest possible reviewers? What are the rationales for and again this? -Posted by: jack 

Another reader answered:

This is a common practice in science journals, to ask for (i) possible referees, and (ii) sometimes a list of people who you do not want to review your paper. In science it is common place to have only single blind - so the reviewer sees who the author or authors are. I publish regularly in an empirical field (call it scientific), and the key journal will not send your paper out for review unless you have your name on it.

However, while this may be a common practice in science, I wonder how readers feel about it, and whether anyone has tips for 'best practices.'

Recovering from grad school mistakes?

In the course of a spirited and important discussion responding to some professionalization tips (and yes, grievances) a new tenure-track faculty member shared, a reader shared the following story:

Re: disappearing from your committee

I was guilty of this when I was a grad student in a Leiterrific philosophy department. There were about a year and half at the beginning of my dissertation that I felt like I was adrift and I became very depressed. My advisors were not giving me very constructive feedback ... and I felt like I didn't know what I was doing. I felt like I couldn't talk to my committee unless I have completely "figured things out" so as not to come across stupid - I knew I depended on their positive opinion for my career, which further paralyzed me. When my advisor finally reached out to me to stage some kind of "intervention," I tried to explain the depression and how I had recently joined the dissertation support group run by the university counseling center. What I was told by my advisor that (a) if I couldn't take the pressure and produce writing consistently, then I was not cut out of grad school, and (b) when my advisor joined a dissertation support group when they were in grad school, the support group was useless ("they don't understand how philosophy works"). I was flabbergasted and cried in their office. I felt ashamed and humiliated.

I want to stress to faculty to be sensitive to the mental health needs of your grad students. Avoidance is a key sign of depression.

Faculty members ought to "lower the stakes" when interacting with grad students - not every interaction is about evaluating your worth as a philosopher. Making students feel like every interaction with you is about making a good impression or about what will go into a letter that will decide your career is exactly the wrong thing to do. Interact with your grad students like they are human - they will have strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes it's okay to get have a silly conversation where the expectation is not that one is being evaluated. Helping grad students realize that they can come to you with "stupid" or "half baked" ideas, and that will not be held against them, will help with the disappearing problem.

In a follow-up comment, I mentioned that I had an eerily similar experience. Throughout graduate school, it seemed like every single little thing I was doing was being judged. Although I made it through course work and comprehensive exams well enough, things really went awry at the dissertation stage. I too spent about a year-and-a-half completely floundering, which left me so depressed that I too systematically avoided my committee and disappeared from my department more generally. And I wasn't the only one. I knew others in program who did the same. Some of them eventually finished the program, others didn't. Like this reader and many other graduate students, I had not only lost my confidence: my overall mental health was shot. Anyway, I too eventually showed up in my advisor's office and came clean about everything. The difference was that instead of shaming me, my advisor expressed empathy and confidence in me. To this day, I think this kind and supportive treatment may well have saved my career.

Fortunately, despite being treated callously by their advisor, the above reader reported in a follow-up comment that they too made it through grad school and recently got a tenure-track job. They wrote: 

I think that conversation in my advisor's office helped to crystalize for me that I needed to find allies and people out of my committee who will give me the kind of support I needed. The dissertation support group helped me see how my advisor's behavior did not reflect on my worth as a philosopher. I was lucky that there were other philosophers around who encouraged me and read my drafts and gave me constructive feedback.

If any other grad student is reading, I hope that you know you can make "mistakes" in grad school and still come out on the other side. (As far as I know) all my committee members wrote me positive letters, even though I went through a period of disappearance and depression - grad school is tough!

I cannot over-emphasize how important I think this comment is. First, although it may not be true for every graduate student in every situation, cases like these show that it can be possible to royally mess up in grad school and make it through to the other side. Even if there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel, it can be possible to find your way through. But second, as both of our cases show, a crucial part of doing so seems to be finding support. When I was isolated and trying to find my way all on my lonesome, nothing seemed possible. It was only when I found empathy and support--just like this reader--that the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel began to appear.

Which brings me, finally, to the point of this post: what mistakes did you make in graduate school, and how did you recover from them? My hope here is that if readers share stories of their own here, it may accomplish several important things. First, it may give struggling graduate students some much-needed hope. Second, it may give them good practical advice and strategies for recovering from mistakes. Finally, it may clarify just how important it is for grad faculty to be understanding, forgiving, and empathetic--and by extension, helpful in 'getting the word out' on how important it is for grad program cultures to support struggling students. Anyone willing to share?

Saving philosophy from elimination: what can be done?

I am sure some readers are well-aware that a number of philosophy programs and departments have been eliminated in recent years, with faculty (both tenured and untenured) being summarily terminated from their jobs. What is truly stunning, to me at any rate, is just how quickly these kinds of cuts appear to have accelerated. In just the past three months alone (April-June), I count at least seven philosophy programs targeted with termination:

• University of Tulsa
• Illinois Wesleyan
• Rockford University
• Elmira College
• University of Alaska
• UWE Bristol
• Liberty University

Given the COVID-19 pandemic, this is almost certain to get worse as universities struggle financially. What can be done? Is there anything we can do to stem the tide? Is there anything that professional organizations (the APA, AAUP, etc.) should be doing? If so, what? And how can we get them to act? 

Grad program COVID updates?

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

Circling back to a post you made back in April asking about department’s plans to limit admissions for incoming graduate students, I would love to know if any more people have heard confirmation or reliable information about what might happen with certain departments this upcoming admissions cycle! Also, does anyone have any idea if departments will actually be transparent about these changes, or if soliciting information from departments in the fall regarding limited admissions would be something acceptable/appropriate to do?

Great question. In addition to this issue (limiting admissions), I wonder if there are any other updates on the kinds of steps that grad programs are taking this fall in response to COVID. Are programs taking any of the steps that I proposed here, such as extending grad student funding for a year so that students can stay in their program instead of heading out onto what is almost certain to be a uniquely horrible job market? Are programs taking any of the steps that the APA's Graduate Student Council (GSC) advocated for here? It would be great to hear any updates.

The importance of self-archiving

A reader writes in:

I’m always a bit annoyed/bummed when I see a cool looking brand new paper with an interesting abstract only to find that there is nowhere to get the paper. The journal hasn’t yet released it, the author doesn’t have it on a website, and it’s not on philpapers. It typically means I’ll never come back to it (often I see something in a weekly email I get saying what’s in the journals I like and this is a way I find things to read that aren’t central to my research but that catch my interest, so I look then and there in a moment of useful procrastination or never again). I wish everyone would follow the good advice on the APA blog!

Indeed, I very much encourage everyone to read the APA blog post this reader references. Independent scholars, as well as faculty and students at smaller colleges and universities that lack resources for certain journal subscriptions, can be at a real disadvantage when doing research. Self-archiving published articles on your own website or on philpapers can be a great way of counteracting this, as well as for making your work more accessible to a broader audience. In fact, this reader's comment reminded me that things are even more tricky with books. As a faculty member at a university that now does have good journal access, (which it didn't have in the past), I'm still continually frustrated by how difficult it can be to access many book chapters--which often aren't posted on repositories such as philpapers. Here, I think it is worth remembering that many book publishers do allow you to post 'accepted manuscripts' after certain embargo periods (usually 12-18 months)--so if you published a book chapter a while ago, it's now past the embargo period, and you still haven't self-archived it, now would be a great time to do so!

Are journal articles getting too long?

Brian Weatherson (Michigan) has a really interesting project featured at Daily Nous applying methods of 'topic modeling' to the history of philosophy. One of the many interesting findings Weatherson presents is that journal articles have gotten progressively longer in recent years, indeed longer than they have ever been. Here's the relevant graph:

In brief, while the average paper (50% percentile) was just less then 10 pages at points in the 1950's-60's, it is now double that. Similarly, while papers upwards of 30 journal pages were rare outliers throughout the 20th Century, now a full 10% of articles are upwards of 30 journal pages and outliers upwards of 35 pages.

Is this a problem? Are journal articles getting too long? Weatherson thinks so, writing, "This feels like a bad thing; articles are getting bloated, and we need to find a way to get them back to a reasonable length." For my part, I'm a bit torn for reasons outlined below. But I'm really interested to hear what you all think!

What are different journal 'tiers'?

A reader writes in:

I really appreciated the recent post about how to select a journal for submitting one's work.  A lot of the comments concerned the differences in experience with "top" vs "mid-tiered" journals.  I am aware of a few obvious examples (Mind, J Phil) of "top" journals.  But I really don't have a sense of how to identify whether journals are top, tier-2, mid-tier, bad, etc.  Is there a way to tell?  Is there a ranking somewhere?

Interesting question. I'm not a big fan of journal rankings myself, and am not sure how others think about what constitutes one tier rather than another. However, for my part, to the extent that I do pay attention to rankings and classify journals in one 'tier' rather than another, here (very roughly) is how I do it. When it comes to how philosophers rank journals, there are polls like the ones Leiter carries out from time to time on generalist journals and journals in moral and political philosophy. Then there are other rankings you can find through a simple Google search, such as these ones. Next, as a rule of thumb (just judging on how I expect others in the profession think about these things), I'm inclined to categorize 'top-5' journals as tippy-top A+ journals (first tier), journals ranked 6-10 'A/A-' journals (bottom of first tier), journals 11-20 something like 'A-/B+/B' journals the further you go down the list. Then, again judging by how (some) others in the profession seem to treat them, journals outside of the top-2o are something like 'third tier' or 'lower tier' journals.

Is this about right, at least in terms of how people in the profession tend to think? I'm curious to hear. However, things don't quite end there. In addition to how people in philosophy think about various journals, there are quite a lot of interdisciplinary journals that publish work in philosophy that--as these quantiative Scimago rankings indicate--which actually have significantly higher citation rates and impact factors than journals highly ranked by philosophers.

Myisha Cherry on Solidarity Care

Myisha Cherry (UC Riverside) kindly offered to have the Cocoon share a few passages from her new paper, "Solidarity Care: How to Take Care of Each Other in Times of Struggle", in our series on anti-racism in philosophy:

In present-day social discourse, valuing how people speak to each other has been termed, pejoratively, as political correctness. And a person who values such things are labeled snowflakes or cupcakes. On the other hand, the ability to say particularly destructive speech is, by some people, hailed as the American right of free speech. It’s the right that tough people exercise.

However, if being woke has the mental effects that I claim it does...(regardless of one’s sensitivity level), then affirmation and encouragement are not luxuries or coddling. Solidarity care is a necessity. The work of psychologists show us that what we believe about ourselves on the subconscious level can have an impact on outcomes. Their work also shows that affirmation and encouragement provide a buffer to stress, particularly the racial and sexual traumatic stress that many experience. It can be stressful to be awake in a world that reminds you and others that you are in solidarity with––through rhetoric, policy, entertainment, and laws––that your life does not matter; that you are cursed, a mistake, a freak, or inferior. However, being presented with counter evidence of this through affirmation, confirmation, and encouragement is both a form of care and resistance against such destructive claims. A person can fight for freedom and still not be free because she can eventually––if not believe these messages––be in such a vulnerable position that the words can beat, defeat, and burden her. Destructive words have harmful mental and physical effects that threatens one’s overall health. However, affirming through counter-speech can help block these effects.

This way of extending care is what made Malcolm X so appealing. Many may disagree with the rhetoric and arguments of the early Malcolm X, but one of the many things that the black community adored about him was his use of language. His words allowed them to feel like they were still human. His words affirmed the black man who was getting beat by the cops on the streets of Harlem. His words sowed a seed of love to the black woman who felt disrespected by life. His defense of blackness made the unemployed young person feel that there was still hope. This is because affirmation has this power. If a person cares for others, she will not only speak words to power but she will also speak words that will empower others.

Consider the affirmation James Baldwin offers to his namesake in a letter to his nephew:

Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear … [later on he says] this is your home … do not be driven from it… it will be hard … but you come from sturdy peasants … men who picked cotton and damned rivers … and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved … a monumental dignity.(25) 

Consider the affirmation and encouragement Martin Luther King, Jr. gives to members of SCLC in one of his most radical speeches, “Where Do We Go From Here?”:

And with a spirit straining toward true self-esteem, the Negro must body throw off the manacles of self-abnegation and say to himself and to the world, “I am somebody. I am a person. I am a man with dignity and honor. I have a rich and noble history, however painful or exploited … yes, yes we must stand up and say “I am black but I'm black and beautiful. This self-affirmation is the black man’s need, made compelling by the white man’s crimes against him.(26) 

Consider the encouragement of black Congresswoman Maxine Waters spoken in a MSNBC interview after white TV personality Bill O’Reilly demeaned her for her black hair:

And I’d like to say to women out there everywhere: Don’t allow these right-wing talking heads, these dishonorable people, to intimidate you or scare you. Be who you are! Do what you do!(27) 

This is why social media hashtags such as #RefugeesWelcome, #TransIsBeautiful, #BlackExcellence, and #BlackGirlMagic are so needed and powerful. They are viral expressions of care. Their users express them in order to affirm and encourage those who may be hearing opposing messages.

Neil Levy on peer-review

Neil Levy (Oxford, Macquarie) has some interesting reflections here.

Ways to improve online conferences?

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

In many ways conferences moving online is a great thing for increasing accessibility to junior academics who otherwise might not have been able to afford conference travel. But there are some pitfalls to the new medium that I think we should flag for more senior academics and it may be worth discussing strategies to help mitigate such concerns. In particular, I'm thinking about how Zoom meetings make it much harder to approach speakers and more senior academics during breaks. Some conferences I have attended specifically encourage participants to keep discussions going during the breaks, but this is a recipe for academics who already know one another well to form an 'in group' breakout room that might prove doubly hard for relatively unknown academics to break into. When these groups form in an in-person setting, it is easy enough to hover around and find an opportune moment to join the discussion. In a virtual setting, however, there is an additional epistemic barrier, since one may not even be aware that such discussions are taking place. One concrete step virtual conferences could take is to leave Zoom meeting rooms open after talks and encourage those who wish to continue the discussion not to break out into new Zoom rooms. Simply continuing over email is also relatively exclusionary. Minimally it is worth bringing the concern up so that more senior academics can be aware of the way in which virtual settings can rob junior academics, particularly those of us less likely to ask questions in a large Zoom meeting, of a valuable means of low-stakes participation.

I like this suggestion a lot. It's not only online conferences that can be exclusionary in these kinds of ways. In-person conferences can be similarly exclusive, as in-groups can continue the conversation after talks in ways that others might be interested in but feel excluded from. It's not clear what can be done about the in-person case--aside from encouraging people to include others. But in the online case, this reader's suggestion seems helpful: conference organizers can simply remind people to keep discussions during break going in the original Zoom meeting rather than breakout groups.

I wonder what other things might be done to improve online conferences. I haven't been a part of one that uses Zoom myself, but imagine others have. What works well? What doesn't? 

Journals for survey articles?

A reader writes in asking, "Do you know of any journals that accept unsolicited submissions of introductory-style papers on a given topic? - by 'introductory-style' articles, I mean a survey article, just in case my meaning wasn't clear."

Interesting question. Philosophy Compass is the only philosophy journal I know that publishes survey articles. However, it only publishes commissioned articles. For the record, this has always seemed a bit strange to me. I've read Phil Compass articles whose surveys of a field I strongly disagree with in one way or another. The journal also admits that its articles feature "an author’s position on the field or sub-field." Given that authors are not always the most unbiased sources of information, it would seem to me to make sense for there to be a venue that accepts unsolicited submissions for survey articles--including, let's say, articles that challenge a previous survey article (as, in some cases, it may be important to 'set the record straight').

Is there a journal for unsolicited survey articles? One doesn't immediately spring to my mind--but perhaps I'm forgetting. Anyone know of one?

Floyd protests & philosophy: what can we do?

In the comments of my Saturday Sounds post, a graduate student writes:

[C]an you please do a post about the current protests going on around the country? What can philosophy professors do? Maybe this community can start a thread where people post pictures of their donations to local communities combating the police.

I think this is a really great idea, and would like to open up the comments section below for discussion. I also want to note that Helen De Cruz and I are in the process of putting together a new series of guest-posts on how philosophy faculty and students can help support our black colleagues, students, communities, and the cause of racial justice. We already have a few guests lined up, but I would like to put a call out to our readers to contact either of us (marvan@ut.edu / helen.decruz@slu.edu) if you would like to contribute a post. Our hope is that the Cocoon can be a helpful forum featuring diverse voices and perspectives in pursuit of truth and long-overdue social change. 

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?  

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.

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.

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.

Backup career paths in the COVID era?

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

It would be useful to talk more about the back-up career paths for mint philosophy PhDs. And how to switch to them. This is more necessary than ever since Covid19 will disrupt the already competitive academic job market. If people like me had some hope before the pandemic, now university cuts on jobs and post-docs lead us to face reality: fresh PhDs have passed from having little chances to zero chances — not only in Humanities. So, many would be grateful if even more space could be given to non-academic careers in either the US and Europe. At least, I see also the positive side-effect: the situation will push to think more about the prospectives philosophers have outside academia. Thank you in advance!

This is a really important query, for obvious reasons--as the academic job-market is almost certainly going to be a disaster this year (even more so than normal, sadly). Anyway, here are a few resources to begin with:

• The APA's Beyond Academia Network: mailing list for philosophers searching for non-academic opportunities.
• Phil Skills: a website of interviews with philosophers in non-academic careers.
• Helen's series of interviews with philosophers outside of the academy at The Philosophers' Magazine.
• Our own Alt-Ac Workshop and Alt-Ac Jobs series featuring tips and guest-posts.
• Free range philosophers: more interviews with philosophers with non-academic careers.
• A helpful 'Plan B' article with practical tips at Chronicle of Higher Education.
• Beyond the Professoriate: a website and membership service featuring free (?) career events as well as (paid?) job-search courses, coaching, and other resources (I just discovered this and have no idea whether it's any good).

Finally, because I was curious, yesterday I did simple Google searches for "philosophers in industry", "philosophers outside of academia", and "philosophers non-academic careers. Because (1) to my astonishment I wasn't able to find anything like a list or directory in 15 seconds (let alone after a little more digging), (2) as we've discussed before networking is how the vast majority of jobs are found and filled, and (3) ex-academic philosophers are probably the best people to appreciate the talents and job situation of philosophers, I just decided to create a Philosophers in Industry Directory of my own. As of now, I am taking suggestions for additions, updates, and deletions by email: marvan@ut.edu. I hope some of you find it helpful, especially those of you who need a job or will need one soon (e.g. post-graduation).

Basically, I just did a little bit of digging and decided to list people alphabetically by last name, linking to their professional pages and listing their line of work. Although I imagine an individual listed here or there might email me asking to have their name removed or whatever, given that all I've done is list publicly available information on LinkedIn, an informal directory like this seems to clearly fine to put together--especially given that it might drive viewers and talented new employees to their company. Who knows? Among other things, I think it's kinda cool to see in one place all of the interesting and diverse things ex-academic philosophers have gone on to do in their careers. And if the directory turns out to be more trouble than it's worth, then I can always take it down. Until then, enjoy - and feel free to suggest additions, etc.!

In any case, do any of you have any helpful tips or resources for the original commenter?

Has philosophy made progress?

A few of my philosopher friends on social media have been sharing this interview with Tim Maudlin (NYU), where Maudlin contends that philosophy has made plenty of progress. This issue comes up time and again, and Daniel Stoljar wrote a recent book defending the existence of philosophical progress. On the other hand, there are a number of works arguing that philosophy has made no real progress and has no good claim to truth-aptness. See for example:

• Jason Brennan (2010). Scepticism about philosophy. Ratio.
• Eric Dietrich (2011). There is no progress in philosophy. Essays in Philosophy.
• Peter Slezak (2018). Is there progress in philosophy? The case for taking history seriously. Philosophy.

The last of these works, for what it's worth, directly addresses Stoljar's work. I'm curious what readers think, especially given broad and persistent divisions over what the most defensible answers are to most (if not all) basic philosophical questions.

My own view is that while I think some real progress has been made, it's probably a lot less than defenders of philosophical progress seem to think. Moreover, how one views the matter depends, presumably, on one's own substantive views. For example, Maudlin sides with the the 59% of philosophers or so today who report leaning toward or accept compatibilism about free will--even going so far as to say, "I think Locke and Hume nailed free will, and since then there has been no interesting debate about it." Notice, first, that this only indicates that majority of philosophers lean toward compatibilism (hardly a ringing endorsement), leaving a full 41% of philosophers who think it's not the right answer. Second, surveys of ordinary laypeople show a similar split. Consequently, there are at least two possibilities here: (1) philosophy has made real progress on free will, or (2) about 60% of people are psychologically inclined to compatibilism, and that's just a psychosocial fact about human beings, not a form of real philosophical progress. How are we to discriminate between these two hypotheses, especially when some of us suspect that compatibilism may be the worst of all answers to the free will problem?

Similarly, consider moral philosophy. Does it make progress? Well, here are some relevant philpapers results:

Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?

Accept or lean toward: moral realism	525 / 931 (56.4%)
Accept or lean toward: moral anti-realism	258 / 931 (27.7%)
Other	148 / 931 (15.9%)

Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?

Other	301 / 931 (32.3%)
Accept or lean toward: deontology	241 / 931 (25.9%)
Accept or lean toward: consequentialism	220 / 931 (23.6%)
Accept or lean toward: virtue ethics	169 / 931 (18.2%)

Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?

Accept or lean toward: naturalism	464 / 931 (49.8%)
Accept or lean toward: non-naturalism	241 / 931 (25.9%)
Other	226 / 931 (24.3%)

By my lights, its hard to even know what to make of these results. First, in the best cases (questions 1 and 3) the leading positions in these polls only indicate that approximately 50% of philosophers lean toward the view. Second, the views all seem in tension with each other. Moral realism is generally understood to to be the position that there are objective moral facts that don't depend upon us for their truth--thus constituting a form of non-naturalism. Yet, the answer to (3) indicates that nearly 50% of philosophers lean toward naturalism, and the answer to (2) shows that philosophers are widely split on what the moral facts are (deontology, virtue ethics, and consequentialism being vastly different normative positions). 

Let me be clear, I don't mean to say that there's no moral progress. I wouldn't do philosophy myself, writing books and articles defending new theories, if I didn't think there to be some truth the arguments. What I am inclined to think, however, is that confident pronouncements about philosophical progress go too far. We should admit, as Russell does in the passage below, that philosophy has serious epistemic limitations:

Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority…All definite knowledge—so I should contend—belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man’s Land, exposed to attack on all sides; this No Man’s Land is philosophy. (Russell 1945: xiii)

We should then aim to improve upon those limitations by doing better metaphilosophy and putting that metaphilosophy into practice, including testing empirically whether the kinds of premises philosophers appeal to really are ones that people in general take to be true.

Or so I'm inclined to think. What do you all think?

Constructive vs. destructive philosophy

In my recent post discussing our dialectical obligations in research and publishing, Amanda writes:

The overall point that I can't stand about philosophy these days is this: it is not a philosophy paper unless you are disagreeing with another philosopher and showing them how they are wrong. The idea that a philosophy paper could be about improving the views of someone else is just a laughable concept (unless you are doing that through the conduct of showing that another critic was wrong.)

Mike then responded:

While some people (editors, referees, philosophers sitting in a Q&A) may think that "it is not a philosophy paper unless you are disagreeing with another philosopher and showing them how they are wrong", I think there's enough room within the philosophy publishing ecosystem for creative, constructive papers that are "about improving the views of someone else".

I'm curious what other people think about this. Has academic philosophy become too 'destructive' instead of constructive?

What are our dialectical obligations?

I took part yesterday in a very interesting methodological discussion with other philosophers on social media that got me thinking about some questions I have long wondered about as a reader and journal reviewer: namely, questions about what our dialectical obligations are when writing and publishing our work. Let me explain.

Sometimes when I read a paper in a journal or serve as a reviewer, I find that a paper seems to me in certain respects dialectically unfair. Here are a few examples of what I have in mind:

1. The paper presents itself as refuting a particular view, but only by appealing to a premise that proponents of the view supposedly being refuted will clearly reject given their background commitments.
2. The paper predicates its argument on a view that some people have defended previously, but which has been subject to numerous refutations (claiming to show in pretty clear terms that the view in question is not supported by any good arguments).

"Now", you might say, "I don't see anything dialectically unfair about that. We're entitled to base our work on premises and positions we find compelling, and as far as we can convince reviewers and editors of this, all is well and good!" And indeed, as I have thus far described the above cases, I would agree. The questions I have about dialectical fairness arise rather with how articles that adopt the above approaches sometimes appear to present themselves. For example, it would be one thing if in case (1) the paper recognized explicitly that proponents of the position being criticized would reject one of the author's central premises; and similarly if, in case (2), the paper recognized that the view they are taking as their starting point has been argued by others to be based on serious confusions. But, my sense is that sometimes this doesn't happen. Instead, sometimes case-(1) papers seem to present themselves as though they are based on premises that anyone (including proponents of the view being argued against) accept or should accept as true, even when (by hypothesis) it seems clear that that is precisely what proponents of the view being criticized would contest. Similarly, sometimes case-(2) papers don't even seem to recognize that the position they are adopting as their starting point has been the subject of multiple claimed refutations.

Now, you still may be wondering what the issue is. In case (1), if the paper in question is published, isn't it just open to proponents of the view being criticized to argue in follow-up papers that the initial paper was based on a premise they reject? Similarly, in case (2), isn't it possible for people to respond in the literature, pointing out the paper in question is based on a presupposition that others in the literature have claimed to definitively refute? My answer is that of course these things are possible--but I still think there is a problem, and here it is: In almost every philosophical field at any given point in time, there are dominant positions that seem to 'run the dialectic' to the exclusion of minority voices (see e.g. here, here, and here). Those in the minority position who think the dominant dialectic is badly mistaken in some way are already at a dialectical disadvantage. They may have already published claimed refutations of the dominant position, only to see the refutations never engaged with or mentioned in papers coming out in the dominant position. Then, when yet another paper is published defending the dominant dialectic but (in type-1 cases) ignores that those in the minority position reject a premise they are appealing to, or (in type-2 cases) ignores that the dialectic being assumed has been vigorously criticized, the result is another new contribution to the literature that makes the dominant dialectic look stronger than those in the minority position think the overall literature supports (since their favored premises and refutations are in effect being 'suppressed' in the paper's mode of presentation).

For my part, I think the answer to this issue is straightforward: when writing and publishing things, we have some real dialectical obligations--specifically, to be as perspicuous as possible about what we are and are not doing. If we write something appealing to a premise that those we are criticizing would reject (as in case 1), we should flag that, making it clear that we know they would have a problem with it. Similarly, when adopting a starting point that others have argued to be confused (as in case 2), we should recognize that our starting point has been argued to be confused, even we disagree with the supposed refutations (which we can also note). These, it seems to me, are ways to be dialectically fair to our readers and interlocutors. As an important final note, I do not claim myself to be beyond all reproach here--as it's entirely possible that readers of my work might find errors of the above as well (I'm not sure!). The epistemic difficulties we face in appreciating whether the dialectic we adopt seems fair to others in the above senses is, I think, exacerbated by our present approach to peer-review. In our present peer-review regime, it's standard to get 'feedback from your friends' (who may share your general outlook on things), and then submit for anonymized review. In this process, there is precious little opportunity to address potential cases of dialectical unfairness. In the kind of more public ArXiv-approach to pre-publication peer-review that some of us advocate, this might be less of an issue--as people in a more public setting could draw attention to these kinds of dialectical issues prior to journal review.

But these are just some of my thoughts, and may be totally off-base (I'm willing to listen!). What are yours?