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BernardJOrtcutt

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  • Application Season
    2013 Fall
  • Program
    PhD Philosophy

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  1. MKE, you're out at UConn. Someone at my program was #1 on the waitlist, and he didn't get in.
  2. Here is something I would say: You should ask these questions to your professors you studied under. They ought to have some interest in their students doing well in PhD applications. My MA program was exceedingly helpful, we had seminars on how to put together our application, and I had several faculty members read over my statement. Also, your interests make it somewhat hard to get a good feeling for "second tier." Normally I would recommend the Leiter Rankings, but German Idealism is pretty frowned upon in the analytic schools, and the Leiter rankings heavily skew analytic.
  3. I had a really witty reply, but my post got deleted through browser crumminess, and now I'm sad... Just this: I was being overly snarky analytical with the BS claim. I think the main thing analytic philosophers dislike about continental philosophy is that it often doesn't involve clearly stated positions and arguments. I tried to read that Manifesto for Cyborgs... wow, I have seldom seen so many unclear undefended premises arguing in such a convulated fashion. And I have certainly never seen it reading anything I consider good philosophy. So, for example, what is the central claim of humanism, and what is the central claim of posthumanism? If the earlier is "humans are the things most deserving of moral consideration" and the later "humans are not the things most deserving of moral consideration," then these are certainly interesting claims within the area of normative ethics. It just seems to me that most contemporary ethical theories have already decided the latter to be correct, with natural law theory and more traditional Kantien ethics being the odd ones out. But this is a sub debate in a specialized field, not anything particularly central. Also, for OOO, I really just read a little of the wikipedia article. It seemed to me that the central claim is: "In contrast to Kant's view, object-oriented philosophers maintain that objects exist independently of human perception and are not ontologically exhausted by their relations with humans or other objects." I don't understand the second half of that sentence (what is "ontological exhaustion"?) but the first half doesn't sound like a very stunning or surprising view. Another central claim accordingly is "Thus, for object-oriented ontologists, all relations, including those between nonhumans distort their relata in the same basic manner as human consciousness and exist on an equal footing with one another." Ok, I understand relations and relata. And yes, they are all, human or not, on the same footing. I suppose that is true so long as we are talking about physical objects. I also don't understanding the phrasing of "the relata destort one another like human consciousness." I suppose this is a badly written intro, but so far it sounds like "there is stuff out there, the stuff is all kindof the same, relates the same, and humans are some of the stuff." That's just plain ontological realism, isn't it?
  4. But if we publically shame Vanderbilt, then soon they will have to reclaim their name, only Vanderbilt will be able to call anyone a Vanderbilt, and there will be Vanderbilt walks to overcome the stigma.
  5. I was actually being sarcastic. There is this (perceived?) chasm in philosphy between continental and analytic philosophy. Basically most analytic philosphers think that much of the continental stuff is utter bullshit, and many continentals think that analytic philosophy is trying to reduce life to math. Since OOO seems like a deeply continental project (being Post-Kantien and all) going over to the analytic side would be sort of intellectual treason, hence the dark side reference. What I am saying though, is that analytic metaphysics (Quine, Lewis, Stalnaker, Sider, Williamson, Chalmers, Nolan etc.) OBVIOUSLY don't put any special status to human experience, and haven't ever done so. In other words, to a philosopher in the analytic tradition OOO is either trivially true and uninteresting, or bullshit. About humanism: In ethics and metaethics there are few questions about what it means to be human, but usually the question is: What are the necessary and sufficient condition for something being a person (Person's being the kind of things with high moral status). Posthumanism also seems like a pretty boring topic. Given evolution, the concept of "species" is maybe useful to biology, but there are no deep ontological devides between them. You could pretty much arrange matter in any way you like, and if you get something that isn't quite homo sapiens enough, you could ask about the psychology of those beings and what they would like and dislike, but that doesn't sound like a very interesting question for philosophy.
  6. Here is some modest consolation: Consider this, if you were shut out of PhD programs, then if you had been accepted, you may not have gotten a job after you graduated. You are better off having spent two years in grad school and not getting to work in philosophy than having spent seven to nine years in grad school and not getting to work in philosophy. Other than that, I suppose your options are claer: Re-work your sample, try to do more great work and see if you can send it to your letter writers (Or ask them if they just won't be writing you a good enough letter), re-take the GRE, get a puplication or conference presentation, apply to more safety schools, and do-over next year. OR Figure out something else you are passionate about and pursue it OR Find something you are willing to do that will pay the bills in a city you would like to live in and surround yourself with friends with whom you can still talk about the stuff that interests you (OR) Figure out how to change your own desires. (OR) Work a job you don't enjoy and be dissatisfied. I don't know if the second to last one is psychologically possible (Drugs, Religion, Psychotherapy?), but it seems these options about exhaust logical space. Best of luck :/
  7. I had to google this to figure out what it is. I suppose you mean "Object Oriented Ontology." According to wikipedia: "In contrast to Kant's view, object-oriented philosophers maintain that objects exist independently of human perception and are not ontologically exhausted by their relations with humans." If that's it then just call it analytic philosophy and come join the dark side. We've been doing it for over 50 years and it's awesome.
  8. I'm pretty happy with where I applied. My rejection/waitlist/acceptance situation is ordered exactly by Leiter Rankings. I am accepted to some "safety" schools, waitlisted at some mid range (below top 20) schools, and have all definite rejections and one implied Rutgers rejection from the top 20. There is no school that I wish I had applied to that I feel I could have gotten into, and I'm glad I gave the top schools a shot, since I really only get to do this once in life. Given that this was, according to the adcomms, a year with (a more applicents (b better applicants, and many places (c fewer available spots, I can't feel bad about this. Now it's time to hit the publish or perish hamster wheel as all of us will be competing for the few tenure jobs left.
  9. Napoleon, Maybe I'm a bit too jaded coming from an MA program where the received wisdom is to apply up and down the Leiter rankings, but my understanding is that what matters most is writing sample, statement, recommendations and mostly luck. Once you reach a certain threshold of 'good enough to get looked at' it comes down to some faculty member being interested in what you are doing. The other thing they are looking at is "do we think this student could place a TT job in a school with a graduate department/do serious research in philosophy?" And sadly, unless you post your letters, your statement, and your writing sample, your other stats just won't tell us enough to give you any great advice on what to expect.
  10. Here is some more or less inside scoop on three departmens that show up on the report so far: On the Ohio State Acceptance (Not me): This is for a fellowship competition. There will be more acceptances. I heard this from someone in the department. On all the Notre Dame rejections (Phew, not me yet), here is a post from Fritz Warfield on Leiter's blog explaining the process: Here's how a large number of applications (more than half of the total number in a typical year) get eliminated before a full reading of a writing sample. This reports my own practice. I don't know how closely my practice resembles how others work. At Notre Dame the admissions chair looks at every application. When I am on the committee as I often am, I also look at every application. For many applications I see the following: (a) what appears to be a weak transcript, either concerning philosophy background, grades, or both; ( average or below average GRE scores; © letters that don't in any way indicate that the student is a standout or that the GRE and/or transcript is deceptively weak. In such a case I'll start reading the writing the sample and in most cases I'll get quick confirmation that the student is not a plausible applicant to our program and I'll stop reading and not recommend the file for further consideration. This year my judgement exactly matched the judgement of the Notre Dame admissions chair about what files to eliminate from consideration at the early stage in well over 95% of the cases. Where our initial judgements did not match, the file was kept alive for further consideration. Source: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2011/03/are-some-schools-using-undisclosed-gre-cut-offs-in-admissions-decisions.html On the Baylor Interviews (Yay, that is me): Heard from someone who went last year that the 12 interviews typically result in 6 offers and 6 waitlists. That is unless you have baby bones sticking out your teeth during the interview of course. There, no all you good Bayesian evidentialists can do some credence adjustments.
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