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.

I think the one text belonging to the continental camp that has impacted my worldview the most is 'Simulacrum and Simulation' by Baudrillard. The very notion of a simulacrum gave me a 'clearing' with which to understand the manipulation of simulacra (X is a simulacrum just in case there is a Y such that Y is represented by X, the representation of Y by X deceives societies by masking or perverting realistic interpretations of Y). For example, let Y be 'love' and let 'X' be a Nicholas Sparks film. Let Y be 'friendship' and let X be 'facebook,' where someone thinks you hate them because you defriended them on facebook. Anyways, the point is that there's some really good stuff in the continental camp, but the camp also suffers from a lot of convoluted, pretentious writing. At the analytic arena, on the other hand, you've got a lot of people making minor points concerning smaller debates over a special topic of interest under a sub-topic of philosophy (is the point taken yet?). With that being said, the continentals could use some PR work. Is there anything of comparable importance in continental philosophy in the later 20th century to Rawls' A Theory of Justice? Where's the continental correlative to Naming and Necessity? I'm not calling continental philosophy out; I'm just ignorant of what happened after Foucault or Deleuze, who weren't exactly 'mavericks' like Hegel, Husserl, or Heidegger.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh thank you! Amherst is my top choice in terms of fit (philosophy of time), so I'm really crossing my fingers that I'll be a part of that first round... but we'll see.

To be honest, I've noticed this interesting correlation about people who didn't think they'd do well this admission season, who end up doing extremely well this admission season, and it turns out they're from some of the best places to do philosophy -- with letters from P.V. Inwagen, for example. The correlation is interesting to note because one expects more confidence from people who underwent an excellent course of study with good professors in a (presumably) great community setting, but the betrayal of insecurity might lead us to believe that attendance at such programs is tough due to the pressure to be excellent and to compete with excellent peers. As for me, I went to a small liberal arts college on a need-based scholarship. My department peers would tease me, very rarely, only because I'd turn my philosophy papers in on time when the norm was to turn it in a few days late. The environment was chill, and I was doing relatively well. Now, I'm getting waitlisted for funding at MA progams (despite having higher expectations), and I kind of just feel chill about it . . . how the world works, I guess.

I was recently waitlisted (top 3) at Oklahoma (MA). It's kind of my top choice at this point, so if anyone is thinking of declining please let them know soon so I know where I stand!

Here's the rub, and I'm not trying to end the thread: as I understand it, it's impossible for you to know what it will be like attending one university over another and seeing through your course of study. It's impossible to know what it will be like because your course of study counts as a transformative experience (see L.A. Paul). The transformative experience, which you have not yet undergone, cannot be fairly evaluated in comparison to other potential transformative experiences, precisely because you have not yet undergone those experiences! It's lame because we're epistemically limited, but the risk keeps us young. In my opinion, if I were lucky enough to have options between schools, I would choose fit and location over prestige. Over time, you'll just stop caring about the prestige stuff. What you'll really value is the great experiences you share with others in your cohort, and the great times you had practicing philosophy in a community setting -- but what makes or breaks your course of study will be just that: the quality of your community. For instance, I just can't stand people who stress out really easily and, whether knowingly or unknowingly, take it out on others; I also can't stand childish one-upmanshipisms -- criticizing without a point or leading us somewhere constructive, for the sake of... well, I just don't know how people can be ignorant of how they belittle others constantly without feeling remorseful. But how in the hell can you predict whether you'll get along really well with your cohort or not?

WashU is real, according to our facebook group.

3:00 PM EST.

Well, it seems like OU offers only two funded MA spots. All I know is that they have not had an admissions meeting yet, but that it might be sometime this week or the next (consistent with past results). edit: also, would you mind expounding upon the funding crisis in OK? Your sources and its impact so far?

my thoughts exactly: come on Oklahoma and NIU!

Just received a rejection from UW-Madison. Not my best fit, but it's a great school.