Many of you reading this blog will have been getting letters from various philosophy departments telling you that you’ve been admitted and/or wait-listed for different departments. If so, you may now have a very big choice ahead of you – which school to choose. You’ll get a lot of advice from various sources; here’s my contribution.

IGNORE Leiter rankings.

I think the Leiter rankings are incredibly useful, especially for foreign students. But their usefulness is in deciding which universities to apply to, not which universities to go to. By the time you make the decision, you should have much more information than the voters in the Leiter rankings, and much much more information about the fit between you and various departments. You should care about the things that influence Leiter rankings, like faculty quality, but not the rankings themselves.

NOTICE placement records.

I think you should spend a lot of time looking at the placement record of different schools. Think of all sorts of questions to ask about the placement record. What’s the third best job students from that school got any given year? What’s the fifth best? Does the school place its students reasonably equally, or is it more of a ‘feast or famine’ model, with the best students going to top 10 schools, and many others getting nothing? Or perhaps is it one way for students in one discipline and another in other disciplines. How many years do students spend at the school before getting jobs? (If the school generally places well, but only after you’ve spent 8-10 years there, is that something you’d prefer to a weaker placement record that nevertheless gets most people jobs after 5-6 years?) Does the school seem to support its students who get unattractive jobs out of grad school, then move somewhere else at (or even before) tenure?

Remember that these things change, and records from only 1-3 years may be a very small sample size to generalise from. So reading these records takes some care, but it’s worth spending time thinking hard about. The PhD is, at the end of the day, a professional degree, and you should think about what it will do for your standing in the profession.

IGNORE negative campaigning.

Everyone will have horror stories about their rivals. Trust these about as much as you trust RNC press releases about Barack Obama. To be fair, some of the stories will be related in some loose way to the truth. Perhaps when they say that things are like X at school Y, that will mean that in the late 90s, things were kind of like X there, at least among the unhappy students. But in my experience these stories are typically out of date (ask yourself – how much time has the person telling me the story spent the school in question in the last 24-36 months?), and based on lazy stereotypical thinking.

NOTICE who your classmates will be.

You’ll spend more time with your fellow grad students than with faculty members over the next five years. They matter. A lot. In recent years students seem to have started paying a lot of attention to who will be in the incoming class with them. That’s important, though not much more important than who will be in the other classes. A student body that is smart, engaged with current debates, active (in terms of setting up reading groups) and supportive of each other’s work is very valuable. At Rutgers some of the student readings groups are run at a higher level than some seminars. (Well, at least than my seminars.)

And don’t just look at the individual students – look at the culture. This can be tricky, because cultures can change. But they tend to change slowly. A culture where everyone is competing to be the best student, and denigrating each other along the way, is going to be a bad place to be at grad school, and it will stay that way. On the other hand, a culture where everyone is trying to help everyone out will, in all probability, keep being a fun place to work for many years.

ATTEND as many campus visits as possible.

You can’t get a sense of what the grad students at a school are like without being there. So attend these visits, and talk to the grad students. If there’s something wrong with a department, they’ll say so. You’ll be told about what the culture is like, and you’ll have a chance to check what you’re told against what you see. And you’ll get to meet your incoming classmates. This is all incredibly valuable information.

I hope to see many of you at the Rutgers visit!

Posted by Brian Weatherson at 12:14 pm

3 Comments »

I’m hosting a one day workshop on philosophical methodology in the (Rutgers, New Brunswick) department on Friday March 12, from 10am to 6pm. The workshop will feature papers by Joshua Knobe, Elizabeth Harman, Michael Strevens and Jennifer Nado. It will be held in the seminar room in Seminary 3, which is one of the two new department buildings. (It’s on Seminary Place, at George St, two blocks north of the New Brunswick train station.)

The papers by Harman and Strevens will be distributed ahead of time, and their sessions will mostly be Q&A on their papers; the papers by Knobe and Nado will be presented on the day, with questions afterwards. Lunch and refreshments will be provided throughout the day.

The conference has no registration costs, but numbers are limited. As some of you may have seen from the talk last Thursday, the seminar room at Rutgers can get crowded for popular talks. So if you’re interested in coming along to it, could you leave a comment to this post registering your interest? There are about 20 spots left, though that number will shrink if more Rutgers or Arche folks are interested in coming along, since my employers get priority!

I’ll be posting a full schedule, along with the papers that will be distributed in advance, in the next week, but for now I’m just opening registrations. I hope to see many of you here at the workshop!

Posted by Brian Weatherson at 3:29 pm

15 Comments »

Aesthetics & Philosophy of Art

Philosophy of Humor (p 112-126)
Joshua Shaw
Published Online: Feb 10 2010 4:56AM
DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2009.00281.x

Abstract  |  References | Full Text:   HTML,   PDF (Size: 105K)

Temporality in Queer Theory and Continental Philosophy (p 136-146)
Shannon Winnubst
Published Online: Feb 10 2010 4:56AM
DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2009.00278.x

Abstract  |  References | Full Text:   HTML,   PDF (Size: 87K)

History of Philosophy

Frege’s Distinction Between Sense and Reference (p 147-163)
Gideon Makin
Published Online: Feb 10 2010 4:56AM
DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2009.00277.x

Abstract  |  References | Full Text:   HTML,   PDF (Size: 118K)

Logic & Language

Pejoratives (p 164-185)
Christopher Hom
Published Online: Feb 10 2010 4:56AM
DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2009.00274.x

Abstract  |  References | Full Text:   HTML,   PDF (Size: 135K)

Mind & Cognitive Science

Philosophical Issues in Neuroimaging (p 186-198)
Colin Klein
Published Online: Feb 10 2010 4:56AM
DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2009.00275.x

Abstract  |  References | Full Text:   HTML,   PDF (Size: 95K)

Naturalistic Philosophy

Experimental Philosophy and Free Will (p 199-212)
Tamler Sommers
Published Online: Feb 10 2010 4:56AM
DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2009.00273.x

Abstract  |  References | Full Text:   HTML,   PDF (Size: 103K)

Posted by Brian Weatherson at 9:32 am

No Comments »

I’ve been writing up some thoughts on easy knowledge, but they got a little long for a regular blog post. So they’re in this PDF. But don’t think of this as a paper – it’s really a long blog post in PDF form!

Easy Knowledge and Other Epistemic Virtues

Posted by Brian Weatherson at 12:29 pm

2 Comments »

Do you want to be my boss – or at least one of my bosses?

The Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science at the New Brunswick Campus of Rutgers University is searching for a new director. We are looking for an outstanding scholar with proven administrative abilities and a vision for the future of cognitive science at Rutgers. Highly desirable is experience in obtaining and administering interdisciplinary, multi-investigator grants. Intellectual breadth—an ability to understand and articulate the contributions from the principal disciplines that compose cognitive science is important, as is the ability to effectively represent the interests of RuCCS inside and outside Rutgers. Fund raising ability and community/industry outreach also desired.

Description of Center
A primary goal of the Center is to foster research on the nature of symbolic processes constitutive of intelligent performance, emphasizing foundational and computational approaches. The goal is to understand such aspects of intelligent performance as perception, language processing, planning, problem solving, reasoning, learning and knowledge formation, in terms of the underlying computational processes. The Center’s mission is essentially multi-disciplinary. It promotes the integration of techniques and knowledge drawn from experimental psychology, computer science, neuroscience, philosophy, linguistics, mathematics, and engineering. The Center offers a Cognitive Science Certificate for graduate students and supports a minor and independent major for undergraduates. RuCCS has 22 jointly appointed faculty members at present. It also has an additional 30 associates housed in various departments who play an active role in the intellectual life of the Center. At the present time the principal contributing disciplines are psychology, computer science, linguistics and philosophy. The policies of the Center are set in consultation with an executive committee which has representation from several participating departments.

Candidates should be at the Full Professor level. Salary is negotiable. Consideration of applications will begin on March 29, 2010, but applications will be considered until the position is filled. Send a letter of interest that outlines your qualifications for the position as well as a CV to:

Search Committee Staff
Rutgers University
Center for Cognitive Science
152 Frelinghuysen Road, Psychology Building Addition
Piscataway, NJ 08854

OR

Fax: 732-445-6715

OR

Email to: dirsearch@ruccs.rutgers.edu

Posted by Brian Weatherson at 11:32 am

No Comments »

It’s well known that it’s easy to ‘mix’ two unconditional probability functions and produce a third unconditional probability function. So if x ∈ [0, 1], and f₁ and f₂ are both unconditional probability functions, and for any proposition p in the domain of both f₁ and f₂, f₃(p) = xf₁(p) + (1-x)f₂(p), then f₃ will also be an unconditional probability function. (This is really immediate from the axioms for unconditional probability.) I thought the same kind of thing would work for conditional probability, but I can’t figure out how to do it.

It’s certainly not true that if f₁ and f₂ are both conditional probability functions, then the function f₃ defined by f₃(p|q) = xf₁(p|q) + (1-x)f₂(p|q) will be a conditional probability function. Here’s a counterexample.

• f₁(A | BC) = 0.3
• f₁(B | C) = 0.4
• f₁(AB | C) = 0.12 (a consequence of previous two posits)
• f₂(A | BC) = 0.5
• f₂(B | C) = 0.6
• f₂(AB | C) = 0.3 (again a consequence)
• x = 0.5

If we just apply the above formula, we get this

• f₃(A | BC) = 0.4
• f₃(B | C) = 0.5
• f₃(AB | C) = 0.21 (inconsistent with previous two lines, if f₃ is a probability function)

One natural move is to say that when f₁(q) = f₂(q) = 1, then f₃(p|q) = xf₁(p|q) + (1-x)f₂(p|q). That will deliver something that is a conditional probability function as far as it goes, but it won’t tell us what f₃(p|q) is when f₁(q) = f₂(q) = 0. And I can’t figure out a sensible way to handle that case that doesn’t run into a version of the inconsistency I just mentioned.

It feels like this is a simple problem that should have a simple solution, but I’m not sure just what it is. There’s a lot of information about mixing probability functions in this paper by David Jehle and Branden Fitelson, but it doesn’t, as far as I can see, touch on just this issue. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Posted by Brian Weatherson at 11:25 am

2 Comments »

As you probably noticed, the comments section now includes pretty pictures. For some people, that will include their own picture. For most people it includes a randomly generated monster. I kinda like the monsters, but if you would rather not be represented by one, here’s the instructions for creating your own picture.

1. Go to gravatar.com
2. Create an account with the same email address as you have on your TAR account
3. Upload a picture – or take one with your computer’s camera

That picture should then show up as your avatar in TAR, and in other blogs with this feature turned on. I’ve noticed, for instance, that it also works on Feminist Philosophers, and I’m sure it works elsewhere as well.

Posted by Brian Weatherson at 11:31 am

No Comments »

Two days ago I mentioned that I was impressed by the typesetting that Anders Schoubye has done, which apparently set off a flood of people to download his papers. I thought I should update that post to note that one of these papers, Intuitions in Question has now been accepted for publication at Linguistics and Philosophy. Well done Anders, and I highly recommend getting the paper for both the form and the content!

Posted by Brian Weatherson at 10:52 am

No Comments »

The faculty in the philosophy department at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, have sent the following letter to the administration at King’s College, London, protesting their proposed firing of three distinguished philosophers.

The members of the Philosophy Department at Rutgers University hereby join the chorus of protest of your actions with regard to the Philosophy Department at King’s College and the outrageous treatment they have received from the College. The damage done to academia, to the Department, to the College, and most of all to the specific colleagues involved, is unconscionable. We urge you to reconsider, so as to contain the damage.

King’s decision seems to be both imprudent and unethical, and it’s in everyone’s best interests for it to be reversed very quickly.

UPDATE: Broken link fixed.

Posted by Brian Weatherson at 4:55 pm

No Comments »

Barack Obama, from yesterday’s YouTube conference:

And I’m a big believer that the most important thing that a kid can learn in school is how to learn and how to think. If Malia and Sasha, my two daughters, are asking questions, know how to poke holes in an argument, know how to make an argument themselves, know how to evaluate a complicated bunch of data, then I figure that they’re going to be okay regardless of the career path that they’re in. And I think that that requires more than just rote learning — although it certainly requires good habits and discipline in school — it also requires that in the classroom they’re getting the kind of creative teaching that’s so important.

I think the two things that could do the most to promote this aim are (a) a really good statistics course, to give people a feel for working with data, and (b) a really good critical thinking course, of the kind the best philosophy teachers deliver to college freshmen. If those courses were integral parts of the high school curriculum, then we’d see many more people who can make and evaluate arguments, especially arguments based around numerical data.

There have been intermittent attempts to bring philosophy in high school in various Australian states, but it would be great to see something similar attempted in America.

UPDATE: Via Larvatus Prodeo, I just saw this link to an article about teaching philosophy in schools in Queensland. It seems there is much more philosophy going on in pre-tertiary education than I’d realised.

Posted by Brian Weatherson at 11:52 am

6 Comments »