How to Publish a Book in Philosophy: A Guide for the Perplexed (Part II)

It's hard to get good advice about book contracts. Here's why.

(1.) Publishers don't want to be too open with advice. They'd understandably prefer not to publicize details about their contracts. Authors might compare notes, and then the author with the worse deal might feel offended. Other publishers might gain some competitive advantage through asymmetric knowledge of the details of their competitors' contracts. And a certain amount of ignorance among authors presumably gives at least the less scrupulous publishers an edge in negotiations.

(2.) Agents don't want to be too open with advice. That would be to reveal their secrets. Besides, agents aren't interested in the small-run academic books most of us publish, which have different (less advantageous) contracts than more popular agented books.

(3.) Your mentors would love to give you advice. But they've probably only published a couple of books themselves and so have limited personal experience -- or if your mentor is a big shot with ten books from major publishers, their experience might be too unlike your own.

(4.) General books of publishing advice might be helpful, but they won't be well tailored to the current situation in philosophy. Based on my publishing in science fiction as well as philosophy, and based on my experience with how book contracts have evolved since 2007, I can say that standards can vary considerably between fields and over time.

I too won't give you good advice! The best I hope for is to give you slightly flawed, medium grade advice, based on my own limited experience.

My experience runs the range from my first book (co-authored with Russ Hurlburt), which did not get an advance contract and received its one and only contract offer after an extensive review process, through my most recent arrangement (The Weirdness of the World, forthcoming with Princeton), which involved three leading academic publishers competing to give me a good but not superstar-level advance contract. I've also edited a couple of anthologies, which has provided more experience with academic book contracts, though anthologies won't be my focus today.

So apply a big dollop of doubt to everything I say here. It would be terrific if some others could share their experiences in the comments section, so that readers of this post can get a sense of what I might be overlooking.

General Thoughts about Negotiating a Book Contract

Based either on a book proposal or on a full manuscript, an academic press has now sent you a contract. That is so amazingly awesome! Savor it. Not many people in the world have the chance to publish a book with a serious academic press. I remember gliding high all day when I received my first book contract. However, despite your delight and desire for closure, you must resist signing the contract immediately. As I mentioned in Part I, you should...

First, wait a bit.

There are two reasons to wait. One is that you might have your proposal or manuscript also under consideration with another publisher or two. If so, give those other publishers time to let their process play out. Tell them that you received a contract offer from Press X (ideally a competitor they respect) and say that you're hoping to decide by such-and-such a date. Also inform Press X that you are still waiting to hear back from another publisher or two and by when you expect to be able to decide.

Even if no other publishers are still evaluating your proposal or manuscript, there's reason to wait: You should take some time to evaluate and discuss the details of the contract. Book contracts are not all boilerplate that you must sign as is. Perhaps surprisingly, they have many negotiable features, which I'll discuss shortly. The initial contract is an opening offer.

In my view, it's reasonable to ask publishers to wait a few weeks for you to decide on an offer based on a book proposal, and it's reasonable to ask them for up to a couple of months if your full manuscript is currently being reviewed elsewhere. If they want you to decide in a snap, they're either playing ugly hardball or there's some unusual situation which you should ask them to explain.

Second, be honest, friendly, and collaborative.

Acquisition editors for academic presses are generally lovely people who are deeply committed to their subjects. If they've offered you a contract, they like your book project and they want you to succeed, and you are now considering a collaborative multi-year partnership with them. Be nice. This isn't some zero-sum car deal where their loss is your gain and you win if you pressure them into loathsome capitulation.

Let the editor walk you through the contract, and ask questions about the details, including what it might or might not be possible to change. If you have good reason to want to change some aspect, discuss it openly. If you're fortunate enough to have a competing offer that is better in some respects than their offer, tell them about it -- though probably it's best to be vague about exact wording and dollar values, due to the confidentiality of contract details.

Your acquisition editor works with a larger editorial board and an editor in chief. In that context, they are the advocate for your book. Give your editor the tools to help them help you get a better deal. Maybe they can say to their editor in chief, "our author would really like X, so if we can give them that, I think it will close the deal" or "Press Y is offering our author such-and-such -- do you think we could match that?"

At least one video call is probably a good idea. It is more relaxed and personable than an email exchange, allowing discussion to open up in unexpected directions, and it gives you a chance to notice paralinguistic cues.

Don't lie or exaggerate. Ugh. If you get caught, you'll have ruined the trust on which a good partnership depends.

Third, ask for a few things.

This advice consists of two parts. Ask. Requests are generally better than demands in a collaborative relationship of this sort. And you can make requests. Even if you have close to zero leverage -- no status in the field, no competing offers -- you can still gently wonder aloud if it's possible to change such-and-such. Some asks are pretty small and straightforwardly given if asked for. In fact, the editors are sometimes themselves ambivalent about one or two of the clauses in their contracts and are happy enough to strike or modify those clauses if the author asks. Other times, delighting you, bringing discussion to a close, and securing your final commitment are motivation enough to make some adjustments.

For a few things. I'm about to list 15 things that I know you can ask for. Don't ask for all of them! Figure out the two or three or four that are most important to you and ask for those, expecting to get one or two or maybe three of them. If you've got a potential bestseller, then hopefully you have an agent who can demand all sorts of changes to the contract. But if you're an ordinary philosophy professor, the press isn't expecting to make forkfuls on your book and most of their authors will need to stay pretty close to the standard contract. Being too pushy can backfire -- in the extreme, even leading to a withdrawal of the contract offer. Unless you really are the prima donna, don't be a prima donna.

Negotiable Contract Details

Instead of going through any sample contracts clause by clause, what I'll do is list 15 things that I have either successfully asked for in a book contract or that an editor mentioned to me as a possible contract change during the course of negotiations.

(1.) An advance. An advance is pre-payment of royalties. The advance might be paid either when you sign the contract, when you deliver the final manuscript, or when the book is published, or some combination. People tend to be cagey about numbers here, but my guess is that for a book they think will have a big popular audience maybe you can get $50,000 plus, and for a book that will sell mainly to specialists (i.e., most academic books), you probably shouldn't expect an advance at all. For a "crossover" book that the press thinks will have some popular sales, you might think in the ballpark of $5,000-$15,000. (These are just my impressions from my own experience and talking with a few colleagues.)

You won't get paid any further royalties until you "earn out" your advance, that is, until the amount you would have received in royalties had you not been given an advance exceeds the amount of the advance you were given. If your book doesn't sell well enough to earn out, you won't see any more royalties, but the publisher won't ask for a refund.

You might not think an advance matters much. Compared to the amount of time you spend writing a book and compared to an academic salary, what difference does it make whether you receive a few thousand now or that same few thousand later, hopefully, in royalty checks? But it does matter. If a press offers you an advance, that constitutes a commitment by them to market your book in a particular way. The more they offer you up front, the more they will have to make in sales to make the up-front offer look like a good decision. A book with a good advance will be priced reasonably and marketed well, rather than being priced at $85 and put in the back of the catalog, targeted mostly for sales to university libraries.

All of this said, you probably shouldn't expect an advance unless you can make a plausible case that your book will have substantial popular or classroom sales in addition to academic sales.

(2.) A maximum price. I don't know how common it is to ask for a maximum price, but I successfully asked for a $30 maximum price with my first book (about $38 in today's dollars). It can be disappointing to have your book priced at $85, out of the price range of many students and causal readers and an uncomfortable price even for dedicated colleagues. Some editors have expressed surprise that Russ and I were able to include a maximum price in our contract, partly due to uncertainty about inflation. It would of course be reasonable to have a sunset clause on a maximum price.

(3.) Royalty rates. I've seen everything from 2% to 20%. Often royalty rates are higher on paperback editions and electronic editions. Often royalty rates scale up if sales break some target number of copies, such as 1000. There might be some language about royalties being based on "net receipts" excluding returned books and such, which is normal. I can imagine a publisher trying to weasel in some complicated language to reduce your royalty payments in some non-standard way, but I haven't noticed such problems with any of my publishers.

(4.) Commitment to market the book in a particular way. "Trade" books are aimed at popular markets. "Crossover" books are scholarly books that are expected to have substantial popular sales. If your editor thinks your book might have popular sales, you can ask them to commit to marketing it as a crossover book. In discussion, you can ask about other marketing details, which vary by press. Usually such agreements are oral instead of written.

(5.) International rights and translations. A publisher might commit to commissioning a translation. You might ask to reserve some of the international rights if you have connections in a foreign country and aim to pitch your book to a publisher there (perhaps already with a translator in mind).

(6.) Paperback guarantee. A publisher can commit to releasing the book in paperback as well as hardback, or even possibly just go straight to paperback (though I'm not sure that's preferable if the hardback is well priced), possibly after specifying a sales threshold. I've generally found that editors are more comfortable with oral assurances about a paperback release or with saying what their usual conditions are for paperback release (e.g., XXXX copies sold in the first two years) than with putting this language explicitly in the contract, though it can be done. A paperback release after a couple of years is terrific, since it gives your book a new marketing push at a lower price, and some of your colleagues will see it as an indicator of prestige and impact.

(7.) Option on the next book. Some publishers include clauses stating that you must give them the option to consider your next book, negotiating with them first about the book contract and only seeking another publisher if that negotiation fails. I find this somewhat obnoxious, and if you want you can ask for this clause to be struck. However, I haven't heard of publishers really holding authors to this in any strict way.

(8.) Index. Usually it's up to the publisher whether your book will have an index, and then if they want an index it's up to you to prepare it. It is possible to insist on an index, and it is possible to have the publisher commit to preparing it or to paying you to have an assistant prepare it.

(9.) Audiobook. Audiobooks are increasingly popular, and you can ask for a commitment to produce an audiobook version -- though I suspect that this would usually be only for trade books or books that the publisher expects would have a substantial audio audience.

(10.) Cover and title. Usually presses want to have control over the cover and title, since those are crucial to marketing the book. But if you want to insist on a particular cover or title, this is negotiable. If you don't insist on a title now, you should consider your current title to be your working title only, up for discussion later.

(11.) Figures and rights. Often, it is expensive to have figures in a book, especially color figures, and it can cost some money to buy rights to figures produced by professional artists, or to have figures custom made. The default seems to be no figures or few figures, black and white only, and the rights purchased at your expense; but this can also be negotiated.

(12.) Authors' free copies. Often it's ten, but if there's a good reason to want more, you can ask.

(13.) Submission and publication dates. The contract will probably specify delivery of the manuscript by a certain date. This is of course negotiable. I've rarely seen a deadline of this sort enforced -- manuscripts are often months late or even years late. Likewise, the publisher will commit to publishing within a time frame after acceptance of the manuscript.

(14.) Reversion of rights. In a worst-case scenario, the press doesn't publish your book, or the press publishes your book but goes out of business. Also, of course, after years pass, the book will probably go out of print. You can ask for the rights to the book to revert to you if the book isn't published in a timely way or after three or five consecutive years of being out of print. (Being available electronically normally counts as being "in print" for these purposes.)

(15.) Teaching buy out. My university, U.C. Riverside, allows faculty to occasionally "buy out" of teaching a class (with the dean's and department chair's permission) if they have an outside research grant that supplies money for a replacement lecturer. I was able to have a teaching buy-out clause added to my most recent contract. I asked for this money not on top of an advance but rather instead of (most of) the advance I would otherwise have received. However, I sense that this request was highly unusual.

Usually the press will reserve the right to reject the book or insist on changes, even if you've signed a contract in advance. I can understand why they would want to reserve this right. What if you have a mental collapse and produce a deranged screed? I have never tried to push on this clause, instead having confidence in the good faith of the press upon signing the contract and in my ability to produce a book of good quality.

Choosing Among Offers

Suppose you have more than one contract offer. Yay! I've been in that position exactly once in my career -- a month ago. I don't have a lot to say here, but I will point out that it's not all about which press gave you the better formal contract. You should also consider your rapport with the editor and whether you share a vision of the book. For example, did the editor give you feedback on the book that you found valuable? If so, not only is that a good sign, but also the editor has already contributed some of their intellectual labor to your project.

You should also consider whether the press will be out there marketing the book for you in a way that you like. Will they put it on their table at APA meetings? Will it appear near the front of their catalog? How have they treated previous authors you know? You probably can't get formal commitments about such details at this point, but in some cases a smaller press can be better than a large press where your book might be lost amid the crowd -- if the press has the resources to make your book visible in the right places.

Part III?

I'm considering whether to write a third part about manuscript revisions, page proofs, title and cover, and marketing. However, I'm not sure I have enough of interest to say about these things to be worth a post, so no promises.

Diversity in Philosophy Departments: Introduction

[Cross-posted from The Blog of the APA]

This is the first in a several part series discussing ways to improve diversity in philosophy departments.

At least with respect to gender and race, philosophy departments in the United States are less diverse than most other departments in the university, both in their faculty and in their student bodies. In series of blog posts to follow, several philosophers will discuss what can and should be done about this issue. This post will present some statistics and general reflections.

I begin with gender and race because they are the most frequently studied and the easiest to find data on. In its 2018 membership data, the American Philosophical Association reports 26% women among members responding to a demographic survey, 74% men, and 0.2% “something else”. Similarly, in 2017, Schwitzgebel and Jennings found that 25% of faculty in U.S. departments rated in the Philosophical Gourmet Report were women and that 29% of philosophy PhD recipients placed in academic jobs were women. Data from the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) shows that women have earned approximately 29% of philosophy PhDs since the early 2000s. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) shows that women have received approximately 32% of philosophy Bachelor’s degrees since the 1980s.

The decades-long flat trend lines among students give little reason to think that gender proportions in philosophy will dramatically change anytime soon, absent more assertive action or cultural change in the discipline. Despite earning 57% of Bachelor’s degrees in the U.S., women constitute a minority of the “pipeline” into philosophy and may also disproportionately leak out of the pipeline, with progressively smaller proportions at more advanced stages of study and career. The Data on Women in Philosophy group website contains detailed department-by-department data on faculty.

Data on race are more mixed. In its membership data from 2018, the APA finds 80% of respondents identifying as White/Caucasian, compared to 60% in the general U.S. population. Also in 2018, White students received 84% of PhDs in philosophy, compared to 70% of PhDs overall (excluding temporary visa holders). However, the racial composition of philosophy undergraduates was close to representative of undergraduate degree recipients overall: White students received 60% of Bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and 57% of Bachelor’s degrees overall, across all majors. NCES and SED data show that racial diversity among philosophy students has been increasing for decades at both the graduate and undergraduate level.

A closer look at these data, however, reveals that most of the growth has been among Hispanic/Latinx and Asian/Pacific Islander students. Black or African American students remain sharply underrepresented in philosophy, with approximately flat trendlines over several decades. Currently, Blacks or African Americans constitute 13% of the general population, 10% of Bachelor’s degree recipients overall, 5% of Philosophy Bachelor’s degree recipients, 3% of Philosophy PhD recipients (only 10 total recorded by the Survey of Earned Doctorates in 2018) and also only 3% of respondents to the APA’s demographic survey. American Indians / Alaska Natives are also underrepresented, constituting about 1.3% of the U.S. population, 0.4% of Bachelor’s degree recipients, 0.3% of Bachelor’s recipients in Philosophy, and 1.1% of APA members who reported their race. In 2018, the SED recorded no American Indian or Alaska Native philosophy PhD recipients.

Other dimensions of diversity are less commonly measured, but data from Shelley Tremain suggest that people with disabilities are substantially underrepresented. Anecdotal evidence and some mixed evidence from the SED suggest that philosophers might hail disproportionately from higher socio-economic status backgrounds. As Bryan Van Norden has extensively documented, non-“Western” philosophical traditions tend to receive little attention in the philosophy curriculum in most departments. Uwe Peters has recently argued that philosophy lacks political diversity.

One might think that these facts simply reflect a natural sorting by interest in a diverse but egalitarian society – that men are, for some innocuous reason, more likely to be drawn to philosophy and Black people less likely to be drawn to philosophy. We ought not expect a perfectly even sorting of all social groups into all disciplines, even if no group faces disadvantages.

We should reject that perspective. There is nothing about philosophy, as a type of inquiry into fundamental facts about our world, that should make it more attractive to White men than to Black women. Philosophical reflection is an essential part of the human condition, of interest to people of all cultures, races, classes, and social groups. If our discipline and society were in a healthy, egalitarian condition, we should, in fact, expect people from minority groups to be overrepresented in academic philosophy, rather than underrepresented. Academic philosophy should celebrate diversity of opinion, encourage challenges to orthodoxy, and reward fresh perspectives that come from inhabiting cultures and having life experiences different from the mainstream. We should be eager, not reluctant, to hear from a wide range of voices. We should especially welcome, rather than create an inhospitable or cool environment for, people with unusual or minority or culturally atypical or historically underrepresented experiences and worldviews. The productive engine of philosophy depends on novelty and difference.

Philosophy should be among the most diverse of the academic disciplines, not among the least diverse.

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In 2018, the Blog of the APA ran a companion series on the lack of diversity in philosophy journals, which readers might also want to check out. Here is the introductory post.

[image source]

The Edge of Chaos

Last Monday, a curfew was announced in Riverside -- blaringly announced, with calls on my landline in both English and Spanish, emails from the city and from my employer, cellphone text alerts from emergency services. I decided to violate it.

Being a middle-class white guy in my fifties, when I think of curfews, I think of the former communist countries of eastern Europe. I think of police states and dystopias. The curfew started at six. At seven, against the advice of my wife, I drove downtown. I noticed boarded up shops, loitering groups mostly of young men, blocked off roads, parking lots with police cars. I parked several blocks down a side street, donned my face mask, and walked toward the center.

Heading toward the noise, I felt conspicuous for my age and race. I felt examined and judged by groups of young black and Latino men who were leaning against the buildings. A stream of wailing police cars looped around toward me. I dashed around a corner onto another street and they rolled past.

On Market Street, people were milling in all directions -- mostly not protesters, it seemed. No one was chanting or holding signs in a large organized group. Instead, they appeared to be curious residents out to see what's happening in their neighborhood, men looking for excitement or trouble, and a few college or high school students with friends and cameras.

Someone called out to me, "Hey, weren't you my professor for Evil?" (Every fall, I teach a 400 person class on the moral psychology of evil.) A couple of Asian students approached me. They had been at the protests, taking pictures. The protesters had been fired on with rubber bullets, and my student (or was it his friend?) showed me an injury on his hand -- an inch-long laceration where a bullet had struck him while, he said, his hands were in the air and he was shouting "don't shoot". He had picked up the bullet that struck him. I took this picture:

Someone who takes a round of this sort to the neck or head can be seriously injured or potentially even killed.

Ahead, I heard an explosion -- not for the first time -- and saw the bright star of a firecracker rising over the roofs of the two and three story buildings. The protesters were taunting the police with commercial-grade firecrackers. They were moving as a mob from place to place. When police advanced, the protesters would flee and regroup somewhere else. Teams of squad cars looped around with sirens on, attempting to intimidate and scatter curfew violators, but they couldn't cover the whole area. A least two helicopters were also circling.

Cars would drive down Market Street when the lights were green. Most cars seemed to be traveling on ordinary business, but a few drove slowly and honked, some with signs. One car had windows rolled down and a sign that said "Fuck you Karen". Pedestrians shouted "Fuck you, Karen!" several times to cheers.

Groups of about a dozen people would suddenly appear, fleeing down the middle of Market Street. Crowds on the sidewalk would briefly run too, or duck around corners, in case police came chasing. I saw a man who had been shot in the leg sitting by the side of the road. Some people stood on the sidewalk with their phones out. Others appeared to be fleeing a T-Mobile cellphone store. I heard, but didn't see, shouting and more firecrackers. People were mostly wearing masks -- I suspected both because of the pandemic and to reduce the chance of being identified by police.

Two women in a car pulled up, windows down, and demanded several times that the crowd stop taking pictures. No one paid attention to them until I asked them why. Their reply was drowned in the noise and they drove away. An ambulance roared past.

Photos don't capture the tension, the feeling of a crowd despite the broad California streets, the sense that chaos might approach from any direction.

Maybe seventy protesters turned onto Market Street as a group, some carrying signs, some shouting, none threatening or violent. At that time I saw no police, except in helicopters. I headed back in the protesters' direction, taking photos from the sidewalk.

Ahead of me, I heard a crash, then saw a broken window and someone in a shop, messing with the blinds and broken glass. On the sidewalk, I was suddenly surrounded by large, strong men -- and then they were running. I was jostled among them, then I tripped up against bolted down sidewalk furniture. I feared becoming the tail end of a group that was being shot at by police, so I ran amid them. After about half a block of running, people calmed down. I could hear squad cars blaring on nearby streets.

A crowd was stopped in the street, looking various directions but mostly up at a crane -- a huge, bright blue crane rising maybe 120 feet. A lone man was climbing its interior. The crowd cheered him on and probably, like me, wondered if he would fall. I watched him climb nearly to the top, but then I heard explosions or gunfire and nearby sirens and decided I'd seen enough. Later, I heard that the crane climber had somehow entered the control booth and turned the crane. Under what conditions might a badly operated crane fall?

Leaving the scene, again I felt assessed by loitering men and curious residents. The last person I saw was also the only person my age that I recall seeing the whole time I was out. He greeted me from the small front yard of his house. I don't recall his words, but I thought he looked at me in camaraderie, one middle-aged white guy to another, as if we stood together above or to the side of the chaos.

I returned home and related my adventures to my family. That night, as I lay in bed unable to sleep, I found myself longing to return downtown, despite the risk and fear I had felt. It seemed exciting and important, compared to daily life as a professor, compared to being caged at home amid the pandemic. If I were younger, more in love with excitement, if I had no children, no job, the streets would call to me more strongly, I'm sure.

The Riverside police couldn't handle a thousand curfew-breakers downtown. They, we, pushed the police to the edge of what they could do with rubber bullets and their existing rules of conduct. It is easy, so easy, to imagine this amplified -- larger, more persistent tumult in the streets, unpredictable, potentially violent, police frustrated and tempted to use more extreme measures -- street-level chaos of the sort we in the U.S. are used to hearing about in other countries, but rarely imagine happening in our own.

How to Publish a Book in Philosophy: A Guide for the Perplexed (Part I)

A couple of weeks ago, I signed my fourth book contract (working title, The Weirdness of the World, Princeton University Press).  I thought I'd share my impressions on book publishing in academic philosophy since I haven't seen any good, detailed how-to guides (and to help others avoid my mistakes).

Seeking out and evaluating book contracts was especially puzzling to me, so that will be my focus.

I'm no expert, and I certainly-definitely-enthusiastically-appreciatively welcome contrary opinions and further advice in the comments.

Should You Publish a Book and When?

Yes, you should!  Who else is going to plunge into your wonderful ideas in such depth?  What better excuse is there to really think things through in detail and see how it all hangs together?

When?  Neither too early nor too late.

Not too early: First publish a few articles on the topic, which will give your ideas a few years to mature, build your reputation and credibility in the subfield, and bring valuable feedback from readers, referees, and conference audiences.  (Most dissertations should become articles first rather than being revised straightaway into a book.)

Not too late: After several years, your interests will probably drift and your perspective will probably change.  Hit the book project while you're still near the peak of your enthusiasm about the ideas.

If articles 1-4 on Topic Y appear in years X to X+3, ideally you should be working on your book proposal on Y in year X+3.  (Of course, rarely are things ideal.)  At this point, you've probably been working on the topic since at least year X-3.

Connect with Editors Early

I had zero clue about this as an Assistant Professor.

You know those book exhibits at the American Philosophical Association?  Their obvious function is to sell books, but they also have a second, less obvious function: They are a chance for acquisition editors to connect with potential authors.  If you're following my X+3 plan, you want to start connecting with editors in year X+2 or X+3.

Here's how I recommend doing it:

Early in the conference, visit the book exhibit.  (This could be an APA, but it could also be a subdisciplinary conference with a book exhibit.)  Notice which publishers have tables full of books of the sort you plan to publish.  Approach those tables and ask if an acquisition editor is around.  If one is, say something like this:

Hi, my name is [You Know What Goes Here].  I've published a few articles on [Your Favorite Topic] in [The Most Prestigious Venues You've Published in So Far], and I'm thinking about synthesizing my ideas into a book.  Would you be available to chat about this over coffee sometime today or tomorrow?

The editor might or might not agree.  Their schedules might already be full with other meetings (this is why you want to hit the book exhibit early), or they might be skeptical that you'd write a book of the type they want.  Or they might be willing to hear you out, but only standing there on the spot, which isn't nearly as a good as a dedicated meeting.

Consider doing some homework ahead of time, finding out which publishers will be at the meeting and what they emphasize in their recent catalogs, maybe even emailing acquisition editors beforehand. But if this sounds intimidating, don't worry. It's probably more typical, especially if you're new to this, to first try to get a sense of things by strolling around the book displays.

If the editor agrees to meet, you'll informally chat through your book idea with them.  The editor will likely think your book project needs some tweaking.  This is fine.  They might be right!  Work through broad ideas about how to frame the book and what to cover in it and what you imagine the audience to be.

Be prepared for the editor to push you toward making the book more popular or more suitable for classroom use than the small-audience scholarly monograph you might have been planning.  Publishers love big sellers, of course.  But academic presses also obviously also publish lots of small-audience scholarly monographs, so if that's what you aim to write, it's fine to stand your ground.

If your book idea seems not quite ready, or if the editor thinks it's not quite their thing, don't despair.  The best acquisition editors tend to play a long game, cultivating connections over several years.  Maybe next year you'll have a different angle that the publisher likes better (one reason to start in X+2 rather than X+3).  Or maybe in six years, your next book will be something they want.  Say hi once in a while and toss new ideas their direction.

If the editor likes your idea, follow up by sending a book proposal.

How to Write a Book Proposal

Stand warned: I can't say that my book proposals have been especially good.

Your book proposal might not be accepted, especially if you haven't previously published a book.  It's still a good idea to write one.  It will give you a chance to think about the general structure and aims of your book.  Share it with acquisition editors, since it might prompt useful feedback and pique their interest even if they can't commit to a contract.

There's no formula.  In my experience writing and reviewing them, book proposals run about five single-spaced pages and contain the following elements:

• a working title;
• an estimated word count (60,000 - 80,000 words might be the typical sweet spot, though some presses also love shorter books);
• a summary of the main idea, anything from one short paragraph to two longer paragraphs;
• a description of the intended audience, e.g., "intended primarily for graduate students and professors doing research in philosophy of mind", "intended for a broad audience of scholarly readers, including both specialists in philosophy of mind and non-specialists from other fields who have an interest in the nature of consciousness";
• optionally, a list of 3-5 books with which it is comparable and how it will differ from them;
• a paragraph-long description of your qualifications and/or a short c.v.;
• probably a summary of the projected chapters, one by one, with one paragraph per chapter;
• optionally, attach a sample chapter.

Some publishers also list proposal submission guidelines on their web pages. If so, you should presumably follow those guidelines.

Unless your format is sufficiently unusual that it's difficult to see what the book will look like without a sample chapter, I think it's generally better not to include a sample chapter.  Referees will pick at the sample chapter, and unless you've already written the book it probably won't be in polished book form yet.  Better to let the general vision and your track record as a researcher carry the proposal.

As an example, I attach the first version of my most recent book proposal here, along with some comments about how it was received by editors and reviewers (and thus some respects in which it is a negative example).

I have a weakness for making my book proposals look like I'm just stapling together previously published articles.  Let me warn you against this.  Publishers are much less interested in collections of articles than they are in freshly written, coherent books.  Although I think it's usually best first to work out your main ideas in published articles, it should be clear in your proposal that your book will be written fresh from the beginning as a unified treatment that goes well beyond your articles.

Send a cover letter along with your book proposal, reminding the editor of any previous discussions you've had and giving the title, main idea, and intended audience.

Where to Submit Your Proposal

One difference between publishing articles and publishing books is that although you shouldn't submit an article to more than one journal at a time you can and probably should submit a book proposal (or full book manuscript) to more than one publisher at a time.  I recommend targeting three to five publishers.  The key to doing this ethically and without hard feelings is to be open about it in your cover letter.

I recommend only three to five publishers for two reasons.  One is that you want to be able to honestly say that you are also sending your proposal to a few other select presses.  An acquisition editor at, say, Oxford will understand if you're also approaching Princeton and Cambridge.  But if they think you're spamming twenty presses with your proposal, they will probably look elsewhere.

The other reason is that you don't want to find yourself in the position of having to decide on a contract offer from a press that isn't among your top choices while you're still waiting to hear back from your preferred presses.

The reasons to approach more than one publisher are obvious: Since it can take weeks or months for a decision, a strictly serial approach could slow you down by a year (or even more, in some particularly bad cases I know about).  Also, if you're fortunate enough to have more than one interested press, that gives you leverage in negotiations.

If your proposal or manuscript is out for review at more than one press, you want to give the process time to play out at each press. After the first press makes you an offer, be sure to tell the other presses that are still considering your book that you have an offer from Press X (ideally, a competitor they respect) and that you are hoping to make a decision by such-and-such a time. Unless Press X is playing some strange hardball or the situation is unusual, Press X should be willing to wait at least a few weeks on a proposal and at least a couple of months on a full manuscript.

One exception to my multiple-submissions advice is this: Based on a conversation or a proposal, a publisher might ask for an exclusive look at your book manuscript. This is a sign of enthusiasm about the project. You might wish to agree, especially if they commit to moving quickly. If they don't quickly offer a contract, or if they respond with a contract you find disappointing, you can later re-open the possibility of approaching other presses.

Which presses in particular should you approach?  If you're writing a scholarly monograph for fellow philosophers, start by considering the publishers who have prominent book displays at the APA and at conferences in your subfield: These are the presses that are out there pushing to make their books visible in the circles you travel in.  You can also look at which presses are publishing books that you like and that are reviewed in journals you read.  And of course, if you followed my advice about connecting with editors in advance, you'll presumably want to send your proposal to editors who have already expressed interest in you or your book project.

According to statistics I recently compiled on book reviews in elite general philosophy venues, the most visible academic philosophy presses seem to currently be Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, Princeton, Routledge, and Harvard.  Some other presses are highly visible in particular subfields, such as Columbia in Asian philosophy.  I'm currently pitching an anthology of science fiction to MIT, Routledge, Wesleyan, and Wiley, based on the strengths of those presses, and I have another anthology in the works with Bloomsbury.  There are many presses, and fit with the vision and strengths of the press is probably at least as important as the overall visibility of the press.

If Your Proposal Is Rejected

... write the book anyway.

You don't need a book contract in advance.  If you write a good scholarly book, you will very likely find a publisher.  Although some people find this surprising, it is substantially easier (in terms of likelihood of acceptance, not in terms of amount of work) to publish a book at an elite academic press than it is to publish an article in a comparably elite philosophy journal.  Even if your book isn't accepted at one of the most visible presses, there are lots of other presses to try.

If you are capable of publishing research articles in mainstream journals, and if you pour your heart into a book of similar quality and scholarly rigor, it's very likely that some press will want your book.

Don't accept a book contract in advance from a publisher that isn't among the publishers you'd most like to work with.  If you don't get the contract you want beforehand, write an awesome book and try again for that contract.  (This advice applies only to scholarly books for specialist audiences.  Popular "trade" books should usually be contracted in advance, with plenty of editorial input up front.)

Responding to Feedback on Your Proposal or Manuscript

Once you've emailed your proposal, expect to receive a reply email within a week or so.  The editor might decline your proposal without seeking further input from reviewers, or the editor might be interested in your proposal.  If the editor is interested, they might send it straightaway to reviewers or to their colleagues for further evaluation, or they might suggest that you make some revisions to the proposal before they send it along.  You might or might not want to make those revisions.

For example, when I proposed A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures, I imagined it as a collection of revised and updated short reflections from my blog and op-eds, on several themes (moral psychology, cosmology, philosophy of technology, and the sociology of philosophy).  Some editors thought it would be better as a unified book just on moral psychology, possibly quite short, and suggested that I revise my proposal accordingly.  I can imagine having done that, but in the end I chose to stick with my original vision, and fortunately MIT Press was enthusiastic.

In contrast, my proposal for The Weirdness of the World was of interest to three editors at leading presses, and two of them made substantial suggestions about how to improve my proposal.  I accepted about two-thirds of their suggestions, resulting in somewhat different proposals to different presses, and I do think the proposals were stronger as a result.

It doesn't take long to read a book proposal, so after it gets past the acquisition editor and sent out for further review, expect to hear something back within a few weeks -- hopefully not more than a couple of months.  Outside reviewers will make all kinds of suggestions.  You don't have to accept those suggestions!  Remember, at this point the acquisitions editor liked it enough to send it to reviewers.  What you need to do is respond to the reviewers' suggestions.  Write a response letter detailing your reaction to the suggestions and how you plan to accommodate them in the book; and if there are some suggestions that you would prefer not to implement, explain why.

If you sent a full manuscript without a signed contract in advance, it will probably take longer to receive reviews (a few months to hopefully not longer than half a year) and the editor may be more neutral about your project.  These reviews should be handled more like you would handle reviews on submitted articles, especially if some of them are tepid to negative about the manuscript.  In other words, make the requested changes if you can, and if you can't, explain yourself well without striking a defensive tone.  The revised manuscript might or might not be sent back out to those same reviewers again.

Negotiating a Contract

Yay, yay, yay!  You have a contract offer!

This is going to be hard if you're a newbie, but don't sign the offer right away.

A book contract is a legal document about ten pages long.  (I'd share an example, but I think my publishers would rather I kept the exact details confidential.)  Here's something you might not know that makes book contracts very different from the contracts you sign when you agree to let a journal publish an article: Many of the clauses are negotiable.  The contract can be changed.  Think of the initial contract you receive as an opening offer. It's not all boilerplate that you have to sign as-is. Also, you might still be waiting to hear back from other presses.

It will take some space for me to walk you through the details of book contracts, so I'll save that for Part II.

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Update, June 4:
Please read the comments section for some further helpful ideas from authors and editors, especially pertaining to simultaneous vs. exclusive submission of full manuscripts.

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The Most Visible Academic Presses in Philosophy

Now that I've signed the contract for my fourth book (working title, The Weirdness of the World, with Princeton University Press), I've been thinking of sharing some reflections on how to publish a book in philosophy. Even the basics of how to land a book contract aren't obvious (e.g., can you approach more than one press at a time? [Yes, but!]). A guide could be helpful.

Part of the guide will involve advice about the relative prestige or visibility of different academic presses in philosophy. I have some informal impressions, but I thought some quantitative support would be good. Toward that end, I've collected data toward a ranking of the most visible academic presses in philosophy.

I relied on five sources of book reviews, critical notices, and book symposia: Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Philosophical Review, Mind, Journal of Philosophy, and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, using data from January 1, 2018, through May 25, 2020. I chose NDPR as probably the most-circulated regular source of reviews of academic philosophy books, and I chose the other four journals because of their top-5 rating in Brian Leiter's most recent poll of "best 'general' journals of philosophy". (Nous, also in the top five, had no book reviews, critical notices, or book symposia during the period.)

I granted each press one point for each book review in any of the four included journals. For an article-length critical notice or a book symposium, I granted 4 points. NDPR issues many, many reviews -- 726 in the target period, which is more than 4 times as many as all other sources combined. To give NDPR a total of 1/5 of the weight in the final ranking, it was necessary to grant only .079 of a point for an NDPR review.

I welcome corrections.

The results:

1. Oxford University Press (210.5)

2. Cambridge University Press (12.7)

3. MIT Press (12.2)

4. Routledge (10.8)

5. Princeton University Press (10.1)

6. Harvard University Press (6.2)

7. Fordham University Press (4.5)

8. Bloomsbury (3.6)

9. University of Chicago Press (2.7)

10. Columbia University Press (2.0)

11. Indiana University Press (1.8)

12. Springer (1.7)

13. Rowman and Littlefield (1.11)

14t. McGill-Queen's University Press (1.08)

14t. Open Court (1.08)

16t. Palgrave Macmillan (0.47)

16t. University of Minnesota Press (0.47)

18t. Edinburgh University Press (0.40)

18t. Lexington (0.40)

20t. De Gruyter (0.32)

20t. Polity (0.32)

20t. SUNY Press (0.32)

24. Ohio University Press (0.24)

25. Editiones Scholasticae (0.16)

One NDPR review each: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Catholic University of America Press, Hackett, John Benjamins, Leuven University Press, Mangalam Press, Northwestern University Press, Open Book Publishers, Pennsylvania State University Press, The Warburg Institute, University of Pennsylvania Press, University of Pittsburgh Press, University of Virginia Press, Wiley-Blackwell, Yale University Press.

Reflections:

* Oxford's lead is huge. My sense is that this is not because Oxford is that much more prestigious than others in the top six but rather because it has a much longer list (see below). Oxford might or might not be the most prestigious university press in academic philosophy, but due to the length of their list plus their prestige and quality, they are clearly the most visible press in academic philosophy.

* Fordham's high ranking is due almost entirely to Judith Butler's Senses of the Subject. With four points possible for a symposium or critical notice, we ought to expect substantial noise in the data at below 8 points. The fact that there aren't more presses over four points is evidence that, for at least the past two-plus years, the top six presses pretty much have a lock on reviews and symposia in the most elite general philosophy journals, except when a highly visible philosopher, like Butler, publishes elsewhere.

* The number of NDPR reviews is extremely skewed, saying something about the presses' list sizes (though of course many scholarly philosophy books are not reviewed in NDPR): Oxford 298, Routledge 99, Cambridge 97, Bloomsbury 46, Chicago 22, Springer 21, Harvard 15, MIT 15, Princeton 14, Rowman and Littlefield 14, Columbia 13, every other press 10 or less. Oxford is the 800 pound gorilla! Routledge and Cambridge also publish lots of scholarly work in philosophy. MIT, Princeton, and Harvard appear to have short but selective lists.

Update 5:11 p.m.

Several people have suggested I divide the points by the total number of books published. I'm not seeing a good way to get those numbers for all of the presses, but one easy approach would just be this: Look at what percentage of the reviews are in NDPR. A score of .50 would mean that for every book reviewed in NDPR, the press also had a review in one of the elite journals.  A score of .00 would mean that no books by that press were reviewed in one of the elite journals during the period.

Using this method, and limiting it only to presses with at least 15 reviews for stability, we get the following ranking:

1. MIT Press (.42)

2. Oxford University Press (.31)

3. Princeton University Press (.30)

4. Harvard University Press (.25)

5. Cambridge University Press (.05)

6. University of Chicago Press (.04)

7. Routledge (.03)

If we include all presses, then McGill-Queens and Open Court are tied for first at .50, each with one NDPR review and one non-NDPR review on my list. Also in the mix are Fordham (.14), Indiana (.09), Columbia (.07), and Chicago (.04).  All of these presses have only one review on my list apart from NDPR.

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Dispute Concerning Science Fiction, Philosophy, and the Nutritional Content of Maraschino Cherries

Helen De Cruz, Johan De Smedt, and Eric Schwitzgebel

forthcoming introduction to Philosophy Through Science Fiction Stories

“—this dialogue, for example,” said Johan, folding his arms, gazing across the table in the hotel bar at the meeting of the American Philosophical Association. “It didn’t even happen. Fictional philosophical dialogue is out of fashion for excellent reason.”

“But that’s the beauty of it!” replied Eric, looking slightly hurt. His imaginary cocktail was bright pink, with three cherries and an umbrella.

“No one will believe it. What’s the point? It’s a waste of time. If you’re doing philosophy, just lay it out straight. Say what you want to say. Don’t decorate it with fiction.” Johan pointed accusingly at Eric’s cocktail. “I mean, why an umbrella? It’s silly froufrou.”

“It’s cute!” said Helen, who you didn’t picture until just now, but who had been sitting at the imaginary table all along. “It enhances the mood. It adds color. Even if strictly speaking it has no nutritional content, its vivid turquoise complements the pink and red of drink and cherry. Fiction dresses an idea, invites you to engage with that idea, makes it attractive in a certain sort of way.”

“The wrong sort of way!” said Johan.

“Fiction is the very flesh on the bones, not decoration,” said Eric.

“Imagine a man who is explicitly sexist,” said Helen. “He is committed to patriarchy, thinks that women should only have certain roles. They should only be mothers and homemakers. Now give him a story to read. Tell it from a woman’s point of view. Make it some future dystopia where women are oppressed in a way that even he would say is bad. Get him to sympathize with those fictional women, really feeling their plight. Tell the story vividly, emotionally, with depth and detail over three hundred pages.[1] When he pokes his head back up out of the story, maybe he’ll see the world a little differently. Maybe he’ll have a little more sympathy for women in oppressive systems. Maybe he’ll see similarities between the exaggerated situation in the fiction and the experiences of women in his own society, and maybe he’ll be a tiny bit more open to change. He’ll have shifted a little, philosophically, in his view of the world. That’s the kind of work philosophical fiction can do.”

Johan looked around the bar. For a long time, academic philosophy in Europe and North America had been almost exclusively the province of white men, and—since what is not made explicit in fiction conforms to the reader’s beliefs about the actual world[2]—it still showed in the demographics of the discipline[3] in this imaginary hotel. Aristotle, Kant, and Locke could probably have benefited from imaginative exercises like the one Helen was describing.[4] And yet … “that’s not really philosophy, exactly, I’d say.” Johan paused, seeming to gauge Helen. “Philosophy is about rational argumentation. Of course, things other than rational argumentation can change your worldview. Even listening to a great piece of music, such as Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony[5], can be emotionally profound. It can fill you with awe just by its very sound, with no rational content at all. And maybe, in the right circumstances, it could color your future perspective. But that wouldn’t make Beethoven a philosopher or his symphonies philosophical works.”

“If the work explores or promotes a worldview,” said Eric, “I don’t see why we shouldn’t call it philosophical.” He pierced a maraschino cherry with the stem of the umbrella, then lifted it to eye level. “Now suppose that the intent of this cocktail,[6] in its pink and turquoise flamboyance, is to celebrate life’s capacity to delight us with sweet, luxurious, unapologetic indulgence. The manager highlights this drink on the cocktail list with that very intent, and knowing that intention, the bartender mixes and presents it. This cocktail , then, is itself an act of philosophy, even if certain dowdy no-funners are unable to appreciate it.” With one finger, Eric flicked the cherry off the umbrella, high into the air, aiming to catch it in his mouth on its downward arc. The cherry struck him on the chin, then bounced to the floor. The bartender, who in mixing the cocktail had no such intentions as Eric described, glanced critically in their direction.

Helen stooped to retrieve the cherry, then set it on a napkin in front of her. “So, we can drink philosophy as well as read it, Eric? Should we invite the bartender to give a colloquium talk?”

Eric lifted his cocktail. “That would be awesome! But of course she will need to perform in her accustomed liquid medium.”[7]

“Argument by cocktail? I wouldn’t go as far as that,” Helen said, gazing absently at the hotel’s logo on the crumpled napkin. “But maybe a great painting can express a philosophical idea more vividly and effectively than an expository essay. Take Picasso’s Guernica—such an austere, quasi-monochrome study in the horrors of war.[8] A few days ago, I was in a museum and saw a painting by, I think, a French painter, of glossy horses standing in the shade and bedraggled donkeys standing in the glaring sun.[9] It showed how they kept those animals for hire, but clearly it was also a social commentary. Its basic content was kind of obvious and simple—but it was political philosophy. And maybe it would reach people better than an essay. I imagine some aristocrat contemplating the painting, pitying the donkeys. Maybe later, as he’s rolling along in a lovely carriage, he sees someone selling apples in the bleaching sun and thinks “What are we doing? We’re treating people as badly as those donkeys!” It’s not like he couldn’t get similar ideas from prose and think the same thing non-metaphorically, but the vividness of the metaphor hooks him in, leads him along, makes the idea salient and emotional and memorable in a way it wouldn’t otherwise be.”

“But, Helen,” groaned Johan, “now everything will become philosophy. You can’t sustain the compromise position you want. Every work of fiction, implicitly or explicitly, critiques or celebrates a worldview. The main characters have ideals and values, they make life choices, and by portraying these sympathetically or unsympathetically, and by showing us how those values and choices play out in the story, the fiction nudges us toward a worldview. But surely, we don’t want to say that all fiction is philosophy. And it isn’t just fiction. All movies and TV shows, all lyrical songs, and maybe all songs of any sort—maybe even architecture and fashion and product design. If you say that painting is philosophy, lots of things risk becoming philosophy, until you end in the inanity of turquoise-umbrella cocktail philosophy. Eric’s ability to appreciate the cocktail in phenomenological terms does not turn the bartender into a phenomenologist. Where do you stop?”

“Why stop?” said Eric. “I rather like the idea that everything you do is implicit philosophy. Every choice you make manifests your worldview. Every public act is a kind of advertisement for a way of being. We are all always philosophers. Why does philosophy need to be some rarified, privileged activity?”

... the dialogue continues here.

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NOTES

[1] Atwood, M. (1985). The handmaid’s tale. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.

[2] Lewis, D. (1978). Truth in fiction. American Philosophical Quarterly, 15(1), 37-46.

[3] See e.g., Wilhelm, I., Conklin, S. L., & Hassoun, N. (2018). New data on the representation of women in philosophy journals: 2004–2015. Philosophical Studies, 175(6), 1441-1464; Schwitzgebel, E., & Jennings, C. D. (2017). Women in philosophy: Quantitative analyses of specialization, prevalence, visibility, and generational change. Public Affairs Quarterly, 31(2), 83-106; Botts, T. F., Bright, L. K., Cherry, M., Mallarangeng, G., & Spencer, Q. (2014). What is the state of blacks in philosophy? Critical Philosophy of Race, 2(2), 224-242.

[4] Van Norden, B.W. (2017). Taking back philosophy. A multicultural manifesto. New York: Columbia University Press.

[5] van Beethoven, L. (1812). Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93. The work can be heard here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-f3iKeUJm4

[6] On the philosophy of cocktails, see e.g., Bakewell, S. (2016). At the existentialist café. Freedom, being, and apricot cocktails. London: Vintage.

[7] Schwitzgebel, E. (2020). A theory of jerks and other philosophical misadventures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, chapter 50, The philosopher of hair.

[8] Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. s.v. "Guernica (Picasso)" (accessed August 10, 2019). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso)

[9] Actually, Joseph Stevens is a Belgian painter. We apologize for embarrassing fictional Helen in this way. The work is linked here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Stevens_-_Horses_and_Donkeys_for_Hire.jpg

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Gender and Sexual Orientation of First-Year Philosophy Students in the U.S.

by Eric Schwitzgebel, Morgan Thompson, and Eric Winsberg

With funding from the American Philosophical Association (thanks, APA!), we obtained access to data from the Higher Education Research Institute's "Freshman Survey", which aims to construct a representative sample of first-year students in four-year colleges and universities in the U.S. We will be analyzing these data with an eye toward looking at demographic trends in the philosophy major over time.

The most recent year to which we currently have access is 2016, and already there are lots of interesting facts that we are eager to report! For today's analysis, we'll be merging the 2015 and 2016 data to give a bigger sample. Respondents were 171,300 first-year students from 253 colleges in 2016 and 202,033 first-year students from 311 colleges in 2015 (almost all from four-year colleges).

Among these 373,333 students, 0.36% (1132/315158 students, excluding undecided and unanswered) expressed an intention to major in Philosophy. This compares with Philosophy being either the first or second major of 0.39% of students receiving graduate degrees in the most recent available year (2018) in the NCES IPEDS database.[Note 1]

Two gender identity questions are included in the survey:

* Your sex (male, female)

* Are you transgender? (no, yes)

Although men were more likely than women to express an intention to major in philosophy, the ratio was closer to parity than we see among graduates in philosophy: 43% (485/1132) of intended philosophy majors were women (1%, or 7 total, declined to state), compared to 58% of first-year students overall.

Since the latest data from NCES show that among Bachelor's degree recipients, 36% are women, the HERI data are consistent with the "leaky pipeline" hypothesis about women in philosophy. (The leaky pipeline hypothesis holds that over the course of their education, women are more likely than men to leave philosophy.) We plan a more careful time course analysis of these data in the near future, with a close eye on potential non-response bias in the HERI dataset.[Note 2]

Nine percent (105/1132) of the philosophy majors declined to state whether they were transgender. Among philosophy major respondents, 8/1027 (0.8%) identified as transgender. Among students with other majors, 8% did not respond and 0.4% (1172/288989) identified as transgender. Note, however, that with such small proportions, a disproportionate representation of transgender students among those who decline to state (perhaps because they are not sufficiently "out" to want to reveal their transgender status on a questionnaire of this sort), could dramatically affect the results. Similar considerations apply to transgender students who might falsely state that they are not transgender. Given the small number of self-reported transgender students and these resulting interpretative difficulties, we are hesitant to draw conclusions about the proportion of students who are transgender or about whether philosophy students were more likely than other students to be transgender.

Students were asked their sexual orientation as follows:

What is your sexual orientation?
Heterosexual/Straight
Gay
Lesbian
Bisexual
Queer
Other

Overall, across all majors, 92% identified as straight, 4% as bisexual, 2% as other, and the remaining groups 1% each. Philosophy majors were more likely to report non-heterosexual sexual orientation: 88% straight, 6% bisexual, 3% other, 2% gay, 1% queer, and < 1% lesbian. (p < .001, comparing the proportion straight). Although nonresponse was again an issue, with 10% of philosophy majors not responding and 8% of students overall not responding, the proportions, absolute numbers, and effect sizes are large enough to permit some confidence in the conclusion. Students intending to major in philosophy are more likely to identify as non-heterosexual than are students in other majors.[Note 3]

Perhaps this in unsurprising. However, we have not previously seen good systematic data on the sexual orientation of philosophy majors. (Please let us know if we've missed something!) In previous work, Schwitzgebel noted the possible disproportionate representation of non-heterosexual philosophers among the most-cited authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Unsurprisingly, philosophy isn't the queerest of all disciplines. Among disciplines with at least 1000 respondents, that was theater (23% non-heterosexual). If we include smaller disciplines, it was women's studies / gender studies (42% non-heterosexual). Most of the arts, humanities, and social sciences had at least as high a proportion of non-heterosexual majors (among disciplines with at least 1000 intended majors responding, art, English, foreign language, media studies, music, theater, environmental science, music/art education, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and social work were all at least 12% non-straight). The least queer discipline? Finance, 98% identifying as straight.

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Note 1: One complication in these data is that respondents are disproportionately drawn from higher-status universities and from Catholic and private universities, and women are more likely to respond. To compensate for this, HERI stratifies universities by status (high, medium, low), by university type (private university, public university, public college, private nonsectarian college, Catholic college, other sectarian college, and historically black), by gender (man, woman), and by race/ethnicity, then assigns each respondent a "weight", with higher weights for respondents from lower response-rate groups (e.g., men from lower status public non-sectarian colleges) and lower weights for respondents from higher response-rate groups. Respondents from two-year colleges and from institutions with response rates much below 65% are given zero weight. HERI's own "norms" and population estimates are based on these weights. Above, I report raw numbers rather than weighted numbers. For these analyses, the weighting does make a bit of a difference. For example, the unweighted percentage of philosophy majors is 0.36% and the weighted percentage is 0.32%. Other weighted calculations will be reported in subsequent notes.

Note 2: Using HERI's weighting procedure [note 1], 41% of first-year philosophy majors were women and 55% overall were women.

Note 3: Using HERI's weighting procedure [note 1], 11% of first-year philosophy majors do not identify as heterosexual, vs 8% from all other majors combined.

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Five Books of Philosophical Wonder

Over at Five Books, I've shared some thoughts on philosophical wonder, alongside five book recommendations and reflections about those books in conversation with Nigel Warburton.

The books are:

Zhuangzi (c. 300 BCE/1964). Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings. Trans. B. Watson.

Montaigne, Michel de (1580-1588/1957). The Complete Essays of Montaigne. Trans. D.M. Frame.

Borges, Jorge Luis (1940-1960/1964). Labyrinths. Ed. D.A. Yates & J.E. Irby.

Sacks, Oliver (1985). The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales.

Egan, Greg (1998). Diaspora.

Ah... such wonderful books! I'm pausing right now to relish their awesomeness.

[insert a momentary reverie here]

Topics of the interview include:

the nature of philosophical wonder

Zhuangzi's butterfly dream

wu wei / "doing nothing" in the skillful flow sense vs. the nap-beneath-a-tree sense

Montaigne on cannibals, religious elephants, and the contingency of our cultural practices

Borges on the infinitely random "Library of Babel" and the non-identity of indiscernible works

Sacks's "Lost Mariner" -- a man stuck in 1945, incapable of forming new long-term memories

Egan on dream apes, radical freedom in value choice, and the amazing variety of forms of life that might open up in the future

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Five Books of Philosophical Wonder

Before we discuss your books, let’s start with the topic, philosophical wonder. What do you mean by that?

I was just wondering what I meant by that this morning. I don’t have an analytical philosopher’s definition of ‘wonder’ yet. Here’s what I have so far: We go through life with all kinds of presuppositions, which are usually implicit, about how things are and how they must be. Philosophical wonder occurs when we’re jostled out of that and we start to see new, interesting possibilities.

The idea that did it for me when studying philosophy, that certainly changed my outlook on the world, even though I wasn’t convinced by the arguments, was reading Descartes’ First Meditation, and suddenly having that idea, ‘could I be dreaming?’ This was in the early 80s when we hadn’t had so many movies that addressed just that question. If you take it seriously, it gets you into a position where you have to think quite hard and change your attitude to things you had previously taken for granted.

Right. We normally assume that we’re awake. But when I engage with Descartes or with Zhuangzi [or Chuang Tzu], the author of the first of the five books I’m going to talk about—then I start to wonder, is it possible that I could be dreaming right now?

Probably the most famous passage in the Zhuangzi is this. One night Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, fluttering around, doing whatever he liked, and giving no thought to humans. Then he woke up and suddenly there he was, a human! So he wondered, is he a human who had dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly now dreaming that he’s a human? How could he tell the difference? That’s one of the earliest historical statements of dream doubt, in ancient China around 300 BCE, long before Descartes’ Meditations.

Before we get on to Zhuangzi as a book choice, what part does this kind of philosophical wonder play in your life and your writing as a philosopher?

I’ve always liked when philosophy pulls the rug out from under me. People come to philosophy with different aims and preferences. Maybe what I value most is when I’m reading a philosopher and suddenly something that I took for granted is exposed to me as merely contingent, or possibly untrue, or something I might not be 100% justified in believing. When that happens, the universe seems to expand. There’s this sense of more possibilities than I had assumed to exist before. The world gets bigger.

That sounds very like the language that people who’ve taken psychedelic drugs use.

I guess so! I have never actually tried psychedelic drugs, although my father was a collaborator with Timothy Leary on one of his classic papers.

That’s amazing. Did your father take drugs to do that?

Not for that paper. He was an observer during that experiment rather than a participant. But, yes, he took some psychedelic drugs in his life. Not a lot.

So, you’re getting a natural high from philosophy.

That’s one way of thinking of it!

I took some LSD when I was a student. I would say that, in my experience, it wasn’t different from doing philosophy. It was continuous with it in some senses and it informed it. You don’t have to do it more than once or twice to discover that. It’s just that there are different ways of organizing experience. That’s for sure.

Right. My father was also a licensed hypnotist. So I got to see how hypnosis worked. Dreaming is another kind of altered state of consciousness too, and it’s quite normal. There are lots of different ways that the human mind can encounter the world.

Continue here

Your Infinite Counterparts

The visible universe is tiny -- only about 93 billion light-years. The whole universe might be much larger, maybe even infinite. A trillion galaxies might be an infinitesimal fragment of a speck of the tiniest toenail of what there is. Think large!

If you think large enough, eventually you'll get recurrence. There are only finitely many ways a finite number of particles can arrange themselves, within some arbitrarily small error tolerance. Some of the same stuff, eventually, will repeat.

If we assume cosmic diversity in which we're not exceptional (for example, if we assume that it's not just flat vacuum apart from our one special region), then eventually among the things that will repeat is you. Not you you exactly. Your counterpart, let's say. Someone who, to some arbitrarily fine degree of precision, is just like you in locally measurable qualities. The more precision we want, and the more life history we want (the past five minutes? your whole life? the whole history of Earth?), the farther away in spacetime we should expect this counterpart to be. But if the universe truly is infinite, that counterpart will out be there, eventually, at some spatiotemporal distance. And then again somewhat farther, and again still farther, and again -- infinitely often.

If you don't want to be so self-focused, fine. Maybe you care more about your daughter. Eventually, there will be a counterpart of your daughter. Maybe you care about Socrates's conversations in Athens. Those will of course repeat, too -- in every possible variation.

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My question is, what should our attitude be toward this repetition, if we assume it exists? Should you care that somewhere out there are infinitely many counterparts of you, your daughter, and Socrates in dialogue? Should the existence of such things have any effect on how you think about your own life or what's happening on Earth? Or is it all a big meh?

Nietzsche, for one, didn't think recurrence would be a meh.

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy, and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence? -- even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, a speck of dust!"

Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine." If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, "Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?" would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal? (Gay Science 341, Kaufmann trans.).

Nietzsche's posthumous notes suggest that he might have been thinking of recurrence in something like the sense I've described, as a genuine physical conjecture (cf. Boltzmann and Poincaré), though that remains disputed.

We might challenge Nietzsche's implicit personal identity claim -- that if the hourglass of existence were turned over and everything was run again, it would be "you" doing all the same things, rather than merely a duplicate of you.

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Straightaway, I can imagine two reasons to favor Team Meh. One concerns distance, the other causation.

On distance: These counterparts are, in all likelihood, very far from you, spatiotemporally. Maybe that distance matters. You probably care a lot about what's happening in your house, less about what's happening down the street, still less about what's happening on the other side of the planet, even less about what's happening in Andromeda, and basically not at all about something that's a googol lightyears distant. Distance breeds indifference.

On the other hand, there's something odd about thinking that distance per se is indifference-making. If someone kidnapped your daughter and took her around the world -- to New Zealand, say, if you're in the U.S. -- you wouldn't find yourself (I assume) growing more indifferent as she approached New Zealand and then, maybe, starting to care about her more after the kidnappers did a U-turn. More fancifully, if you knew that you'd be deep-frozen then revived after a trillion years in some other galaxy, you'd probably care about what your new home would be like even before you were frozen. The mere fact of its physical distance isn't enough to make it irrelevant to you.

Lack of causal interaction correlates with distance and maybe is a more justifiable basis for indifference. You normally have had and will have many more, and more important, causal interactions with your daughter than with a stranger in New Zealand, even if they are both in New Zealand right now. And in the deep-freeze case, you care about that future galaxy because it will be you there, carrying forward the effects of all your past choices and life events. You care about Earth Socrates more than counterpart-Earth counterpart-Socrates because Earth Socrates is the one who actually had the effects on your culture and philosophical tradition.

On the other hand, we can sometimes care about distant strangers, even when the causal threads are thin. And causation is cheap, if we're patient enough, echoing butterfly-like through the world, and maybe even scaling up infinitely over vast spans of time, so that eventually any action you do could have whatever arbitrarily specific effects you desire, on some far distant counterpart.

That last thought is so speculative that we might brush it aside. Fair enough (though read my post and book chapter on it, if you like). Lack of causal interaction, or lack of the right kind of causal interaction, might justify a "meh" reaction to those infinitely many far-distant counterparts, playing out all those versions of your life.

If "meh" is the reaction that you arrive at, or want to arrive at, you can probably justify it. But I invite you to consider whether, on reflection, you really do find the possibility of a universe with infinitely many duplicates and near-duplicates of whatever you care about to be meh, rather than worrying, intriguing, puzzling, or in some other way potentially of interest.

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Suppose you are struck and killed by lightning. Somewhere out there in the infinite universe -- if standard physical theory is correct -- will be a suddenly congealed new version of you, in an arbitrarily large environment. Alongside the duplicate, if you are willing to look far enough, will be duplicates also of your home, your family, your country, your galaxy. (Sudden chance organization from disorganized chaos is, of course, extremely unlikely in any region of spacetime as minuscule as a few trillion light years. But literal infinitude is powerful.) This new entity and its friends will (presumably, but disputably) have seeming-memories, experiences, plans, attitudes, that are qualitatively identical to yours even if they have a radically different history. In some sense, no one will notice the gap. It will be as though you smoothly continued. (Compare Swampman. See also the story "Penelope's Guide to Defeating Time, Space, and Causation" in my recent book [free manuscript draft here].)

Sometimes, we treasure uniqueness. There's only one copy of the Michelangelo's statue of David. That makes it, maybe, uniquely valuable in a way that any one instance of Rodin's The Thinker, of which there are 28 castings, is not. Suppose that our galaxy were to happen only once. Suppose that the overall sum of awesomeness and value of our entire galactic history is n units. Now suppose a precisely similar version of it happens again, and again, and again. Is each version worth n more units? Or does repetition decrease the marginal value, so to speak? If you were God, choosing a universe, would you say -- well, we did that once, done, that's enough! Or would you say, replay, replay, replay, endlessly with no point of diminishing returns?

What Nietzsche seems to think most of us would find terrifying about repetition is that every decision we have would have infinite weight. We decide as it were, not only for ourselves, but for all our duplicates. (Though I wonder, on this perspective, if I'm not first in the chain, maybe I don't decide at all because an earlier version already decided for me?) Although what you choose wouldn't normally cause your distant duplicates to choose the same, it might at least signify that they would and will choose the same. In some sense, you speak for all of them. Maybe, if there's some chance in the process, or some divergence in the process due to small differences, you will make a different choice than some -- and so there will be near-duplicates of you playing out each possible choice, among which you either belong to the majority or you make an atypical choice. Do you follow the crowd of yourself? Is it too strange to find some small comfort in the idea that somewhere out there is a duplicate of you who made a better choice?

Just some things I find interesting to think about, if the universe is infinite.

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If you enjoy my blog, check out my recent book: A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures.

[image duplicated from here]