An Unconventional and Fruitful Approach to Studying Philosophy
The New Yorker published a profile of L.A. Paul (Yale) today. It’s a detailed, positive piece that covers her background, education, career, and ideas.
–
One particularly interesting part concerned her undergraduate education with Quentin Smith at Antioch College:
Smith suggested that Paul read widely and reach out to philosophers whose work intrigued her. Perhaps, he said, they would agree to correspond with her for a modest sum. A letter-writing campaign resulted in a sort of pedagogical supervision-by-mail with three of them. Paul offered each a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar personal check and asked if they would reply to letters about their work, as well as comment on a paper of her own. They agreed to correspond with her, she now suspects, “not quite knowing what they were signing up for.”
Every two weeks for many months, Paul mailed at least twenty typewritten pages to each philosopher, attempting to dissect their arguments one by one. They responded to all of Paul’s letters. By the end of the experiment, Paul felt surer of herself. She wrote a paper about the philosophy of time—“Truth Conditions of Tensed Sentence Types”—and used that, along with letters of recommendation from her epistolary tutors, to apply to twenty graduate programs, which she chose based on which had the lowest acceptance rates. She got into all but two and decided on Princeton, which was the most prestigious and home to David Lewis and Saul Kripke, two of the most famous working philosophers at the time. Paul arrived in 1993, having heard of hardly anyone in the department.
When I suggest that students get in touch with philosophers whose work they’re reading, they often reveal that it never occurred to them to do so. But it can be worthwhile, especially for advanced undergraduate students (and graduate students), so long as they’re advised on how to do it properly: asking a limited number of specific related questions based on them having read and thought about the philosopher’s work, doing some preliminary research to make sure they’re not asking questions the answers to which are readily available elsewhere, explaining the context in which their questions arise, doing all this professionally and politely, and being prepared for the possibility that your email may go unanswered.
Whether the student should offer to pay the professors for their time, as Paul did, well, I’m not sure I’d advise that to most students, but it may depend on the student and on what they’re asking for. It would be unusual, but sometimes taking (what are in academia) unconventional approaches can be fruitful, as it was in Paul’s case.
The whole article is here.
Discussion welcome.
For the low low rate of $500 per page I would happily be your advisor. Contact info below. Must be able to write in LaTeX and read formal-ese. Must be willing to leave your classical intuitions at the door.
Unfortunately I can’t link to the New Yorker article because I’m not a subscriber. is there any other way to link to the article?
Hi Gary
It is archived here
https://archive.ph/vNhYD
I was never instructed to do this, let alone explicitly taught how to do this well. Unsurprisingly, then, I have made a few mistakes along the way, having to do with the (annoying) politics of academia.
My advice to graduate students is to reach out to academics humbly. If you acknowledge that you are still learning, and that what you may be asking about is possibly answered in a part of the literature which you have simply not yet read, and if you release your correspondent from any expectation of a response (let alone a timely one), you may be pleasantly surprised to find that even well respected scholars will take the time to respond, even if only ever so briefly. I should add that I almost exclusively reach out to scholars whom I greatly respect, even if I disagree with them, so it probably does not hurt that I always emphasize how much I admire their work.
I would also advise any graduate students going down this route to check in with their advisors before hand. Students have an obligation to not put their supervisors in an awkward position. Moreover, supervisors are often better positioned to fill in their students on social dynamics which occur behind the scenes.
Having said all of this, I would still recommend regularly reaching out to other scholars, especially junior scholars who are not only eager to receive feedback, but are often quite sympathetic to the challenges one faces as a student in the academy as it stands at the time of your writing.
If you look at some of the most prominent thinkers in history, you will find that many of them were avid correspondents with other leading thinkers. When you write letters you can often work through your thinking more rapidly than might otherwise be the case were you to wait for a published response to your published work that may simply never come.
I would add one more point, this time to senior scholars. While I am sure you are already aware of this, when a student reaches out with questions and comments, they stand as a partial representation of those in the generation to come who have found your work interesting. As such, you can learn something too through these conversations, even if only how your work might be received in the future.
Years ago, I was teaching a class that included an article by Peter Singer where, amongst other issues, he discussed the moral status of pets. There was some disagreement in the class regarding what his moral position on pets actually was. On a lark, I decided to email him about the article and simply ask what his position on the moral status of pets actually was, fully expecting that my email would be perfunctorily ignored. To my surprise, within a day, I received a cordial, detailed reply that I was able to share with the class. It added a new dimension to the discussion.
The moral of the story: You just never know.
The very first philosophy class I took was a philosophy of religion course, at Boise State, taught by a philosopher from near-by Northwest Nazarene College, who was teaching it at BSU as an adjunct. (I didn’t really understand any of this at the time.) Among our texts were some by John Hick. Of course, I had no idea who he was, but was under the assumption then that anyone who wrote books we’d use in a class must be a big deal. The professor told us how when he’d taught the class before, there was some dispute about how to understand something Hick had said, and so his class went to his office and called Hick on the phone, happening to get him, and had a little discussion about what Hick had meant. That sounded amazing and exciting to me – one of the first indications that one might be part of a group of scholars in dialogue with each other.
I use ChatGPT for this and it’s free.
For now. Like Uber, they’re starting out by letting you spend the money of rich investors. The eventual goal is to monetize it once they’ve run their competitors out of business by underpricing them. Uber’s competitors are traditional cabs and public transit. ChatGPT’s competitors are people who can write.
The question is whether people who can write can outlast ChatGPT’s money reserves, or whether it’s going to succeed at putting us out of business and replacing us, at which point it’ll have a monopoly on generating text and it can jack the prices way up because there are no humans left who know how to write for themselves or others.
Personally I hope ChatGPT does not utterly destroy literacy beyond a basic level for the next generation of human beings, and that it instead runs out of money and cant keep offering its services for free, but uh, I dunno how optimistic to be.
Why on earth would you use Fancy Predictive Text to find out what philosophers think? For any definition you like of “know”, no matter how loose, how would it know?
Ship has already sailed. I can say from personal experience that it’s already creating work that is duping professionals in multiple subfields.
As an undergraduate, I did this quite often. As a rule, I found that professional philosophers were thrilled to hear that a young scholar was engaging with and enjoying their work, and were quite happy to correspond over email or maybe even conduct a brief video call. Moreover, I found that such discussions were remarkably easy to parlay into talk of one’s own work and even graduate prospects, assuming that the professor in question works at a potential grad school destination.
I started my Ph.D. in Fall 2019, straight outta undergrad. The pandemic derailed chances to conference during crucial years. So I reached out to people I was reading and engaging with. Almost always I started by expressing genuine interest and questions about their work, then asking if I could Zoom.
As a result, I was able to develop networks of scholars in my areas of research, outside my program, who know me, have mentored, counseled, and shepherded me, and who exchange drafts and offer perspective. Basically many of the favorable outcomes of conferencing.
I always tell other grads to reach out to the people they are thinking with and writing about!
This seems related to a question I’ve got. I minored in philosophy, but I’ve been out of school for several years now and I don’t want to go to grad school anytime in the foreseeable future.
There’s a philosopher at a local university who works in fields I’m really, really interested in (political liberalism, political epistemology). I’ve read some of his work (his last couple books, a few articles, and some of his public facing stuff), and he seems to know the terrain of the things I’m interested in.
I’ve wanted to talk to him and pick his brain for a while now. I have some arguments I want to try out, but can’t with my friends. I’ve also got some general questions that seem like they probably would have been written about somewhere, but I’m not even sure where to begin looking.
So my situation differs from the one described in that I’m a local, but not a student, and I don’t have an interpretive question about his work (he’s generally a very clear writer). Would it be unreasonable to reach out to him? If it would be reasonable to reach out, what would be the best tact? He’s making a public appearance for his upcoming book, and I was hoping to go to that and feel things out, but I had a work thing come up, so that’s out.
Non-philosopher here (and not employed in academia, though I think I can say I’m somewhat familiar with its ways). My reaction is as follows.
As a non-student, you don’t have the same kind of claim on this person’s time and attention that a student might. (I assume that, given what you’ve written, this person is busy and has various claims on his time, as is the case w/ most or all successful professors, esp. those w/ a public presence of some kind). So I would not approach this with the thought that you will likely have some kind of general and ongoing dialogue with him.
However, if you have a specific disagreement with an aspect of his work or a specific argument you want to make, you could certainly do that in a (polite) email (or letter). Be open, explain you’re not a student but that you’ve read his work and that you wanted to say such-and-such about it. People, no matter how successful (unless maybe they’ve reached quasi-celebrity status), are always pleased that someone has actually read what they’ve written and cared about it enough to have a thoughtful reaction. So there’s no reason not to write him. If he replies, great; and if not, you haven’t lost anything except a little time.
For whatever it’s worth, when I said I had read some of his public writing, I was referring to the genre, not necessarily its level of prominence. That stuff was mostly published in smaller outlets I had never heard of before; I tracked it down a couple years ago during a brief period when I was considering applying to grad schools, before I learned that pursuing an advanced philosophy degree would mean throwing my life away. I won’t try to judge how successful he is within the academic world.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to suggest that I had any claim to anyone’s time. Justin’s original post said that he wouldn’t usually recommend offering to pay people for this sort of thing (and doing that would certainly impact the dynamic of the conversation), but maybe this would be one of the exceptions? Getting beers was more like what I had in mind, though. If I was just going to pay someone to correspond over email, there are others who I would probably rather reach out to first. Would it maybe make sense to see if I can audit a class? That somehow feels less icky and transactional.
Thanks for the clarifications. I think what Bradley R. suggests (having drinks, with you paying) would make sense; so would auditing a class, if that’s possible. At the risk of repeating clichés, just follow your instincts and do what seems right to you.
Abraham Lincoln once said, nothing gets lost by taking some time
“I minored in philosophy and am really interested in your areas of research. I’ve read your work and really like it. Any chance I could buy you a beer and talk over some ideas?”
I would say yes to that, most semesters.
Start a podcast and interview them about their work. You’re welcome!
I would suggest that Laurie Paul’s strategy may work well for some but only on condition that not too many people employ it. I guess I might reply to the occasional polite enquiry about my work, but only on condition that I don’t get to many. An avalanche of such enquiries would lead to mass deletions adn I would not be able to cope.
Should be
I would suggest that Laurie Paul’s strategy may work well for some but only on condition that not too many people employ it. I guess I might reply to the occasional polite enquiry about my work, but only on condition that I don’t get to many. An avalanche of such enquiries would lead to mass deletions as I would not be able to cope
Oh dear, the New Yorker reduces philosophers to a collection of strange creatures cavorting in a cartoon landscape.