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Research guidance after grad school / online communities for philosophical research?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I am curious how people get suggestions and guidance regarding one’s research after graduate school, especially for those who work in small departments where there are minimal overlaps between people’s research interests. I am not talking about conference papers or substantive drafts, but some early-stage, premature ideas, or some relatively basic questions.

More specifically, I have seen really great discussions and suggestions both here (thank you, Marcus!) and the “Teaching Philosophy” facebook group. I guess I am looking for a counterpart of such online communities for research. Somewhere I can ask questions anonymously, such as “I become interested in topic X. What are some recent works on it?”, “I had a really hard time understanding the concept Y. Can anyone help me or suggest some readings?”

Do any readers who have been in a similar situation have any helpful tips?

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6 responses to “Research guidance after grad school / online communities for philosophical research?”

  1. Laurence B. McCullough

    The first step in addressing the two questions raised is a literature search. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an excellent starting point. Entries are what encyclopedia entries should be: scholarly and kept up to date, with comprehensive bibliographies. SEP is also searchable. Then to PhilPapers, Philosophers Index, and other online databases such as JSTOR.
    An example: Lately, I have been thinking about the concept of life as a cluster concept, analogous to the concept of art as a cluster concept in aesthetics. To learn more about cluster concepts, I searched SEP and was led to excellent entries, the reading and critical appraisal of which and of entries in the bibliographies has greatly advanced my thinking. I am now in a position to talk to colleagues at a much higher level of philosophical inquiry than I would be in the absence of this literature search.
    I have used this approach for years, even back when the Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP’s predecessor) was hardcopy, which was searchable using the index. It has blue covers and sits to this day on my library shelf.

    Reply
  2. ChastenedAuthor

    I doubt this will be helpful, but I got the idea for one of my most cited articles from a YouTube argument.
    Every now and then, I like to spend time in YouTube comments sections, and during one argument, my interlocutor said something, and I started to fashion a response and said suddenly, “Hark! If you do this and this, and if we find out about this, then …. oh wow.”
    About three months later, I had a finish rough draft. All from what started as a dumb YouTube argument.
    Also, ChatGPT is pretty good at playing Devil’s Advocate if you’ve got an early idea and want to explore it preliminarily. It’s also pretty good at giving basic information if you’re not understanding a concept and don’t have time to read the SEP entry.

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  3. Michel

    In aesthetics, there’s the ‘Aesthetics Anonymous’ FB group, as well as the ASA mentoring program.
    For my part, like Laurence, I mostly rely on myself, survey books/articles, and extensive bibliography-mining.
    If you’re looking for paper ideas in a new area, look at the CFPs for edited collections, special issues, and topical conferences on PhilEvents.

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  4. Daniel Weltman

    Mostly I use Google Scholar and PhilPapers, plus the SEP and/or Philosophy Compass if they have articles on the topic. There’s a “Bored, Certified Ethicists” group on Facebook for if you work on ethics.

    Reply
  5. Tim O’Keefe

    Oxford Bibliographies (annotated entries on an area grouped topically) is worth checking out too. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/page/147 . It’s not comprehensive, but it’s got a lot of articles, and the overall quality is high. (Subscription required, so go through your library to see if they have access, or ILL it.)

    Reply
  6. Charles Pigden

    Can I challenge one of the OP’s underlying assumptions, namely that in a small department people won’t have much to say to one another, since everyone will be labouring in their small discrete research vineyards? I think that this is a mistake, partly because the research vineyards are not as discrete as all that, and partly because it is enjoyable and stimulating to take a turn in neighbouring vineyards. I have spent my entire career (39 yers now) in small departments – there are eight of us in my current department, two of us being part-time – and over the years we have talked to one another PLENTY. I am a meta-ethicist by trade, but I have joint papers with colleagues on Metaphysics (one on truth maker theory and another on Lewisian possible worlds), on the Philosophy of Maths and on the Philosophy of Science. I regularly discuss the Philosophy of Logic with the resident logician, climate change and political philosophy with the political theorist and early modern philosophy with the Spinozist. In the past I used to discuss imperative logic, metaphysics and ethics with a colleague, now sadly deceased, who was primarily a metaphysician and philosopher of logic. I have a paper on the Philosophy of Religion which owes something to the resident philosophers of religion. And it’s not just philosophers. I contribute to our successful PPE program and I have had lots of fruitful discussions, some suggesting new research ideas, with economist colleagues. I have a paper on Plato’s Thrasymachus that draws on Marx and Adam Smith and which I probably would not have written (at least in its current form) absent my contacts with economists. I have a paper on Jane Austen and Hume, owing something to a former colleague in English who was a Jane Austen scholar. And I have a paper deriving philosophical lessons from Russian literature which owes a lot to long-ago conversations my wife who studied Russian as an undergraduate. So although I don’t want to downplay the role of online resources – I was a regular contributor to an email discussion list on one of my research interests and attend an online seminar on another – I want to suggest something else. If you want to get ideas for papers, try broadening your horizons. You can start by talking-to your colleagues about their research interests, following up with a policy of wide general reading. Start with your own AOS and broaden out from there. If, as your post seems to imply, you work, or expect to work, in a small department, you will be forced to do this anyway as you will probably required to teach a wide range of subjects outside your research speciality. You should not regard this as a problem but rather as an opportunity. There is a famous saying of Dan Dennett’s which I quote from memory: ‘The great thing about being a philosopher is that you can read almost any book you like and call it work.’ I agree that this is one of the great things about being a philosopher. But you won’t get to enjoy that great thing if you confine yourself to your original AOS.

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