Blogging is, as far as I can tell, ‘the thing to do’ in philosophy these days, so I have an interest in both participating in that world and in building a viable and robust blog for my name to be attached to; as you may have noticed, however, I have been doing a less then admirable job of writing for Reformed Philosophy as of late. This is because I have been wrestling with a dilemma – a dilemma concerning what to post. On the one hand, as a Ph.D. student who is pursuing a career in academia, I want to be very protective of my work. Given the current job market, there is tremendous pressure to publish, so anything I’ve spent a suitable amount of time polishing (especially anything directly related to my dissertation) I shouldn’t post since someone might snag it and publish it before I get the chance. On the other hand, I don’t want to post something that I haven’t spent enough time polishing, since, after all, my name will still be attached to it. I certainly have my pocket-hypotheses on a wide array of topics, but I have not invested the time or done the research to write them in a professional fashion.
So as it stands, I don’t want to post work that I’ve spent sufficient time polishing, but, then again, I don’t want to post work that I haven’t spent sufficient time polishing either. What, then, is a blogging Ph.D. student to do? I’m not entirely sure. One answer is to post work that is in the grey area in between publishable and mere opinion; topics that I have done some research on but not enough to where I’ll be able to publish on the matter anytime soon. But can this be right? Is the value and purpose of a philosophy blog really so limited? To be fair, one can post on more than philosophy proper, one can post on relevant news in current affairs, book reviews, etc.; nonetheless, surely philosophy (proper) is or should be a pillar of any philosophy blog.
I don’t have a great answer for this dilemma yet; any feedback, as always, is appreciated.
March 2, 2009 at 4:13 pm
I have the same worry: Do I really want to be putting either good or bad work on the internet? That’s why I don’t post very much, and usually explicitly work in progress of a fairly self-contained nature.
March 2, 2009 at 7:06 pm
“someone might snag it and publish it before I get the chance” – is there a real chance that someone might do this? Are there rumours that something like this ever happened? I tend to think that no rational person would snag an idea from a blog. The likelihood of ruining one’s reputation is just too high. And what about conference presentations and lectures? Should philosophers stop presenting new ideas there just because someone might try to steal them? So I tend to think that the fear is unfounded but maybe I’m to naive?
March 2, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Tim,
Thanks for your comment. Good points; I certainly argee that no rational person would steel from my blog!
I may very well be overly paranoid, but I have heard of cases where this sort of thing has happened. I doubt it happens very often, but nevertheless, given the job market, I am inclined to be very protective of my best unpublished work. Indeed, I don’t think I would present on anything tightly connected to my Ph.D. thesis anywhere except my own department.
I wonder how much weight my blog’s Creative Commons License has.
Best wishes,
-Ian
March 3, 2009 at 1:33 pm
I think you’d have to initiate a lawsuit if someone was ignoring the terms and you wanted to try to make the terms stick. :p
February 3, 2010 at 1:13 pm
[...] to signify a change in the general nature of the blog. Given my aforementioned blogging dilemma, I find myself significantly hindered in the amount of constructive philosophical content I am able [...]