The Philosophers' Cocoon

5 responses to “Tips for pursuing interdisciplinary philosophy projects?”

1. Nic Sharp

   March 11, 2025

   I’ve also wondered the same thing recently… And in also taking inspiration from Dennett, my version of just-do-it has been co-founding an indie interdisciplinary philosophy press! (We are called Contralytic).
   We’re always looking to have conversations with people about the future of philosophy and its re-inventing itself in a more interdisciplinary form so do check us out and get involved with a contribution, or help spread us by word-of-mouth, if you’re interested! And share with us any cool interdisciplinary niches you’ve found some research going!

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2. Charles Pigden

   March 11, 2025

   Quite a lot of my work is on the borderline between Philosophy and other disciplines, though I have not run any research projects with non-philosophers. However I do have plenty of friends and colleagues who DO collaborate on such projects so I think I know enough to offer some tentative advice.
   1) When it comes to writing borderline papers (in my case papers on the borderlines between Philosophy and History, Philosophy and Politics, Philosophy and Social Psychology, and Philosophy and Literature ), I’m, with Dan Dennett and Marcus Arvan: Just do it! However I would add the proviso that you should do enough reading around to be reasonably sure that you are not making some egregious blunder and that it helps to have friends in the adjacent disciplines that you want to address. And though there may be many subjects that you can learn enough about to make a borderline contribution, there will usually be limits depending upon your talents and skill-sets. For any given individual, ‘Teach yourself (enough) X!’ will be possible for some subjects X but not others. But since it IS usually possible for SOME subjects X to teach yourself enough about the subject to make a borderline contribution, I want to ask the question ‘Why do you think that you need a mentor?’ I have not felt the need for a mentor wrt any of the borderline papers that I have written, some of which have been quite successful. The same is true of lots of the people I know who have done borderline work.
   2) When it comes to collaborative projects, I would repeat the question ‘Why do you think that you need a mentor?’ It seems to me that what you need is not so much a mentor as PARTNERS in the discipline or disciplines in question. Most of friends and acquaintances who have succeeded in collaborative projects have done so without the aid of a mentor, though (obviously) none without the aid of partners.
   Okay, two further points.
   A) I love Dan Dennett’s reported aphorism: ‘One of the great things about philosophy is that you can read almost any book you like and call it work’. I would add the ‘corollary’ that unless you like reading books about non-philosophical things you are not likely to be that great as a philosopher.
   B) The OP’s question, like similar questions on earlier thread, adds to my suspicion that the American taught-PhD sometimes (and I stress the ‘sometimes’ since this is obviously not universally true) has an infantilising effect on students, diminishing their intellectual self-reliance and encouraging over-specialisation. People are WORRIED about writing on a topic on which they have had no formal training and feel the need of ‘mentor’ to help them do so. Sometimes this is necessary of course. (Not having a mathematical mind, I would be very leery of of writing about the philosophy of mathematics without doing advanced courses on the subject, and my feeble forays into the philosophy of mathematics have been done in tandem with partners who DID have a mathematical training. I would say the same of the Philosophy of Physics. Colin McGinn provides an object lesson of what a cropper you can come if you presume to write about a subject on which you lack any formal training and which you DON’T have the capacity to teach yourself. ) But though formal training is sometimes required, often it isn’t, and the idea that taught courses and mentoring are necessary before venturing into a new area of study should not be the default assumption.

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3. an interdisciplinary kind-a-guy

   March 12, 2025

   “interdisciplinary research” is a big umbrella term, picking out many different things. About 4 your out from my PhD I began doing research in other fields (in the social sciences … for which I had little formal training). With that research I generally only publish in the top journals in the sub-field. But then I began collaborating with others, starting with a computational biologist, and then moving on. Here we were addressing issues of interest to both us, and we needed each other’s expertise. I have since collaborated with others in other disciplines. It is rewarding and educational. But the start up costs (in terms of energy, etc.) are huge. If you want to do something of the latter sort, then you really need to have something to offers to your collaborators. So think carefully about that.

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4. pick your poison

   March 12, 2025

   Here is an assortment of possibly relevant points. I’m relatively early career but have done a few kinds of interdisciplinary work including publishing empirical results in a philosophy journal, publishing philosophy in a science journal and collaborating with scientists.
   Views of interdisciplinary work vary by country, department and subarea of philosophy. In broad strokes, interdisciplinary work is frowned upon by US phil departments while it is actively advantageous within many continental European funding schemes. Canada and the UK seem like intermediate cases (with the caveat that I haven’t worked in these places myself). I have no idea about Australasia or other regions. So, consider your career goals when you decide about publishing interdisciplinary work. Keep in mind that if you go though a tenure process, work not published in philosophy journals may not count for tenure review, even if the department otherwise supports such work.
   There are senior philosophers doing social science-adjacent empirical work. Look up the people doing x-phi and the people using qualitative methods (if you have trouble locating the latter people, search ‘qualitative methods’ in philpapers, also check who cites relevant articles).
   Regarding Charles Pidgen’s point B, I would suggest that if you are going to run an empirical study, you absolutely do need some formal guidance as to study design, data handling, relevant software and so forth. Another point is that empirical research simply moves way slower and is way more labor intensive than traditional philosophy. So consider if the time investment is tenable for your career stage (if this is what you’re considering).
   There are various existing ways you can frame interdisciplinary work as normal philosophy, if you judge doing so to be more conducive to your career. For instance, if you are a philosopher of science, you can pitch such work as things like ‘engaged,’ ‘practice-based’ or a ‘case study.’ You should also think carefully about the distinction between adopting a method from another field to improve your philosophical argument, versus just doing research in the other field. You might be able to frame publications in non-philosophy journals as outreach or increasing your impact, a matter that is very important for researcher evaluation in some countries and not at all in others.
   If you are still a graduate student, then I’d frankly suggest you keep doing straight philosophy at least until you have developed a reputation and publication record within philosophy. The job market is bad enough without people questioning whether you are actually a philosopher.

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5. Creative funding solutions

   March 13, 2025

   This is a great question, and I appreciate and second a lot of what has been said above . (Great to hear of this indie press, Nic.)
   If like some of us, you have interests in philosophical claims or arguments that rely on empirically sensitive points, then you might start by learning to read in that field. Then you might look for a mentor who has done some collaborative work and can help you translate what you’re reading, read work that aims to integrate what you’re finding from the empirical stuff, that sort of thing.
   Another thing I’m thinking about lately, as I’m in the US, is how philosophers can help to resource scientists doing really important work that’s getting defunded by the broligarchy. We have access to private funding sources that they may not typically be eligible for; but by collaborating, we can provide some access. If there are excellent researchers at your university in a field that you’re interested in, and which usually gets funded by NSF, NIH, CDC, they might be more open to trying a collaboration right now. And great things could come of it (think of bioethicists who worked with folks in public health and the impact that has made on our ability to understand vaccine hesitancy and refusal…).

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