Monadology

Can someone (in this thread of via PM) say more about these 'ideological commitments' that education programs tend to have? I'm curious, especially as someone with an interest in pedagogy and education, but unfamiliar with the current state of the field.

Yeah, that seems like a good counterpoint. I'm certainly not sure what a good PR strategy for philosophy is! Just to be clear, and you might have gathered this, I don't know whether or not I think any of the reasons I gave are good ones. I just listed ones I thought people might have. As to the charlatan stuff/real philosopher, I'm not sure I follow you as to why it is merely descriptive. It sounds like you think the idea is that the goal is just to draw a line that excludes people like Derrida because the public sees them as ridiculous and to have an excuse not to read them. I think I understand why that doesn't imply any evaluation (it's just strategically aimed at PR goals/laziness goals?). That said, some people might mean it that way, but I'm pretty sure there are quite a few people who are not just talking like that for strategic reasons. I think this is a fairly crude reading of (5), I probably wasn't clear: I didn't mean for (5) to suggest that philosophy as it has traditionally been practiced by the sorts of people who have been called philosophers (e.g. Kant, Hume, Aquinas etc...) has a privileged grasp of ethical truth and that only people from that class can even begin to live well. What I meant in (5) was the point of view of someone who is suggesting a much more revisionary concept of 'philosopher' which doesn't presume such a privilege, though there is probably still some intended connection between being reflective about the human condition in some way and the respects in which the person was an exemplary human being. Another way is to take (5) to be saying 'look, some people live well in a way that is revolutionary or in some way philosophically significant, you've admitted that MLK was like that, so why not call him a philosopher?' That doesn't presume that the person did 'philosophy' and thereby learned to live well, but more like the reverse and the suggestion is to make room for those people to be called philosophers as well. I'm pretty sure your 'Why not just use the appropriate adjectives to directly laud them instead of using 'philosopher'' response is going to press pretty heavily against either of those, though. That said, I'm not an advocate of (5) (especially not in the way you took it). Kierkegaard whipped me out of philosophical elitism years ago. The only way (5) has any grip on me is indirectly as a kind of 'what the heck is philosophy even good for given what it describes (especially these days)' sentiment, which occasionally grips me.

Thanks for your response, Ian. You're right that I think the idea of reclaiming a word, as in the case of 'queer,' is tangential. Part of the reason I raised my question was because it seems to me that your philosophy professor was doing something closer to the reclamation case than, say, trying to give the meaning of the word. So I was surprised that your response was "Words aren't assigned meaning that way." The case is a bit muddled because your professor is working with a use of 'philosopher' that is an genuine live usage, albeit not one that is very active in academic philosophy: identifying individuals whose lives and thought exemplify philosophical wisdom. Still, I had taken it that your professor was advocating for that usage, not saying what the popular usage was within academia. I wasn't there of course, so I may have misunderstood! There seem to be a number of considerations that weigh against the narrow, academic use of the word: (1) Adding the adjective 'academic' to 'philosopher' already clearly narrows the scope to precisely the typical academic usage of 'philosopher'. Why make 'philosopher' track what 'academic philosopher' tracks? (2) It puts the use of 'philosopher' out of sync with its usage in the general public, who often use it in a broader sense and an evaluative sense. This contributes to a disconnect between the public and philosophy. [When the public thinks of a philosopher they do not generally think of someone who writes papers about whether lumpl and goliath are identical objects] (3) It narrows the scope of what will receive academic attention in philosophy to a narrow subset of people (a subset which, as has been emphasized lately, is not very diverse). (4) [This seem to be part of your professor's point] It makes the meaning of 'philosopher' disconnected with the properties such as 'producing most of the best work of philosophical value.' This leaves us without a helpful word to refer to those who are not academic philosophers but who produce work of great philosophical value. It also implicitly removes this as an ideal for a[n academic] philosopher. (5) Along these lines, because of the narrow scope, the exemplary philosopher now becomes more of a researcher (emphasizing 'work' in that sense) as opposed to the exemplary philosopher being someone who lives well and does not just research well: most people would not take Martin Luther King to be an exemplary philosopher merely because of what he wrote. Notably, the same goes for Socrates. Dumbnamechange has made some very good points that I think weaken some of these complaints, namely that we do not need a special word to perform some of these functions: adequate descriptions should do. There are also reasons to be wary about evaluatively valenced terms, since they can be used to set boundaries in a much more malicious way. Additionally, the traditional evaluative use probably is entangled with the conception of the philosopher as a genius, which is itself entangled in our biases about gender, race and so on. For that reason, the narrow use might be helpful in the same way that emphasizing actual research in our vision of what a philosopher is can help tone down the influence of implicit bias in our judgment. One doesn't have to be a genius, just a researcher. This relates to the remarks you close on: while the bare word 'philosopher' is not perhaps always straightforwardly evaluative, the non-evaluative content becomes important when we attach evaluative modifiers. There is definitely an important evaluative element of 'philosopher' in that sense even among those who use it to mean 'academic philosopher': e.g. 'Derrida is a charlatan, not a real philosopher,' 'Saul Kripke is the greatest philosopher since Kant' The evaluative use often comes into play more indirectly, such as when sorting 'good' and 'bad' philosophy apart which is more common than sorting into than 'good' and 'bad' philosophers. The evaluative dimension is still very much live even in the academic use of 'philosopher' though, for these reasons (even if no evaluative terms would appear in the dictionary definition which might be something like 'Someone who works in a philosophy department as a professor').

Ian, do you think that pragmatic reasons can warrant advocating the usage of a word contrary to its shared meaning/popular usage? For an example, take the deliberate reclamation of derogatory terms like 'queer'. I ask this because if pragmatic reasons can warrant advocating a change in the meaning of a word (or insisting on it meaning something), then the debate is less about one's theory of meaning and more about whether there are good reasons to use 'philosopher' in a way that includes Martin Luther King or, more strongly, is exemplified by Martin Luther King.

I apologize for my inaccurate speculations (though it was certainly not my intent to raise any worries about some kind of 'mass exodus'). I don't know if the situation is as tidbits described for the faculty member I have in mind, but it is certainly possible.

I'm not sure how much is appropriate to say, but there is another UW Madison faculty who is in the process of applying out (they have not been offered a job yet to my knowledge, hence I am not sure whether it is appropriate for me to say more). I suspect that Scott Walker is driving faculty away. Anyone considering offers from UW Madison should ask any faculty they are interested in working with whether they plan to stick around. Having faculty leave/the Scott Walker budget cut in the background should make this a perfectly reasonable question to ask (I think it is a good question for any prospective student to ask regardless, but it can feel awkward to ask when there is no apparent motivation for worrying).

A lot of good advice here! Especially DontFly's advice. Something DontFly touches on and which I want to emphasize if you are applying to an MA as a stepping stone to a PhD: look into what kind of support the programs offer for students who are applying to PhD programs. Do they have a writing sample workshop or something similar, for instance? Try to ask about the concrete details of how they support students in the placement process.

These sorts of results are not just legends. I know that there were two students applying out of UW Milwaukee's MA program that the faculty there thought were likely to do well (this was from a class 2-3 years prior to mine). The first year they got shut out. The second year, one of them got into Harvard, the other into UNC (I think - it was a top program) but both were rejected from every other program they applied to. Granted, that isn't a case of someone being rejected from an MA but accepted to a PhD, but I don't see why it should be any different in that case. Admissions is unpredictable.

I had a similar experience! The first time I applied out of my MA program (UW Milwaukee, in fact, where I gained my love of Berkeley - so I'll admit my recommendation is a bit biased), I looked at UC Riverside and for some reason decided it wasn't a good enough fit to make my list. Then two people in my cohort were admitted there and visited. Neither of them ended up at UCR, but both came back from the visit and basically said 'It's perfect for you! Why didn't you apply there?' I checked again and realized it was, in fact, an excellent fit.

Berkeley is awesome! How come you didn't apply to the MA at UW Milwaukee? Margaret Atherton is fantastic if you want to do Berkeley (and early modern in general).

Interesting! I don't think they had one last year, but they also ended up with only two students in the incoming class. Perhaps they changed things because of that result.

That's right. Last year I was wait-listed at Purdue. At Purdue that year, the admissions was organized by AOI. I was in the 'continental' category (at the top of the wait list). I would only get an offer from them if the person who currently had an offer and was their 'continental' candidate turned it down. If someone with an offer with a different AOI (say philosophy of religion) turned their offer down, I wouldn't get an offer. Instead, the first person on the wait-list in the 'philosophy of religion' category would get the offer. I have also heard second-hand that sometimes AOIs from previous years matter. If the last class at a program was really heavy on phil of mind, they might emphasize other AOIs because otherwise the phil mind faculty will have a lot of advisees (which is bad for the faculty and advisees). The only trend I have seen as far as rank is that people who get into more than one top program have decent odds of getting into a few more. But even the all-stars don't generally get in everywhere, and will get rejections from lower ranked programs.

Congrats to all the acceptances this week! A lot of action today. I don't have any insider information, but going by the timeline from prior years UCR should be sending out offers soon. There is a job search going on here, so that might be slowing admissions stuff down.

I wouldn't infer anything from this. Lots of people who get into well ranked programs get rejected from lower ranked programs. I've heard of someone who got into Harvard and was rejected from every other program they applied to. Plus, while fit helps and is important, it might just be that they preferred someone else with the same interests and didn't want two incoming people overlapping two much with interests (and the reason for the preference could be any number of reasons that might not even have to do much with the quality of your application). It's even possible that the interests of the cohort last year could have influenced whether they wanted to admit someone with your interests this year. tl;dr the admissions process is really chaotic and basically impossible to predict. The evidentiary (evidential?) weight of rejections, wait-lists and acceptances is minimal.

Let's assume that some areas are foundational. Isn't it true, though, that many people working in 'subfields' are also, more likely than not, working on those areas? This seems to be something you would agree with, Ian. So wouldn't the view have to be something more than 'epistemology is foundational', since, for example, many feminist philosophers do work on epistemology and, indeed, about the very core of epistemology? It seems like it would have to be more like 'contemporary epistemology done in the inherited tradition of a subsection of anglophone philosophy'? In other words, whatever definite description picks out the sort of epistemology done at top ranked departments. That seems a much harder view to defend than the much more general view that epistemology is foundational.'