The Philosophers' Cocoon

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?

On norms against self-promotion (Guest post by C. Thi Nguyen)

By C. Thi Nguyen (Utah Valley University / University of Utah)

The following is a post I made to Social Epistemology Network, a Facebook group that has become the de facto online hub for social epistemologists. I started out just wanting to suggest a small change in the social norms of the group — to encourage people, especially less well-known people, to post more about their work. But it evolved into a discussion of the unfair social impact of various norms of humility in our discipline. Basically: who benefits from the norms of humility, and who loses out?

(This post was originally composed on my phone, with a toddler in my lap, while supervising him on a vaguely educational app. This circumstance that may have resulted in some extra warts in the writing, but also more honesty. Take it for what you will.)

——

Hey all. I wanted to talk about the norms for using this group, to encourage better information dissemination.

Let me briefly claim some credibility first. I think this group exists because, at an APA a few years back, I met Sandy Goldberg and asked him if there was an mailing list or group for disseminating social epistemology Information, and he said, “You know, I don’t know if there is. That’s a great idea!” And a week later, this group was born.

This was super important to me because, at the time, I had zero connections into the social epistemology world. I had no ins to the conversation. I didn’t know what to read or what people thought was important. There was no place to find out about conferences. I would pick up random bits of information, but I was definitely not PLUGGED IN.

When this group started, I had a particular hope: that people would post all their new papers. That it would become a one-stop shop for finding out about new relevant publications. This seems particularly important for us, since social epistemology publications are scattered across all sorts of journals. And the group seemed to be headed that way for a while, but then the norms settled in a different direction. Most people now seem to be following some kind of norm against self-promotion.

Basically: I think this de facto norm is a bad one, and I’d like for us to talk about it. And I would like to throw my support towards a different norm. I will, as is appropriate, offer a quick social epistemology argument for this.

Here are two plausible norms:

The No Self Promotion Norm (NSP): you should not post about your new articles here, nor should you mention when you have a relevant article in another person’s query thread. This is bad self-promotion. The properly humble thing to do is let others mention your articles when relevant.

The Expected Publicity Norm: when you have a new article or potentially useful blog post, post about it once here. Also mention it when relevant on other people’s threads. No shame for basic self-promotion. (Perhaps there should be some shame for spamming many posts to the same article).

The Expected Publicity Norm seems standard in science networks on social media, and works very well, in my opinion. But philosophy tends toward the No Self Promotion Norm on social media.

But the NSP seems bad to me, because it preserves status quo social imbalances that are often arbitrary, unjust, or simply not useful. NSP best serves people that are already well known and well connected in the field. It makes it very difficult for people that aren’t already well-embedded in the community to make their work known, or to find out about new work.

Before social media, a lot of knowledge dispersal happened through whisper networks and informal social networks - like chatter at conferences. This is particularly good for people who are well-known, or who have ready access to various forms of casual professional contact. You have a major advantage here if you have good travel funding, or live in one of the metropolitan hubs for active philosophy, or already know tons of people in the field and chat all the time. But if you don’t have these advantages, you’re cut out of the information network. NSP is a norm that amplifies inequities — many of them arbitrary ones.

Groups like this one could help to even that out. They offer the hope of better and more equitable access to information and distribution for all. But when we adopt the NSP norm, we push things back towards the old imbalances. (Also: some people seem to have adopted a norm where they post about new work on their personal thread, but not here. But this also preserves imbalances in social connections. This group is nice because anybody can join and get access to the information.)

So: I think we should try to shift norms. It would be better if the norms were such that it was expected, normal, and almost obligatory to post your new articles, with brief description, so we can ALL keep track of all the posts. Creating better awareness of relevant articles inside our community is an epistemic good. (I think a lot about Karen Jones’ suggestion in “Trustworthiness”: that the fully trustworthy person works to predict other people’s epistemic needs and actively tries to fulfill them - especially when others aren’t yet aware that they have a need.)

And also: if you’re afraid that this would create too much traffic: if this ended up generating one or two posts a day with new articles, that’s a drop in the bucket. Do you seriously think that I’m going to be annoyed to see a daily new article SE article pop up between the zillion baby photos, COVID armchairing, and social media crap? I mean, this group is 100% voluntary and mutable and filled with people whose lives are devoted to this topic.

Posting your articles isn’t the noise; it’s the signal.

Grad programs rescinding offers/funding?

A reader wrote in here:

Some schools (I have heard of [redacted]) are rescinding funding for already admitted students. I’ve heard other schools are not accepting anyone waitlisted. Can we get a discussion thread on this issue? It strikes me as morally wrong to in effect rescind an admission. Those students probably turned down other offers to go to [redacted], and are now completely screwed. Do they count as some of the precarious workers deserving of protection?

As I don't think the Cocoon is a place to make public allegations of impropriety, I've redacted parts of the comment. Still, do readers know: has this been happening? If so, what should be done about it? 

APA Grad Student Council (GSC) statement

The APA released today a statement by its Graduate Student Council entitled, "Supporting grad students during COVID-19." I think it's a really good statement worth reading, disseminating, and acting upon to whatever extent possible.

What to do if you're plagiarized?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Elisa (editor's note: not our own Elisa!) writes:

Hello and thanks for the great work you have been doing so far! I was wondering if you would consider dedicating a post or thread to plagiarism in academia. I would be interested in hearing from people whose work has been plagiarized in some way or another by their advisors, colleagues, or students. Sometimes plagiarism is very difficult to detect (people can steal your working arguments, ideas, and project plans not simply your unpublished drafts) but it hurts deeply. As an early career scholar I have seen my project being taken and used by a more senior colleague I was collaborating with. I presented my project in multiple occasions, so my drafts were very well-known, and I only published a paper that drew on some parts of the project I presented. It's difficult to broach the subject with the colleague who was so interested in my project to the point of appropriating my own ideas and arguments (even the bibliography!). I would appreciate some help and advice by people who have been in a similar situation, if possible. Thank you!

Another reader ('me') responded:

Elisa
I do not think this is the place to resolve such issues. You need to talk to someone on a research ethics board at the institution or institutions where you work. Begin with a consultation. Then they may advise you to raise a complaint formally, but within the institution's framework.

I certainly don't think the Cocoon is the place to make plagiarism accusations, or to 'resolve' them. But I do think the general issue is worth discussing, for several reasons. First, my sense--from things I've heard people say online and in person--is that this sort of problem, while perhaps not common, is not exactly uncommon either. Second, my sense is that for early-career people in particular, things just aren't as simple as 'me' suggests (i.e. talking with a research ethics board at your institution). Why? The problem, of course, has to do with actual and perceived power differentials. As some of the sexual misconduct scandals in philosophy illustrated years ago, institutions and individuals in them can be all too willing to protect eminent figures, even going so far as to retaliate against accusers. Imagine, then, being a grad student faced with an unethical advisor stealing your ideas. What are you going to do: lodge a formal accusation against your advisor? Perhaps. However, I assume that many of us might be so afraid of what that might mean for our career or reputation in our department and beyond that we might be too afraid to say anything to anyone about it, let alone lodge a formal accusation.

Blogging in times of COVID-19

By Gottfried Schweiger (University of Salzburg)

At the moment most of us are sitting at home and are observers of events that are radically changing our lives and for which the outcome is open. The universities are closed and what remains for philosophers is online teaching, writing papers and books. As long as there are no childcare obligations that make all professional activities much more difficult and tedious, if not completely impossible, one might think that the COVID 19 pandemic does not change much for philosophers. Yes, there are no more conferences and jetting from one talk to another is no longer possible. Also the change to online teaching is challenging, but is possible in philosophy in principle, unlike laboratory-based teaching. My impression from my own experience and conversations with colleagues is that productivity is decreasing. On the one hand it is often not so quiet at home, on the other hand the overall situation is stressful, exhausting, even frightening for some. The COVID-19 isolation at home is not a nice writing retreat for most people. This can become a problem especially for early-career colleagues who depend on publications for job applications.

But since we are all thinking about the current situation and what is probably still to come, it is a chance for philosophy and especially for philosophical blogging. Many philosophical questions arise: Allocation of scarce resources, the weighing of different goods (health vs. economic losses), the legitimation of far-reaching state measures and surveillance. At least three debates are now needed: First, a public debate in which all sciences with their different expertise should participate. Secondly, internal debates within the discipline, including a debate in philosophy on the above questions. Thirdly, a debate on the role of philosophy in interdisciplinary and public debate and what role philosophy can play for the public right now. The COVID-19 pandemic has an existential dimension, which is also reflected in all kinds of practical advice on how to deal with it and reflections on the changes in our everyday lives. Questions about the meaning of life and one's own vulnerability now arise for many. This should also be a field for philosophy.

What are the academic virtues?

Which virtues do we value? There are big cultural variations. For example, the virtue of honor does not have a place in American society at large (as Tamler Sommers discusses in his recent book on the topic), but it still seems prized in some subcultures, such as in sports (taking one for the team, etc). 

In The Lakota way, Marshall uses anecdotes and stories from his family and community to examine which virtues are valued among Lakota. Some of these do not have a clear equivalent in mainstream American culture. For example, humility is prized in the Lakota, but not in the US. Humility will not get you tenure, political office, or fame. By contrast, among Lakota, humility is a virtue that further amplifies and enhances other virtues. Crazy Horse showed leadership and courage, and those were amplified by his humility. 

Virtues can clash, both within and across cultures, leading to tensions in our ethical values, as Owen Flanagan details in Geography of Morals. This is clearly the case for academic culture. Academia has specific virtues and values which are sometimes in tension with the virtues we grew up with. For example, I grew up in a working-class environment in Belgium, where virtues like thrift, modesty (including a gendered version of this), and good manners were valued.

What are the academic virtues? With academic virtues I mean the dispositions that academics generally strive toward and that they find laudable in others, for example, that they mention in obituaries or when speaking of the recently deceased (Mark Alfano has systematic work on this, which I haven't done here, my sense is just an informal appraisal of how people speak of dead academic colleagues). Here's my attempt at fleshing them out. 

Ambition: Aristotle says in Nichomachean ethics that having the proper amount of ambition is good and laudable. You should not claw your way to the top at the expense of everyone else, but you should definitely not be too modest. My sense is that ambition can go very far in academia before it is regarded as improper. 

Excellence: This is probably the most tiresome and daunting of the academic virtues; in brief, you need to be better than other people. You need to perpetually be excellent, outdoing others both in in quality and (to some lesser extent, but still, also) quantity of work. There seems to be no upper limit to how excellent is excellent enough. 

Fortitude/perseverance: this is the hardest one to learn. Academics value fortitude in the face of adversity. If you are for years on the job market, working under difficult circumstances, you basically are expected to suck it up. People may be sympathetic and say how difficult the market is, still, they accept adversity as a reality that you will need to live with. Relatedly, any academic needs to accept multiple rejections (papers, grants, etc.) without grumbling, and just keep on trying and trying, until hopefully they succeed. 

Truthfulness: This is the virtue that guards against such practices as plagiarism, falsifying data, p-hacking, etc. You are expected not to mislead or knowingly falsify data or present work in a misleading fashion. In philosophy, which is less empirically driven, this is perhaps less a concern than in other fields. 

Magnanimity: In an Aristotelian sense, this is the virtue where you know you're worthy of honors and behave accordingly. I think that Aristotle's definition of this term comes pretty close to what I see is expected among academics of a certain seniority (especially "academic stars").

Benevolence: This comes close to the Mengzian idea of rén or humaneness/benevolence, where academics are supposed to show compassion, for instance, to graduate students or to people in precarious positions. While this virtue might not be immediately obvious, I've heard many people speak warmly of academics who showed compassion and were benevolent to them in a difficult period in their lives. 

Edited to add: Originality of thought: Marcus mentioned creativity as an important academic virtue, and while it is indeed a good thing to have, I wonder if we can be more specific to talk about originality of thought, as we don't hold it against academics to re-iterate the same idea for decades, for example. Originality of thought is ideas/concepts you come up with that are specific to you and that define you, in some cases, that are like a trade mark of you, e.g., rigid designators, Gettier cases, Frankfurt cases... While most academics do not have such a trade mark they're still expected (even already as job candidates) to have their specific, original idea that is unique to them. 

I am probably leaving several important virtues out, and maybe people here will disagree with some I listed. Some of these virtues have costs: fortitude/perseverance can lead to sunk costs where people are stuck in suboptimal adjuncting situations but they keep on going in the hope that they will get a job next time round. Magnanimity has problematic aspects of academic hero-worship, clubbishness among elite departments, etc. 

Still, to thrive in academia, you need to either internalize the academic virtues (i.e., the virtues prevalent in academia), or at the very least understand them. Understanding and emulation without internalizing gives rise to "code-switching" where you are in academic mode or in home mode. As Jennifer Morton argues in her recent Moving up without losing your way, this comes at some ethical cost. How to balance the academic virtues with virtues you value for yourself? 

Practicing Academic Kindness in the Classroom (Guest Post by Philipp Schulz)

This is a guest post by Philipp Schulz, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Intercultural and International Studies (InIIS) at the University of Bremen. It first appeared on Duck of Minerva on 17th February 2020. We're grateful to both for allowing us to republish it here.

Academic competitiveness and pettiness is alive and real. From expediting demands of the competitive academic job market, disrespectful peer review comments, to micro-aggressions and open hostilities at conferences – in particular to early career, women and/or people of colour scholars – there seem to be countless examples for an acute absence of kindness and empathy in the academy. Probably most of us, although to varying degrees, have been confronted with the unkind aspects of academic environments. In many ways, of course, these problems are embedded in wider structural problems of racism and sexism within the academy at large.

Fortunately, there seems to be increasing (albeit slow) recognition of the toxic practices of academic work cultures. As an early career researcher, I am particularly excited about some of the kindness that many of my peers are extending and the horizontal generosity that is beginning to spread across conferences, workshops and social media. Yet, I do believe that the (sub-)field of feminist international relations is particularly unique in that way, perhaps not unrelated to some of the disciplinary sanctioning and marginalizing that the field still experiences in the discipline more widely.

Teaching Bullshit and Assholes - Part 1 (Guest Post by C. Thi Nguyen and Imree Parma)

Teaching “On Bullshit”

by C. Thi Nguyen

I recently taught a "Bullshit and Assholes Week" in my introductory ethics class, and just had a lifetime peak teaching experience. It was for my first attempt at teaching Harry Frankfurt's "On Bullshit". Raw, pure, unrefined teaching ecstasy.

I was actually prepping for the class the day before and totally freaking out that I'd picked something too hard for gen-ed, intro ethics – that it was too dry and too tediously analytic. But it turned out to be a TOTAL DELIGHT. It is, in fact, a perfect way to introduce students to conceptual analysis. Because the article is, I now realize, this perfect escalation of gradually improving attempts at getting the right analysis of "bullshit," in a wonderfully teachable sequence.

First pass: is bullshit the same as lying? The answer: no, because there's plenty of bullshit (administrative red tape) that's not lying. Second pass: is bullshit pretentious lying? No, because some bullshit is pretentious, but not lying (excessively precious artisanal-signaling food). And some bullshit involves lying, but no pretension.

The moment the article really hit, for my students, is when Frankfurt proposes the account that bullshit is bullshit because it is sloppy. And the students all saw it at the same moment: that excessively precious artisanal-signaling food may be bullshit, but it is certainly not sloppy. In fact, it is bullshit because *too much care has been put into it," perhaps in the wrong sort of way. And so "bullshit" needs to be an abstract enough concept so that it encompasses some bullshit which is bullshit because it is sloppy, and other bullshit which is bullshit because it is too carefully crafted.

When the students saw it, they were, like, jaws agape in illumination and pleasure. I think they went from laughing at the fact that the professor was talking about bullshit, to laughing at how deep the analysis could go.

What is like to be a philosopher in Panama?

This is the 15th installment of The Cocoon Goes Global, a series that gives a sense of what the philosophy profession looks like outside of the Anglophone West. This is a guest contribution by Ruling Barragán, Adjunct professor of philosophy at the Universidad de Panamá.

 

Country Profile.

 

The Republic of Panama is a small Spanish-speaking country (about 4 millions inhabitants, 75,000 square kilometers) within the Central American geographical region. Culturally speaking, it is more related to Afro-Caribbean and Colombian culture than to Central American countries. For instance, its food and music have been influenced by Afro-Caribbean cuisine and folklore, while its legal and political culture is heir to its history with Colombia (Panama was a Federal State within the 'Gran Colombia' in the second half of the 19th century).  Panamanian history has also been particularly influenced by the US, in a unique manner within the region, as part of Panama's territory (that surrounding the Panama Canal) was actually a US colony.  Panama achieved complete independence from the US in the year 2000, not without tensions, conflicts and even a military invasion (1989) throughout its history with the North American nation.  Nevertheless, on the whole, Panama has never been foe to the US.  Friendly relations have prevailed between both countries.

 

Culture/philosophy profile

 

To begin with, it should be said that Panama does not have a significant influence in the history of Latin American philosophy comparable to countries like Mexico, Peru and/or Argentina.  There has been an important continuity of the Western philosophical tradition in these countries and some will argue (Enrique Dussel, for instance), even an outstanding non-Western, pre-colonial philosophical tradition.  Whatever be the case, most of Latin American 20th century philosophy has flourished under the influence of late 19th century and early 2oth century European philosophy.  The analytic tradition has been for the most part non-existent in Latin America until (more or less) the middle of the 20th century.  However, there was a prominent positivist tradition (especially in Argentina and Brazil) way before there was an interest along the lines of the Analytical tradition.  This positivist tradition (that goes back to the French philosopher Auguste Comte) influenced especially the legal profession and the political institutions that constituted most of our countries.  Panama was no exception to that.  Its most prominent legal and political thinker, Don Justo Arosemena (1817-1896) was influenced by that culture in his writings.  However outstanding as a political and legal thinker of the Panamanian nation, he cannot be considered, in the academic, professional sense of the word, a philosopher.  Neither that is needed.

 

Professional philosophy and authenticity

To set a price for oneself whereby one becomes no longer a person but merely a cog! Are you co-conspirators in the current folly sweeping over nations, which, above all else, want to produce as much as possible and to be as rich as possible? Your concern ought to hold out to them a counter-reckoning: what vast sums of genuine inner value are being squandered on such a superficial external goal! (Nietzsche, Daybreak, 206).

Like other fields with a high degree of professionalism and lots of competition, academic philosophy exacts a lot of us. It requires we're willing to move practically anywhere, face painful dilemmas about family, finding jobs in the same area of your spouse, relocate multiple times, lose our savings yet again, and--hardest of all--lose our friends or opportunities to be close to parents and siblings. For those of us who are first-generation, or immigrant, or both, it also often requires we cut emotional ties with our friends and home environment. Even if we don't want to cut ties, it happens, almost inevitably. Or so is my experience. 

But to what extent does academic philosophy require that you give up yourself? To what extent does it require the loss of authenticity? 

I've been mulling over this especially after I read this moving piece of philosophical autobiography. The piece is written by Fabio, who ended his career as a philosopher after a two-year postdoctoral fellowship. He writes honestly about his struggles with academic philosophy, 

Philosophy has always been a very personal affair. Well, not always. When it stopped being a personal affair, it also stopped being enjoyable. It became a performance. I realize that many of you are able to seamlessly weave personal involvement and academic performance together. For me, that’s always been impossible. I’m too slow, my thoughts too dim, and too prone to distraction to focus on one single problem. And when I do, I am unable to crystallize my involvement with such a problem to intelligible and coherent terms. And even if I manage that, I can at best produce a competent list of platitudes. When the inexpressible (not because mystical, but because too close to the bone for me to articulate onto the field of discourse) project of shaping (edifying, in both senses of the term) my own individuality — what I thought philosophy was about — became the public performance of puzzle-solving, that’s when I developed a rejection of philosophy.

My first response to this would be to say: but you don't need to choose! Philosophy can be so much more than puzzle-solving. Still, I think it's important to be honest and clear about the trade-offs involved. Philosophy written from the heart is, at least in my experience, more difficult to sell to a journal than philosophy that intervenes in some recent debate that you might have something useful to say about, but not really keeps you up at night. 

Clearly, though, philosophers do prize honesty and authenticity--the voice of the person who seeks and is honest about it. The best philosophy is deeply personal. Augustine's Confessions, which wrestle with faith, grief, family, still resonate today, as do Descartes' or Al-Ghazali's skeptical doubts. We value Zhuangzi's playfulness and Mengzi's earnest optimism. To know such people, even across the ages, is like having valuable friends we can lean back on, and from whose works we can draw wisdom and insights now. We marvel at Fanon's raw insights into racial micro- and macro-aggressions and how his perplexity gives rise to deep philosophical insights. We read along with De Beauvoir's mixed feelings on her mother's death, more recently also Elizabeth Barnes' and Havi Carel's deeply personal insights on disability and long-term illness. We admire philosophers who can weave the personal and the professional. 

Maybe there's a tension between two kinds of philosophy, as Martin Lenz speculates: "The first kind is what one might call a spiritual practice, building on exercises or forms of artistic expression and aiming at understanding oneself and others. The second kind is what one might call a theoretical endeavour, building on concepts and arguments and aiming at explaining the world." --maybe the problem is that we value the second one almost exclusively in professional academic contexts. 

The philosophy social media dilemma

After over 10 years of being on FaceBook, I quit the platform over increasing worries and concerns I had about transparency, privacy, and other issues. This was the culmination of a gradual withdrawal. First, a few years ago, I deleted the app from my phone. Soon thereafter, when the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, I deleted all its permissions to log in to other websites I use (Typepad did not make the switch easy). Then, I asked on Twitter what revelation, if anything would cause people to quit, and many people responded that nothing would make them quit. I thought the same, that I was stuck for good, and that thought worried me. A couple of days ago, in what I feel to be a moment of clarity, I deactivated and cut ties brusquely. 

It's early days now but I feel happy and liberated with the decision. I notice how my behavior had become too dependent on it, I still check it often without thinking, as I take a break from writing, even though checking it will now bring me to the login screen. These habits will take a long time to unlearn. I worry that other media I am still part of (such as Twitter) might soon take over and play the same role. I'll decide what to do when I get to that point. 

I thought it would be difficult to quit, as I have moved country several times and use the platform to keep in touch with friends (my extended family, fortunately, are social media shy and so I keep in touch with them through other means). But especially, I used the platform for professional engagement.

This started a few years ago, maybe around 2015 or so, when the philosophy blogs I contributed to started to dwindle (except when it concerned "issues in the profession"). Concurrently, informal philosophical engagement on Facebook increased. Soon, there seemed little point to blogging and I put blogging on the back burner. This brings me to the central point of this blogpost, to which I have no answer: the philosophy social media dilemma. What happens and what should a philosopher do if the academic community massively has moved on to making its informal engagements happen on one platform, specifically, Facebook? 

Survey results: non-TT faculty issues

A couple of months ago, I began a new series on the rights of non-tenure-track faculty. In the first post in the series, I asked the blog's non-TT readers to chime in on what they take to be important professional issues they face. The issues identified were:

• Absolute deprivation (e.g. poor pay and/or benefits)
• Relative deprivation (less pay, benefits, and/or job security than similarly qualified individuals)
• Lack of job-security (e.g. year-to-year or semester-by-semester contracts)
• Lack of opportunities for promotion
• Lack of union representation
• Never feeling like you belong (always feeling like a 'visitor' in your own department/institution)
• Being treated as a second-class citizen at work
• Lack of respect in the discipline of academic philosophy (e.g. only people with tenure-track jobs matter)
• Unjust inequity (unequal pay for equal work)
• Lack of academic freedom

Then, in the next post in the series, I ran an informal survey asking the following questions about the issues identified:

• Q1 - This is a serious problem I face as a non-tenure-track member of academic philosophy.
• Q2 - The American Philosophical Association (APA) should do more to address this issue.
• Q3 - Please rank the following in terms of importance to you as a non-tenure-track member of the profession.
• Q4 - My answers to the above questions are based on my experiences working as:

Although this was only an informal survey (with all of the attendant methodological issues thereunto), here are the results (N = 44 respondents):

Q1 - This is a serious problem I face as a non-tenure-track member of academic philosophy.

Here is the breakdown by mean (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree):

1. Lack of job security: 4.65
2. Lack of opportunities for promotion: 4.23
3. Relative deprivation (less pay, etc., than similarly qualified individuals): 3.95
4. Unjust inequity (unequal pay for equal work): 3.86
5. Lack of respect in the discipline of academic philosophy: 3.79
6. Never feeling like I belong (a visitor in my own department): 3.62
7. Being treated like a second-class citizen at work: 3.42
8. Lack of union representation: 2.98
9. Lack of academic freedom: 2.93
10. Absolute deprivation: 2.88

Some interesting results here are that respondents agreed most strongly with lack of job security, opportunities, and relative deprivation as serious issues, whereas the mean responses to (8)-(10) (union representation, academic freedom, and absolute deprivation) align with "neither agree nor disagree."

However, when eyeballing the data, the latter results appear to be confounded by the respondent's type of job. Respondents who self-reported as adjunct instructors appear more likely to agree that union representation, academic freedom, and absolute deprivation are important issues they face (though there was some considerable variance on all three issues even among the adjunct respondents).

Query on IHS

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, left-winging writes:

I have been hearing that it is bad for an early career scholar's reputation to have received funding from the Institute for Humane Studies (George Mason). Any opinions?

I haven't heard anything like this myself. On the one hand, it is always possible for people with moral opposition to libertarianism or classical liberalism to hold IHS's ideological background against people. On the other, my guess is that if an early-career scholar does work with that kind of background anyway (as I would expect people who receive IHS funding generally do), then libertarian or classical liberal themes will show up in their CV and publication-list, in which case receiving funding from IHS is probably a moot point.

In any case, my general stance on these kinds of things is simple: "you do you." Although I'm not a libertarian or classical liberal myself, my sense of philosophical and moral integrity is that if this is the work you do and believe in, then living in fear of what people may or may not think of IHS funding is no way to live. Sure, it's always possible some people may not look favorably on it--but other people may: namely, those who are more sympathetic with libertarianism or classical liberalism. And so I guess I'm inclined to say: just do work you believe in, and let the cards fall where they may.

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

New series on tenure

Yesterday, I came across an interesting discussion on social media on what tenure requirements are at different schools. Because it is clear from that discussion and others discussions I have encountered that tenure requirements differ greatly at different institutions, I thought it might be good to run a short series on the tenure process and tenure requirements. It occurred to me that such a series might be of interest to a variety of the blog's readers, including job-marketeers (who might benefit from better awareness of differences in the tenure process and standards across institutions), tenure-track faculty who have not gone up for tenure yet, and members of the profession more generally.

Anyway, I tentatively plan this series to cover the following topics:

• What tenure processes themselves are like at different institutions
• How clearly and consistently tenure standards are stated and conveyed to job-candidates
• What tenure standards are like at different kinds of institutions
  • R1 (research) institutions
  • Elite liberal arts universities
  • Non-elite liberal arts universities
  • Regional public state schools (non-R1's)
  • Community colleges
• What tenure-denial is like and involves (including potential for appeals)

Are there any other topics the series should cover? If so, please let me know in the comments section below this post. Because the quality of information this series provides will depend on reader comments, I'd like to encourage readers to share posts in the series, so that readers who may have experience and insight in these matters can chime in! For now, I'd just like to solicit suggestions on any additional topics to cover in the series. The first substantive post in the series will come in the next day or two!

Mentioning age in recommendation letters

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

I am a professor at an European University, and I would have a question concerning letters of recommendation.
Is it appropriate to write something like "This is an impressive list of accomplishments for someone who has not reached their 30s yet"? I want to emphasize that these accomplishments are exceptional for a 28-year-old. Or should I never mention or refer to the student's age?

Interesting question. I guess I'm inclined to think one shouldn't discuss age (so as to avoid unwittingly playing into ageism). I think there's nothing wrong with saying in a letter that someone has an impressive list of accomplishments for their career stage--but again, I'm inclined to think it is best to leave chronological age out of it. What do you all think?

New survey: non-TT faculty issues

Last month, I began a new series on the rights of non-tenure-track philosophers. My aim in this series is to learn more about the issues that non-TT members of the profession face, the relative importance of those issues to them, what might be done to address those issues, who ought to address those issues and how (such as the APA), and finally, which issues ought to be considered rights of non-TT faculty.

In the first entry in the series, I held an open discussion on the question, "non-TT faculty, what do you take to be important professional issues you face that you would like to see addressed in some way?". I personally learned a lot from the discussion, and put together the following list of issues that commenters identified as important issues to them:

• Absolute deprivation (e.g. poor pay and/or benefits)
• Relative deprivation (less pay, benefits, and/or job security than similarly qualified individuals)
• Lack of job-security (e.g. year-to-year or semester-by-semester contracts)
• Lack of opportunities for promotion
• Lack of union representation
• Never feeling like you belong (always feeling like a 'visitor' in your own department/institution)
• Being treated as a second-class citizen at work
• Lack of respect in the discipline of academic philosophy (e.g. only people with tenure-track jobs matter)
• Unjust inequity (unequal pay for equal work)
• Lack of academic freedom

I have now put together this informal survey to elicit how important these different issues are to non-tenure track , as well as to solicit non-tenure track people's opinions on which issues the American Philosophical Association (APA) should do more to address. If you are a non-tenure-track member of the profession (e.g. working as an adjunct, postdoc, lecturer, VAP, etc.), please consider filling out the survey. Although it is only an informal survey, not a formal study, my hope is that the answers respondents give to it will be illuminating for further discussion in this series. Please only fill out the survey if you have worked or are working in the above non-tenure-stream capacities. Please do not fill out the survey if you have only worked as a graduate teaching assistant or graduate student instructor in your MA or PhD program while in graduate school. While I think the professional issues that graduate students face are important (and indeed, I hope to do a series on the rights of graduate students in the near future!), I would like for this series to focus squarely on non-tenure-stream members of the profession beyond their work in their own graduate program. Many thanks in advance to everyone who takes the time to fill out the survey!

Poll results: service and the market

A couple of discussions the past few weeks got me thinking about the role that service (to one's department, university, the profession, etc.) plays on the job market. First, a little over two weeks ago, Daily Nous hosted a discussion on whether graduate students should receive compensation for service work. Second, around the same time, a colleague in the discipline at a research university mentioned on social media that they actively discourage their grad students from engaging in service, the rationale being, if I recall, that it's just not worth grad students' time and energy. I weighed in on this discussion, saying that my experience working and hiring on four search committees at a liberal arts university is very different: namely, that service may substantially benefit candidates on the market for jobs at universities like mine. 

Anyway, both of these discussions got met thinking: do search committee members, and search committees as a whole, care about service? Do candidates' service records affect how they are evaluated by search committee members? If so, how?

Because these seem to me to be important issues, I decided to run an informal poll asking search committee members to weigh in on a few questions. To be clear, it is just an informal poll with a relatively small sample size (N = 29), not a formal study--so the results should be presumably taken with a serious grain of salt. However, here are the results:

• Number of respondents: 29
• # self-reporting as from R1 research universities: 18
• # self-reporting as from regional state universities: 4
• # self-reporting as from non-elite liberal arts universities: 3
• # self-reporting as from elite liberal arts universities: 1
• # self-reporting as from community colleges: 1
• # self-reporting as from 'other': 2

Q1 - A job-candidate's service record (viz. service to their department, university, community, etc.) can play a real role in how I personally evaluate their candidacy as a search-committee member:

Q2 - The search committee(s) I have been on have taken candidates' service records (viz. service to their department, university, community, etc.) into account in their collective deliberations on who to interview or hire:

Q3 - Depending on your answers to Q1 & Q2, what kind(s) of service may play a role in how candidates are evaluated?:

All responses, complete and unedited:

• "Diversity related service, public philosophy, service that brings in media attention, service that attracts grads to the department, undergrads to classes or the major."
• "All forms, but especially technology, diversity, and proactive, positive contributions to the profession."
• "Course development, curriculum reform, labour organizing, establishing MAP chapters, etc."
• "Student outreach, diversity initiatives, reading and discussion groups, syllabus reform."
• "Service with students."
• "Anything that indicates that they would be a responsible member of my department--graduate representative, serving on committees, organizing events, etc."
• "In a UK context, it really is a must. You need to be able to show some "admin" experience, e.g., being part of committees, taking on admin roles in your department."
• "Has the candidate been involved in any diversity initiatives on campus, or leadership/shared governance roles. At my institution we need people to do a lot of service because we are badly understaffed, and we also need people who can help with diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts."
• "Undergraduate mentoring; teacher training related initiatives; diversity related initiatives (e.g. MAP chapter)."
• "It's not so much that kinds of service matter, but when debating candidates with differing research outputs, variations in teaching and administrative loads become relevant to predicting future performance."
• "Anything that indicates that the candidate is a team player."
• "Stuff that shows experience working with grad students, stuff that shows they would be a leader in enriching our intellectual community."
• "I don't care about journal refereeing. I take an absence of departmental service, or only insubstantial-looking service lines on the CV, as something of a red flag; it suggests to me that the candidate won't pull their weight in the department. Larger professional service roles suggest the candidate is becoming connected, which is a weak positive sign of reputation-building (which can matter for tenure)."
• "Work that showed a serious commitment to various kinds of diversity (running a MAP chapter, teaching philosophy in urban schools, etc)."
• "I was not allowed to officially consider any service, only the vague 'capacity' to take on roles within the department. This is a serious issue, and I wish that I could take into account junior colleagues that have undertaken senior roles (perhaps to the detriment of their research outputs). If able to, evidence of taking on important departmental roles would be great to ensure that we are hiring someone that can cope in those roles (i.e. future chairs of departments!)."
• "Primarily we have looked at administrative experience--has this person served as a chair, been in charge of adjuncts, performed class scheduling, served as an advisor."
• "Founding/running undergraduate clubs, recruitment efforts (with data to show their personal involvement), conference volunteer work, tutoring/mentoring students in an official capacity."
• "Philosophy club, public philosophy, pedagogical committees."
• "None."

Q4- I answered the above questions on the basis of my experience serving on search committee(s) at:

Again, this is just an informal survey--but I for one find the results intriguing, especially the qualitative answers to Q3 (indicating the kinds of service respondents care about, and their reasons for doing so). Anyway, I hope you all find this information helpful, and would be curious indeed to see what a more formal study might find!