MentalEngineer

I'm not an AdComm, but I'd read the shit out of that paper.

I have a list as long as my arm of lessons learned in this area. Sadly, the only generally applicable one is: this is a minefield, tread carefully, good luck. You know, in case the application process in isolation wasn't enough cause for optimism.

My thesis defense was basically all three committee members saying "You know you're done with this topic. We know you're done with this topic. We'll ask you a few questions that we know you have answers to because we've heard you complaining about how unhelpful the answers are for weeks, and then you can start working on something interesting."

I changed my writing sample as well and also went from a thesis chunk to an original piece. My intuition, though, is that success has less to do with fit and more with quality. Writing about something I was genuinely interested in exploring and saw as a critical element of a broader research program made this year's WS much better as a paper than the thesis chunk I defaulted to last year because it happened to be the best thing I had. That writing about something which interests me also does a better job of showing my fit for programs that I want to be in seems like less of a factor than the jump in quality between the two topics.

They didn't have Satan. You want Aramaic. Also, the cat goes on the outside of the pentagram, you go on the inside, and there's no bathrobe. You all remembered the goat blood, right?

I am fairly confident from some of the other emails I've since received that everyone who is getting an outright acceptance has gotten one. I don't know if they're running a waitlist, how long it is, or when they might notify people who are on it.

Even if they do, your WS is almost certainly good enough to make up the difference. I have no idea what AdComms think or don't think about having a terminal MA as an indication of "potential" - whatever that even means. But I have a pile of anecdata, both from my own development and seeing how other people at my program have grown, that says doing an MA makes your work so, so much better. A couple of us, maybe, could have written the writing samples we're using without the extra training. I'm just going to straight up quite my SoP because it makes the point better: That stuff shows in your work. Does it ever. And I think (although I suppose I'm yet to find out for sure) that development is worth more when you start your PhD than getting to skip some coursework. Also, if you want to be teaching, an MA might be enough to at least get started down that road. This obviously depends a lot on location and dumb chance, but still.

When do we get to come see him?!

Sometime in May, just like every other rejection. Tongue only somewhat in cheek, sadly.

Also, brewery tours. I'm going to miss Wisconsin.

Yeah, this is the end of the debate that I came in from. Like, the way Kant goes about taking the concerns of British Empiricism seriously got me interested. But I'm way more worried about how we underwrite the systematic inferences about the way the world is that then get concretized into societal dogmas and institutional policies than I am about whether we can draw 'ordinary' inferences about the existence of tables. I just tend to run them together because it smells to me as though the same epistemic arrogance that I think might be at play in the PhilSci side of the question(s) bleeds into the way philosophers think about the ordinary inferences.

Fine, you can have How to Do Things with (Magic) Words. But I'm keeping The World as Wand and Incantation.

I feel as if this answer avoids saying anything that would commit you to being wrong or incapable of proving you're right at the cost of not saying anything particularly satisfying about WTF reality is. (I would say substantive, but there's definitely a sense in which this result would be substantive, and I should admit at least that.) But this is just the argument we start having every time we hit the bar. Anyone else want to lead me out of my dogmatic slumber?

I don't think we have no reason to think the relation holds. I think there's a reason to think the relation holds. I just don't know what the reason is, and I was hoping metaphysics might be able to tell me. I also don't know what the relation is, although I'm a bit less hopeful metaphysics can tell me that one.

FSU

You know that now I'm going to ask you what metaphysical goo is, and how you know something has it. So: what's metaphysical goo, and how do you know something has it?

Hey there, buddy! I guess we can narrow down the scope of the conversation a bit, at least in terms of what I was trying to get a handle on. Not that I'm the first person to wonder this, but what's the difference between "what it is to be a ____" and "what is what we take it to be to be a ____"? When I wonder what metaphysics is up to, that concern, and the skepticism that there is (or could be? less sure here) much difference between them are the kinds of things I wonder about. I don't think you're reading tea leaves; there's something at least some metaphysics gets at. But I also don't know what that real thing metaphysics responds to or if it's as real as the strawman metaphysician in my head wants 'real' to be. Also, if a metaphysician ever displayed the ability to do "all kinds of sorcery," I'd switch subfields in a flash and write How to Do Things with (Magic) Words. Also, I will find a way to sue the pants off anyone who takes that title before I use it for something.

I have to teach! I've never had an independent prep before, so I get to be neurotic about whether I can get a bunch of teenagers to look at me with the right sort of puzzlement and what readings I'm going to assign for those two weeks at the end of the syllabus that just say "TBD". (For those of you who haven't done this yet, you can get a lot of neurotic mileage out of this. A lot. Oh God, so much.) If I don't spend enough time being neurotic about my students and grading their work, I get in trouble (I think I'd still get paid, but I'm very, very, very terrified of finding out). So this is very helpful in driving most other neuroses out of my mind.

I submitted the details of my offer through some link or other on the blog a while ago. Is that distinct from sending you a funding email, and if so, how do I do the latter?

I thought that was you? It's what you're doing every time I stop by your office...

Honestly, now that Julius Sensat's retired I wouldn't recommend UWM for people whose primary interest is continental. Bill Bristow is good, but depending on who you're most concerned with he may not have the background to help you. We generally get one graduate seminar on a major continental figure and maybe a course on Kant per year: last year it was Hegel and this year Nietzsche. So you'd be looking at maybe a third, and probably more like a quarter, of your credit hours being on continental figures, and those are likely all going to be historical. Women's Studies and English have things on different bits of critical theory from time to time, but with only two years here, you might miss the courses that would be most helpful. Whether that's enough preparation I'll let you judge. (As a final piece of data, to my knowledge there have been three writing samples on continental topics in the last three years out of 30+ students: two on different aspects of Nietzsche and one connecting Hegel to debates in contemporary phil. of mind.) I suppose that you could get into UWM and then take a bunch of courses from Marquette, which is much stronger in continental. They seem quite good from what I can tell (I've gone to a decent number of their talks and a couple of one-day conferences), but I don't really have the background to say for sure. Unfortunately, I'm still unsure that you could do enough courses that way to give you a strong background to apply to continental PhD programs. You might do better to consider getting an MA at Marquette directly if their funding and ranking permit that.

There may yet be hope; I don't know that acceptances without fellowship nominations have gone out yet.

Well, since I've taken the plunge and registered, I may as well give my profile. Anyone from my program will instantly recognize me, so hello, you fellow neurotics! Philosophy was my third undergraduate major. Between the early failed classes that led to migrating across fields and work ethic problems, my undergrad GPA was only 3.51 and my philosophy GPA not much higher. I attended an unranked undergrad that, if it is known, is known for having its entire economics department sponsored by the Koch brothers and making the Final Four that one time 10-odd years ago. But I somehow scraped my way into a top-tier funded MA and had an absolute blast. I struck out in my first year of applications, but I've been able to stay in the city where I got my MA auditing courses, going to colloquia, and writing, and I get to adjunct in the spring. So I think I put together a fairly productive "third year." For my writing sample this year, I wrote an entirely original piece instead of refining a term paper, which definitely helped me because I gave a shit about the subject matter this time. My interests mostly fall under philosophy of mind and psychology, evolutionary ethics - shading into phil. of science and phil. of biology, metaethics (because I hate it and want it gone), practical reasoning, some stuff about identity and action, and the ethical and policy fallout of debates in those other areas. I've got side interests in Nietzsche, pragmatism, feminist philosophy, and Sartre. Most importantly, I've also developed a finely honed methodological approach: if I can be skeptical of something, I'm skeptical of it; if I can't be skeptical of it, I'm deflationary about it; if I can't be skeptical or deflationary, I'm pragmatist about it; if I somehow can't manage any of those, I assume modal realism and choose the position that follows from that. This ensures that even if I never finish, I'll at least enjoy myself. TL;DR: 3.51 UG (3.54 philosophy), 3.97 MA, 169V/159Q/5.5AW Arizona, CUNY, Texas, UCSD, UC Riverside, WashU, Duke, Maryland, British Columbia, Cincinnati, FSU, UI Urbana Champaign, UI Chicago

FSU was mine. According to the grad school website, yesterday was the deadline for the department to submit fellowship nominations, so I'd think anyone with a shot at a fellowship should have heard from them.