Academia | Nick Byrd, Ph.D.

Peer-review: on what basis should we reject papers?

When you peer-review a paper, you can make one of a few basic recommendations to the editor. One option is this: do not publish the paper.

So what criteria should you use to make such a recommendation? In this post, I argue that some criteria are better than others.

1. Is the paper convincing?

A friend of mine mentioned this criterion the other day: “…[philosophy] papers ought to be convincing.” Call this the Convince Me standard or CM.

Maybe you think that CM sounds like a reasonable standard for peer-review. I don’t. Continue reading Peer-review: on what basis should we reject papers?

Podcasts …for research?

In a recent APA blog post historian of philosophy and pun-loving podcaster, Peter Adamson, floated the idea of using podcasts for teaching. Sounds like a good idea, sure. In this post, I’d like to focus on the idea of using podcasts for research. As I see it, podcasts could be AMAZING for research! Yeah, like, all-caps amazing! Continue reading Podcasts …for research?

What do philosophers do, anyway?

Lots of people ask me this question. Students. Friends. My mom!

I spend a lot of time with philosophers, so you might think that I have a good answer to this question. Alas, my answer usually sucks. You can find some of my worst answers to this question over at The American Philosophical Association (APA) Blog: “You’re a philosopher, eh? What do philosophers do?”

I’ve also shared my general thoughts on how to answer this question in that post. But if you want really good advice on how to answer this question, check out what philosophers are saying in the comments.

Excerpt

Let me be the first to admit that I’m doing it wrong. My philosophy pitch is…well, boring. And my delivery is awful. When someone asks me about what I do, my first (and now-automatic) response is a sigh.

What can I say? When people so reliably respond to philosophy with confusion or condescension, I become a little insecure. Unfortunately, insecurity doesn’t help. It just makes my next philosophy pitch even worse. I need to break the negative cycle.

Special thanks to philosopher Skye Cleary for connecting me to the APA blog.

Featured image: “Philosophy” from dakine kane, CC BY 2.0, cropped, adjusted color

Text-To-Speech for Speed Reading & More

My job requires lots of reading. But sometimes I read very slowly. Other times my body is occupied doing something that precludes the ability to read from a book or an electronic display. So I have been looking for ways to fit in more reading and to read faster. Text-to-speech technology provides the means to do this. So I use text-to-speech for speed reading, for multi-task reading, for and a few other things. In this post, I will (a) talk you about the best PDF-to-speech app that I have found and (b) talk about how I use text-to-speech more generally.

1. PDF-to-speech

Most computers, tablets, and smartphones can read text aloud in one way or another. However, until recently, I have not found text-to-speech software that can do both of the following:

Speak the whole document start-to-finish. Every new page seems to trip up the software, so I have to restart the speech playback at the beginning of every new page.
Ignore header and footer text. If the software can do 1, then it gets sidetracked by the text in the headers and footers every time it advances to the next page (e.g., copyright notices and page numbers; see figure 1 below).

Continue reading Text-To-Speech for Speed Reading & More

One Way To Do Philosophy: A Flowchart

I like philosophy. And I like flowcharts. So — obviously — I had to make a philosophy flowchart. It outlines my process as a philosopher.

1. The Process

According to the philosophy flowchart, my philosophical process is pretty straightforward. There are just a few steps.

Look for a thesis.
Look for an argument.
Determine whether you care about the thesis.
Take a stance.
Give an argument.
Evaluate the argument.
Document and/or repeat.

2. Try Out The Process

Let’s see how the philosophy flowchart would work. Imagine that you’re reading Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” (1974) [PDF]. Here’s how I’d proceed:

Step 1. Look for a thesis.

Singer was pretty kind to his reader. He made the thesis fairly clear. It’s just this:

Thesis: “[most people in affluent countries] ought to give lots of money away, and it is wrong not to do so.”

Step 2. Look for the argument.

Singer has also made it pretty easy to find the argument for his thesis. The premises are as follows:

Premise 1: “Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are very bad.”

Premise 2: “If it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything else of comparable moral significance, [then] we ought, morally, to do it.”

Premise 3: “([For people in affluent countries] It is within our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything else of comparable moral significance — e.g., by giving away lots of money away.)”

Step 3-7: …you get the idea.

Challenge. If you’ve never run read or written anything about Singer’s paper and you’re interested in the thesis, then you might consider the following challenge:

(re)read the paper
complete the remaining steps in the flowchart
share your results in the comments.

References

Singer, P. (1972). Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1(3), 229–243. [PDF]

University and Department Rankings: A Custom Solution

Lots of people pay close attention to the US News National University Rankings. But those rankings assume all users have the same priorities. Moreover, some people want field-specific rankings that compare universities at the department level (e.g., the Philosophy department at Harvard vs. the Philosophy department at MIT). Ranking-obsessed philosophers have had the Philosophical Gourmet Report to rank philosophy Ph.D. programs since at least 1996—1989 if you count the pre-internet version. For many reasons, academic philosophers are becoming more vocal about their criticism of these philosophy rankings (e.g., Bruya 2015, De Cruz ~~2016~~ 2018). In this post, I will propose a (new?) custom ranking system. This system will address common complaints about philosophy’s existing ranking system: a custom ranking system will be more versatile, up-to-date, and generalizable.

1. THE COMPLAINTS

The complaints about the rankings are voluminous — what else would you expect from philosophers? In lieu of an outline of every blog post and every public statement, I provide a list of major themes that fall into three different categories: the practice of ranking, the current process of ranking, and the current leadership of the ranking.

Complaints About Ranking

Rankings might misrepresent the magnitude of the differences between departments.
Rankings might indicate a false sense of hierarchy and/or prestige.
Ordinal lists just aren’t that informative.

Complaints About Process

Continue reading University and Department Rankings: A Custom Solution

Hey Marco Rubio! More philosophy, less rhetoric!

Marco Rubio recently suggested that we need fewer philosophers and more welders because welders make more money. See below:

In case it’s not obvious why this is a foolish suggestion, I’ll explain.

THE MAIN PROBLEM

Here are a couple claims that are probably true:

There is a need for more welders.
Some welders make more money than some philosophers.

Notice, however, that neither of the following follow from those probably true claims:

A. We need fewer philosophers.

B. On average, welders make more than philosophers.

So, insofar as Marco Rubio thinks that A and/or B follows from 1 and 2, Rubio is just wrong. And many people have pointed out that B is just false.† So insofar as Rubio thinks B is true, he is just wrong.

SOLUTIONS?

What can we learn from this?

We need better fact-checking in politics (ideally, politicians would check the facts before they start talking at a public venue).
We need more philosophy (viz., a proper understanding and appreciation of good reasoning) — even in the highest ranks of US politics. Maybe we need argument-checking: “Fact-checking is not enough. We need argument-checking“.

TWO MORE PROBLEMS

And for those who still want to point out that we need more welders: fine! Having more welders and having more philosophers is not mutually exclusive! We can have both!††

Finally, there is the implicit suggestion that we should choose careers based on how much money the career offers. Sigh… Look, I get that we need a certain amount of money to flourish. But — contra Rubio’s short argument — surely there are other (more important?) variables involved in a career choice.

† “Marco Rubio said wrongly that welders make more money than philosophers” (Politifact). “Marco Rubio says welders make more money than philosophers do. He’s wrong” (Slate). “Philosophy majors actually earn a lot more than welders” (Vox).

†† Thanks to John Ballenger, James Endicott, Andrew Chapman, Cameron Buckner, and Andrew Cullison for making these points (and other points that I haven’t even mentioned). Finally, thanks to my Facebook friends for humoring my Facebook rants about this.

Featured image: “Gas metal arc welding” via Wikipedia, Public Domain

Office Space: Desk Setup

[Update: A more recent desk setup: “Office Space: Sit-stand Workstation“]

An office can be a sanctuary for productivity. An important component of the santucary is the desk. I find that some desk setups are less distracting and more practical than others. In this post, I’ll mention a few things about my current desk setup.

1. THE DESKTOP

Sometimes I stand at my desk and sometimes I sit. I When I am sitting, I use the ViewSonic LCD monitor as an external monitor. Mounted on the wall behind the desk is a SteelMaster Organizer. On the top shelf of the organizer I have a Dell LCD monitor. I extended the bottom shelf with a piece of plywood that protrudes over the desk to hold my laptop and my coffee tumbler. I use the other shelves in the organizer for papers.

academic-desk-tech — Left to Right: SteelMaster Horizontal Origanizer, ViewSonic LCD Monitor, Dell LCD Monitor

And yeah, I know. It’s not a glorious workstation. I had to MacGyver the standing desk from leftovers in the department storage closet. Another department was kind enough to give me another old monitor after they remodeled some offices. What can I say? I’m a scavenger. I’m always on the lookout for ways to use redundant campus equipment, e.g., my last standing desk.

podium-standing-desk-nick-byrd — Got a redundant podium and a filing cabinet? Then you’ve got a standing desk. #recycle #gradSchool

2. THE COMPUTER

I’ve had a few laptops and a tablet over the last 10 years. I’ve found that I strongly prefer Apple’s operating systems to Microsoft’s operating system. I also prefer smaller and lighter devices over larger and heavier devices; it makes travel and bike commuting a lot more tolerable. And when I’m traveling I find that I prefer screens that are no larger than a piece of paper. That leaves me with two options: an iPad or a small Macbook. I’ve tried iPads, but they just didn’t do everything I needed to do. The main problem is that iOS is miles away from OS X. So I went with the macbook air. It’s small, light, durable (no glass panel display), and powerful enough for my daily needs. Plus, I get 9-10 hours of battery life which is great when I’m traveling.

SUMMARY

So that’s my desk. Sometimes I sit. Sometimes I stand. And when I stand I prefer to stand on The Level. My trusty workhorse is the macbook air accompanied by one of two computer monitors.

The recycled-drawer-slash-organizer-slash-plywood sit-stand desk.

Thoughts about the steup? What is your desk setup like? Or if you’re undecided about a setup, what do you want out of a setup?Thoughts, pics, links, etc. are welcome in the comments.

† Here’s an example. First, some background. When I’m at my desk, my back is to the door. And the door is almost always open. When I am reading and writing, I often listen to music. And sometimes I find myself dancing to the music…with my back to the door…while the door is wide open. Once in awhile I catch myself and then turn around to find a couple of students laughing at me from the hallway.

Implicit Bias | Part 4: Ten Debiasing Strategies

At this point it’s pretty clear why someone would be worried about bias. We’re biased (Part 1). Consciously suppressing our biases might not work (Part 2). And our bias seems to tamper with significant, real-world decisions (Part 3). So now that we’re good and scared, let’s think about what we can do. Below are more than 10 debiasing strategies that fall into 3 categories: debiasing our stereotypes, debiasing our environment, and debiasing our decision procedures. Continue reading Implicit Bias | Part 4: Ten Debiasing Strategies

Implicit Bias | Part 3: Workplace Bias

Think about decisions that people make every day. A committee decides who to hire. A supervisor rates an employee’s performance. A teacher grades a student’s assignment. A jury arrives at a verdict. A Supreme Court judge casts their vote. An emergency medical technician decides which victim to approach first. A police officer decides whether to shoot. These are instances in which workplace bias can have significant consequences.

I won’t be able to highlight every area of research on workplace bias. So I cannot delve into the findings that police officers’ sometimes show racial bias in decisions to shoot (Sim, Correll, and Sadler 2013, Experiment 2; see Correll et al 2007, Ma and Correll 2011 Study 2 for findings that indicate no racial bias). And I cannot go into detail about how all-white juries are significantly more likely than other juries to convict black defendants (Anwar, Bayer, Hjalmarsson 2012).

GENDER BIAS AT WORK

Instead, I’ll focus on the instances of workplace bias to which most people can relate. If you’re like most people, then you need to work to live, right? So let’s talk about how bias can affect our chances of being hired. Continue reading Implicit Bias | Part 3: Workplace Bias