Philosophy Disturbed: reflections on moving between field and philosophy

Part of a special issue of Parallax on 'Field Philosophy and other experiments'. In a number of accounts, field philosophy has been described as providing freedom from disciplinary constraints. In this paper, however, I suggest the importance of paying closer attention to the strength of philosophy’s boundary policing and the consequences this might have for those interested in the approach. Discussing field philosophy in terms of disturbance, I highlight some of the difficulties and opportunities it produces. In particular I focus on the labour involved in adopting new methods and working in new sites of enquiry. I suggest that reconstituting the ‘philosopher’ outside of their traditional habitats is no simple task. Still, I argue that field philosophers should lay claim to the boundary policing question ‘how is this philosophy?’ in order to proliferate accounts of what philosophy is and can be, with the hope that the discipline’s future might be turned more strongly towards supporting diversity rather than defending purity. Keywords: field philosophy; feminist philosophy; inclusion; methods; field researc

Educating epistemological principles, virtues and research skills. Review on Marina Klimenko’s textbook “Research Methods in the Social Sciences”: Book review of: Marina Klimenko (Dept. of Psychology, University of Florida), “Research Methods in the Social Sciences”, William England Sentia Publishing 2020

proving university students’ research skills, research integrity and best standards for scientific excellence is crucial for all disciplines. Marina Klimenko, a senior lecturer at the University of Florida, developed an innovative digital textbook entitled Research Methods in the Social Sciences (2020) with the focus on investigative psychology. The edition was powered by the e-learning portal and published by Sentia Publishing. The author’s own epistemological and research expertise is combined here with her competence in higher education didactics. Klimenko’s textbook seems to be perfectly tailored for prospective researchers – and useful for various disciplines representing the social sciences and humanities

Philosophy at a Crossroads: Escaping from Irrelevance

Although there have never been so many professional philosophers as today, most of the questions discussed by today’s philosophers are of no interest to cultured people at large. Specifically, several scientists have maintained that philosophy has become an irrelevant subject. Thus philosophy is at a crossroads: either to continue on the present line, which relegates it into irrelevance, or to analyse the reasons of the irrelevance and seek an escape. This paper is an attempt to explore the second alternative

Toward a Pedagogy of the Absurd: Constitutive Ambiguity, Tension, and the Postmodern Academy

Over the course of the past few decades, scholars and theorists have engaged in a dynamic and concerted effort to interpret, make sense of, and resist a variety of social phenomena often categorized under the concept of “postmodernism.” This project has also been taken up by educators of various stripes, especially those who identify their work as belonging in a “critical” tradition such as critical theory or critical pedagogy. In this paper, I aim to join the discussion of critical education scholars through an analysis of Albert Camus’s work on the concept of the absurd. In particular, I interpret the absurd as it relates to the identity and work of critical academics in the postmodern university. After providing an orienting perspective of the key elements of postmodernity and critical pedagogy that are relevant to my project, I move into a discussion of the connections between Camus’s concept of the absurd and postmodernism. Working from this basis, I then suggest the relevance and value of the absurd to critical academics within two general constellations of challenges: critical thought/identity and moving from theory to practice, especially in the absence of any forthcoming consensus or unity of intellectual or ethical systems. I conclude by recapitulating my main arguments and gesturing toward potential for further development. Ultimately, the essay ends by raising the question of the value of raising a question

Re-engineering Ethics: Pushing Philosophy Outside of its Comfort Zone at the APPE Annual Meeting

This article discusses ethics and pushing philosophy outside of its comfort zone at the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) annual meeting

Show me the numbers: a quantitative portrait of the attitudes, experiences, and values of philosophers of science regarding broadly engaged work

Philosophers of science are increasingly arguing for the importance of doing scientifically- and socially-engaged work, suggesting that we need to reduce barriers to extra-disciplinary engagement and broaden our impact. Yet, we currently lack empirical data to inform these discussions, leaving a number of important questions unanswered. How common is it for philosophers of science to engage other communities, and in what ways are they engaging? What barriers are most prevalent when it comes to broadly disseminating one’s work or collaborating with others? To what extent do philosophers of science actually value an engaged approach? Our project addresses this gap in our collective knowledge by providing empirical data regarding the state of philosophy of science today. We report the results of a survey of 299 philosophers of science about their attitudes towards and experiences with engaging those outside the discipline. Our data suggest that a significant majority of philosophers of science think it is important for non-philosophers to read and make use of their work; most are engaging with communities outside the discipline; and many think philosophy of science, as a discipline, has an obligation to ensure it has a broader impact. Interestingly, however, many of these same philosophers believe engaged work is generally undervalued in the discipline. We think these findings call for cautious optimism on the part of those who value engaged work—while there seems to be more interest in engaging other communities than many assume, significant barriers still remain

An Essay about a Philosophical Attitude in Management and Organization Studies Based on Parrhesia

Management and organization studies (MOS) scholarship is at a crossroads. The grand challenges (such as the climate emergency) humankind must face today require an improved contribution from all knowledge fields. The number of academics who criticize the lack of influence and social impact of MOS has recently grown. The scientific field structure of MOS is based on its members’ accumulation of symbolic capital. This structure hinders speaking truth to the elite dominating neoliberal society. Our literature review suggested that a deeper interaction between MOS and philosophy could aid in improving the social impact of MOS. Specifically, an attitude by MOS scholars based on parrhesia (παρρησíα, to speak truth to power) could revitalize the field through heterodox approaches and, consequently, allow them to utter sound criticisms of the capitalist system. Parrhesia would lead MOS scholars towards a convergence of ethics and politics. We investigate whether daring to speak inconvenient truths to the powerful (some peers in the field and some individuals and corporations in society) can be a straightforward tool for revitalizing MOS. Boosting a candid philosophy-MOS interaction requires the fulfilment of three objectives: practical dialogue between these fields, reconsideration of the fields’ structures based on symbolic capital, and a post-disciplinary approach to philosophy. That fulfilment implies the delimitation of the MOS-philosophy interaction, a respectful mutual framework, mutual curiosity, and moving from prescriptive theoretical reflection towards more socially useful MOS. Ethical betterment through parrhesia could be the key to surpassing MOS stagnatio

Introduction—Grand Challenges and small steps

This collection addresses two different audiences: 1) historians and philosophers of the life sciences reflecting on collaborations across disciplines, especially as regards defining and addressing Grand Challenges; 2) researchers and other stakeholders involved in cross-disciplinary collaborations aimed at tackling Grand Challenges in the life and medical sciences. The essays collected here offer ideas and resources both for the study and for the practice of goal-driven cross-disciplinary research in the life and medical sciences. We organise this introduction in three sections. The first section provides some background and context. The second motivates our take on this topic and then outlines the central ideas of each paper. The third section highlights the specificity and significance of this approach by considering: a) how this collection departs from existing literature on inter- and transdisciplinarity, b) what is characteristic about this approach, and c) what role this suggests for the history and philosophy of the life sciences in addressing Grand Challenges

Measuring the Isolation of Research Topics in Philosophy

Various authors have recently argued that certain parts of academic philosophy are highly isolated from other fields of academic research. The central aim of this paper is to go beyond philosophical arguments, and empirically test whether this is indeed the case. More specifically, we investigate whether domains of Core Philosophy, like metaphysics and epistemology, are more isolated than Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Value Issues. To do this, we collected 2,369 WoS indexed papers divided into 17 Philpapers topics from these three kinds of philosophy, and used 11 indicators to measure their isolation. The results show that both Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Value Issues are less isolated than Core Philosophy. In addition, general topics in Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Value Issues tend to be more isolated than applied topics. These results suggest that the isolation of philosophy could be alleviated by shifting the priority from Core Philosophy to applied Philosophy of Science and Value Issues