The Philosophers' Cocoon

Writing and Publishing at Teaching-Heavy Institutions

In today’s post, I wanted to take a look at research at teaching-heavy institutions. Before moving forward, I wanted to explain my motivation in writing this. First, as more and more job seekers seem to be taking an interest in colleges with heavy teaching loads, including two-year institutions, I thought hearing the views of someone at a heavily teaching-focused institution might be of some value. I also hoped to hear from others who teach at such colleges about their own experiences and views on writing.

I will organize this post around several questions that have arisen in discussions with other faculty at similar institutions or others who are seeking employment at these sorts of institutions.

First, a word on what I mean by teaching-heavy schools. I have in mind schools that both have a heavy teaching load (let's say, 4-4 or higher) and also see themselves (as reflected in tenure requirements, contract specifications, and culture) as concerned solely or almost solely with non-research requirements. If we think of colleges as falling along a spectrum, my own institution is firmly toward the teaching side. It transitioned from a 2-year institution to one offering 4-year degrees about a decade ago, but the requirements for faculty and the cultural norms have remained the same. The load is 5-5-2 (2 in the summer) and the tenure process involves significant scholarship of teaching and learning. (We must attend many pedagogy seminars and workshops, and we must submit about 300 pages of research examining elements of our teaching, but there is no push for anyone to publish any of it.) There are no research requirements for tenure or in our contracts other than the pedagogical writing we need to do for the tenure process. I know of other colleges with 4-4 loads that also require little or no research and involve lots of interaction with students outside of the classroom. I think of these as teaching-heavy as well.

What are the downsides for writing in this environment?

There are a few, I think. First, there is no pressure to publish, and for many of us (myself included) it is easy for writing to get pushed onto the back burner if there is no pressure. Second, it can be difficult to find others in our institutions who wish to be actively engaged in research. This can make those of us who wish to write feel a bit alone. Third, we tend to have smaller departments, and so have less opportunities for the sort of engaged philosophical discussion that can inspire writing projects. Fourth, at some of these institutions (certainly at mine), there is almost no opportunity to teach courses related to our research interests.

To promote one’s work, or not?

Updated: 2:50pm, 6/4/2019

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

Should I be trying to get people to notice my papers in some way other than just publishing and putting them out there? Cold emailing relevant interlocutors, posting about them in a public Facebook post, something like that?

I think these are great questions, one's I've wondered about on a number of occasions given the visibility the Cocoon provides. Here, in brief, are the conclusions I've come to: some people may look down on promoting one's work - but I think there is nothing to be ashamed of in doing it, and it probably benefits the profession and individuals who do it, at least on balance. Let me explain why.

Query on note-taking

A reader writes in:

What is the best way to develop a philosophy research journal, or commonplace book? I often find myself pulling from my annotated copies of peer-reviewed philosophy articles when I write. I would rather be drawing from notes of some kind, and verifying my citations in the final stages of my writing process. Unfortunately, when I try to develop a note-taking system for research purposes (for example, the twentieth-century 3-by-5 index card system for research papers) I become wildly inefficient. Should I just stick with my note-taking system of choice until I become efficient? Or should I be approaching this in a different way? Should I just continue researching without systematic note-taking? Is systematic note-taking a waste of time, contra the venerable Kate Turabian?

I don't know how other people would answer these questions, but for my part I don't take many notes. Instead, I have a carefully organized set of folders in my Google Drive where I catalog journal articles I've read, as well as piles of books on or next to my desk or on a bookshelf that I have read. Like this reader, I simply annotate what I've read: I scribble brief notes in book pages as I read, fold page-corners to remember where important things are, and jot brief notes in e-copies of journal articles. Then, when I draft new work (e.g. articles or books), I have a running memory of important things I know I've read, including a fair idea of where I read them. Then, as I write, I'll track down the relevant article in my Google Drive or fish the relevant book out of the pile next to my desk (or on my bookshelf), re-read relevant passages and my annotations. I think this method requires a pretty good memory--so I imagine taking detailed notes might work better for some people. Finally, on that note, sometimes I do jot down brief ideas in the 'notes' app in my iPhone, which I find helpful for remembering ideas I've had that might slip my mind later.

Anyway, that's what I do, and I guess I'd suggest to the reader if the annotating method works fairly well for them, they might as well stick to it. But that's just my offhand guess. What do you all do? Any advice for this reader?

Writing philosophy papers – some reflections, tips and tricks (J. Adam Carter)

By J. Adam Carter (University of Glasgow)

It will be hard to follow up Neil Levy’s post in this series - he’s published over 200 articles! If my own remarks diverge from his, reasonable principles of epistemic deference suggest you should go with what he says rather than me! In what follows, I’ll give an overview of some of the things that work for me. I don’t mean to suggest you should do all, or even any, of these things. But if you run up against a wall and want to try something different, maybe some of this will be of use.

In no particular order, here are some things that, for better or worse, I both (i) actually do and (ii) am under the impression are pretty helpful.

Keep a Paper Ideas List

Ideas for new papers often strike unexpectedly (in fact, this is something I’ve published about, through the lens of virtue epistemology, here). The fact that new ideas can strike unexpectedly is entirely to be expected: the literature on the psychology of creativity tells us that the ‘Aha!’ experience of an insight often hits when we’re not actively working on a problem.[1](For an amazing story about this phenomenon, read about Yitang Zhang and the twin prime conjecture!) Given that insights are hard if not impossible to channel at will, I find it helpful to write down an idea immediately whenever the idea strikes. I keep a list on my phone (currently about 50 ideas jotted there—just a few short sentences for each, capturing the gist), and, when I’m ready to write a new paper, I go to the list and pick one. Of course, some of the ideas on the list will probably never be drafted (and that might be for the best—some are probably crap, or perhaps already covered by someone else!) But it’s helpful to know they’re there anyway.

Dissertations: monographs or three articles?

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

I wonder what folks think about monograph dissertations in comparison to three-article model dissertations.

I wonder because it seems as if having three articles are more likely to increase once’s chances on the job market in comparison to a monograph.

I think this is a really interesting query, and I'm curious to hear what people have to say. Allow me to share a few thoughts.

Taking time away from research

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

I'm not sure if you've covered this already, but.... When do you think a person is "allowed" to take time away from research? My list of papers-in-progress is long and so I more or less always think I should be working on one of them, whenever I have a spare moment (i.e. a moment not devoted to fulfilling other obligations). But right now I have a couple of hours to kill and yet I'm not doing research. I'm tired. I have a young child. I had 4 campus visits this semester and each one was fatiguing to prepare for and to go through. I'm teaching (albeit with a light load). 
How do you decide when to rest and when to push through?

These are great questions, ones I have asked myself from time to time. In fact, I would be very interested to hear answers to them, as I haven't been able to answer them well myself.

Getting things done, part 5: starting early

In the first four entries in this series, I shared some of the obstacles I've seen people commonly run into when it comes to being productive and meeting deadlines--many of which I struggled with in the past myself--along with some strategies I've found helpful for overcoming those obstacles. In today's post, I am going to share something that I've never struggled with myself but have seen other people struggle with a great deal...and that is not leaving enough time to get things done. Allow me to explain.

A while ago, I saw this image going around on social media:

I got a nice laugh out of this because I am such an "A'' person. I literally do think, "I'm already running out of gas" when my gas gauge gets below 3/4 full, and am pretty much anxious about it constantly after that. Absurd, I know - but I can't help it! I've also known many B-type people in my life, and I constantly find myself simultaneously horrified and anxious driving with them. :P

Interestingly, my sense is that this sort of difference in attitude can very much carry over into one's work-life. I always start projects super early because I want to make sure I will get them done with plenty of time to spare. For example, if I get a revise-and-resubmit and the journal gives me a 4 month deadline (or whatever) to get it in, I'll start now--like, the week I get the R&R. In contrast, I've seen other people who have trouble meeting deadlines seem to run into trouble because they adopt a 'B-type' approach. They think to themselves, "Hmm...well, it's not due for 4 months, so if I just leave myself one month to get it done, that will give me plenty of time." Alas, I've seen how this can go: they give themselves a month to get it done, thinking that will be plenty of time--but then sh-t happens, a bunch of stuff comes up they didn't expect, and they end up having to ask for an extension (or worse, get denied an extension and have to send off something that isn't as good as it could have been if they gave themselves more time).

This may seem like a pretty small thing--but my sense is that it can make a huge difference. Anyway, if you are someone who has trouble getting stuff done--and have trouble meeting deadlines--it may be worth asking yourself, "Am I always putting things off because I think I will have more time than I do?" If so, it may be helpful to consciously try to be an 'A-person' when it comes to work stuff--to tell yourself, "No, don't leave this for later. You need to get started on it now, so that you're not pressed for time later!" 

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? Do any of you struggle with this sort of thing, or with procrastination more generally? If so, what tips (if any) do you have for handling it? I'm curious to hear about people's strategies!

Reader query about undergraduate research

In the comments section of our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, SSW writes:

As an undergraduate student, I wonder what is the best way to choose a dissertation topic? Since my department does not provide many courses on the topic I am interested in, I have to read something by my own. I have read some companions and Philosophy Compass articles, is there anything else I can/should do?

It's not entirely clear to me what SSW means when they ask about a 'dissertation topic.' For example, if they are asking about a PhD dissertation, then my answer is that it is probably much to early to think about that. On the other hand, if the question is about an undergrad thesis, then the question seems to me an apt one. Either way, though, I'm glad they asked these questions, as in thinking about them it occurred to me that I would advise something quite different than what they are currently doing.

Writing formal philosophy

This is a guest contribution by Richard Pettigrew, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bristol for our series How Philosophers Write:

Stephen Hawking speculated that every formula he included in A Brief History of Time would cut its readership in half. In the end, he included only one, E = mc2, and the book sold half a million copies every year for twenty years.

You often hear a similar complaint from those who work in the more formal parts of philosophy--Bayesian epistemology, philosophical logic, formal semantics, decision theory, voting theory, formal approaches in metaphysics and ethics, for instance. They lament that their work is not so often read, not so often discussed as work on nearby topics that do not use a formal framework.

Now, I don’t know whether the numbers support this gripe, but whether they do or not, there is certainly a lot of work in formal philosophy that is not easily accessible to people who aren’t fully immersed in the formal framework it uses. And while this is no doubt due in part to the difficulty of the mathematical techniques in play, it is also partly the result of the way in which some formal papers are written. And, indeed, mea culpa, I include a number of my own papers in this--I read them back sometimes and hate myself for not doing more to open them up to a wider readership. So I’m writing this not from the smug position of someone who claims to know all the secrets, but rather from the position of someone who’s trying to get better at making their formal work easier to read and digest. I’m not sure whether I’m succeeding, but here are some of the writing techniques I’ve been trying to use. I’d love to hear alternatives or supplements in the comments.

Should you write articles on marginal or moribund topics?

Should early career philosophers devote time and energy to writing journal articles on figures, topics, or debates that are moribund, marginal, or otherwise unlikely to gain interest among other philosophers? Obviously, this turns on complicated metaphilosophical and professional issues too large for a blog post, so let me offer an autobiographical perspective, following Thi Nguyen’s approach in an earlier post in this series.

I did my doctorate at Durham University, starting in September 2006, submitting exactly four years later. My topic was the neglected later writings of the still-controversial philosopher of science and self-styled ‘epistemological anarchist’, Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994), author of Against Method. In terms of publishing articles on his later work, the prospects were mixed. On the one hand, Feyerabend was considered old hat. Genuinely important in his day, sure, but relative to ‘old-school’ concerns, no longer on the agenda of philosophy of science.

Remaining research-active outside academia

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Worried philosopher writes, 

I am applying for a research position (in ethics) outside Academia. I want to remain active as a researcher (go to conferences, give talks, publish, review papers, etc.). I feel like I'll remain much more active with a research job than with a teaching position. Yet I'm worried: since the position I'm applying for is outside Academia, perhaps I won't be taken seriously by the rest of the research community. So, a couple of questions:

- Do journals care whether you hold a position in Academia or not?
- You see people at a conference with "private sector/government/public sector" on their name tags. Will you talk to them? Will you attend their talks?
- When browsing for papers on topic X, you notice that the author is not from Academia. The paper is published in a good journal. Will you still read the paper?

Great questions. I'm actually personally familiar with a few folks who have continued to publish successfully (in some good journals) after moving outside of academia. So I definitely know it can be done. However, I am not quite sure how to answer the specific questions Worried asks. I mean, I wouldn't treat someone differently at a conference on these grounds, and I would definitely read their paper if it looked interesting to me. But I don't know how others feel.

Anyone have any insight to share?

Getting things done, part 1: adaptation

In my experience, one of the more common things early-career people struggle with is getting things done. Earlier in my career, I had a really difficult time with this myself. For example, after my comprehensive exams in graduate school, I think I went something like a year-and-a-half without finishing any research projects (including a dissertation proposal). Then, when I was in my first job, I think I spent the better part of a year futzing around with a couple of paper drafts--again, not really finishing anything. If these were just struggles that I went through, well they would be just that: an idiosyncratic problem. But in my experience the struggles I faced are pretty common: I've known a number of grad students and early-career faculty members who faced similar issues, especially once they find themselves in full-time faculty jobs where competing demands (teaching, research, and service) really begin piling up.

Because so many people I've known have shared these kinds of struggles, I figured it might be helpful to create a new series where I and readers like share tips on how to get things done. In this, the first post of the series, I'm going to briefly share one thing that I've found helpful--and then ask readers to share any specific troubles they face in getting things done that we might discuss in future posts. Anyway, here goes!

Outside readers for a book manuscript?

I am happy to report that I recently signed a contract for my second book, Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality: A Philosophical Theory. If there are any readers out there who specialize in areas the book focuses on who might be interested in confidentially reading and providing feedback on revised chapter drafts, I could really use some help!

Here is a short description of the project:

Philosophers across many traditions have long theorized about the relationship between prudence and morality. Few clear answers have emerged, however, in large part because of the inherently speculative nature of traditional philosophical methods. This book aims to forge a bold new path forward, outlining a theory of prudence and morality that unifies a wide variety of findings in neuroscience with philosophically sophisticated normative theorizing.

The author summarizes the emerging behavioral neuroscience of prudence and morality, showing how human moral and prudential cognition and motivation are known to involve over a dozen brain regions and capacities. He then outlines a detailed normative philosophical theory of prudence and morality based on neuroscience and lived human experience. The result demonstrates how this theory coheres with and explains the behavioral neuroscience, showing how each brain region and capacity interacts to give rise to normatively prudent and moral behavior. The theory also resolves normative and descriptive critiques of the author's first book, Rightness as Fairness: A Moral and Political Theory.

I am especially in need of readers who specialize in decision-theory (particularly risk and uncertainty) and philosophy of science (specifically, the nature of explanation and theory evaluation). I could also probably use some readers who focus on moral psychology (motivation, emotion, and cognition) and meta-ethics (particularly normativity, reasons, and categorical reasons).

Resources for sharing work?

A reader writes in:

My name is James Lee.  I'm a recent Ph.D. grad out of Syracuse University.  I enjoy reading Philosopher's Cocoon and appreciate the work that you are doing for the community.  

I had a question that may have been addressed in your blog.  I find myself in a position where I really don't have a community of philosophers to share my work.  I am far enough removed from being a graduate student that it seems awkward at best and inappropriate at worst to participating in department activities geared towards paper commentary.  (I've been ABD for a while before defending.)  I'm also an adjunct instructor, and so am not privy to any opportunity among faculty members for the same sort of thing.  The individuals that were in my cohort have mostly left philosophy, or don't seem interested in participating in paper review.

I'd like to find others that are willing to read and comment and my work, and I'd be willing to do the same, but finding such a community seems difficult for me, as I don't know where to look.

I wonder if there are others in my position.  As mentioned above, if this was addressed in your blog, can you direct to the relevant posts?  If not, would you be aware of any possible resources for individuals like myself?

I'm really glad James wrote in. First, I'm hoping we can find some people that James can make connections with. Are any of you in a similar position, looking for people to talk shop and share work with? If so, please do feel free to reach out to James at <soowonlee@gmail.com> (James indicated he is happy to have me share his contact information for this purpose).

Second, and more generally, I'd be curious to hear how readers handle these issues themselves. For my part, I've been pretty bad at making connections to share work--though it is something I have started working on the past several months. What kinds of connections do you have for sharing work? How did they come about, and how do you sustain them? Also, do any of you know of any particular resources for sharing work that you've found helpful in giving and receiving feedback?

I'm really curious to hear people's answers!

An easier poll on peer-review

[Update: survey fixed!]

Following feedback on the poll on peer-review I rolled out the other day, I've tried to design an easier poll. HERE is a new survey that I think readers should have a much easier time with. Although it has 20 items, the items are so simple that I think it should take readers just a couple of minutes to click through. Hopefully we'll get some better data out of this one--and, although it's only an informal poll, my hope is that its results will give us some good material to discuss moving forward!

Query on framing one's research

In the comments section of our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, 'junior faculty' writes:

I am curious about strategies for illustrating 'research promise' (either in a cover letter or research statement). How do people try to communicate their future research ability?

Here are some thoughts I have so far:

1. Mentioning existing publications indicates an ability to publish - so past success is some evidence of the potential for future success.

2. Mentioning works in progress indicates very near future publications (or, ideally, should, but obviously if it gets rejected a lot maybe it will be awhile). The issue here is that, hypothetically, if a paper is under review when you submit your application for a job, it would be accepted for publication prior to starting the job. And so does not seem to clearly indicate anything about what you will do once in the position. Except insofar as it is evidence that you work (much like 

3. Mentioning areas of research. Here the area is reasonably large (big question or some particular subfield) and you of course place your previous work and current work within it, but the hope is that by indicating the more general area you are (implicitly) indicating you can and will do future research, although you are not clearly indicating what that will be.

4. Mentioning future plans. This seems like the most directly relevant, but the issue seems to be that this will often be quite vague or 'promissory'. "In the future, I intend to explore the such and so question" or something like that. Maybe this is less problematic if it fits with previous and current work.

So I see various methods of indicating research promise, but all seem to have issues. But I am just wondering what other people do and what search committees respond to with regard to this issue.

Writing service

Pendaran Roberts (Warwick) writes in:

I saw that one blog post about the student asking for help with their writing sample and another blog post about non-native English speakers. I was thinking that my skills and experience could be of service to people. Maybe you could share the below with your readers? I’d be a good resource and could provide a personalized experience. I was thinking of trying to do this kind of work part-time to help people. 

_____________________

I am offering a service where I help philosophers develop their writing samples and perfect their writing more generally. I have a PhD in Philosophy from a UK university but know both US and UK English. I have a dozen academic publications, many in top 20 journals (https://philpeople.org/profiles/pendaran-roberts). I can help you to achieve your academic writing goals to get into a PhD program or to get your ideas published. 

Please just email me at pendaran@mac.com. We can discuss what help exactly you need and agree on a fee. My help can range from merely proofreading your work to in-depth coaching to develop your academic writing ability.

If you are a non-native speaker, I am also happy to be of service. I am not an English teacher but can read through work, correct English mistakes, and help with the overall feel of your writing. 

Query on resources to improve writing

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

I recently graduated with a MA and applied to very few PhD programs during fall of 2017. I didn't get in any of them. I didn't expect to because I kind of had a feeling that my writing sample was weak. Very weak. However, I'm trying again this time around, but with a better sample (hopefully). So, i was wondering whether anybody on here knew of good resources for someone like me to get better at writing. Groups people who can help etc. Or, if there are workshops anywhere in the country that help with writing for PhD admission. Any resource, guide or advice will be very helpful. I'm more or less on my own since I'm no longer in school and my professors from my previous school have their hands full with their current students. So, anything will be helpful. Thanks.

I'm not personally aware of particular resources, but am curious whether readers do. The only real advice I have is to write, and write a lot--and to get feedback from anyone who's willing to take the time to read your stuff. Writing, like anything else, takes a ton of practice. I've rewritten particular papers from scratch upwards of a dozen times. I also draft up papers that I go on to do nothing with. To me, doing these things isn't a waste of time. It's practice! My experience, at any rate, is that the more one writes, the more one's writing skills are likely to improve. 

Still, I know this doesn't really answer the reader's particular query. So, what do you all think? Do you know of any good resources for improving one's writing--particularly as it pertains to putting together a good writing sample for PhD programs?

Reader query on handling idea-theft

A reader writes in: "what should a student or early career researcher do when someone with a permanent position and recognition steals some of her unpublished ideas (for example, ideas from her thesis) without literally plagiarizing them?"

Great question. I've heard multiple stories of this happening to early-career people. In fact, I saw someone report such a story on social media just the other day. In that case, it was a senior member of the profession reporting what happened to them earlier in their career, noting that they felt powerless to do anything about it and how it negatively affected their career prospects (evidently, the person and the person who stole their ideas both published on the topic, but the person who stole the idea has reaped nearly all of the credit for it). 

Given that I have heard more than a few stories about this sort of thing, it seems like an important issue to address. What can an early-career person do in cases like this? And what, if anything, should they do? Also, what if it happens to a non-early career person? Is how they should handle it relevantly different?

Query on developing research projects post-PhD

A reader wrote in by email:

I'm not long out of graduate school, and now I've got to get some publications under my belt. I'm okay with diligence, but now that I'm not working on the dissertation and don't have a committee steering me with a moderately heavy hand, I'm having a heck of a time finding rich research projects and identifying good potential essays to work on. I've got a handful of smaller ideas (here's a minor objection, here's a quibble something buried deep in that literature), but nothing that seems remotely like the sort of idea that'd become a great article. Do other people have that problem? Do people have good strategies for getting on track?

I looked at Karen Kelsky's Unstuck program, but that seems more like it is for people who have a project but just can't quite bring it to the submission stage. Does anyone have experience with this program or some other coaching program that they wouldn't mind sharing?

This is a really great query. I struggled with the same issue my first couple of years post-PhD. While I had projects from my dissertation to work on (which is a good source for potential publications), I hardly got anywhere with coming up with substantial new projects. I read a lot and tried to write a lot...but the only ideas I came up with for a year or two were the kinds of 'minor' objections or quibbles this reader describes--stuff that seemed philosophically banal and nothing like a major research project? Fortunately, I learned a lot from the experience--both about what didn't work (for me, at least), but also methods for coming up with major new projects (something I no longer struggle with). While I don’t have any experience with coaching programs, let me describe my experiences and tips, and then invite you to share yours!

Accountability Tools

While I was working on my dissertation proposal, I came across Robert Paul Wolff’s blog post “How to write a doctoral dissertation in philosophy.”  For the most part, I thought it was great. (I just reread it for the first time in years.  I still think most of it is great advice.)  I thought it was so great I emailed it to several of my classmates who were ABD.  Some of them hated it, and so we all took a break from the serious business of grad school to argue about it. I have no intention of returning to that argument here.

Instead, I want to talk about just one of the things that Wolff says.  Here it is:

On the first day, write one page and stop. The next day, write another page, and stop.... If you are able to, write two pages a day.... Also, do not write four or five pages on a really good day and then figure you can take a few days off. Those few days will stretch into eternity. You are a tortoise, not a hare. Slow and steady wins the race....

He also suggests the following for those who might need extra motivation, but I think it might be of use even to those who are fairly self-disciplined:

…cut a deal with a fellow dissertation writer. You will send her a page a day by email, and she will send you a page of her dissertation every day by email. You will read her page [it only takes a minute] and send back an encouraging word, and she will do the same for you.

Writing Groups

For my first few posts, I wanted to talk about writing.  In particular, I wanted to talk about practices—both individual and communal—related to writing.  I am interested in how the act of writing (and the act of avoiding writing, for that matter) is related to other behaviors.  I am also interested in how we might better integrate the act of writing into our lives, perhaps to make us more productive, or perhaps simply to make us happier.

What I wish my earlier self had known about my AOS - part 1: history of philosophy

The other day, a reader approached me by email suggesting a new series, one where more advanced members of the profession share things they have learned about doing work in their AOS that they wish their earlier self might have known. I thought it is a great idea, and want to invite readers interested in contributing to the series to email me at marvan@ut.edu.

In the meantime, the reader who emailed me  submitted the following post, which I hope you find interesting and helpful!:

By Anonymous 

I approached Marcus about the idea of doing a series on what people wish they’d known as grad students about their own area of specialty. He suggested that I tackle the first post of the series. So, here goes.  I am a historian of philosophy in a tenure-track position. I’m mostly happy with my professional specialization and my place in it, but I would still want to tell my younger self a few things I’ve learned since finishing my Ph.D.

Obituary for the Prosblogion - and what public philosophy might look like after FaceBook

After nearly 15 years, the Prosblogion, a philosophy of religion blog is no more (the link does not work). The blog's owner let me know yesterday that he had the blog expire. Posting had become less frequent, a fate similar to other group blogs. 15 years in blog terms is a long time. Let me tell you about what writing for the blog meant to me, why the blog is valuable, and why I think we will ditch FaceBook as a platform for philosophy in due course too. 

I wrote for the Prosblogion since about 2010, joining when the blog was already mature at about 8 years old. At the time I did not have a PhD in philosophy yet, but I was a postdoc in archaeology, working on a philosophy project and fascinated with philosophy. I was writing my second PhD thesis (in philosophy) while being a postdoc, and got the degree a year later. Being a postdoc outside the English-speaking world (at the University of Leuven), writing for blogs such as Prosblogion and NewApps was a wonderful way to be in touch with other members of the profession. For various reasons, I felt isolated and lonely in Leuven, and had no support network. Prosblogion gave a sense of community, mostly with other early-career philosophers (although there were frequently pieces by more seasoned academics on it as well).

Reader query on focusing one's research

In the comments section of our newest "how can we help you?" thread, RC asks:

How do people decide what to focus on in their research? It's not that I don't have any ideas the problem is that I have a lot of different ideas and I can't decide which to focus on. And how do people stay motivated to work on research? My current job has pretty low research expectations so there's not really that push any more. But I do want to stay active in that. It somehow feels like I'm not a real scholar if I don't. And while I don't have any plans to go on the market in the immediate future, I wouldn't mind keeping my options open in the long term. (I love the day to day work of my job, but I'm increasingly less sure about the upper level admin and not crazy about the region).

Good questions! While we're all different, and what works for one person might not work for another, my own strategy is two-fold: 

1. I prioritize whichever project seems clearest to me (the one I'll have the easiest time getting down on paper), and
2. Failing that, I just work on whatever I'm most excited about.
3. If I'm not excited about or clear on anything, I take a research break and do other stuff!

In practice, here's how this works...

Reader query on when to set aside a project

 eIn the comments section of our most recent "how can we help you?" post, Anonymous writes:

How do you work out when it is time to give up on (or at least put aside for the long term) a project that you have been working on for some considerable time?

I have been working on a paper for a couple of months now, unfortunately to the detriment of my dissertation. I've give a couple of talks on it and the feedback, while positive about the underlying idea, has been largely negative about the presentation and readiness of the paper for submission.

My dilemma is whether I should put another few weeks or months into the paper in the hopes of getting it published, or if it is time to put it on the back burner (perhaps until my dissertation is finished).

Getting a high quality publication is really important, and I still have about a year to work on the dissertation, but I feel that I might be falling for a kind of sunk costs fallacy: putting in further work now that is not productive due to fear of having wasted the last two months or so.

I'd love to hear any tips, heuristics, or other ways of judging such a situation that people have. I understand that specific advice is beyond the scope of anonymous posting here, but perhaps people have general strategies or ideas that might help me assess the situation better.

I think Guy provided a nice reply targeting the particular situation described:

As counter-intuitive as this sounds, put the project down for two months. Work on your dissertation. Then pick the paper up and see what it sounds like once you have some distance from it. In the meantime, you will have pushed your dissertation forward. I have had a few projects that I set aside for two years, and then I found I had insights and conceptual tools I did not have before.

However, Guy's advice is really narrowly targeted to the reader's situation. What about the reader's more general query regarding tips or heuristics for knowing when to side aside or give up on a project?

I think this is an important issue because in my experience mentoring a few grad students, one common problem I see is in "getting stuck" on a single project. I've seen this happen more than a few times: a person gets an revise-or-resubmit or something, and then they end up spending all of their time on the project--even when that involves spinning their wheels for months on end and letting other projects fall by the wayside. Because of the "publish or perish" nature of the job-market and tenure, my sense is that this is a really important pitfall to avoid. Which once again raises Guy's question: what are some strategies for recognizing when one should set aside or give up on a project? 

Structuring unstructured time

In the comments section of Trevor's recent post, "Dissertation Reflection Series, Part 2: A Different Kind of Project", a reader ("cw") wrote:

For me, #1 was the biggest problem. I'm not good with unstructured time. I found myself rushing at the end of each semester to have something to show my director.

I should have set more meeting points for us, and clearer expectations for each meeting. I'm sure my director would have gone for it, but I didn't ask.

In my experience, this is a problem a lot of graduate students have, and for roughly the reasons Trevor gives. Throughout the first part of grad school (e.g. course work, comp exams, etc.), one has fairly clear deadlines. Yet, when it comes to the dissertation stage and publishing, one no longer has such clear deadlines--and one can end up wasting a lot of time getting little done. I know from experience! After my comp exams, I basically got nothing of import done for about a year-and-a-half. And it wasn't for lack of trying. I was reading. I was trying to write. I just wasn't being effective. And I know I'm not alone in this. I am currently mentoring a PhD student who excelled in graduate school...until passing comp exams (just like me!). Fortunately, I have learned a lot about how to deal effectively with "unstructured time", and as I will explain below, the strategies I have developed have sound empirical support.

I didn't know this until my spouse (who works in IO-Psychology), but one of the more well-confirmed theories in her field is known as Goal-Setting Theory. In rough outline, Goal-Setting Theory posits that specific and ambitious daily and weekly goals lead to higher performance than easier or more general goals. The basics of Goal-Setting Theory have been inductively confirmed by over 400 studies spanning over 25 years. More exactly, the theory recommends (here I quote):

How I learned to love writing philosophy: 3 steps

In his post last week, "Should You Go to Graduate School in Philosophy (Revisited)", Trevor wrote:

Now let’s suppose you answer this first question in the affirmative – you think the grad school experience will be worth it even if things go unfavorably for you sometime during the program or during your time on the job market. The next question to ask – one that I did not consider when I was contemplating whether to go to graduate school – is this: “Do I deeply enjoy writing philosophy?” Like the previous question, if you cannot answer this one with a sincere yes, then I think going to graduate school is unwise.

If you enjoy reading philosophy or talking philosophy, that’s great. But what really matters to your long-term success in graduate school is whether you will write philosophy...

In response to Trevor's post, an anonymous commenter ('O') wrote: "I think the author is exagerating [sic]. How many people do you know who enjoy writing philosophy? I know very few, even among professors." However, my experience--and Trevor's evidently--is very different. Like Trevor, many of the people I know who have done well in the profession appear to be people who sincerely love writing, and do a ton of it. Not only that. Whereas the times that I struggled the most in my career--both during graduate school and during my early career after receiving my PhD--were the times that I didn't get much written because I didn't enjoy it. I only began to publish successfully and do better on the job market once I learned to really enjoy writing philosophy, just like Trevor says. And, make no mistake, I really love it. As I noted in a comment: "I absolutely love writing philosophy. I wake up just about every weekday looking forward to doing it." This is, if anything, an understatement. I'm half-ashamed to admit it, but often enough if I'm having a boring weekend I actually can't wait for Monday around so I can start drafting a new paper! I'm a nerd, I know, but it's true. :)

Anyway, after writing my comment, a few people asked me how I came to love writing. First, Amanda asked:

Marcus, did you always love writing, or did it change once you decided to write about big ideas instead of the stuff others told you to write about? I think I am going to change my writing style (i.e. write about what I enjoy writing about, and in the style I enjoy) after I finish one last round of revisions for the "try to please the authorities" paper. I hope I have more fun.

Then, after responding to Amanda, I received a similar query via email about how to write more efficiently. Because learning to love writing was such an important part of my professional development--and because at least a couple of people were interested in the answers--I thought I might write a short post on these issues. So, here goes!

Tips for doing public philosophy?

There has been some good discussion recently on what we should do as philosophers in these politically turbulent times. I myself have increasingly felt--especially as a moral and political philosopher--as though I should get more involved in "public philosophy": publishing pieces in non-academic outlets for a broader audience.

To that end, dating back to early last summer, I composed a handful of pieces on contemporary social, political, and economic affairs. Alas, I haven't (yet) had any luck with them (a few of them have been under review, others turned into academic pieces and submitted to journals, etc.). I've also really struggled as a writer to feel like I can hit the right level of sophistication versus accessibility. On the one hand, whenever I write something short and super-accessible (the kinds of things popular venues tend to publish), I feel like the piece is terrible--too polemic, glossing over important intricacies and supporting facts or theories (I think it's important to base public arguments on facts!). On the other hand, whenever I write something I feel better about, it seems more like an academic piece (much longer, rife with citations, etc.).

In any case, because doing "public philosophy" isn't something that most of us academic philosophers have experience with or training in, I thought it might be good to get some tips from people who have done it successfully. Here are just a few questions I have:

1. What's the best way to go about the process (i.e. submitting proposals, pieces, etc.)?
2. Do you need to have an "in" with an editor to be successful?
3. What tips do you have for "hitting the right level" for readers?
4. Which venues would you suggest?

I'm particularly interested in question (2), in part because as John Scdwenkler notes here, "I have written a bunch of reviews and essays for popular publications. It's always been by way of contact with an editor (sometimes initiated from their end). I have tried submitted unsolicited things once or twice, and I don't think that's ever worked out."

Any public philosophers out there have any helpful tips for those of us who want to get more involved?

What counts as philosophy? On the normative disguised as descriptive UPDATED

As a scholar of Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā I am well aware of how the normative is often disguised as descriptive. "It is seven o' clock" says the mother, but what she means is rather "Get up! You have to go to school".

 

Similarly, complex discourses about the nature of philosophy, how it was born, e.g., in Greece or in Plato's Republic, and how it developed in (Latin), German, (French) and English, are only meant to say "We are not going to welcome colleagues working on things we do not care for in our departments". Why so? Because as soon as one tries to reason with the authors of the allegedly descriptive statements (as done here by Ethan Mills and here by Amod Lele), one gets answers such as "the universality of philosophy", "the primacy of logical argumentation", "the importance of debate", "the supremacy of reason over tradition" etc. All of them can be easily found at least in some Indian schools.

I am not saying that they are not found in African, Chinese, Mesoamerican philosophy, I am just saying that no matter how restrictive your definition of philosophy, Navya Nyāya, etc., will fit in. Conversely, Thomas the Aquinas, Augustine, Nietzsche etc. will end up being excluded by such definitions. Thus, the argument is in fact overtly not descriptive.

Does it mean that we should try to make philosophers accept at least Navya Nyāya etc? Or should we rather uncover the normativity of the discourse and call for a broader definition of the enterprise of philosophy?

An insightful discussion of the same issue, with extensive quotes and critical reflections about them can be read in Malcolm Keating's blog, here.

Eric Schwitzgebel offers further interesting reflections on the issue in his blog (be sure to check the comments and his accurate replies to the "ignorance justifying ignorance" argument, as well as the labels for the "not really philosophy" and "low quality" arguments).

UPDATE: "Prof Manners" has an interesting post here explaining that articles trying to say that Confucius is not "philosophical" because philosophy is x, y, z in fact only list "generally desirable and admiration-worthy qualities".

 

(cross-posted on my personal blog, where you can read also some interesting comments regarding the inclusion (or lack thereof) of Islamic philosophy, and on the Indian Philosophy blog, where you can read some comments regarding the organisation of philosophy institutes.)

 

“The State of Teacher Training in Philosophy”

By Jerry Green

I recently came across an interesting paper published in Teaching Philosophy, “The State of Teacher Training in Philosophy”. This paper, authored by David Concepción, Melinda Messineo, Sarah Wieten and Catherine Homan, investigates the training given to graduate students in philosophy programs. You can access the paper here or here. I thought the results were worth sharing here; they’re not exactly surprising, but still worth highlighting.

The tl:dr version of the paper is that the state of teacher training in philosophy isn’t very good. The vast majority of grad students and faculty agree that teaching is an important part of one’s professional obligations and that PhD training should include training in pedagogy. But most grads get little explicit training, and what they get is often (i) not very targeted or practical, and (ii) run by faculty that have no particular expertise in pedagogy. The paper concludes with some recommendations for improving the state of things, focusing mainly on what they call “high impact’ training, which basically amounts to structuring pedagogy courses more like seminars, with required reading and assignments.

One particularly interesting facet of the paper is the disconnect between how competent people feel about teaching versus how good they feel about the training they got. Basically, people tend to think that they didn't get sufficient training on how to teach, but feel that they're sufficient teachers anyway.

There are some reasons to be a bit hesitant about fully endorsing the results of this survey: the authors note that the respondent demographics don’t quite match what other surveys have found, for instance, and there’s always the worry that the sample is skewed in favor of people concerned enough to fill out the survey in the first place. But I don’t think this makes a big difference. The numbers may change a bit, but probably not enough to affect the overall results.

The main thing I wanted to do was simply bring this paper to everyone’s attention. But I also thought I’d open the floor to see if any of our readers had particularly good experiences with their own pedagogy training. At UT Austin we have a required course, usually taken in the 2^nd or 3^rd year, that involves making a few syllabi for intro level courses.  Many of us have found this useful when we’re put in charge of our own class down the road. And there are often university teaching and learning centers that offer training and certification, which you can use to supplement what you get from your department. I've done a couple of these certificates, and I've found them useful, but I've heard others report the opposite. But like many of the paper’s survey respondents, the bulk of my pedagogy education has come from a combination of (i) copying role models, (ii) trial-and-error, and (iii) outside research (like, ahem, here). So I’d certainly like to hear more about how folks do things at their own institutions. It might also be nice to hear from anyone who’s been involved in changing the way their department runs things. Have any tips for how to improve the state of teacher training in our own departments?

Working at Philosophy - Introduction

By Stacey Goguen

In this series, I want to talk about what goes into the work we do as philosophers, what sorts of difficulties arise when we’re trying to work, and what we can do about them. 

Hello! I am an ABD graduate student, and I’ve spent a lot of my nascent philosophy career so far struggling to figure out what I should be doing when I “do philosophy.” When starting graduate school, I found talking about philosophy easy enough, as well as thinking about it on my own. But when it came time to sit down and write for any substantial amount of time, I often felt lost. And it didn’t help that there seemed to be a voice in the back of my head asking if maybe I didn’t belong in philosophy, if I was having this much trouble with what is supposed to be our basic activity. Furthermore, I was puzzled by the observation that people in philosophy rarely talked about how they worked. It was like some secret, mystical process by which we all retreated to our private quarters and returned some time later with the philosophy we had birthed in the interim. (Maybe I didn’t have the right philosophical reproductive organs that everyone else had?)

Now, years later, after asking a bunch of professors and graduate students how they work, taking a cold, hard look at my own work habits (and lack thereof), and tripping over some life lessons as they came barreling at me, I think I have something of a grasp on how to be a working philosopher. By this I mean, I sometimes feel like I actually know what I am doing, and most days, philosophy does not feel like it is slowly eating my soul. In fact, some days I down right enjoy working.

So I want to talk about what I’ve found out—about myself, about doing work, and about some of the psychological processes that may be in play when we try to do philosophy. I want to do four things with this series of posts.

Two papers critical of order effect research at Synthese

By Wesley Buckwalter

Several experimental philosophers have found that philosophical intuitions of both professionals and laypeople are sensitive to the order in which the thought experiments they come from are presented. A nice summary of the latest results about this by Schwitzgebel & Cushman can be found here.

But now, not one but two new papers critical of this body of research are set to appear in Synthese (what did order effects ever do to you, Synthese?). One paper “Ordering effects, updating effects, and the specter of global skepticism” by Zach Horne & Jonathan Livengood questions the assumption that order effects indicate philosophical intuitions are unreliable. Another paper, “How not to test for philosophical expertise” by Regina Rini claims to have identified a deep methodological problem invalidating most findings about order in philosophy!

What should we be reading?

I've been so preoccupied the past several months with working on a book and, more recently, preparing for my fall courses that I haven't had much time to read many new books or articles. What have I missed? What are the best books or articles that you've read recently? Feel free to suggest things in any area!

Moral Expertise and The Distribution of Knowledge

By Jamie Carlin Watson

Ethics consulting is a growing practice in business, medical, and research contexts. And given the unique subject matter of ethics, there are concerns about the role of ethicists in professional decision-making, even among ethicists. Foremost among these is whether ethicists can, like authorities in other fields, speak as experts about their subject matter. I am currently working on a problem for moral expertise called the credentials problem: arguments that there are no sufficient reasons for non-ethicists to assign greater evidential weight to the testimony of ethicists about what one ought to do than to anyone else’s. I am working on an argument defending the moral expertise of consulting ethicists against this problem, but along the way, I’ve come across a popular objection to moral expertise that I call the distribution problem. While this problem has important implications for how we should respond to moral testimony, I don't think it is a challenge for the plausibility moral expertise. Here’s why.

Some common prejudices about Indian Philosophy: It is time to give them up

Is Indian Philosophy "caste-ish"? Yes and no, in the sense that each philosophy is also the result of its sociological milieu, but it is not only that. Is Indian Philosophy only focused on "the Self"? Surely not.
Why am I asking these questions? Because ---no matter how sophisticated our discussions of specific topics of philosophy can be--- one still encounters these prejudices in secondary literature…and consequently also in the writings of many colleagues who do not have access to direct sources. They cannot be blamed for that, but I hope that they will be grateful to receive some advice concerning what they believe on the basis of surpassed or unreliable sources. The last example for me was a collection of notes on Academia.edu. Its author starts with the good intention "I’ve had enough of ignorance about Indian philosophy" and overall he sounds engaged and interesting. Unfortunately, however, he has received bad advices and/or chose badly among them. The result is a short summary of the usual suspects, with a strong bias in favour of Advaita Vedānta mistaken to be "Indian Philosophy" sic et simpliciter (bold passages are the author's ones, followed by my comments):

1. "‘See the Self’ is the keynote of all schools of Indian philosophy. And this is the reason why most of the schools are also religious sects" (p. 1). I thought that B.K. Matilal had done enough to defeat this prejudice, but this seems not to be the case. Thus, I am afraid I will not be able to defeat it myself. Let me just note that this is a short summary of what some schools of Vedānta could be said to do but it has little or nothing to do with the vast majority of Indian philosophers. There is no "religious sect" called "Mīmāṃsā" or "Nyāya" or "Vaiśeṣika" and so on. Not to speak of Buddhist schools of philosophy, who tend to be anātmavādin `deniers of the existence of a [permanent] Self'.
2. Self-forgetful service of others is a Christian, not a Hindu idea (p. 1). Well, one might argue that self-forgetful service of others is difficult to attain for human beings. And one is reminded of Hegel's critique of Kant's concept of morality. Moreover, self-forgetful service of others is exactly the Bodhisattva ideal ---which the author himself mentions at p. 9.
3. (Evidently all the life-denying aspects of Indian tradition, as well as the superstitious and degrading religious practices, proceed largely from the caste system, its lack of dynamism, its oppressive structure, its eternal unchangingness. A society that worships Hanuman the monkey and Sabbala the cow, that countenances the burning of wives after their husband’s death, is an inhuman one, in which man is subjugated both by the earth and especially by a caste-structured povert) (pp.1--2). My personal position is not consistent with strict Marxism as for the idea that philosophy were only a superstructure of economic relationships. But in any case, I am strongly suspicious about such summaries highlighting an a-historical laundry list of shameful acts of Indians (not Indian philosophers) without any effort to understand (worshipping Hanuman is not like worshipping a monkey, just like believing in St. Mary does not amount to beliving that virginal births are possible in general).
4. Hegel, Hegel, Hegel (except for the mysticism) (p.3). No, thanks. Again, the author is speaking of Advaita Vedānta and thinks of "Indian Philosophy" as if Advaita Vedānta were its only representative. In fact, Advaita Vedānta, as discussed by Daya Krishna (Three Myths of Indian Philosophy), is virtually absent from the philosophical arena until almost the end of the first Millennium AD. And, one might add, its role in the second Millennium AD has been possibly overemphasised by well-known activists of Advaita Vedānta such as Vivekānanda who looked at Indian Philosophy through these lenses.
5. Hinayana, a religion without a God, emphasizes self-help […]. Mahayana, on the other hand, is less egoistic and negative […]. In this sect Buddha is transformed into God and worshipped as such. […] The Mahayana religion has more missionary zeal than the Hinayana; it is more progressive and dynamic (p. 9). "Hinayana" is already a bad start, since it is a pejorative term (literally meaning 'small vehicle', opposed to Mahāyāna 'big vehicle') applied by Mahāyāna Buddhists to their forerunners. "God" seems to me here a misleading category. If one thinks at the Western and Indian concept of God as creator of the world, dispenser of mercy, etc., then the Buddha is surely not a God, not even in Mahāyāna. And so on.
6. The original teachings of Buddha were not incompatible with the Upanishads—for instance, he emphasized Atman, the Great Self, and encouraged people to act under the light of that Self, to seek union with it—but his early Hinayana disciples (of the Sarvastivada, or Vaibhasika, school) changed that (p. 9). This is a neo-Vedāntic interpretation of Buddhism, which uses a fundamentalistic device ("the origins were good, the successors mixed all up") in order to suggest that the Buddha was in fact a crypto Vedāntin.
7. Idealism is obviously the philosophy of choice for most Indian thinkers (p. 10). This is not so, and surely not "obviously" so. Which schools would one count among the Idealist ones? I can only think of Advaita Vedānta, Yogācāra and perhaps some trends of Pratyabhijñā philosophy. Which schools are closer to Realism, Representationalism, etc.? Mīmāṃsā, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṅkhya, Śaivasiddhānta, Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, Dvaita Vedānta… (all of them are never mentioned in the "Notes"), Yoga, Nyāya, both schools of Jaina philosophy, most schools of Buddhist Philosophy, Cārvākas, and so on.

Long story short: Perhaps scholars of Indian Philosophy have really to do something to spread some better-funded knowledge on Indian Philosophy (and perhaps interested scholars should make some efforts in selecting their sources ---the Indian Philosophy Blog lists for instances useful resources).

(cross-posted on my personal blog)

Guest Post: Playing Outside of Your Wheelhouse

by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc (cross-posted at A Philosopher's Take)

Anyone who has been following the Grinworthy Quotes series here on A Philosopher’s Take will likely have noticed that I’ve been reading a fair amount of medieval philosophy recently. Some readers may also be aware that I usually work on philosophy of mathematics, logic and metaphysics. In working on medieval philosophy, and in particular medieval ethics and political philosophy, I have been playing outside my wheelhouse.

For those unfamiliar with the  term, according to my Oxford American dictionary, a wheelhouse is a shelter for the person at the wheel of a boat or ship, which is not at all what I mean in this context. Rather, I think of my wheelhouse as the philosophical space where I am comfortable in virtue of being somewhat of an expert.

I bring this up because I think it is important for us as philosophers (and undoubtably in other disciplines and jobs as well) to work on projects that fall outside of our respective wheelhouses.

Of course, in the current job climate it is difficult, and probably undesirable to be a true polymath, but it is just as bad, in my opinion, to only focus on one narrow sub-discipline. I have a few reasons for thinking this. First, it is likely that you will find a different approach, idea or way of thinking that you will be able to fruitfully apply to your primary research.

Second, there are practical considerations. We all need to have conversations with philosophers outside of our ‘areas’, and it’s nice to be able to engage on common ground, even if that ground doesn’t happen to be in either person’s wheelhouse. Similar considerations apply to talks and conferences. Furthermore, the more areas and debates you are familiar with, the wider variety of classes you will feel comfortable teaching, which will both be helpful on the job market, and help alleviate the boredom caused by teaching Logic I over and over again.

Third, and most importantly, it can be fun. It turns out that I very much enjoy reading medieval philosophy. I also enjoy doing (read ‘writing’) history of philosophy. Searching for quotations from obscure texts, and engaging in textual analysis is very rewarding for me.

Now I’m not suggesting that everyone should run to the bookstore to buy a copy of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed (I doubt they’ll have it anyway, though it is fun if you can find it). Different people enjoy different things. If you work mainly on problems that have directly to do with people—applied ethics, say—you might find doing some analytic metaphysics refreshing.  If you usually do philosophy of science, you might enjoy taking a break from scientific case studies to try and figure out what you think truth acually is.

So next time you end up taking a class outside of you’re area of expertise, don’t try to wedge your own research into a seminar paper; do something different. Or, if you’re passed the point of doing coursework, next time you see a call for papers for a conference outside of your area that sounds interesting (especially if it’s somewhere you’ve always wanted to visit) try to write 10–15 pages on that topic, you might just find you like it. Even if you don’t, we will all end up doing better philosophy if we sometimes decide to play outside our wheelhouses.

Confluence: A new journal on comparative philosophy

How did comparative philosophy evolve in the last sixty+ years? What is the difference between intercultural philosophy and comparative philosophy? All the answers can be read in the introductory essay to the first number of a new journal dedicated to comparative philosophy, namely Confluence.

The long and learned introductory essay, by Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach, Geeta Ramana and James Maffie (who are also the journal's editors) is a detailed analysis of the evolution of comparative philosophy, taking the first number of Philosophy East and West in 1951 as a departing point and distinguishing among three phases in this evolution. The phases are to be understood as expressing a predominant orientation and are not watertight.
In the first phase, philosophers tended to compare ideas of non-Western origin predominantly with Western ones. In the second phase, the moral role of the comparative philosopher comes to the foreground, since thinkers become aware of the need of a moral commitment to an equal treatment of the ideas one is comparing. Consequently, comparative philosophy reached beyond the comparison of non-Western ideas to Western ones, and included also the comparison of non-Western ideas with other non-Western ones. The third phase elaborates further on the moral character of the ideal comparative philosopher and on the political impact of her engagement.

Within the discussion, an interesting excursus regards the relation between the terms "comparative philosophy" and "intercultural philosophy". The latter originated among authors of the German-speaking world as a reaction to the Western-centric perspective of the former. "Interculturality" in this sense indicates a shared space for discussion, in which participants are mutually interested in each other ideas and do not pretend to dictate the terms of the discussion. However, similar concerns are present also in philosophers who continue to call themselves "comparative philosophers" and this difference in names is often only the result of one's different history.

Another asset of the introductory essay is the long bibliography, which is a mine of interesting authors and articles bridging philosophers working on very different areas of research and in different parts of the world.

A few pages at the end of the essay discuss the role of Confluence itself within this debate. Confluence aims at hosting discussions of comparative philosophy and at "doing philosophy together", so that authors are not forced to publish on Area Studies journals (as it has often been the case for me, given the general lack of interest of general philosophy journals for what has been thought beyond Seattle or Königsberg).

Thus, think at Confluence the next time you write something on Comparative Philosophy ---and meanwhile download the first issue here.

(Just in case you were wondering: I have no direct or indirect interest in the success of the journal, just thought that the first issue was full of interesting material.) This post has been published, with minor modifications, also on my personal blog and on The Indian Philosophy Blog.

Participation for a survey on religious disagreement

What do philosophers think about religious disagreement? This is a brief survey (takes about 5-10 minutes) to find this out. The survey is aimed at academic philosophers, by which I mean people who hold a PhD in philosophy or are graduate students in philosophy. If you fit these criteria, please consider participating. Participation is fully anonymous. The format of the study is a multiple choice questionnaire. I will ask some personal questions, amongst others about your religious views, but your name will not be asked. To further take care that your anonymity is preserved, I will not report on individual responses but report statistical patterns. There are a few places where you can provide an open response (optional). I will publish at most one open response per participant, making sure that there is no identifying information within your response. The full dataset will remain confidential and will not be shared with anyone. I will report the preliminary results on the Philosophers' Cocoon and one or two other websites. The study is designed and carried out by Helen De Cruz, postdoctoral fellow of the British Academy at the University of Oxford. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact helen.decruz- at - philosophy.ox.ac.uk. To participate, please click here or paste this link in your browser: https://surveys.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_9TFkp1QkxnZkdTL

You are not too busy, just disorganized

Let us face it: We do not work in optimal work conditions. The ones of us who work in the US or in a US-similar system are always under pressure in order to find a job (whatsoever), then to find a tenured-track position, then to have their tenure confirmed and then to have enough articles per year. The ones of us who work in Europe or in a Europe-similar system are constantly precarious, spend their lives applying for projects and have to overcommit to many projects in order to survive.

Nor there is hope for the future: Today in the morning I heard at the news that only 1% (sic!) of the Italian researchers will sooner or later achieve a permanent position in an Italian university. Such being the case and beside fighting for better conditions for researchers, one just needs to learn to do research nonetheless. How? By applying the basic rules of managers and other over-busy people (schedule, organise, delegate ---an example of the latter activity can be found here---…). No matter how little we like this to become part of our daily routine, if we do not, we are just deemed to fail. We do not have the freedom to spend years on a single article, with no other commitment apart from the one to research and to the search for truth. Nor do we have the freedom to ignore that things have changed, unless we are ready to be unemployed.

Of course, one can try to commit to as little things as possible, learn to say "no" to most offers and focus on only a few things. This is a risky way (one never knows whether one will keep on receiving invitations and offers), but a fair one, I believe. No one pretends from us that we organise conferences, panels, apply for gigantic projects, edit proceedings, write an article per month and so on.

However, if we want to keep on organising conferences, writing articles, teaching, researching, etc., we are not allowed to throw our organisation problems onto our colleagues. Many years back, I submitted an article to an edited volume reserved for early career scholars. One can easily imagine that these people really need their articles to be published. Nonetheless, the book has been published only five years after the conference. And we all know many other cases of this kind. This is just unfair.

We are all in the same situation (a small boat in a wavy ocean) and it is just unfair to pretend from your colleagues to be patient or even to solve the problems we have created. Thus, please don't call your co-organiser telling her (usually women tend to be more vulnerable to this behaviour) that you are overbusy and she needs to do more than her half: WE ARE ALL OVERBUSY and unless you are the single parent of five disabled children, you are very likely not to be busier than anyone else. You are just disorganised. Either you stop committing to too many things or you start being better organised. But you are not allowed to tell other people that they have to wait or to solve your problems.

Funding your research projects: some data

(This post is a continuation of my post of last week and gives some better grounded data.)

As already hinted at, if you are a scholar active in Europe, you will most probably depend on funding for your projects in order to survive, given that surviving out of teaching alone is infrequent and a tenure is not foreseeable. Thus, it becomes essential to know what one's chances are.
A short comparison shows that among European countries,

• Switzerland is the one in which more money for research is granted (total amount/number of inhabitants): 88,5 E pro inhabitant each year
• Finnland is the next one: 61,1 E
• UK (Research Council UK): 48,0 E
• Neatherlands (NWO): 37,2 E
• Germany (DFG): 33,5 E
• Austria (FWF): 23,8 E

This is however still not enough, since a lot depends on how many funding agencies there are in each country, so that, e.g., the situation may look different in Germany if one takes into account also the Humboldt scholarships, the Max Planck foundation, etc.

Moreover, the amount of money available per inhabitant still does not say much, since it is not said how many inhabitants apply for that money. In this sense, it seems that the acceptance rate of the German DFG is much lower than expected, whereas the Swiss acceptance rate is high, as expected:

• Swiss acceptance rate: around 50%


• Austrian acceptance rate: 25,8%


• German (DFG only) acceptance rate: around 17%

Still more interesting, especially for prospective peer reviewers are the following data:

• acceptance rate in 2008 (Austria, FWF): 43,0% (2008 was the highest peak attained, before that the rate was around 41,5%)
• acceptance rate in 2013 (Austria, FWF): 25,8%

Why this huge difference in a few years? Because the number of application has been incredibly growing (from 1,000 in 2001 to 2,386 in 2013). This means that the lower acceptance rate is not due to the lower quality of post-2008 projects. Rather, after 2008 the FWF Jury (and I imagine that a similar situation applies to the DFG and similar fundings) just had to look for weak points in each project in order "not to go bankrupt" (precise quotation of what I heard at a recent FWF roadshow). Given that the decision about a project is taken in Austria, Germany and Italy (I guess that the same applies to the other EU countries, but I cannot be sure) by a jury or committee on the basis of peer-reviews, much burden lies on the peer reviewers themselves. Again, as I heard at the same roadshow:

We are forced to look for anything which looks like a critique, if we want not to go bankrupt. We know we are turning down projects we would be funding in better financial conditions.

There is nothing blamable in that, but I am convinced that peer reviewers should be informed about the weight of their decisions. Anything less than "enthusiastic approval" amounts to good news for the committee, who can turn down the project. It is fine, if you think the project not to be worthy, but I, for one, will send my further suggestions directly to the applicant and not include them in my peer review the next time I am asked to review a project.

Source: FWF

This post has been published, with minor variations, also on my personal blog.

The Problem of Contingency for Religious Belief

It’s a pleasure to have some of my work featured here in the Cocoon (again!). Thank you to my hosts, the regular Cocoon bloggers, and especially to Marcus Arvan, Pupa-in-Chief.

The paper I’d like to submit to your scrutiny—“The Problem of Contingency for Religious Belief”—was recently published in Faith and Philosophy and can be found here.

For this first of three posts, I’ll introduce you to this problem for religious belief and set up how I mean to solve it. In the next two posts, we’ll see if my solution works.

I’m interested in a very old and very common objection to religious belief: a problem of contingency, of irrelevant causal factors, of historical variability. We notice how contingent our religious beliefs are, how much they depend on an accident of birth. If we had been born and raised elsewhere, elsewhen, we easily might have had different religious beliefs. These beliefs have been shaped to a disturbing degree by factors which don’t bear on their truth, factors like who our parents were, what culture we were raised in, which peer-group we happened to admire most, which book we picked up while wandering in the library after school, which conversations we stumbled into in college (and which we didn’t). We so easily might have ended up with different religious beliefs—why trust the ones we chanced into? We may as well consult a Magic 8-Ball on life’s most important questions, you might think.

This skeptical thought is old. One finds it with wit in Xenophanes’s attacks on Greek popular religion, less clearly in Sextus Empiricus, and more clearly in Descartes’ Discourse. It springs up again in J.S. Mill’s On Liberty, and later in Antony Flew’s The Presumption of Atheism. Here’s a nice recent statement of it from John Hick:

[R]eligious allegiance depends in the great majority of cases on the accident of birth: someone born into a devout Muslim family in Pakistan is very likely to be a Muslim, someone born into a devout Hindu family in India to be a Hindu, someone born into a devout Christian family in Spain or Mexico to be a Catholic Christian; and so on. The conclusion I have drawn is that a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ is appropriate in relation to beliefs that have been instilled into one by the surrounding religious culture.

And another from Philip Kitcher:

Most Christians have adopted their doctrines much as polytheists and the ancestor-worshipers have acquired theirs: through early teaching and socialization. Had the Christians been born among the aboriginal Australians, they would believe, in just the same ways, on just the same bases, and with just the same convictions, doctrines about Dreamtime instead of about the Resurrection. The symmetry is complete… Given that they are all on a par, we should trust none of them.

The skeptical thought seems to be this: the connection between many of our religious beliefs and the truth isn’t good enough for knowledge, even if those beliefs are true. And so, when we are made aware of this frail connection, we acquire an undermining defeater for our religious beliefs, we can no longer sensibly claim to know that these religious beliefs are true.

So, I propose that we understand the problem of contingency for religious belief as a problem for religious knowledge, as an argument for the conclusion that, because of the shady way in which they were formed, religious beliefs do not rise to the level of knowledge even if they’re true.

But exactly how is the undermining meant to happen? What’s lacking in the literature—what Xenophanes, Sextus, Descartes, Mill, Flew, Hick, and Kitcher all failed to pony up—is a clear statement of just which epistemic principle our religious beliefs allegedly violate. According to the skeptic, some virtue is missing from our religious beliefs, and this missing virtue precludes knowledge. But which virtue is it? The skeptic stammers where it matters most.

So I thought it would be a service to figure it out. Next time, we’ll explore some candidate virtues that are often taken to be necessary for knowledge and which our religious beliefs may plausibly lack, virtues like sensitivity, safety, and non-accidentality. We’ll also examine the troubling sort of symmetry that Kitcher gestures at: the apparent lack of dispute-independent reasons to ignore all those epistemic peers (and superiors!) who disagree with us on religious questions.

The skeptic’s way forward won’t be easy. Perhaps (as I'll argue) the contingency of our religious beliefs doesn’t really preclude sensitivity, safety, or non-accidentality. Perhaps (as I'll argue) these virtues aren’t even required for knowledge after all. And the skeptic must step lightly to avoid self-defeat: her own “negative” beliefs on religious topics seem at least as contingent as those of the typical religious believer. 

Can the skeptic avoid these pitfalls and fashion a sharp challenge to religious belief? Or will the skeptical project dissolve—slowly, harmlessly—like a coastal fog in the afternoon sun? Tune in next time to find out!

(Probably Friday. Maybe Monday.)

Another Kind of Kinds of Philosophers

There are a lot of kinds of kinds of philosophers. Most obviously, we can break down philosophers by AOS. We can also divide philosophers by method: ‘empirically oriented’ or ‘arm chair’ (each year at the SPP a psychologist asks me which kind of those I am!) or something else. What I want to suggest is that there is another kind of kinds of philosophers, which perhaps depends more on one’s dispositions or personality than the content of what one argues in papers. I don’t mean to suggest that any of these are ‘bad’ kinds of philosophers, and I want to suggest that we all benefit by having the different kinds around. Here is a list (by no means comprehensive, feel free to recommend others):

1. The systematic philosopher: Most of the greats belong here. These are folks who operate within most (or all) areas of philosophy offering a systematic view of everything.
2. The expert in just that area: Folks who focused on one area (sometimes one problem!) for their whole career. Sometimes to the exclusion of almost anything else. I think this is less common in philosophy, but in other disciplines (such as history) often folks will become the world expert on a very narrow topic and are able to conduct all their research in that very narrow topic.
3. The non-believer: This is the philosopher who is not interested in being pinned down. Perhaps lots of their papers are conditional (“here is how to solve the overdetermination problem, if you want to be a non-reductive physicalist”).
4. The desultory philosophers: Some philosophers make a career out of disagreeing with themselves. (I consider this kind of philosopher distinct from the non-believer because they sincerely argue and endorse positions that they later sincerely argue against and reject).
5. The formalizer: Sentential logic is too damn simple! Let’s break it all down to see what the hell is going on!

My point is not to prize one of these kinds of philosophers over the others. I think they all need each other—just as there is a division of labor among the disciplines within academia (and perhaps between the sub-disciplines of philosophy), I think we need to acknowledge a division of labor within the field of philosophy. The benefits of the systematic philosopher and the expert in just one area are, I think, pretty obvious, but we need the other folks too. I appreciate the honesty of the desultory philosopher, and it’s fun talking to them since they are totally willing to change their minds! The non-believer helps move debates along, even if they’re not sure about the starting points. I’m no formal philosopher, but there are plenty of times when a debate needs some ‘house cleaning’ (as a formal philosopher put it to me once).

I think adding this taxonomy is helpful because, while we might admire the content of what some philosopher says, we might not be the same kind of philosopher that they are. So attempting to emulate their overall approach might not be right for you. Maybe your supervisor is an ‘expert in one area’ type, but you would prefer to spend time thinking about the implication of your views in that area across sub-disciplines. Maybe you find a certain debate really interesting, even though you disagree with the starting premises. Maybe you’re not even a theist, but have something to say something about the trinity!

I have found myself thinking that all philosophers should be of either the first type or the second type. Or, in the case of early stage career philosophers, one must be the second type. However, after I finished writing my dissertation (on dual-process theory), I decided I wanted work on some of the tangents in the dissertation that I didn’t get to pursue then. It seems that realizing that there are other kinds of philosophers to be is healthy individually (I can do stuff I want to do!), and for us as a profession (we all benefit from these different kinds of philosophers being themselves).

 

How do you write?

I thought I might follow up my post on reading philosophy with a post on writing! Here again, I'll share my approach, and then ask you all to share yours. It'll be interesting to see, I think, how different people go about the writing process. Okay then, here goes.

My writing process has changed immensely over the years. As an undergraduate, and for most of my career as a graduate student, I absolutely slaved over papers, composing them slowly and carefully, crafting and revising every sentence as I went along. When I was writing (typically, term-paper time), I would literally spend all day, just about every day of the week, for weeks or even months on end, to get the paper just right. Unfortunately, at some point in grad school -- unsurprisingly, I think it was around the dissertation time -- this process stopped working effectively. My production ground to a halt. I think, like many grad students, the dissertation seemed like such a monumental, herculean task that carefully crafting one page at a time rapidly transformed into crafting no pages at a time. ;) 

Since that time, I've had three particularly formative experiences, each of which dramatically changed my writing process, and which I'd like to share now.

I've shared the first of these formative experiences several times before. As luck would have it, after a couple of years of getting nothing done on my dissertation, I received an unsolicited self-help book in my department mailbox on how to write a dissertation. Although I normally have no interest in self-help books, I was so desperate with my dissertation at that point that I said, "What the heck!", and actually read it. Its main piece of advice was this: make yourself free-write some small number X (e.g. 3-5) pages per day -- never any more, never any less -- with absolutely no self-censorship or editing, and preferably first thing in the morning. The advice then allowed you to do other stuff (editing, revising, etc.), but only after you'd completed your mandatory free-write.  The basic rationale behind the advice is that the most crucial things with writing are to (1) actually force stuff out of your head rather than procrastinate, and (2) maintain a positive daily attitude where you actually wake up each day wanting to write. 

My experience following this advice was astounding. I can still remember the very first week I did it. For about 18 months prior, I'd gotten basically nothing complete with the dissertation. I was always doubting everything, scrapping stuff I'd written as garbage. Then, that first week trying the book's advice, I did it. I got 5 pages of garbage out of my head in a couple of hours the first day, then the same thing the next day, the same thing the third day, etc. By Friday I had 25 pages of garbage. Then, on Saturday, I took that 25 pages of garbage and whittled it down to about 10 pages of really good stuff. I was sold. 9 months later -- after following the advice to a "T" -- I finished and defended my dissertation. Like many dissertations, it wasn't great. But whatever. I got it done. I later gave the book to a friend a year behind me in the program who was also struggling immensely (she basically had none of her dissertation written either). She followed the advice and, just as I did, finished her dissertation about 9 months later. Crazy. I suggest that anyone who finds themselves struggling try the same.

My second formative experience occurred during my first year out of graduate school, during the year I was a VAP at the University of British Columbia. Although the writing strategy above was still working for me, I wasn't publishing. So, I picked up the phone and called a couple of friends from grad school had been publishing up a storm (and in great journals). I asked them what their secret was. They both said the same thing: they write and send out a ton of work, with around 10 articles under review at journals at any given time. Basically, their rationale was this: acceptance rates are so low, and reviewers so unreliable, that this is the only rational way to "play the odds." In their view, even if a particular article is great, chances are it will get rejected several times, in which case if you only have a few papers out for review at any given time, you may not publish anything for years -- again, even if your work is awesome (side note: it's public knowledge that some very famous articles in philosophy were rejected by numerous top-ranked journals before being accepted anywhere). So, anyway, I followed their advice. Instead of wasting a bunch of time "polishing" papers I already had, I basically drafted paper after paper, revised them a bit, and sent them out. Like them, I began publishing up a storm. And, far from leading me to do work of lesser quality, I believe the process of continually drafting and sending out papers led to an increase in the quality of my work. Of all the papers I have published to date, I do not think any of them would have been substantially better had I spent substantially more time on them. Good ideas are good ideas, bad ideas are bad ideas. The quicker you get them out of your head and out to conferences and journals, the quicker you find out which are which. Over the past 6 years, I've drafted well over 30 papers. Only 10 of them have been published. Not a great batting average to be sure (though I think a few of the unpublished ones are very good), but in my experience this is pretty much par for the course. Many people who engage in creative endeavors -- authors, artists, etc. -- will tell you that the vast majority of their work is garbage. As Linus Pauling is famous for saying, "The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas." Indeed, if anything has been my experience, this has.

My third formative experience was the day, during my first year at Tampa, that my hard drive died and I lost 6 months worth of work (note to you: back up your work!;). I had just spent the previous six months writing, and then polishing, two papers -- both of which I went on to later publish. Indeed, I had literally just put the finishing touches on both papers the day my hard drive died. I was devastated. I couldn't believe that I had lost 6 months of work. But I wasn't about to accept that. So, I went to Best Buy, bought a new laptop, and resolved to rewrite both papers from scratch as quickly as possible, before I forgot everything that I had written. I rewrote both papers from scratch in two days or so, revised them quickly, sent them off, and they both got accepted. And somehow, from that point on, I became able to write papers insanely quickly. As "unlucky" as losing my hard-drive was, in retrospect it now seems like one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me.  These days, I find myself writing first drafts in a few days to maybe a week or two tops. Some days, I'll draft 5 pages or so. Other days I may draft anywhere between 15-20 pages. Revising, obviously, takes much, much longer. But still, I typically get full drafts done super quick now. And apparently I'm not alone. I've heard similar things from some other people I know, as well as from my wife, who works in a different field (her mentors say that they, too, tend to write paper drafts in a couple of days). Just a few years ago, I would have never imagined writing papers so quickly -- and I certainly never would have imagined it in grad school. But that's the way it is now. Somehow, over time, one just becomes much more efficient -- and again, I don't think it's come at a cost of quality.

Finally, I guess I will share in a bit more detail what my actual writing process looks like. When drafting, I tend not to have any notes or books around. I also do not do outlines (I never have). I more or less just sit down and start writing off the top of my head. If I don't know the literature well enough to do that, as far as I'm concerned I'm not ready to write. So, I only sit down to write once I feel like I know the literature well enough in my head to situate my work in it -- and, because of this, I don't worry about references (and such) at the drafting stage. I just write. I get the introduction out quickly, then summarize whatever I need to in the literature, and then just lay out my argument, consider objections, and go from there. When I told my wife this is how I draft -- without books, without notes -- she was very surprised. But then she asked her mentors (again, in a very different field) how they draft, and they said they do it the same way. And she works in a field that has very strict citation requirements. So, it seems to me, what I do is apparently what other people do too. Getting bogged down with books, articles, and notes just slows me down too much at the drafting stage. Again, as far as I'm concerned, if I can't lay out my project and situate it in the literature off the top of my head, I'm not ready to begin writing. It's only after drafting that I will go back, sentence by sentence, and section by section, with books, articles, and notes to add in citations, deepen my discussion, etc. Anyway, that's my drafting process: quick and straightforward. Phenomenologically, it feels a lot like laying brick work or planks in putting a boat together. I just lay things out as simply and straightforwardly as I can, and fill in all the details later.

My revising process is much more labor intensive. After I have a complete draft (and only then), I will go back and start reading my work at page 1. Here, I try to make each sentence as clear and lean as I can, cutting away unnecessary words and chopping up overly long sentences into multiple shorter ones. I also put in citations, and try to clear away unnecessary italics (which I have a really bad habit of overdoing when I write;). If, say, I get to editing/revising page 5 on a given day, I will not start at page 5 the next day (there go those italics again!). Rather, the next day, I will start once again at page 1, read all the way up through page 5 (making any necessary revisions along the way), and then engage in the labor intensive revisions from page 5 forward. Let's say, then, that I make it to page 10. Do I begin at page 10 the next day? No! I begin, once again, at page 1. It drives me a bit batty, but each time I do this I discover things I don't like, and end up making changes. In this way -- by starting my revisions at page 1 every single time -- I force myself to repeatedly read, assess, and fix earlier revisions. Which I think is a good thing.

That, more or less, is how I revise. What about feedback? I've heard many people say that getting good feedback on work is crucial. I sort of agree, but for reasons I'll give below, I'm actually of two minds about it. I've always been pretty bad at seeking out feedback. First, believe it or not, I'm rather shy, both intellecually and socially. I always get nervous showing people my work, and so, all too often, I just avoid doing it. Second, I also work in an extremely small department -- there are just 3 of us, and we work in different areas -- so it is hard to seek out feedback locally.

In some cases, I think my difficulties getting feedback has worked against me. It took 6 years for me to publish my paper, "First Steps Toward a Nonideal Theory of Justice" -- and, while I'm thankful that the process turned out the way it did (I think it really did take all that time to become the paper it should have been), I suspect it might not have taken nearly so long had I been better about seeking our feedback (almost all of the feedback I received on it came from journal reviewers, as well as a few conferences). In other cases, however, I think my not seeking out much feedback has worked in my favor. Early in my career, I was easily discouraged, especially when working on really ambitious ideas. While it is important to get, and be open to feedback, I also think it is very important to learn to trust oneself as a philosopher -- and I think working more or less alone has helped me in this. In short, I think "the right amount of feedback" is a fine line. If you don't get enough feedback, you may end up toiling away on bad ideas -- ideas that feedback could set you straight on. On the other hand, too much feedback can be stultifying. My feeling is...you sort of have to feel it out, and see what amount and what kinds of feedback work best for you.

Anyway, this is how I write. How do you?

How do you read philosophy?

A reader recently emailed me the following series of questions:

I would like to ask you and your audience a simple question: How do you read philosophy? What methods have you experimented with in the past, which of these have stayed with you, and which proved ineffective and were tossed aside? Are you a heavy quotation scribbler, apt to copy several direct quotations from the book chapter or article you are working with, and then complementing these with your own expository notes? Or, like many I have spoken to, do you prefer to give a text a quick read, with no pen and paper or laptop nearby, and then go back and have a second (or third), more focused look, writing short but detailed paragraph summaries, that reconstruct the author's argument and bring out the implicit considerations and philosophical commitments that lay within the text, etc.? 

How long will you read for per day? An article or two, fifty or so pages, how much? Do you find there are certain techniques that can keep you from burning out when working with an especially dense piece of philosophy? I am interested in all these things and more. I have an MA...am hoping to enroll in a PhD program in the fall, and have been experimenting with new reading methods and note taking techniques. Given that you often stress your own fondness for rapid production of work, and place heavy emphasis on not getting bogged down in the research process, I was hoping you could speak to how you accomplish these things on a day-to-day basis. 

I think these are really great questions. During the course of my career, I cannot recall ever being given detailed tips on how to read. The only directions I can recall being given were, "Read quickly once to get the big picture, then go back and read more carefully." I also cannot recall ever discussing how to read philosophy with anyone. All of which, now that I think about it, seems rather bizarre. Reading is an enormous part of doing philosophy. It is also, in my experience, something of an artform -- an artform which affects the way one does many other things (e.g. develop paper topics, etc.). 

Maybe one reason the question of how to read isn't often discussed is that it is a very individualized affair. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses, and we must learn to read in ways that speak to our strengths and improve our weaknesses. There is, I think, some real truth in this. Each person must learn what works best for them, and this typically involves quite a bit of trial and error. That being said, I think an open discussion of reading styles and tips could be really fun and informative. So, I guess I will begin.

The first thing that occurred to me when thinking about the reader's questions is that I think how to best read philosophy may be different at different stages of one's career. At an undergraduate level and in grad school, for instance, I think it is really crucial to practice close reading: taking detailed notes, doing paragraph summaries, and reconstructing arguments on paper. I think it's crucial to do a lot of this stuff at these stages because these are crucial philosophical skills to learn, and they take a lot of practice. Then, in my experience, as one goes further along in one's career (e.g. at a faculty level) these things become so second-nature that one needn't do them so much (one learns to trust oneself to choose when to read closely, reconstruct arguments, etc.). So, that's one thing I thing.

The second thing I think is that it is important to learn to read in ways that play to your strengths and improve upon your weaknesses. Some people are really good at "getting the big picture", but have trouble nailing down all the details. Others are super good at nailing down details but have trouble with the big picture. I think it's philosophically important to be a good, well-rounded reader, and work on one's weaknesses. That being said, at certain points in my career I feel like I was discouraged from doing what I think do well (i.e. really big picture stuff) -- I was told by some people to not be so ambitious, and really focus on nitty gritty details -- and I think this worked against me. I can be good at philosophical details, but only if I'm passionate about, and "see", the big picture. 

So much for general remarks. I'd now like to share what my actual reading process is like nowadays (i.e. what I think works for me).

First, whatever I'm reading, I always give a quick first read to get the "big picture" (i.e. what the author is trying to do, what the gist of their arguments are, and how their arguments fit in the existing literature). Typically, at this stage, I will read with a pen in hand, underline "big idea" passages, and maybe jot down them down in a notebook in a few sentences. At this stage, I will also jot down any big worries I have about the project (viz. anything that sticks out at me, setting off my philosophical alarm bells).

A second thing I do here, during my quick first read -- if I find something I do not like about what the author is doing -- is to reconstruct what I think the author is trying to do, in my head, in my own terms, and see whether I think they went about it the right way. In my experience, some people discourage this approach. Some say, "You really need to understand what the author literally wrote before you try to understand what you think they should have written." I couldn't disagree more. I find that it is very important for me to think through a person's project in my own terms before I get too immersed in their own arguments. For, in my experience, it is all too easy to get sucked into someone else's way of thinking in a way that prevents one from seeing things afresh. Indeed, I've seen entire bodies of literature in which I think people have been so sucked into a bad way of thinking that they're unable to see their way out. I think I've fallen into this trap many times too, and my experience is that the best way to avoid it is to always think for oneself when one is reading. Don't just pay attention to what the author is writing. You should always ask yourself, "Do I think this philosopher is going about this the right way?" At least, I find this works for me.

Third, if at the level of a quick first read I find what I take to be a big picture error (i.e. a false or unjustified foundational assumption) on the author's part, I immediately pick up other articles/books in the same area, give them a quick read, and see if I they made the same big error. Notice what I still haven't done yet here, at what is essentially the third step in my reading process. I still haven't even begun to go back and read carefully. I'm still operating at the "quick read/big picture" stage. I do this deliberately because, again, I do not want to get sucked into the details of the literature -- i.e. lose the forest for the trees -- before I see whether I think the forest is well arranged. 

If, after these first three stages, I find a foundational assumption that I think many people are getting wrong, I just read a little bit more closely, make sure I think there's a big error, and then write a paper on it. In these cases, I only engage in close, targeted reading to whatever extent that I need to in order make my argument that there is a foundational error in the piece/literature.

When I don't find what I take to be a big foundational error in a piece (or in the literature surrounding it), I face a choice.

On the one hand, if -- despite not finding any "big problem" -- I find a particular piece or body of literature interesting, I may go back and give it/them much closer readings, taking detailed notes, reconstructing arguments, etc. Then, if I find something that I think doesn't work, I might get a paper idea and write a paper, using my notes to write a draft (note: I almost never draft papers while reading. If I can't write a draft out of my head or off my reading notes, I conclude I haven't understood the stuff well enough to start drafting -- and so I go back, read more, and take more detailed notes. In my experience, drafting papers while reading retards my writing process. My wife reports that many people she knows in her field write papers the same way. I only go back to books/articles themselves after drafting, when I begin writing revisions).

On the other hand, if I don't find the piece/literature all that interesting, I'll just move onto something else entirely. I see no reason to get "stuck" on articles, books, or bodies of literature that I do not have clear ideas about. If nothing "jumps out" at me, setting off my philosophical alarm bells, I just move on to something else.

In a nutshell then, close, targeted readings where I take detailed notes and reconstruct arguments is literally the last thing I do. This is not to say that I do these things rarely. I do them often (I've literally worn my way through several copies of particular books and articles by poring over them so much). I just find that most of the important work I do while reading comes long before the careful, targeted reading stage. Close, targeted reading is important, but for me, it is crucial that I do all of the "big picture" stuff (and do a lot of it) before I get lost in the details. Also, as an aside, I think the "reading fast to get the big picture" element of my approach has a lot to do with my increases in scholarly productivity the past several years. It is easy to get "stuck" on an argument if one reads everything with a fine-tooth comb. The more material I get through, the easier it seems to me to come across a "big problem" worth writing about.

As for how many pages I read per day, etc., I have no simple answer. The answer is that it is quite irregular. If I'm trying to get a big picture view of a body of literature, I may go through a few hundred pages a day. However, if I'm trying to get an argument from one paper down cold, I may spend an entire day on several pages. It really just depends on what I need to do. I let whatever project I'm working on dictate how much, and how, I read in a kind of organic fashion.

In closing, I guess I should emphasize again that I think "how to read" is probably a highly individualized thing, and that one must experiment a lot in order to figure out what works for oneself. For several years in graduate school and afterwards, I tried to read and do philosophy in a certain way (roughly, the way I saw others doing it around me). It didn't work. I had trouble getting work done, and the work I did get done wasn't all that good. It just wasn't who I am. Experimenting led me to the reading, writing, and thinking styles that I have now -- and they seem to work. I have been far more productive, and I think I am doing far better work. I wouldn't recommend my approach to everyone, but it seems to work for me.

Anyway, this is how I read. How do you?

What to do when you don't know what to write about

By sheer chance, I stumbled on the following snippet from the game theorist Ariel Rubinstein, which is posted (for some reason) as an abstract in PhilPapers:

Let me start with what you should not do. Do not attend too many seminars in your own field. Otherwise you may simply end up adding a comment to the existing literature, which is mostly made up of comments on previous comments which were themselves only marginal comments. If you want a good idea, look at the world around you or take courses in other disciplines. Some of the papers in my own dissertation (like my 1979 paper on a principal-agent problem with moral hazard and an infinite horizon) were thought of while daydreaming in some law courses I took.

This strikes me as sage advice. What do others think?

On Prioritizing and Getting Stuff Done

Sorry for posting so sporadically lately. It's partly that I've been insanely busy, but also partly due to my first bout with blog writers block (or "bloggers bloq", if I may coin a new term!). Anyway, although I've been swamped -- with term papers, job applications, an R-n-R, etc -- on one of my momentary breaks today I got to thinking about prioritizing and getting stuff done. 

I actually had an interesting, albeit brief conversation with Fritz Allhoff about this a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about how, the longer one goes on in academia, the more one ends us doing, and how one's graduate school self would be quite in awe of how much one does as as a faculty member. (Fritz, of course, does an insane amount of stuff. He publishes lots, runs a journal, and many other things to boot!).

Anyway, I got to thinking about our conversation today, and about how I've been dealing with having so much to do. Because I think I've learned some good habits here -- habits I didn't have as a grad student -- I figured I'd share some of them with you, and solicit you all to share your own "getting stuff done" strategies with the community.

Anyway, here goes. My first strategy is to chip away a little bit of everything each day.  Here, for instance, is how I've gone about my business today. Woke up, got to the dog park around 8:30. Worked on a lecture on Locke for my intro class until about 10:00. Graded a term-paper. Polished up a cover letter, and sent out a job application. Graded another term-paper. Finished my Locke lecture. Graded a term-paper. Ate lunch. Polished up another cover letter and sent out a job appliation. Started revising an old a lecture on Aristotle for my ancient class. Took a break after an hour. Graded a paper. Polished another cover letter and sent out a job app. 

Basically, the only one of my pressing projects I haven't chipped away at today is the paper I need to revise for my current R-n-R. I'm a little bummed I haven't been able to get to it today, but it's okay because I have a few months to do it and have worked it into my schedule on most days (where, again, I just try to chip away at a little bit at a time. Last week, I made sure I got one section done.  This week my aim to get a second out of the way).

Anyway, let me briefly explain why I think this "chipping everything" strategy is useful. The basic rationale is simple. If you chip away at everything a little bit each day, stuff doesn't pile up. If, say, I had focused today only on getting lectures today, or grading, or whatever, the other stuff would have piled up. And that's not good.  Another nice side-effect of the strategy is that you don't get too sick of anything. Grading a pile of papers is awful. Doing one paper, then moving onto something else (a lecture, whatever), then grading another paper, then moving onto something else, etc., is way better. You slowly get things done without the soul-crushing experience of doing the task all at once (variety keeps you decently happy - it sure has today!).

Here's a second strategy I've happened upon (and then I'll stop): focus on "easy" things first, and get them done, while working in "hard" things. Let me explain. The other friday I was working on my RnR paper first thing in the morning for a few hours and getting nowhere. This bugged me. I had wasted two hours I could have spent doing something "easy" and more productive, such as grading, writing lectures, etc. In the past, I would have let the RnR derail me from stuff, and I would have wasted another, say, four hours toiling away at it (not getting other stuff done). Instead, last Friday, I set it aside, did a bunch of easy stuff (grading, lectures), and then came back to it (the "hard" thing) later on at the end of the day, and actually got lots on it done. It's amazing what stepping way from difficult things can do, especially if you get "easy" stuff done in between. So, I say, do that. When you run into a wall with something -- a paper, whatever -- set it aside, get something "easy" done, and come back. That way, you'll at least get a bunch of easy but necessary projects done during the day, while still giving yourself ample time to working on a tougher project. Far better than getting derailed on the tough project half the day!

Anyway, these are just some tips. I have no idea if any of you will find them helpful -- though I hope some of you do! ;)  Anyone else have any getting-stuff-done tips they want to share?