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How to start with a big project that causes stress
This is a guest post by Rebecca Kukla, Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University I have severe anxiety disorder that often incapacitates me. Often, my anxiety builds up around particular writing projects and professional tasks, for whatever reason. At the same time, while I often finish things much later than... Continue reading
Posted yesterday at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Supporting non-academic careers (guest post by Kevin J.S. Zollman)
Kevin J.S. Zollman is an associate professor and director of graduate studies at Carnegie Mellon University. His research is on the application of mathematical models to social behavior, and he is author of the popular book The Game Theorist’s Guide to Parenting. When I was a kid growing up in... Continue reading
Posted 7 days ago at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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When you have no time, edit a volume or special issue (guest post by Eric Schliesser)
This is a guest contribution by Eric Schliesser, Professor at the University of Amsterdam and blogger at https://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/ where this post will be simultaneously posted. The blogpost is a contribution for our series Once Out of the Cocoon, which aims to provide support for midcareer academics in terms of time... Continue reading
Posted Aug 9, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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How to write a referee report (John Greco)
This guest post is by John Greco, currently Leonard and Elizabeth Eslick Chair in Philosophy at Saint Louis University, and soon in McDevitt Chair in Philosophy at Georgetown University I am sure that there will be varying opinions about how to write a referee report. In keeping with the spirit... Continue reading
Posted Jul 12, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Propriety, good structures, and justice -- thoughts on leadership in academia
In spite of its meritocratic aspirations, academia... Continue reading
Posted Jul 3, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Against referee-proofing one's papers
There are many ways to write a paper. Philosophy would be boring if that weren't the case. Still, I want to register a worry about what I think is an unproductive trend in how people write papers, that is, the increased tendency to "referee-proof" them, addressing all sorts of worries... Continue reading
Posted Jun 21, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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How to be a philosopher at large (John Wilkins)
Guest post by John Wilkins, University of Melbourne I wanted to be a philosopher from my youth, but I was not able to get my PhD until my late 40s. I used to joke that my full-time employment in publishing was supporting my philosophy habit. This meant my chances of... Continue reading
Posted Jun 17, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Drawing philosophical thought experiments
Posted Jun 3, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Teaching Lemonade (Beyoncé) in a feminism course (Louise Pedersen)
By Louise Pedersen, University of Utah I am a fifth-year graduate student at the University of Utah. During the Fall ’19 and Spring ’20 semesters I taught an upper-level undergraduate course titled “Philosophical Issues in Feminism: Lessons from Beyoncé’s Lemonade.” During the first week of class, the students watched Lemonade,... Continue reading
Posted May 24, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Reflective practice exercise (Kate Norlock)
This is a guest post by Kate Norlock, Trent University. Thanks to Helen De Cruz for encouraging me to write about my favorite assignment for this series. I am not the only professor who assigns a “Reflective Practice Exercise” of some sort, so I’m not sure this qualifies as unusual.... Continue reading
Posted May 3, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Teaching Ethics to Business Students: The Ethics Project (Jason Brennan)
This is a guest post by Jason Brennan, Georgetown University I work in a PPE-style department at Georgetown’s business school. I generally teach 2 preps a year, one traditional PPE-style course and one applied business ethics course on a particular subject (such as business and the environment, or social business... Continue reading
Posted May 1, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Making progress on writing when the going gets tough
This instalment of our series on how to write philosophy will be devoted to how to continue when you are stuck on a project. Continuing to write isn't a matter of willpower or perseverance. It's a matter of setting modest expectations, being kind to yourself, and not let the technicalities... Continue reading
Posted May 1, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Feminist Philosophers is closing down - reflections on blogging as service to the profession
Feminist Philosophers is closing down. I'm sad to see yet another blog go. It played such an important role for me when I was an early career scholar, a postdoc with little job security navigating an uncertain environment. For me as for many other people, Feminist Philosophers was an authoritative... Continue reading
Posted Apr 23, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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On rejections for journal submissions
This is a guest post by Jon Robson, University of Nottingham for our series How to Write Philosophy. Rejection is a big part of academic life. By far the most likely response to any job application, funding bid or journal submission is rejection. Here, I offer some thoughts on a... Continue reading
Posted Apr 23, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Doing better for our graduate students, making a PhD in philosophy worth it
This story, by Rachel Williams, is simply entitled "A PhD in philosophy was not worth it". The title reflects the contents well. The story's familiar, but that does not make it less sad: Rachel Williams writes about the disillusionment, lost opportunities, low wages, and a profession that looks increasingly hostile... Continue reading
Posted Apr 13, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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The “job market" doesn't start post-PhD
This is a guest post by John Protevi, Louisiana State University This post has two sections. In the first, I take a wide view at employment practices in philosophy departments in American higher education. In the second, taking that analysis in hand, I offer some advice to people considering entering... Continue reading
Posted Apr 9, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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How to write a philosophy book - the monograph as laboratory
This is a guest post by Donovan Schaefer, University of Pennsylvania I’ve always thought writing was strange, and writing a book is the strangest of all. A book project is like building a little planet of words from scratch. It’s disorienting and exhilarating at once. Common sense says that writing... Continue reading
Posted Apr 8, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Writing a philosophy book
This is a guest post by Fiona Ellis, University of Roehampton, London There’s no one way of planning and writing a book (whether philosophy or otherwise), and much of it has to do with temperament. Some people like to map everything out in advance (Iris Murdoch), others make it up... Continue reading
Posted Apr 5, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Writing papers - in lieu of a guide
This is a guest post by Neil Levy, Senior research fellow at the University of Oxford I’ve published a lot of articles – more than 200. So it seems like I should have some tips worth sharing on how to write them. I’m not sure I do. I thought of... Continue reading
Posted Apr 4, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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A theory of writer's block
Guest post by Anna Welpinghus, Technical University Dortmund Over the last years, I have occasionally been struggling with writer’s block. It looks like this: I have an unfinished manuscript that I cannot bring myself to complete. When I work on it, I look at one of the many unfinished sections,... Continue reading
Posted Apr 1, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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In praise of ordinary academics and their goodness
Averageness is a statistical concept, but often it becomes a normative one. Once you establish a bell curve, you can start looking for the exceptional and unusual, as for example Galton's quest for "nature's preeminently nobles" in eugenics, and this becomes the new norm. In academia, averageness is bad. We... Continue reading
Posted Mar 30, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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How I (Almost) Became a Philosopher of Cognitive Science
Guest post by Carl Sachs, Marymount University My graduate school mentor once said that one’s academic career is shaped like an hour-glass: one’s interest grows increasingly narrow as one progresses through graduate school, then broadens slowly afterwards. (Writing a dissertation is the neck, which is why it is so emotionally... Continue reading
Posted Mar 28, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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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... Continue reading
Posted Mar 7, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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Unconventional teaching ideas that work: Teaching Experimental Philosophy to Undergraduate students (Helen De Cruz)
Posted Feb 26, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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On starting papers, or: how I got over professional despair and learned to love philosophy again
This is the first instalment of our new series How Philosophers Write, a series aimed at demystifying the writing process of how we write publishable works. It is not meant to be universal advice, but rather meant as a series of very personal accounts. Through these accounts, we hope that... Continue reading
Posted Feb 25, 2019 at The Philosophers' Cocoon
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