I might post this eventually to Crooked Timber, but for now I’d mostly be interested in getting philosophers’ feedback. It’s somewhat inspired by the discussion of hiring practices over on Crooked Timber.

Say your department has a job opened up in metaphysics. You’re down to the last two candidates, M and P, both of whom primarily work in metaphysics. Your judgment is that M is the better metaphysician, but P is the better overall philosopher. I take it that this kind of thing is possible. (It’s less obvious when the field is metaphysics because that tends to rely on fewer specialised skills I think, but still possible.)

Even if M and P concentrate on metaphysics, and so their abilities as metaphysicians will be the primary determinant of their skills as philosophers, you might well think that P has skills that will be more useful work on other areas. So you think P will ask better questions at non-metaphysics colloquia, provide more useful comments on colleagues’ draft papers on non-metaphysics topics and so on, and you think these skills outweigh M’s extra ability as a pure metaphysician.

Who do you vote to hire?

I thought it was obvious that P should be the choice, but in asking around I think more people I’ve asked have supported M. (I haven’t exactly been keeping careful count, but that’s the feeling.) Do you agree?

If you would vote to hire M, does the situation change if it was originally an open area hire? In that case there is a straight-up choice between hiring based on how good a philosopher is in his/her strongest area and how good s/he is overall.