thatsjustsemantics

Update: this is where I'm going. There is either 2 or 1 funded slots left. Best of luck to all. Anyone else who is attending or attended should message and say hi.

I'll bump this thread. I'm currently waiting to hear back from NIU until I make my decision. I was informed that (being intentionally vague) fewer than a handful of offers need to be declined in order for one of the GAships to go to me, and there are fewer than a handful of GAships to go around. If anyone here is thinking about declining NIU, please do it soon. I work two shifts (two jobs) this Friday, which is just adding on to my anxiety because I won't always be able to access my phone to see if an offer came through on the 15th. In other words, make your decisions as early as possible!

I'm currently waitlisted for funding at Oklahoma and NIU. I'm not really sure if I'll make it off the waitlist at either school. If not, I'll be applying again next to year (probably only to MA programs this time). I'm really hoping for NIU, just because they're fairly open about their program success and the professors seem nice; but Oklahoma looks like a great program too. I'm just very suspicious of the notion of 'fit,' and although there are some significant differences between both schools that I could factor in, I just can't care for them; I want to go where I'll be happy and achieve my goals, but you can't predict that. NIU is a better fit given my interests and strengths, but who's to deny that I could branch out at OU and strike underdeveloped potential? In any case, I just wish it was April 15th already.

Can anyone chime in on the possibility of studying non-standard languages in graduate programs for philosophy? I can speak and read French at a near-proficient level. I'm bored by European languages, and I just don't care for European culture in general (I came to recognize this after spending a year traveling in Europe). I want to learn Arabic, Russian, or Japanese. Not only do these languages and cultures tentatively interest me, but I think they're better for alt-academic jobs in case the system beats me. Has anyone studied any language besides German or French without having to make a rigorous case for why that language impacts your research? I just want to learn a non-European language.

It's ok. In any case, we're in a lot of trouble because there are context failures in language all the time, because it flew over my head that quoting you does suggest directing something to you.

Hey buddy: you're not 'a lot of people,' you're a person; the attribution of confusion wasn't directed at you. It was a general comment directed at people who haven't heard a lot about Gricean implicatures except in passing. Come on: don't just presuppose that something is perfectly obvious in philosophy, even for philosophers. Remember: to most people, we don't make much sense. It's like that dailynous post that went up maybe a week ago. In that post, Justin asks philosophers to remember that professors of philosophy are so unique in their interest in academia that they pursue philosophy in universities, and that's weird. (The point being that no, you were not perfectly obvious with what you meant).

That's a conventional implicature. A conversational implicature is something you do based on contextual factors and understanding of conventions in conversation. It's like rule-following according to pragmatics. A conventional implicature, on the other hand, is what is expressed beyond the content of what is said in virtue of the conversational conventions. I don't mean to be pedantic either, it's just that a lot of people confuse the two. Source: Scott Soames' Philosophical Essays *Presupposition), Essay I (footnote).

Let's be charitable to some of our top applicants; veiled resentment is unhealthy. A lot of applicants wait to make their decisions after visiting the department. Not all department visits are early. If there's something (more or less) to blame, blame departments: sometimes they schedule their visits obnoxiously in April. Moreover, let's be charitable to the departments (haha!). When there's over fifty departments trying to schedule visits, and some of these departments have applicants who will be visiting more than one school, they have to schedule their visits at an appropriate time. Imagine if MIT scheduled at the same time as Princeton, so applicants deciding between the two couldn't have an informed decision about where they'd like to go. Departments risk letting uninformed applicants decide where they would like to go, whereas it could have been the case that a visit to their department would have changed their initial leanings. tl;dr it's too complicated to assign blame carelessly, where 'carelessly' means not giving enough purchase to others' discrepancies with respect to the waiting list.

You misread. He or she does not endorse (1) or (2). What he or she meant is this: (1) there are a sufficient number of suffering events that some agents can mitigate. (2) One way to achieve productivity is to reduce the occurrence or severity of suffering events. (3) Some philosophers could have achieved greater productivity in society if they had chosen careers that mitigate suffering. (1) is solid, Schwarzwald. You can argue, however, against (2) or (3).

Is anyone thinking of declining NIU soon? I've not really seen ithe program on anyone else's signatures (except for a withdrawal) or mentioned this year.

I don't know why you're conflating the strength of your undergrad program with the strength of your application. There are better schools to do philosophy than your 'no-name' undergrad, we're sure of that, but you should know that it's your particular preparation, course of study, and application that really appealed to those admissions committees. In any case, I'm rooting for your Notre Dame wait-list! It's a huge department, and a great school, so I hope it works out there too (or any of your other waitlists, for that matter).

My intuition is that reapplying after a year or two would be a bad idea unless you had a very good reason, one that your professors and peers will charitably accept. I don't know anything about the MAPH, but it's been suggested that it commands little respect in the admissions process. Elsewhere, if you're not interested in accepting an offer because you think that neaxr year you could offered admission at somewhere more appealing given your interests or tastes, my suggestion is just to wait next year and try again. However, I'm hoping that you applied to schools that you wanted to go to in case only one works out, so perhaps the suggestion might not be helpful (who wants to wait?).

What about your acceptance to FSU?

I have no idea what makes a tradition a tradition, now that I think about it. History of philosophy is tough, and I can only imagine that the philosophy of history is even harder (or at least theories about what conception of history we should endorse). In any case, there's no analytic vs. continental argument going on here. The distinction is superficial on many levels, and only really serves to alienate or polarize certain theorists. Not here! n.n

I'll respond to your last question: there does not have to be a correlative. I don't even know how you could dare an extrapolation like that from my post. A correlative was suggested so as to ground my understanding of thinkers in the continental tradition. It would have served the same purpose as an analogy, right? Anyways, I'll be clear: the point of my post is that some analytic philosophers are ignorant of the advancement of theories in the continental tradition (including myself). I stopped at the introduction and complication of phenomenology. My introduction to Foucault and Deleuze was merely cursory, but I took very little away from it. I took a lot away from Rawls and Kripke (especially Rawls). I could see quite clearly how Rawls was advancing political philosophy, likewise Kripke with modality and language. If I were to read Butler and her stuff on performative acts, or Agamben and his stuff on Homo Sacer, (I don't know anything about Laurelle, Anidjar, or Asad), could you explain how they depart from or improve the ideas of previous thinkers or theories? I'm not asking you to explain now, it's just a question I want you to pose. Indeed, one of the things I absolutely love about analytic philosophy is this sense that people are responding to each others theories, trying to find common denominators from all the fractions of knowledge that people previously produced in the form of publications. You can take a course on a particular subject (the philosophy of time) and start from Newton or Leibniz, make your way to Mach and Einstein, to the British Idealists (McTaggart being the prime example), and then make your way up to philosophers like David Lewis, Ted Sider, Ned Markosian, and Ross P. Cameron.