Jobs in Philosophy

Chris is right and wrong. Science is not in the core; theoretical ethics is; but I’d keep political philosophy and applied ethics out of the core (they’re about as far from it as sicence is). However, for Brian’s purpose, analysing the job market, I think its sensible to group ethics, political, and applied ethics together; but still misleading to include science in the core. What is my criterion for the core? I don’t know. One thing is this — I insist on political philosophy students getting themselves a good background in epistemology metaphysics ethics and phil of language; I would think it odd if Dennis Stampe insisted on his students getting a good background in political philosophy (but similarly odd if he didn’t insist that they get a background in theoretical ethics). Similarly, someone in Science should get a good background in M,E and P of L; but no reason for students of those to get a background in Science.

Why are you surprised at the paucity of applied ethics demand in top 50 departments? I’m surprised there’s as much as there is; both from casual observation of past JFPs and from observation of who is where.

Thanks for counting all these jobs. Out of curiosity, how many hours did it take? It would be especially useful to see long-term trends, and perhaps the American Philosophical Association could be convinced to hire someone to do this. At the moment, they’ve got some rudimentary statistics posted here http://www.apa.udel.edu/apa/profession/jfpstats.html but a detailed breakdown like yours would be much more useful.

Most of the time spent was tinkering with the software. Once I had it set up the way I wanted I think the data entry took less than 2-3 hours. It took a bit longer to get the database set up the way I wanted, but it’s there if I want to use it next year. But it’s not an enormous time commitment if someone wants to redo it using their preferred categories.

I agree the Top 50 line was the most interesting, and the least likely to be repeated by a professional survey.

Let me add one thing about the lack of Top 50 Applied Ethics jobs. Most applied ethics jobs are in bioethics. And most Top 50 depts are in schools that have medical schools, who usually employ their own bioethicists. So it isn’t as if these universities aren’t employing bioethicists, just their philosophy departments aren’t doing so. That’s not perfect, especially if you are a bioethicist who wants to work with other philosophers, but it’s not as bad as the numbers might suggest.

I was primarily just looking at the numbers – the relative falloff from all jobs to top 50 jobs in applied ethics is really steep. In the last comment I was pointing out one possible reason for this. (Though I obviously didn’t provide any empirical support for that – it’s a conjecture not a theory.)

Here’s another way of putting the point. If applied ethics was as big at top 50 schools as outside them, you should be able to run off a list ten times that long of applied ethicists at top 50 schools. Compare how many philosophers of language, or mind, at equivalent schools one could name without trouble.

There’s an interesting terminological issue here by the way. For JFP purposes I wouldn’t have classified Liz as doing *applied* ethics. This one I do have some motivation for – we interviewed Liz for a job that was explicitly *not* in applied ethics. (She withdrew from the search before we made a decision, so there’s no gossip to spread about how well she did in the search.) Obviously her work has applications – the paper Sarah McGrath and I are doing on cloning draws heavily on Liz’s discussion of the non-identity problem, for example – but I’m pretty sure by job search standards she counts as on the theoretical side of the divide.

And Frances Kamm’s primary appointment is in the Kennedy School, which is some good news for my thesis that one cause of the difference in rates we see here is that applied ethics jobs move outside philosophy departments at higher ranked schools. To be sure she has a secondary appointment in the philosophy department, and even an office there, so this isn’t an ideal case. But again, if we have to look at people who are not primarily employed by philosophy departments to find applied ethicists, my conjecture that top philosophy departments don’t hire many applied ethicists looks pretty good!