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Establishment

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Everything posted by Establishment

  1. These presses were not created for the publication of academic works. They have neither the interest nor the capabilities to evaluate such works, as compared to academic presses such as Oxford University Press which are capable of vetting submissions to established philosophers to review and judge the merits of the submission. I know that Verso has published "philosophical" texts before. I own some. But they describe them own selves as a radical publishing house. Their choices to publish Althusser or Gillian Rose has to do with such authors falling into a certain tradition of radical thinkers than academic, peer-reviewed merit. (1) really just falls out as a consequence of (2), insofar as (2) describes the time investment necessary to do philosophy broadly construed, such as being able to read and understand contemporary materials, to respond to said materials, and to do original research. No one is saying that people are inherently incapable of reading books and scrutinizing what has been said... what (1) just says is that people are incapable of reading books and scrutinizing what has been said without the proper educational investment required to understand the piece. Theoretically, I or anyone else on this forum could pick up the current issue of the Physical Review Letters, read the article, "Slow Kinetics of Brownian Maxima," and understand it, if given enough time. But that time is going to involve me teaching to oneself what a student will have spent 4 years of undergraduate courses being taught by expert professors, and 6 years of graduate coursework and research, again guided by expert professors who have decades of knowledge that they are able to impart on you. We're basically talking about 10 years, of full-time, really smart dudes teaching you some real difficult material. How long is it then going to take for a person to teach themselves, without access to such facilities, on their off time, simply to bring themselves up to speed? It would be criminally insane to go into academia for the money. Literally every person I have met who professionally studies philosophy (or any other academic discipline) chose so as an end in itself.
  2. I'll post other examples I can think of or find by editing this post. I do remember Thomas Kuhn. No PhD in philosophy (but rather physics), but he did work as a professor for a number of universities. Not at first, but eventually he'd be a professor in philosophy. He published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. But I much don't fancy Kuhn so I hate to mention him as an example. But there you go in any case for a fifth. (Or fourth. Lewis Carroll is perhaps pushing it. There are probably a wealth of other examples from around that time. I suppose we should look simply at 1950 and on, maybe.)
  3. First, a publication in South End or Verso won't demonstrate anything. Two, I think the order of explanation is as follows. It is more difficult to produce worthwhile philosophical work without (1) a philosophical background, and (2) financial support that would allow for one to focus on producing philosophical work. This should make intuitive sense. Philosophy has had a good century and some change for professionalization, and specialization tends to come with the territory. Without (1), it's much too difficult to gain enough specialty to contribute original work. As to (2), journals are already flooded with too many submissions. Your competition consists of tenured professors whose 9-5 job (with varying amounts of teaching responsibility) is to produce publications. Someone whose 9-5 job is something entirely different is facing a rather steep obstacle to create something in their spare time that equals that of the paid professional. Thus then follows the reason why, "academics, especially philosophers, don't really respect independent research." It's a stereotype that academics have for independent research that is born out by the evidence. That's not to say it cannot happen. It has. But as a general rule, someone who doesn't meet (1) and (2), isn't going to have anything to contribute. But philosophers and academics are still able to recognize the work done by independents who do not meet (1) and (2) whenever an exception to the trend occurs. Here are examples I am familiar with. One thing to note, you seem to make a distinction between independent scholar and PhD. I don't hold to this. You can be an independent scholar (i.e., not have a professional affiliation with a philosophy department) but have a PhD. And that is where most of my examples will consist in: people who did not both have a PhD in philosophy and were working as professors in philosophy. (1) Lewis Carroll (yes, the author of Alice in Wonderland) published an article in the highly respected philosophy journal, Mind, one of the very first professional philosophical journals in the world. It was entitled, "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles." Now, I'm not sure what Carroll's credentials are as to (1), nor what exactly his financial commitments were to (2). That said, philosophy was in its professional infancy at about this time in England, what with Mind, the first English professional philosophical journal being founded in 1876, and so the specialization that comes with professionalization had not yet settled in, so it's not too hard of an exception to fathom. Not to take away from Lewis Carroll though. He in fact did rather solid original work in mathematics, as well as other work in logic. But, again, with Boole's work appearing in 1854, Lewis Carroll was around for the infancy of logic where there as ample room for contribution. (2) Alan Turing. Published, also in Mind, in 1950 the article "Computing Machinery and Intelligence." Now, Turing was obviously not formally educated in philosophy as to (1), but he did fulfill the conditions of (2). His wartime efforts were long gone, and by this time he was an academic working for a university (in a non-philosophy department). Ample time to do this sort of work. And with the pioneering sort of work he was doing, there was room for someone like Turing to contribute. (3) Lewis Creary. Published in 1981, in the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, the article, "Causal Explanation and the Reality of Natural Component Forces." He meets (1). He got his PhD from Pittsburgh. And he meets (2). He was working as a research associate at Stanford at the time, funded by DARPA, in a non-philosophical department, I believe computer science, or something to that effect. (4) Chomsky. He doesn't meet (1) in that his PhD is in linguistics. Then again, it's probably not surprising that one of the most famous professional linguists would have something to contribute to the philosophy of language and related matters. He meets (2). He's held an academic post in linguistics for decades now. He's published in Journal of Symbolic Logic, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, and elsewhere.
  4. You asked for influential works, so here are my top three: (1) G. A. Cohen's book "Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence" and his article "The Labor Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation" I got into philosophy because I was first and foremost a Marxist, and so I was interested in the whole wealth of literature on Marxist philosophy, which lies squarely in the continental tradition. Lenin's remarks on Hegel's Science of Logic, Lukacs' The Ontology of Social Being and History and Defence of Class Consciousness, Marx's Grundrisse and Capital, Ilyenkov, and so on. I felt that I had to do work in this area in order to be a faithful Marxist. However, reading through these works with some professors, I came to split my politics and my career interests very sharply. Philosophy became a scientific endeavor separate from my political beliefs. Cohen showed me foremostly, how to be an analytic philosopher. The reason he was so influential was because he was able to bridge that gap for me. The content of his work interested me while I was still a continentalist, but it introduced me to a new way of doing philosophy. (2) Collected Papers of Gerhard Gentzen. Dummett introduced me to a new way of looking at metaphysical problems, to a wider understanding of the history of analytic philosophy, and most importantly, to proof theory. But I think the most lasting influence on my interest in proof theory would have to be due to reading the very first papers which started it all, those papers by Gentzen. Gentzen was a thinker par excellence, and every time I read and re-read his doctoral dissertation, I find some new appreciation. In his dissertation alone, he revolutionizes logic with the invention of natural deduction as all students are taught today in their introduction to logic courses. Yet, he finds that this invention doesn't suit his needs, so he then invents a another logical system, the sequent calculus, which gets him what he wants. He gives a simple consistency proof for this new system, and a consistency proof for arithmetic without complete induction. And all of this serves as the basis for his later writings where he will then prove the consistency of arithmetic with complete induction, without violating Godel's 2nd Theorem. All of proof theory falls back to Gentzen's doctoral dissertation and subsequent papers. Ordinal analysis on the strength of formal systems. Structural properties of formal systems. Lengths of proofs. Proof-theoretic semantics. Harmony among the logical constants. Proof theory of arithmetic. Etc. There's even a case where people wondered for decades whether a certain result held for natural deduction. We found out that Gentzen had had the answer all the way back then. It was actually a section he removed from his doctoral dissertation. It was much like how it took us centuries to solve Fermat's Last Theorem, where Fermat was saying he had already proved it. Except that Fermat could not have actually had a proof. But Gentzen did. The terrifying thing about it all, is just how clear and simple Gentzen's writing is despite the complexity and significance of the subject matter. I'm not that widely read in logical literature. I know for instance Smullyan is well regarded for his terse style. But Gentzen to me is my inspiration for writing style when it comes to logic. (3) Kierkegaard's "Fear & Trembling" I think "Fear & Trembling" is one of the greatest works ever written. The catch: I think it's one of the greatest works of literature ever written. I love Kierkegaard, but my coming to appreciate him as a writer and not as a philosopher is an additional part of my coming to terms with philosophy as a scientific field.
  5. I'm sort of reminded of Korsgaard's facebook status a while back about gpa's: "After reading a large number of graduate applications, I have some advice for my younger friends. If you find yourself getting straight As in college, don't bask in the glory of it. Transfer to a harder school!" (Relevance in that professors are looking at your GPA's and where you attended) I personally think philosophy GPA's are very important. If you're going to be making C's and B's in your philosophy courses... why is it going to change in graduate school? Which is why, when you have a low overall GPA, you want to be able to show that if you consider your philosophy GPA, over the last year or two, your grades are solid. If you can't satisfy that sort of qualification... if you're applying to graduate school with low grades in your current philosophy courses... you're just as well as done at all PhD and MA programs. I pretty much agree with HegelHatingHegelian's rating of the application components.
  6. http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2014/07/so-lets-take-another-look-at-job-placement.html Thoughts? Those percentages actually seem decent all things considered, though I have some suspicions that Boston U places better than average for their PGR rank.
  7. For whatever reason, thegradcafe has attracted the more continental folks, and whogotin the analytic folks. I'm not even sure where whogotin originally got its philosophical community, but I know Leiter advertised them a few years back, brining over his analytic readership. Which makes it rather unfortunate that whogotin is now dieing.
  8. I don't know where you're getting your information. (1) There's no 2014 issue of the PGR. (2) KU Leuven doesn't appear anywhere on the most recent issue of the PGR (2011). (http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/overall.asp)
  9. Yeah, if anything it seems that working on "hot topics" could put you at disadvantage. I heard that metaethics was a huge topic this year. If you're submitting a paper in that area, you're more likely going to have to compete with those others who have writing samples much more immediately comparable to yours.
  10. Not that it answers your question directly, but Georgia State also seems to fund a large amount of students, which is to say all of their students, all ~50 of them. They both also (if I'm reading SFSU's page correctly) pay below the average MA stipend (they're both around $5k a year), but a $5k/50% reduction in salary doesn't fully explain how they're funding 5 to 10 times as many MA students.
  11. I think abominable GRE's are infinitely better than an abominable philosophy GPA.
  12. Are there any positive patterns concerning your grades that letter writers can identify? Did you get your act together during your final two years? Despite your core curriculum work, did you maintain a ~4.0 within your major? If you have negative responses to all of those two, your chances at graduate school, even for a terminal M.A., are going to look incredibly dicey so far as I can tell. Even if your writing sample is superb, there is literally no evidence that were you to be admitted that you'd have success with the graduate program's coursework. Graduate programs, even terminal M.A.'s, are going to have a whole host of other students with as strong writing samples, but without a terrible GPA from which to select.
  13. I hope you didn't downvote Max because of your, now deleted, post being downvoted, because that was from me. Max is a trustworthy and helpful source. I don't remember what your old post said, but it seemed unnecessarily accusatory.
  14. Checking the APA Guide to Graduate Programs, they do state that SFSU has about ~130 graduate students each year. That said, with ~20 graduating each year, that sounds appropriate if we take those 20 to be those who are on track to get a 2-year MA degree and move on to other things. That would give a size of ~40 students for that demographic. Furthermore, there are 35-45 teaching fellowships and assistantships per year, according to the APA, enough to cover all them. It'd be interesting to hear from some inside sources how such a large "class" though affects the program.
  15. I'm jealous. My undergraduate experience was pretty weak. Even the upper undergraduate courses were still just reading through an anthology. ~20 pages of reading a week. ~10 page term paper. Even some of my graduate courses weren't really any different.
  16. As someone has noted, they've still experienced at PhD programs that the funding is equal. This has been my experience with MA's as well.
  17. SFSU has Van Frassen. Those other programs don't. So, there's that.
  18. Best bet is to email the department because practices differ. I know that all of that stuff was done early on for me in April, whereas I knew others who didn't receive any news from their department (didn't pick classes, didn't sign any paperwork) until August.
  19. This is exactly my point. We're dealing with a mathematician, who all we're told is "anti-philosophy." That could mean a lot of things, but it's a pretty safe bet to say that he probably has some image of philosophy as a bunch of highfalutin ungrounded talk. I know that this was my image of philosophy at first, and I'd scoff at talk about "things that speak to the very core of my being." Giving him Aurelius, Plato, ancient tragedies, philosophical themes in litearture, things that deal superficially with different philosophical themes or issues, fiction that deals with philosophy (I bet there's a 101 class out there that reads Sophie's World.), etc. I can't imagine, going off the limited description of what we have, being good suggestions relevant to what we know about this person. It seems to me that the easiest way to get a mathematician to have a positive view of philosophy, is to show them that many philosophers are doing the same thing as mathematicians, that persons with PhD's in philosophy can end up being a professor in the mathematics department and vice versa. Then, you show him the real philosophy stuff (that isn't logic). He's already, probably, aware of the famous people like Plato and Derrida. He's not interested in that. He's not interested in superficial or popularized items. I can't speak for others, but I know my suggestions aren't aimed to be universally attractive. But based on the description of the person, who reminds me of myself when I was younger, these were the exact kinds of works that I wish I had been introduced to first.
  20. Ugh, these suggestions are terrible and are exactly the sort of things that made me think I made a mistake in first majoring in philosophy. Give him Rawls' Two Concepts of a Rule. Give him Russell's On Denoting. Give him Cohen's The Labor Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation. These are some beautiful papers not needing any pre-req knowledge. Or, since they do math, just tell them that philosophers have contributed just as much as mathematicians and computer scientists to mathematical logic.
  21. After disagreeing with their first point, I think I can agree. If you can't afford the time and money to spend the whole time at a conference, then you probably shouldn't apply in the first place. Point three's a good one. Not sure how I feel about point two though. It seems to me there's the consideration of tact. It's one thing to just say, "You might be interested in article x by y which repeats many of your points, or raises objections to the points you've raised." Perhaps it's different at conferences, but I see this happen in the classroom and I don't see anything wrong with it. In fact I much like it, because I learn about many great articles that I otherwise would have missed. But of course it's something completely else to, "go on for an uncomfortable several minutes," or to, "proceed to address not the panelists, but the other audience member," and turn this into a two-man neanderthal-brow-beating-contest.
  22. I get the idea behind what you're doing, but practically speaking I don't think it's going to work. Mainly speaking, what you're asking is incredibly broad. You've got three or four interests that are going to be fulfilled by a large range of universities and professors. It's one thing to be admitted to schools X, Y, and Z and to email graduate students about professors A, B, and C. It's something completely else to ask people to tell you about Professors A1 through Professors An from schools X1 to Xn. I don't suspect a lot of people are going to respond. I know for one that I'm not going to slander my professors or my program to some anonymous person who may not even be interested in my program/advisor, or might not even get into my program were they to apply.
  23. Hopefully some others, particularly some Brandeis alum, can chime in with their opinions. Particularly if you could secure some need-based grants, that could make Brandeis really attractive. In terms of faculty members, are you drawn to either school? And even having said what I said above, taking out loans to attend Brandeis isn't necessarily a bad idea if you're debt free at the moment. Some of the advice to not attend a non-funded MA programs is in the context of the average BA graduate who will have already accumulated some amount of debt.
  24. NIU. Without an iota of doubt. Yes, Brandeis might quantitatively have a better placement record than NIU, but NIU's placement is still very strong.
  25. If your AOS is 19th and 20th century continental, then yeah. EDIT: Shit, even just for being a philosopher, it's one of the biggest pieces of the historical cannon that probably everyone needs to have read. Otherwise, it's like graduating from High School without ever having read The Great Gatsby. You'd be a cultural degenerate.
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