Techy or tacky: why social media is just about bearable

I joined Twitter this week.

Now, given that Twitter has been around for over a decade, you might think I'm coming a little late to the party, and you'd be absolutely right. This is no accident. I've been purposely avoiding Twitter under the impression that it's a platform where people go to snipe about the contestants on Celebrity Love Island having cellulite, or to spread disinformation about the 'dangers' of vaccines, to showcase their hatred of Jews and Muslims, and to share the general minutiae of their everyday lives with the entire planet.

I haven't changed my opinion in this respect; I still think that Twitter is the place to go to discuss celebrity cellulite, to spread disinformation, hatred, and minutiae - but now I'm willing to admit that there is (a little) more to it than merely this.

It's not just Twitter of course: Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Weibo (etc) are also guilty. Social media as an institution is predicated on the fact that people love to make snarky comments from behind the safety of the screen. I've written previous posts about people encouraging a girl to kill herself on social media (which sadly, she did), and people are oh-so willing to criticise politicians, celebrities, and indeed anyone via the wonderful internet.

I must admit I'm not above this sort of attitude - after all, in this blog post I have made (albeit implicit) judgements about people who watch Celebrity Love Island, oppose vaccinations, and so on. It's a human compulsion to criticise, and social media is the ideal place to do it: people can be vicious without (much) recourse, and reading the comments is a sure-fire way to waste away your life. That's why I try to avoid it.

You might be surprised that someone writing a PhD about AI and future tech shuns social media, but there is no reason to think that all tech is a force for good. We shouldn't just accept tech with open arms merely because it is new or techy. (Indeed, my thesis will serve as a warning as well as an attempt at a solution to the perils of new tech.)

I've not always shunned social media: I spent ten years of my life on Facebook, and it was not time well spent. I knew it was drivel, yet I found myself scrolling through it several times a day, often shaking my head at the banality of its content, but reading it nonetheless! 

I probably spent an hour a day looking at the chocolate-covered faces of the nephews of old school friends, or watching people I once met on holiday pour a bucket of ice over their head, or listening to the rants of people I didnt really consider friends, but felt social pressure to friend them on Facebook because they'd sent me a request and I sort of knew them. It took the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 to give me the push I needed to leave Facebook. 

So, I deleted my account.* The following day, there were several times when I thought to myself "I'll just check Faceb-- oh, I deleted it. Ok I'll do something else." Within a couple of days, I stopped thinking about it altogether, and didn't miss it at all. Now, it's just not a part of my life any more. It's something I wasted a lot of time on, and ditching it gave me more time to devote to other things (such as my son -- not just eBay, Pinterest and TV!)

* Social media being what it is, I understand that my profile was not really deleted, at least, not by Facebook. It'll never be obliterated, short of a planetary meltdown on the scale of the extinction of the dinosaurs.

After that watershed moment (not just leaving Facebook, but leaving Facebook and not missing it at all), I resolved to stay away from social media for good. In my humble opinion, Facebook is possibly the least toxic of the social media outlets: at least it's people I know writing about things in their actual lives. On the other hand, Instagram is probably rife with duck-pout selfies and photos of people's dinners (this is my guess; I must admit I haven't checked). Snapchat is the place to go if you wish to receive unsolicited "dick pics" (again, this is my guess, not an empirical fact). And as I wrote earlier, Twitter is primarily celebrity-bashing, banal arguments, and disinformation. Weibo I'm less sure about, but it is probably filled with posts of people wholeheartedly endorsing the amazing Chinese government. In a nutshell, it seems to me that social media platforms are the means by which humans disseminate the drivel which we would tune out if someone were saying it IRL (in real life). Or it is the written (photographic) manifestation of smalltalk which is palatable in tiny doses, but causes severe nausea and brain damage when taken as a regular part of one's diet. 

So why the turnaround?

If the above is my genuine opinion of social media (and it is) then why on earth have I just joined Twitter?

Well, I was convinced by my friend and fellow grad student Mo (I'm not mentioning their real name; I wouldn't want to be named on someone's blog without my knowledge, unless they were citing my awesome work, of course). Mo said that Twitter is a great place to find out about new research, to make connections with people writing about similar things, and to find out about conferences. At first I was unconvinced, but Mo made a compelling argument. Mo also said Twitter is a great place to self-publicise (although Mo noted that they hate soing this, as it sounds so arrogant and conceited).

I gave it a fair bit of thought, and decided that Mo was probably quite right - Twitter could be useful.

But how could I go on Twitter whilst avoiding the chatter about celebrity cosmetic surgery and the banal minutiae of strangers' lives? Further reflection gave me my answer, and I felt more than a little sheepish. Social media is an echo chamber: if my previous experiences were characterised by pointless trivialities, then I had only myself to blame. If my online friends had interests which I was/am so disdainful of, then why did I engage with it - and with them? I must have engaged with it, because it kept coming back! 

The Plan

This time around, on Twitter, my intention is this: 

1. Follow only people or organisations whose interests truly fit with my own

2. Don't engage with banality, should I happen to see it

3. Unfollow people who routinely post banality 

Will it work out? We shall see. If I don't complete my PhD because I'm too busy commenting on botched nosejobs and why a score on Strictly should have been an 8 rather than a 7, then we'll know the experiment failed.

Wish me luck.

Scholar's guilt

Today is the first day in years that I've had an entire day to myself. My son is away for the day and night with Beavers, and I had an entire day to do with as I pleased.

Obviously, I have day times when he's at school and I am at home, but this was an entire 24 hour period.

It was weird.

So what did I do with my time? Well, I did a few necessary tasks like laundry, then I decided no, I should make the most of having the day of freedom.

So, I got myself a glass of wine (it was 4pm; I never drink before my son's bedtime to this was an uncharacteristic indulgence), set up the hammock hanging between two trees in my garden, and lay back and read a book.

Sounds leisurely enough, right?

The book was an academic text which I think will be pretty crucial for my PhD (John Danaher's Robot Sex). I was highlighting and making notes too.

The incessant studying even on a day of 'freedom' is of course caused by a phenomenon that many students, professors and academics are familiar with: scholar's guilt.

Whenever I'm not writing/researching (and not parenting) I have a voice in my head which says "you should be working on your PhD". It's like a micro-managing pedant lives on my shoulder, forever checking up on what I'm doing.

That's not to say I'm always working - of course I'm not! In fact I found the time today to scroll through Pinterest while lying in the hammock - then accidentally dropping my mobile phone onto the floor and smashing the screen on it 😭 (and I was only a couple of gulps into the wine, in case you're wondering!) But I digress.

The salient point is that while I was scrolling through Pinterest- and later, Googling how much it costs to repair the screen on my phone (it costs about 75% of what I paid for for the phone 😭) - I had scholar's guilt all the while.

I suppose it's just something that people either learn to live with, or they somehow overcome it. I don't get the guilt when I'm with my son, as there is no conceivable way I could do any substantive work while he's awake... but whenever he's asleep or away from me, I feel it. The nagging feeling that I ought to be working. Even when I'm sleeping over at my mum's house, or on the few occasions when I wake up before my son, the scholar's guilt is there, telling me to get PhD-ing.

Then again, perhaps a little scholar's guilt is a good thing, or else I may spend my non-childcaring time just lazing around in a hammock and drinking wine all day long. Then I'd never complete the PhD - and it'd cost me a bloomin' fortune in smashed phones too!

Golf balls, one-word exam responses, and the myths of Philosophy

Philosophy is my life, and I love it. But not everyone really knows what it is (this includes my immediate family, best friends, and seemingly everyone who isn't studying philosophy). I just hope they haven't gone online to try to find out what it is, and found these absurd myths.

Philosophy professor with life lessons 

A philosophy professor stood in front of the lecture theatre and picked up a large glass jar. Wordlessly, he proceeded to put golf balls into it, until the class agreed it was full. Then he poured in gravel; the gravel filled the spaces around the golf balls. Again, the class agreed the jar was full. Then he poured in sand, which filled the gaps around the gravel, and again the class agreed that the jar was now full. Finally, he picked up a glass of beer and poured it into the glass jar. The beer filled the remaining gaps and the class agreed that the jar was finally full. Then the professor said "The golf balls are the most important things in your life, like family. The gravel represents other things that are important to you, like your house, job, and car. The sand is all the other things in your life, like fixing the dripping tap or doing the laundry." "What about the beer?" asked a student. "Ah, the beer just goes to show that no matter how full you think your life is, there's always time for beer!"

If you have never heard this story before, I'm sorry to have put you through it. Because this is not a post about how we ought to prioritise our family (although we should), and nor is it a post about how there's always time for beer (there isn't). It's a post rant about how these ridiculous urban myths which circulate the internet and the real world are not just irritating, but offensive to philosophy as a discipline.

There is already confusion about what philosophy really is. I am recalling open days I've attended (both as a student ambassador, and as a teacher) where people have said things to me like "I'm not sure what philosophy is, but I think it sounds interesting" (I have never really figured out how something can be interesting when you don't know what it is!) or "Is philosophy like psychology, because the words sound a bit the same". I've also been asked (usually by parents rather than students) "What's your philosophy?" as though 'my philosophy' is some sort of belief I hold about life. Now it's OK that people don't know what philosophy is - the fact that metaphilosophy is a thing demonstrates that maybe even philosophers aren't really sure what it is either!

But whoever circulates these banal tales is exacerbating the confusion. I've been in the world of philosophy for 23 years, and never have I ever come across demonstrations with golf balls about the importance of beer. Nor even have I ever come across uplifting life advice about the importance of family and why we shouldn't sweat the small stuff. This is an important message, to be sure, but not really within the realms of philosophy. The latest crazes for mindfulness and meditation have further blurred the lines for the public about what philosophy is. And input 'philosophy' into any university search box and you will get dozens of results stating that the university wants the best for their students, and how students should balance work and play, - you'll have to really dig araound to find anything about the subject discipline of Philosophy.

One word exam answer gets top grade

A final philosophy exam paper asks students to define what courage is. A student responds with the single word "This." and receives the top grade.
A philosophy exam paper consists of a single one-word question: "Why?" A student responds by simply writing "Why not?" and receives the top grade.

These urban myths are simply absurd, and really make a mockery of the gruelling nature of philosophical study - and what's worse is that many people seem to believe them! I have had students who have asked whether they are true, even after a year of writing philosophy essays. One or two students have, over the years, told me that they had constructed some clever one-sentence answer for a question on solipsism, the external world, or determinism which they were sure would get them a grade A*. I of course told them that their idea was a recipe for disaster, and thankfully, to the best of my knowledge, no one ever attempted such a smart-Alec exam response. But still the myth persists (among non-philosophy students, at least) that philosophy is a subject where one can achieve a top grade with a clever one-word or one-sentence response.

There's no right or wrong answer

Philosophy has got a name for itself as a subject where there aren't any right or wrong answers, everything is just an opinion. Ethics is probably to blame for much of this problem - many children's first (and sometimes only) taste of philosophy is a discussion in English, RE or PSHE about whether abortion/euthanasia is right or wrong. People say their opinions, argue about it a bit, then the lesson ends. As an introduction to philosophy, this sort of lesson with youngsters is not too problematic, but when it still exists among second year BA students, it is more problematic.

I'm quite the antirealist when it comes to moral facts, aesthetics, and several other fields, but the notion that in philosophy "you can just argue anything - it doesn't matter what" is a tragic misconception, and far removed from antirealism. And this confusion is echoed by resrachers in other fields, who are aghast that we philosophers don't gather data.

Don't you gather data?

People in the sciences gather data, analyse their data, and draw a conclusion; the same is true of many people in the arts, humanities and social sciences. So many of them simply cannot fathom how one can conduct research without gathering data; they just can't seem to get their heads around it. I have been to numerous interdisciplinary conferences (for example, those organised by my funding body M4C, and those organised by the University of Nottingham, and the incredulity is rife.

When I have told interested people that I am studying how care robots should conceive of harm and consent, they ask me questions like "So what data are you gathering?" "Are you going to survey people to see how they think the robots should act?" or simply "What's your methodology?" Some people have been confused, and others incredulous, bemused or even horrified about the fact that philosophers don't generally gather data (xphi notwithstanding). "What, so you're just going to write about your opinions of how robots should act? Without even finding out what anyone else thinks?" they ask.

All disciplines suffer caricaturing

I suppose it's too much to ask that the general public - and perhaps even students in other disciplines - really understand how philosophy is conducted. After all, I'm perhaps woefully misguided about other disciplines. I guess any subject can be distilled into an excruciatingly dismissive soundbyte:

• Literature: you just read stories and say what you think about them
• Biology: you just look at animals and plants
• Maths: you just add up and take away
• Art: you just paint stuff
• History: you just read about the past
• Philosophy: you just say your opinion about stuff
• Sport science: you just run about and throw balls
• Business studies: you just look at how to make money
• Media studies: you just watch TV

I suppose when placed among these sorts of oversimplified and misguided bullet points, philosophy probably doesn't fare much worse than the other subjects do. I see philosophy as the essential foundation onto which all other knowledge is built (How can you study history without  understanding whether the past really exists? How can you study literature without knowing what language is?) But I suppose that many people see their discipline as the foundation of all others - psychology, language, history, sociology, physics, chemistry and biology can all make similar such claims (and probably lots of other subjects can too!) Nonetheless, it would be nice if people didn't belittle or caricature philosophy, my one true love.

PS - Stupid urban myths which belittle philosophy are infuriating, but if you'd like to see a collection of genuinely funny jokes about philosophy, check out see David Chalmers' website. But note that most of these will only be funny for someone well-versed in philosophy.

"They mustn't have had many good submissions" - impostor syndrome and negative assumptions

A couple of months go, I sent off an abstract to a CFP for a conference and this week I got an email saying I'd been accepted/invited to present my work there. "Hooray!" I thought - which was almost immediately followed by the thought "Maybe they didn't have many good submissions." I astonished even myself with my instantaneous self-doubt! "Maybe they're desperate for speakers?" I wondered, and "Maybe their reviewing procedures are biased?" I asked myself as I recalled the double-blind review procedure.

I can, through an act of will - and in defiance of my inner critic - insist to myself "No, my work was selected because it was good, not because they are desperate or careless with their selections", but it does sometimes feel forced and disingenuous to say that to myself. 

Of course, I recognise that my self-doubts are impostor syndrome, plain and simple (but if I recognise I have it, then I realise I'm good, and if I know I'm good then I don't have impostor syndrome!) 

Anecdotally, impostor syndrome seems commonplace among high achieving people. As kids, they see coming second as failure; getting 98% in a test just shows you weren't perfect; and no matter how well they do, still the feeling remains inside them that it's simply not good enough. Does this come from the school system? (I've seen the 'Two stars and a wish' strategy all over the place - ie each piece of work receives two positive comments and one suggestion for how it could be improved further.) I think self-doubt is perhaps reinforced by a school system which of course wants to push children to make progress. If my teachers hadn't reminded me that I needed to put capital letters after a full stop, I probably wouldn't do it now. But it can't be just the school who are to blame, as there are many kids who (outwardly, at least) aren't self-critical. But so often these aren't the kids who are getting 95% and just have a positive self-image; they are the kids who are getting 45% but just don't care that they're doing badly. There really does seem to be a correlation between high achievers and the feeling that one isn't (yet) good enough. 

Some self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy is probably what causes the high achieving - or at least helps it along. I work hard, achieve well, feel like it's still not good enough, and so work harder and achieve more. It's a good recipe for high achievement!

John Stuart Mill (I ❤️ Mill!) wrote that it's better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. In many ways, it seems to be true - the esteemed but sometimes dissatisfying life of high achievers does seem to be of a higher quality than the satisfaction a 'fool' gets from, say, reality TV and beer. I'd hope that achievement and happiness are not mutually exclusive, but if they are, then for my son I'd choose happiness over achievement every time. 

But what of my own impostor syndrome? Well, I suppose I really ought to heed the advice I've given to various kids about taking pride in your achievements and accepting praise and compliments with good grace. So I'll say this (even though it feels boastful and forced): if I've been chosen to speak at a conference, it's because I'm good enough to do so. I'm awesome!!

Repetitive strain injury

Five months into my PhD, and I've hit a rather large - not to mention painful - snag. I have a rotator cuff tear (a torn tendon in my shoulder) from repetitive strain injury. And I got it from typing so much stuff for my PhD. I've had jobs before where I've spent time at a computer but I guess I've not done it as intensively as I have been doing lately. And I've previously always sat at a desk to use the computer, but over the past few months I've taken to sitting either on my sofa or on my Ikea poang chair. Ironically, the reason I've been sat on my sofa or my chair is because they're more comfortable than my (old) desk chair, so I thought it'd be better for my back and shoulders to sit somewhere comfy so that I didn't get aching muscles!

I always thought that if a position felt comfortable then you wouldn't get RSI from being in that position... I guess I was wrong.

It's been too painful to type (or write by hand) for nearly two weeks. Earlier this week the doctor gave me some strong painkillers and anti-inflammatories which are doing a great job with my shoulder.... but they are making me so spaced out and nonchalant that I can't think straight enough to do  any phd work even if my shoulder was up to it. There's a CFP deadline in a few days that I was intending to respond to, but getting my mind in gear to edit a 3500 word paper is, at the moment, beyond my capabilities  (though I am trying). My wonderful son has said he'd do my typing (of the entire PhD!) for me if I just tell him what words to write! At this stage, I think the 3500 word paper would turn out better if I got him to write it himself!

I'm waiting for some physiotherapy on my shoulder, but my other shoulder has started to hurt too now. I hope I don't get another injury in that shoulder, because I'm using my left hand more than I would normally.

I've bought a new chair for my desk which will hopefully eliminate the problem of bad posture typing, but I need to let my injury heal first.

I hope my shoulder gets better soon as I don't know what to do with myself. Watching TV is boring and I just want to get back to writing about robot ethics. But at the moment I've got a choice between either being in too much shoulder pain to be able to type, or being too spaced out to be able to think. 😭😭😭

Zotero - reference management software review

I've been writing my thesis - but not writing it "up" - for a couple of months, and although I've previously managed all my references manually, I decided that I'd use some reference management software as I wrote my PhD thesis.

I've previously been happy to write all my references the old fashioned way - by looking at the book / journal, and writing down the salient information in the bibliography, and writing out my in-text citations manually. This method has always served me well and because I am a pedant when it comes to things like spelling, grammar, punctuation and indeed referencing, I have been able to manage my references flawlessly in this way. I haven't made mistakes because I know how to reference (Harvard-style) and so I continued with the mindset of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

However, since the number of references I'll probably be using for my PhD thesis was likely to be far greater than those I used for my essays and MA thesis, I decided that I'd start using some reference management software to help me keep track of it all. I'm glad I've taken the plunge, because even at this early stage, I already have 74 items in my reference list! (I've not fully read all of them yet though.)

So I decided that before I got started on my thesis, I'd compare / try a few reference management software (RMS) programs and decide on one which I was happy with. I probably spent nearly 2 days faffing around with RMS and making up my mind, but I was hopeful then - and I'm convinced now - that that was time well spent.

The RMS I settled on was Zotero. Below I list some of the other main RMS and why I chose not to use them:

• Refworks - this was the one which I had heard of most, and so was the one I was originally intending to use. Then I learned that unless your university had a subscription to it, individual students had to pay to use it (and that the University of Nottingham does not have a subscription to it). This quickly put me off Refworks.

• Endnote - The University of Nottingham does have a subscription to Endnote, so this became top of my list. I tried to follow the instructions I found for how to set up an account, and the instructions were unfathomable (for starters, they referred to a different version of Windows than the one on the library PC I was using, so were impossible to follow). I tried to get some help from an online chat person/bot, and from the IT support people in the library, but they struggled to use it too. This is not a criticism of them, but a criticism of Endnote, as I usually find them to be really knowledgeable and helpful. At length, with the help of an IT support person, a YouTube video, and an online help sheet, we finally managed to get the program running. I thought it'd be plain sailing after that, but it wasn't. The way to get an article onto Endnote seemed to involve a very complex procedure of searching an online library database... well, some of the sources I'd already taken a look at aren't on an online library database, and working out how to get these sources onto Endnote seemed impossible to me. Added to which, the 'main' version of Endnote could only be accessed from university PCs, and I'm likely to be doing most of my work from home. So I gave up on Endnote.

Once I'd dismissed these two 'big names', it was a question of doing some comparisons of the alternatives. I looked at a few online comparisons, and screenshots of different RMS systems, and downloaded a couple to try. I can't remember which ones (so this part of the blog post isn't that enlightening, as I can't recall why I dismissed Mendeley, BibTex and whatever else. What I can do is explain why I chose Zotero and why I like it).

Zotero - just click the Download button and Bob's your uncle.

Reasons why I like / chose Zotero

1. It's easy to use. This reason is up there front and centre of the reasons I chose Zotero. Here's how you do it: (1) go to Zotero website. (2) Download Zotero software that takes about 1 minute. (3) Start using it straight away. The Word plugin only has 5 buttons on it (add/edit citation, add/edit bibliography, refresh, unlink citations, and settings). It did take a little playing around with to work out all the functions, but more on that later.
2. Metadata is automatically uploaded to Zotero. Until I looked into RMS, I didn't even know what metadata was (data about data, I would have assumed). Metadata is in fact the details of a document such as its title, authors, publisher, date, URL, DOI, and suchlike. Having tried a few RM systems, it became evident to me that the sheer amount of time it can take to add metadata is just ridiculous on some applications. It can take a minute or two - at least - to write out all the metadata for one file. When that's multiplied by the possibly 300+ sources I may use during the course of my PhD, I realised that that would be a lot of time wasted and a lot of tedium suffered. The fact that Zotero automatically detects and uploads all the metadata on almost every file you drag and drop onto it was a godsend to me: "future me will thank me for this" I thought, and indeed I am grateful to past-me for choosing software which automatically sorts the metadata. And when metadata isn't detected (which has only happened on one online source so far) it's easy enough to enter it yourself with Zotero.
3. Zotero allows me to upload PDFs and other files whilst keeping those files on my computer. This is a must for me, because tech isn't always as trustworthy as we'd like it to be (yeah, I know my PhD thesis is about why we should trust tech to care for the elderly, but this is an entirely different issue!) If a company suddenly goes offline, into liquidation, etc, then I'd like to be able to have all - or at least, many - of my files stored offline on my hard drive as possible. Zotero ticks this box whereas so many other RM systems don't. This also appeals to me because I like to edit my PDFs with notes and symbols and things which aren't available in some RMS dedicated editors. eg some of the other RMS will allow you to edit a PDF, but only within the RMS program; if you then try to view that PDF in Adobe or similar, you can't see any of your notes. Or, the software allows you to highlight but not annotate PDFs on the page itself. Zotero allows me to edit documents with Adobe, Nitro or any other program, and then upload them as they are.
4. The code for Zotero is open-source. I'm not a software buff but apparently this means something along the lines of: if Zotero goes out of business, another company could use the same code to make the same program and so I'd still be able to use it. Or something like that.
5. Zotero is cloud-based, so wherever I am, I can access my saved sources, and the files can be viewed and accessed even if the source file is not on that computer. For example, say I annotate a PDF which is held on my home computer, and then I drag and drop it onto Zotero. The file is still on my home computer, but now if I go into uni and use a PC in the library, I can access and edit the very same PDF (with my notes already one it) even though it is not saved on that uni PC. This is a great feature which I didn't even realise was a feature when I started using it, but I find it really good. Most RMS is cloud-based, but still...
6. There's a Chrome plugin which allows you to upload sources direct from the web. The plugin takes about 30 seconds to download and sits right next to the URL bar. The program detects what type of page is being viewed (eg a news article, journal article, blog etc - I guess that's the metadata doing its job again!) and so when you click the icon, it knows what metadata is needed (date of publication, issue number, etc.) Amazing!
7. Sources of various different types can be uploaded. PDFs are standard for RMS, obviously, but some of the other RM programs I came across couldn't seem to handle a news website, let alone a Word document, powerpoint presentation, TV programme or a jpeg image. Zotero can handle any and all of these - and lots of others too.
8. I can use it as a cloud-based way of saving my own work. Because Zotero can handle Word documents, I made a folder within Zotero called 'my work' and now I upload my work to it at the end of each day as an additional cloud-based backup in case my house burns to the ground during the night. I suppose this wasn't the intention of Zotero, but it's a nice feature I'm utilising for my own gain.
9. It's easy to write notes and summaries. There's a text box on the right-hand side which you can write whatever you like into. I'm using it to write notes and summaries of documents. I know this is standard in almost all RMS, but it's obviously a useful feature!
10. It's possible to tag sources and link sources to one another. This is probably a simple feature which may be available in other RMS, but it's useful nonetheless. For example, I have scanned and uploaded a few different chapters of the same book, and although each chapter is written by a different author, I wanted them to be linked to one another, so that was easily done. I've also tagged my sources with various content-related tags like 'consent' and 'harm', but also 'fully read' and 'not yet read' to help me keep track of what I have and have not read. As one would expect, you can search for particular tags.

Screenshot of some of my Zotero sources at the moment

One wish

I saw on one RMS - I forget which now - that whenever you highlighted some text within a document, it transferred the quote to some sort of clipboard / note-taker interface. This seems like a really useful feature which it would be quite nice if Zotero had, but it doesn't. I suppose that's because it is a file depository rather than a file editor. My highlighting has been done in Adobe/Nitro, and not through Zotero itself; Zotero essentially just keeps a copy of the file. It's not too great a problem though, because it's still easy to cut and paste quotes if I want them.

Using Zotero

For the most part, Zotero is pretty easy to use. you drag and drop the files you want into the window as shown above. You download the Word plugin, and when you want to add a citation, you just click 'Add citation', type in the author or title you want to cite, add the page number, and press Enter. Pretty simple. And indeed far simpler than the other RM systems I had a go at.

But of course, there are always some times when there are slightly trickier things that one wants to do, like adding metadata, having one source with multiple sources attached to it, and it wasn't particularly easy to find Zotero help / guides on how to do these twiddly bits. I did find one help guide from Zotero, but this isn't exhaustive. I worked it out for myself though and wrote it down - here is my help sheet. Anyway, I've found Zotero to be pretty intuitive and easy to use, and I'm glad I took the time to choose a RMS programme which suited me and what I wanted. I definitely have no complaints so far.

Thesis-writing book reviews

I've now read these four books about thesis-writing for PhD study, and I share my thoughts on each of them below.

• Murray (2017) How to write a thesis (4th ed). Open UP Study Skills. Open University Press
• Carter, Kelly, and Brailsford (2012) Structuring your research thesis. Palgrave Research Skills. Palgrave Macmillan
• Oliver (2008) Writing your thesis (2nd ed). Sage Study Skills. Sage Publications
• Williams, Bethell, Lawton, Parfitt, Richardson, and Rowe (2010) Planning your PhD. Pocket Study Skills. Palgrave Macmillan

I've also bought "How to survive your viva" by Murray, but I haven't yet read it; I'll review it at a later date perhaps.

Murray (2017) How to write a thesis

This is a great book - the best of the four - and well worth the £20 I paid for it. I don't often write or highlight in books, but with this one I did because there are some parts of it which are stand-out gems of advice that I wanted to be able to find again and again.

I'd say that this book would be of particular use to people who might find it difficult to get started writing (or continue writing) or people who believe that they have nothing to write about (yet), because the book is filled with writing prompts, ways to get started, ways of planning, and ways of structuring your work. It's written for a generalist audience, but the suggested exercises seem flexible enough that there can be something useful for everyone, whether they are writing about biochemistry, medieval literature, or international politics. With 311 pages, it is bursting with useful tips, advice and information for thesis-writers.

I'm not someone who finds it difficult to get started writing, but I've still found the book really useful - and full of encouragement too! Almost every page has something really useful on it, and I can't praise this book enough. Here's a quote:

"In writing a thesis, we are entering a debate; there are many people who will not agree with our writing. Not only can we not ignore the work of those who are likely to disagree with us, but we must directly address it. We have to articulate the basis of such disagreements in our writing, showing where our work fits into the debate." (p121)

There are sections on getting started, structuring, becoming a 'serial writer', editing and revising work, and some information about the Viva. The only 'criticism' I have of the book is the suggestion that we should try to write 1,000 words a day. You don't need to be doing your PhD in maths to realise that 1,000 words a day for 3 years is over a million words! I suppose many people may struggle to write and so the chance of this actually happening to them is minimal: for me, over-writing is a genuine danger. Typically my way of producing the 4,000-word essays for my MA studies was to write an essay of around 15,000 words, then to cut it down and distill it. The thought of distilling 1,000,000 words into 70,000 words is unappealing, and so I'll take Murray's advice with a pinch of salt.

Nonetheless this book is fantastic, and something I'm sure I'll return to again and again throughout the next three years.

Carter, Kelly and Brailsford (2012) Structuring your research thesis

I found this book a bit weird. It is supposedly written for a generalist audience, as one would expect, but in some parts of it the advice seems very specific to particular domains. There is also a lot of what I can only describe as 'waffle' - which would be fine if it were a lengthy book which can afford to go off-piste from time to time, but with only 84 pages I would say it should stick rigidly to the point, which it doesn't seem to manage.

Something else which bothered me is the style in which it is written. I know it is aimed at an educated audience, but nonetheless, the goal of a textbook - any textbook - should be to explain what needs to be explained in the most efficient way possible; a textbook is not (or should not be) a chance for the authors to show off their articulacy with flowery language unless it is really necessary to the cause. This doesn't necessarily mean dumbing down, but it does mean using concise language where possible. Some sections of this book were unnecessarily verbose - here's a quote which is supposedly about how to make a common thread run through your thesis:

"Because it makes use of the complex semiotics of poetic language, metaphor can also be a strong structuring device. Metaphors that have a cultural underpinning enable a researcher to inhabit a social or cultural space simultaneously with their academic one. Cultural metaphors demonstrate the way that metaphor can contribute to methodology, and our examples make explicit the deep-level functioning of metaphor to carry one set of connotative meaning into another field." (p8)

I am struggling to know what the take-home advice of this paragraph is, and this quote is by no means an isolated cherry-picked example of the way this book is written. Whilst there are some parts of the book which may be of use to a thesis writer, I found the general tone of the book strange and at times almost impenetrable. And so given its price and low page count, I would say that - unusually for the Palgrave study books - this is just not worth the money.

Oliver (2008) Writing your thesis

[NOTE - There's now a third edition of this book, but I have the second edition pictured here.]

This book is really useful, and is a really good accompaniment to Rowena Murray's book, because much (around half?) of the material in this book isn't covered in the Murray book. For example, logistical and technical advice about fonts, layout, use of Latin terms, referencing, academic conventions and suchlike. There's also a useful chapter on working with supervisors and examiners. 

I think that if you're a person who is motivated and ready to start writing, then this book is probably even better than the Murray textbook. But this book does assume a certain readiness to begin study, which not all people will feel. It's fairly concisely written  and provides a happy medium (174 pages) between the brevity of the Williams book (below) and the detail of the Murray book. Here's a nice quote about thesis introductions:

"This [the Introduction] is a very significant chapter in the thesis. As it is the first chapter which is read by the examiners, it inevitably creates an impression in their minds about the writing style of the student, and of the broad nature of the thesis. The main purpose of the introduction is to provide the reader with an overview of the research study, and of the key factors which were influential in its inception. It sets the scene for the reader, providing a glimpse of the setting for the research and of the methodology. It should also provide a statement of the aims of the thesis." (p84)

The down-side of this book (for me as a Philosophy student, at least) is that the chapters on the literature review and methodology were largely irrelevant for me. Notwithstanding these chapters, the book as a whole is a very useful one I'll no doubt return to several times throughout my doctoral study. 

Williams et al (2010) Planning your PhD

This book is only tiny - smaller than A6 - and only 120 pages, but it packs a lot in. Brevity and ease of use are its assets.

As the title suggests, its focus is on planning and preparing for a PhD, and it's probably of most use to those who have not yet written a PhD research proposal. Once you've written a proposal and had it accepted, most of this book becomes redundant (I should have bought it before I wrote the proposal to have got the most out of it!)

Nevertheless, there are a few pages (perhaps 15 - but remember that each page only has around 300 words on it!) about introductions, literature reviews, attending conferences and publishing in journals, which are brief but of use. This book by itself would be insufficient to use as a guide to writing a PhD thesis, but given that its intention is to help you plan your PhD, it does exactly what it says on the (very small!) tin.

Being a woman in Philosophy

The blog Being a Woman in Philosophy (BAWIP) is a well-known collaborative blog; it details some very interesting and eye-opening (not to mention eye-watering) events which have happened to women in the field of philosophy. It's just appalling that people have had to go through these experiences, and it's genuinely alarming if these experiences are commonplace for women in philosophy.

But are they commonplace? I don't know for sure, but I do know that my experience of being a woman in philosophy is entirely at odds with what is on the BAWIP blog.

I was a philosophy undergrad in the late 90s, and I've taught A Level philosophy for about 8 years, and now I have been doing an MA in philosophy at university for the past 2 years; I'm just starting my PhD. I've been a woman throughout, I might add. I don't believe I have ever experience
d any discrimination, harassment, a chilly climate, or anything of the sort. Let's disregard my years of teaching A levels since that's not comparing like with like vis-a-vis the BAWIP blog; let me just consider my experiences as a woman in philosophy as a student at university.

"Yes, I'm female. No, I don't want you to kiss me."

I don't recall every detail of my undergrad degree at Keele 20 years ago, but given that I don't remember any sexual harassment or discrimination, I'm willing to say that none happened (to me). The majority of my professors were men, but there were also some women, and the lectures and seminars which were led by a woman were not qualitatively different from those led by a man. I was outnumbered by males in all my classes, but I didn't care. Males might have "dominated the discussion" in virtue of there being more of them in the room, but I was someone who spoke frequently in seminars, and I never felt any discrepancy or discrimination based on sex or gender. In fact, I have nothing but great memories of my Philosophy degree at Keele; studying there was an absolute pleasure and they were some of the best years of my life.

My experiences as an MA student - and now a PhD student - at Nottingham have not been noticeably different. Yes, I'm almost always outnumbered by men, but this does not bother me. Actually, I quite like being outnumbered by men and I often feel more comfortable in a room full of men than a room full of women. Why? Hard to say. As a kid I was a tomboy, and as an adolescent and young adult, I had interests in activities which happened to be male-dominated. I did sports and activities where I was sometimes the only female among 10-20 males, and I never felt threatened by any of them; they were my friends. So I've always been quite comfortable with being outnumbered by men. From my teenage years onwards, the guys I was surrounded by sometimes made sexual jokes or innuendos, "locker room talk" and the occasional sexist comment, but I either laughed along with them, rolled my eyes and sighed, or gave as good as I got; I never felt uncomfortable or harassed. Sometimes my female friends and I would talk about sex, make sexual innuendos or sexist jokes, so what's the difference? None, as far as I can see. So those were my experiences of being a woman in sport and recreation.

Back to being a woman in philosophy... Yes I'm outnumbered, and no it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I've had contact (viz. conversations) with probably around 70 men and 15 women working or studying in Philosophy over the past 2 years, and every one without exception* has been normal, honest, decent, kind, and I haven't detected the faintest whiff of sexism. Ever. I've been to seminars; I've attended lectures; I've had private conversations in their offices; I've spoken to them less formally over lunch; we've emailed each other... and each and every man has behaved, as far as I can tell, with the utmost integrity, respect, warmth and professionalism. I consider several of them to be my friends. Just to be clear, it is not that I have noticed sexism but been OK with it; it is that I have never noticed any sexism in philosophy. (This differs from my teenage experiences in male-dominated sports and activities, where sexism occurred but I lived with it.)

*Actually there was a man who seemed hostile towards men and women alike, but he only stuck around for a few weeks.

So, my experiences seem fundamentally different from those collected on the Being a Woman in Philosophy blog. There are a few ways to explain the difference:
1. Different institutions;
2. Different intersections;
3. Different foci (confirmation bias);
4. Cherry-picking.
Let's consider each of these.

Different institutions

It's possible that the institutions mentioned on the BAWIP blog are at the opposite end of the spectrum to mine. Perhaps there really is abundant sexism in other universities, and none whatsoever in mine. But this seems highly implausible: it would be remarkably good luck if  sexism is rife but I just so happened to have attended two non-sexist institutions in different areas of the country 20 years apart. It's also implausible because I have had plenty of contact with people from outside my own institution, and indeed from different countries, and all of them, I would say, have behaved just as impeccably as the men in my university. So let's dismiss this idea as simply unconvincing.

Different intersections

A second possible explanation is that the experiences on the blog are from women who are discriminated against not (just) because they are women, but because they are working-class, transgender, people of colour, disabled, or some other reason, whereas I am a white woman who doesn't tick any other boxes where discrimination often occurs. So in many ways, as a white cisgender, able bodied person I am in the overwhelming majority, whereas others may not be. It may be that men's attitudes towards me is markedly different from their attitude towards black women, Asian women, disabled women, trans women, and so on. This is possible, but it seems highly implausible that the pleasant and welcoming male philosophers I know would suddenly change when a woman of colour, trans, disabled or whatever appears on the scene. One reason why I am convinced that this change in behaviour doesn't occur is that I have been in lectures and conferences where there have been women of colour and other minorities in the audience, and a white man at the front, and I would say none of the men have behaved inappropriately or in a sexist way. But hey, I suppose I have to admit that it's possible that some men might have Jeckyl-and-Hyde personalities whereby they behave impeccably when in a public setting, but offensively when in private. I just don't believe that this is true of the men I know. And even if it is true, then the difficulty is not specifically being a woman in philosophy, but being a trans woman in philosophy, a woman of colour in philosophy, and so on.

Different foci (confirmation bias)

It is possible that the women on BAWIP and I simply focus on different  things. I don't believe I'm in a sexist environment, and so any sexist comments that are said simply don't make it onto my radar, whereas someone who does believe they are in a sexist environment would pick up on even tiny instances of sexism. This seems like quite a plausible possibility to me. But is it that I'm getting lots of false negatives, or that the women on the Being a Woman in Philosophy blog are getting lots of false positives?

Perhaps 'false' is an inappropriate term, and there is no mind-independent fact about whether x is offensive or sexist; perhaps x is offensive iff someone believes it's offensive? (That's an issue I'll explore another time.) It does seem possible that people who are already feeling discriminated against, harassed or in a 'chilly climate' due to their sex would be more attuned to noticing sexist comments; this is a confirmation bias, and I'm sure you don't need me to tell you how confirmation bias can disrupt our objectivity. if these women are having a confirmation bias, then the incidents may be out of proportion or misinterpreted. ...But I am also susceptible to confirmation bias, and so perhaps I really am oblivious to sexism right in front of me? I don't think I am oblivious, but that's the nature of being oblivious, I suppose.

If I think really hard, I can recall experiences which, with a fair amount of spin, could be framed as sexist. For example: people accidentally referring to the author of a paper as 'he' even though it was written by a woman; people using male pronouns when talking about a generic philosopher; using male pronouns in written work. I wouldn't call any of these sexism; the only reason I mention them is that I've heard other people describe them as sexist. I'm not convinced that they are sexist - in fact, I've done all of these things myself. Does this mean that the reason I don't perceive the problem is because I'm part of the problem? I don't think it does, but again, perhaps I am just oblivious - and oblivious to the fact that I'm oblivious. Perhaps my definition of sexism is just different to others' (although many, but not all of the experiences detailed on the BAWIP blog are, even by my reckoning, quite clear examples of blatant and unacceptable sexism and sexual harassment).

So I think it's really quite plausible and likely that other women notice sexism where I don't notice it; whether the sexism genuinely exists or not seems something of a grey area. I've definitely had conversations (outside of philosophy) where it was clear to me that A was being disdainful towards B, yet in private discussions with B, it became evident that B didn't notice or didn't believe that A was being disdainful. Without further information, it's not clear whether B or I was correct about the behaviour of A. But this sort of occurrence could plausibly explain why my experience of being a woman in philosophy differs so fundamentally from those described on the BAWIP blog. But I think that confirmation bias alone doesn't explain the sheer volume of instances described on the BAWIP blog.

Cherry-picking

I think cherry-picking is a fair criticism to be made of a blog which collects sexist experiences from women in philosophy, and gathers them together all in one place. If every woman who works in philosophy for say 30 years experiences a single instance of sexism and shares it to the blog, the blog would have reams and reams of material - thousands and thousands of examples. But would one experience per woman per career truly constitute a pervasive sexist climate in philosophy? I don't believe that it would. That's not to mitigate or belittle the genuine and sometimes harrowing experiences detailed on the blog, but we need to remember that they have been cherry-picked because they are so sexist. When I first read the blog, I actually thought they were all the experiences of one woman (I was horrified!) - but they aren't. They are the collected anecdotes of goodness knows how many women. That doesn't make them any less disturbing or any more acceptable, but if they are set against a backdrop of almost universally good experiences of women working alongside men, they lose some of their potency.

Look! A red apple!

Cherry-picking is such a problematic venture when trying to fairly represent the experiences of an entire group. I'm not wholly clear on whether the BAWIP blog is aiming to fairly represent the experiences of all women in philosophy, or whether it is merely trying to gather together some of the worst problems with gender inequality. If the latter, then my argument here has little weight to it, but the title of the blog, Being a Woman in Philosophy implies the former - that it speaks for all women, and shows what it is like to be a woman in philosophy. If it really is intending to show the daily reality for all or even most women in philosophy, then I think it probably fails. If I had no idea about what it was like to be a woman in philosophy, and I read the blog to find out, I don't think it would give me an accurate picture of the reality for most women. I know for sure that it does not describe my experiences at all; it's at the other end of the spectrum. So I think cherry-picking goes a long way towards explaining why my experiences are so different from those detailed on the blog.

The repercussions and the future

Do some men in philosophy make occasional sexist remarks or actions? Yeah, some probably do. But the vast, vast majority of men in philosophy that I have met - and men outside of philosophy for that matter - are kind, decent, friendly, professional, and not sexist.

The BAWIP blog may inadvertently be contributing to the very problem it seeks to eradicate: gender imbalance and gender inequality. Suppose that a 17-year old girl is considering studying philosophy for her degree, and suppose that a female MA student is considering doing a PhD in philosophy, and suppose that a female PhD student is considering following a career as an academic philosopher - and that all three of these women read the BAWIP blog to find out what it's "really" like to be a woman working in philosophy. It's plausible to think that some such women will read the blog, and run a mile. Why would any sensible woman want to enter into a career which is so horrendously sexist, where women are frequent victims of sexual harassment and even sexual violence? The BAWIP blog probably puts at least some young women off studying philosophy, and puts some women off a career in philosophy; this will only contribute to the under-representation of women in philosophy. Under-representation of a particular group is a recipe for discrimination, and so it continues. This is not a foregone certainty, but I think the blog may put some women off a career which they could otherwise have been well-suited to... and if it does, that's quite sad.

Of course, some people will argue that there is something to be gained from making any acts of bigotry and harassment public; that in making them public, we are better able to guard against them. I can see why people find such an argument appealing, but I am not wholly convinced by it. If one experiences harassment, discrimination or bigotry, one should absolutely report it to the Head of Department if not the police, but I think there is little to be gained from going public (ish) on a blog.

For my own case, I will continue to expect and look for the best in the men (and women) around me, and I won't try to add spin and reinterpret every action as if it's one motivated by sexism. I won't gather together all the tiny minutiae of times when someone referred to a philosopher as 'he' by accident, or didn't include "enough" women on the reading list for a module. I haven't seen any sexism until now, and I doubt I will see any in the near future. If that means I am happy in ignorance, then I am content indeed to be happy in ignorance.

Writing - or writing up?

I've been working on my PhD for about 2 weeks now. I've bought some subject-related books (about care, AI, and the robotic revolution) and I've bought 3 books about PhD research. The books I've bought are:

• How to write a thesis - Rowena Murray 
• Authoring a PhD - Patrick Dunleavy
• Writing your thesis - Paul Oliver

...and of course I've chatted to numerous students who are currently studying for - or about to start studying for - their doctorate. And something which has come up both in the books and when chatting to other students is this thing called "writing up". I admit I haven't read the above books from cover to cover, so it's possible that they will solve the mystery for me. But I am, at the moment, at a loss: I just don't see what people mean by 'writing up' as though it is something fundamentally different from writing or editing. I've started to wonder whether others work in a different (better?) way than the way I work.

Typically, this is how I would write something; it's the approach I've used to write textbooks, it's how I wrote all my MA essays, including the dissertation, and it's the approach I intend to use to write my PhD thesis:

1. Have an idea and make some handwritten notes in my notebook
2. Make more substantial notes / a plan on the computer (eg a 500 word plan of the steps my argument will take)
3. Read some relevant articles and make notes on the PDFs
4. Transfer some quotes / arguments to my essay to support my argument or as something to argue against (and edit my argument so as to agree or disagree with the literature)
5. Refine my question and argument by writing more, and deleting less useful parts
6. Repeat steps 3-5 a few times
7. Write introduction and conclusion
8. Decide that my essay is almost finished, and proofread for typos, formatting, and other small errors
9. Repeat step 8 several times until I can read through it without making any corrections
10. It's finished!

Which, if any, of these steps is 'writing up'? It seems to me that none of them are. Sure, some steps involve writing, but the study texts and PhD students talk as though 'writing up' is something distinct from mere writing. For example, I've heard PhD students say things like "I'm in my third year now, so I've done all the work; now I'm just doing the writing up" or "I'm allowing myself six months for writing up" and I find myself wondering: if they 'write up' in their final year, what have been doing the rest of the time? Reading I presume, but then does this mean that they read for 2.5 years without doing any writing, and then do all their writing in one go? Who knows?

Perhaps one day in my PhD journey I'll fathom the difference
between writing and editing, and writing 'up'.

I'm two weeks in and I have written about 3000 words so far. It's not amazing; it's not polished; it will probably be unrecognisable if it makes it into the finished thesis, having gone through several edits and re-edits - or it might not make it into the finished thesis at all. But I have done some writing (and some reading) and I will keep adding to my writing, improving what I've done and adding clarifications and detail, until it is done. If that's how I work (and it is how I work!) then it seems that I won't be doing any 'writing up' at all. 

Perhaps 'writing up' is more relevant to non-philosophical subjects (xphi notwithstanding), where a PhD involves a literature review, an explanation of methodology, results gathered and interpreted, and then conclusions drawn? Perhaps in such disciplines one spends a lot of time reading and explaining literature (without much argument of their own), collecting and analysing data, and then the 'writing up' is something that can (only?) be done afterwards, to draw together all these different threads and create a finished piece?

The thing is that I've dabbled in xphi (a piece of MA coursework I wrote about trustworthiness) and I was writing throughout. I wrote my argument and methodology, and a tentative interpretation of early results as I went along: I didn't just gather the data and then 'write up' my work as a separate process. This meant that once all the results were in, I only needed to edit and tweak my interpretation of the results rather than write it from scratch, meaning that there was no distinct time when I 'wrote up' my essay. I guess maybe my approach wasn't best practice, or maybe there are some disciplines that simply can't do things the way I did my Xphi study?

So it seems to me that there are only these two possibilities:

EITHER:

• Writing a Philosophy thesis is fundamentally different from other PhD theses

OR

• The way I work is fundamentally different from the way other students work

Perhaps I am displaying a woeful naïvety, and over the next year or two I'll have some sort of 'writing up epiphany' whereupon I'll realise what writing up entails... or perhaps I will do things my own way, only to discover all too late that my work is shoddy because I merely wrote it and edited it and proofread it, but I never wrote it 'up'. Because despite my having pondered this for the last week or so, I still cannot fathom how 'writing up' is a thing in itself, distinct from writing and editing.

Beginning my PhD

Secure funding from M3C for PhD study - Check!
Attend orientation residential session by M3C - Check!
Start work on PhD --- umm...

So, it's the end of September, and it's time for me to start work on my PhD. Having been on the residential session through M3C earlier this week, I've met numerous other students at the start of their PhD journey. We have been warned not to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of what we need to produce (i.e. an 80,000-100,000 word thesis), and to be honest, I don't really feel overwhelmed by it, so that's a good thing. I've produced work of similar lengths before, and when it's broken down into chapters, and I need to produce 12,000 words about a particular idea, that is not overwhelming at all. Producing quantity of work has never been a problem for me.

...It's producing quality of work which is my difficulty! But even that is something which I can evidently do, based on some of my MA work, so quality is something that I can produce, given enough time - hopefully.

My issue is this: I don't know what I'm going to argue. Some people are setting out on their PhD journey with a clear understanding of what they are going to argue. For example, they're going to argue that abortion due to foetal abnormality is an act of hermeneutical injustice, or that the work of Chaucer helps us better understand Islamic radicalisation of teenage boys, or that machine-generated musical compositions can improve the overall wellbeing of people with autism. But I'm not in such a clear position. I know my PhD will establish (or attempt to establish) what consent is, and how an AI robot ought to conceive of consent - and the same for harm. But as things stand, I don't know how an AI robot ought to conceive of consent or harm. Hopefully that will come with time, because "I don't know; it's all a matter of opinion" isn't a good conclusion for a PhD thesis!

Massive thanks to M3C (soon to be M4C) for all the
lovely money and incredible opportunities to conduct
awesome research and make a difference in the world.

I'm starting out now, looking at some legal conceptions of consent (ie laws on sexual offences) and I'll read some articles on consent and take it from there. For me, the joy of philosophy is and has always been the search for answers, more so than the answers themselves. It's just as well really, as definitive answers in philosophy are as rare as rocking horse sh!t. But I am so excited to be starting out on PhD study, it really is like a dream come true for me. Having been to the M3C residential the other day and rubbed shoulders with people who are far younger and far more intelligent than me, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling a slight sense of impostor syndrome. But I guess somebody thinks I'm good enough to do this, so objectively, I probably am good enough. I am just so, so pleased that I'm being fully funded by M3C (I'm resisting the urge to say 'lucky' as it implies a randomness or lack of desert which is not a principle of AHRC funding). So for the next 3 years I get to study what I want to study: can there be anything better in life? I don't think so... well, except maybe chocolate!

Let the search for answers commence!!

Finishing off my MA thesis

When I was pregnant with my son, it was a problem-free pregnancy and I didn't mind being the size of a house and having a baby jumping around inside me. But as I reached my due date, I started to want him out; not just because I was looking forward to motherhood, but because I was just sick of being pregnant. A week after my due date, I was REALLY sick of being pregnant and I just wanted the pregnancy to be over with. He finally arrived 10 days after the due date, and although I'd enjoyed pregnancy, I was so glad it was finally over with. (Of course, I soon realised that motherhood was a thousand times harder than pregnancy, but that's another story!)

I feel the same way now about my MA thesis as I did about pregnancy: it's been fun, but I want it over with. On the other hand, it feels like there's just not enough time to get it finished to a really good standard, even though I've been working on it for an eternity. I guess that's another parallel with pregnancy: no matter how much preparation you do, you're never quite ready for it.

My argument has generated far more interest than I expected it to; I thought people might be squeamish about talking about sexbots, but I should have credited people with more maturity. My work has been a talking point among my friends, family, and other academics, so of that I am grateful. At least my work is not so obscure that it's impossible to explain to the lay person, and every couple of weeks I see a sexbot related news article or something that someone sends me via email. I've pushed "not safe for work" to a whole new level, with people sending me all kinds of grisly stories.

I'm hopeful (but not expectant) that my work can be published in a journal. There's very little work on sexbots in the philosophical literature, so that is a point in my favour, but novelty shouldn't (and won't) be mistaken for quality, so I'm still going to have to produce something of a really high standard if I want it out there on Philpapers. Hopefully my MA thesis is a reasonable quality, but I'm so close to it I just can't tell any more. I've spotted a couple of holes in my argument but I'm not sure whether they are insurmountable failures or minor imperfections. They seem glaringly obvious to me because I've been embroiled in it for so long. Maybe others won't really notice them... or maybe they will. I suppose that there can't be many philosophy papers - if any - which present an argument so perfectly that no one has any criticisms of it. (Gettier's paper is the only one I can think of which comes anywhere close to universal acceptance.) So maybe a flawless argument is an impossible, unachievable goal to strive for.

Anyway, it's due in tomorrow, so there's not a lot I can do between now and then if my work is rubbish. I might have to resort to crossing my fingers until I get the grade back.

Funded PhD scholarship - secured!

It feels like it's been a really long road towards securing funding for my PhD, and I won't lie: there have been tears along the way. But this week I got the news I've been waiting for! I've been awarded a fully-funded scholarship to research exactly what I want to research, at the university I want to study at (ie where I currently am: the University of Nottingham) and I am so happy, relieved, and excited that I can hardly contain myself.

There have been a few opportunities to apply for funding over the past year, and I've applied for whatever I could. Earlier in the year (April maybe?) I got through to the final 'round' of scholarship awards from the funding body I most wanted to be funded by, only to fall at the final hurdle. It was a tough blow, not least because I am currently not working, and I have a mortgage and a young child to support, and I need income from somewhere in order to put food on the table. So that was very disheartening, but there was still a glimmer of hope because I had heard word that there was set to be some funding available for arts and humanities research in the field of AI, which is exactly my preferred field of study.

I think it's probably fair to say that it was science fiction which cultivated my interest in philosophy before I even knew what philosophy was. Time travel paradoxes, robots with feelings, mind-body swaps, the ethics of dealing with alien cultures - ah, I love it! Throughout all these years, I've continued to enjoy sci-fi and philosophy, but separately. But the opportunity to study emerging technologies through the lenspiece of philosophy, well, I'm in heaven! So when I found out about a funded scholarship studying how AI robots should conceive of consent/harm, I didn't need to think too hard before applying.

What can I say, the rest is history: I applied, I was selected, offered the scholarship (covering fees, plus a living stipend), and I accepted. Now I'm just finishing off my MA dissertation before starting work proper on something I can't wait to get started on: it's like a dream come true for me. Yes I know that's a cliche, and I'm sure it will be difficult, hard work, and at times maybe exasperating, but right now I am just filled with excitement for what lies ahead over the next three years.

Bring it on!!

Conference presentations

Well, it seems like it's all go at the moment, in a good way. Last month I responded to four calls for papers / abstracts, and I've had word that I've been accepted by two of them. I suppose lots of students get invited to speak at lots of conferences, but it's the first time I've been accepted, so quite exciting, and hopefully it's the first of many such experiences.

One event is an interdisciplinary graduate research event at UoN, and the other is a philosophy conference focusing on philosophy and current events, in the USA. I was thinking to myself that the UoN conference was probably not all that competitive so not that much of an achievement, but then, there are over 8000 postgraduate students here at Nottingham uni, so perhaps I ought to give myself more credit. There's no way for me to know how many applied to either event anyway, so maybe I should just feel pleased. I'm not posting the exact details on here (yet) in case it all falls apart! I'm quietly hopeful but sensibly cautious. I'm not sure how these things are funded: who pays for the flights, accommodation and suchlike for the conference in the USA where I'm due to speak? I hope it's not me.

I also presented at the PGR seminar this week (that's not an achievement though; any philosophy postgrad student can present; there are a group of about 8 of us who regularly attend, and so the audience is usually only about 10 people.) At the two upcoming events, I'll be presenting the same paper that I presented at the PGR seminar; it's one which I've been working on for my MA dissertation. It's about sexbots and some intrinsic wrongs associated with a particular type of sexbot. The presentation went well, I think. Lots of questions pressing me on the distinction between a robot which intentionally represents someone, and a robot which accidentally resembles someone.

If I am able to proceed with my PhD, I plan to be studying a whole lot more socio-political-ethical-legal issues surrounding sexbots and other (non-sexual) lifelike robots. Aside from the fact that it's fascinating and exciting and what I always hoped I could research when I saw things like I Robot and Star Trek, one great thing about my research is how current it is. Hopefully the philosophical investigations into robots won't just be a flash in the pan, because building my career on a mere trend could be problematic. But I am versatile and I have wide-ranging philosophical interests, so even if I am not researching robot ethics for the next 20 years, there will be no shortage of issues I want to write about.

I just hope that these conferences go well. Sometimes I feel as though other people are so much more cut out for this than I am. That seems unfounded though, given that teaching involves (in part) presenting to an audience, and given my extensive experience in that, then it's just implausible to suggest that I'm not cut out for this. Nonetheless, the feelings of inadequacy persist. Maybe they'll dissipate in time; if these upcoming presentations go well, it will help. I've had some academic / funding disappointments recently, so hopefully some better times are on their way. I'm not referring to it as luck, as I think very little of what happens in academia is down to luck, but that's another post for another day.

Phd funding

I am intending to begin my PhD in five months time. In December I applied for funding from Midlands 3 Cities. The odds are approximately that around 1 in 10 applicants for funding are successful. I was hopeful but not expectant; I have in the course of my lifetime become something of an expert at coming fourth; good, but just outside of the medals.

I was told in February that I was through to the final stage of selection - although I don't know what percentage of applicants were also through to the final stage. Last week I received an email, and opened it up... The first line of it read something like "After careful consideration, I can confirm that..." and for half a second there my heart leapt... until I read the second half of the sentence, saying that I hadn't been selected for funding. When I worked in recruitment, I sent many rejection letters to unsuccessful applicants, and none of them ever began with the words "I can confirm". So when I received this email from M3C, I read and reread it just to make sure. And alas, I am sure that it said I've not been selected for funding.

I'm friends with several of the PhD philosophy​ students at UoN, and I only know of one who is self-funded (so I know of around 7 who are funded). Surrounded by such success stories, it would be easy to assume that it's easy to obtain funding, but I have been well aware (and am now even more so) that the unsuccessful applicants for funding simply aren't there. It's not that they don't exist, but that they don't exist on the PhD programme.

It's pretty disheartening to face the sad reality that I'm not one of The Chosen Ones, but I'm trying to remain philosophical (ha! That won't be the last time I make that rather poor joke!) There are other chances for funding, and if those avenues are also unsuccessful, then I can self-fund.

I think.

I hope.

Ok, I don't really know if I can afford to. But I have my heart set on PhD study now, and it will be devastating for me if I can't pursue it.

Weirdest seminar ever

Last week, I got sick with food poisoning (from my own cooking it think. After four days of sickness I went to the chemist and got some anti-nausea tablets. The following day, after 5 days of barely eating, I was starting to feel spaced out and weird, like this was not really reality, nothing matters, I wasn't controlling my own actions, and I couldn't concentrate on what people were saying. It felt like I was in a TV programme, or living in a memory or my own imagination: it didn't seem real.

I remember sitting in my living room looking at my hands and moving them around and thinking I know these are my hands, and they are moving in the ways I'm wanting them to, but it just doesn't feel like I'm the one who's moving them. It feels like someone else is controlling them, and it's just luck that they're doing what I want them to. I found myself looking at my son and thinking I know I love him, but I just don't feel the love. I know it in the same way I know that my colleague loves her kids; I have the objective, propositional knowledge, but I don't feel it myself. 

Feeling this way worried me: what if I hurt him? What if I decided that I just didn't care about anything, because nothing felt real, and went on a killing rampage, like a video game where it just doesn't matter whether you kill the characters are not, because they aren't real. I decided to drive to the walk-in centre to get help: driving felt as if my car was staying still, and the road was moving around me, like a simulator. Even though it didn't feel real, I sort of knew it was real, and I had to be careful not to crash. With hindsight, there is no way I should have been driving, but I hadn't realised that at the time. At the walk-in centre I struggled to articulate why I was there, and why it was urgent. She said there'd be a wait of around 4 hours. Four hours of unreality in a medical centre waiting room with a young child was not appealing. I decided to return home and call my mum for help. She lives a couple of hours away, but came over and looked after my son, while I stared into space and contemplated unreality.

I didn't take any more of the nausea tablets, and the next day I started to feel a bit better, so dragged myself into the seminar at uni (mum drove). It was Epistemology. What better subject to be discussing when you are having doubts about the reality of, um, reality, right? Well, Cartesian scepticism and thought experiments about reality not being real are fine, but living it is a lot less palatable. It was traumatic, actually, and genuinely scary. Why didn't I just stay at home? I don't know. I should have, but my judgment was compromised such that I didn't realise my judgment was compromised. I felt like I was losing myself, and I had to grab on to anything which I objectively knew to be reality (even though it didn't feel real) for fear that if I didn't, then it would genuinely cease to be real. So I went to the seminar in the hope that the professor - let's call him J - would talk to the other 3 students, and I could stare into space and try to absorb some of it and not have to construct sentences. That was my hope. It did not pan out.

I arrived at the room first, and started to unpack my stuff, and it took so much mental effort to work out what I needed to put on the table and what to leave in the bag. J arrived and asked if I was better (I'd emailed the day before that I wasn't well) and I said no, I wasn't better. He said he was unwell too, and it felt like there was a fog in front of him. I said I hoped he and the others would talk and I could just listen; he said he hoped he didn't have to do too much talking either as he was also struggling!

That much I remember clearly, but the rest of the 2 hours was a blur, like yesterday's dream; a drunken evening; a vague memory; a poorly imagined conversation; a half-watched TV programme. No one else showed up to the seminar, so he said it was up to me if I felt I wanted to proceed. I foolishly said I did. The next thing I recall is J talking about the article, while I had my hands over my face, then me crying and saying I couldn't do it as I just didn't know what he was saying. I remember how painfully difficult it was for me to construct a meaningful sentence, to pick the right word, put it in the right place: I think I sounded something like this: "I think the... um... writing... um... writer... author... is wrong that... um... well maybe... sort of... the thing is that... the examples doesn't... they don't really... um..." and I had my hands over my face or my eyes closed for most of the time. He said we didn't need to carry on but I said I thought I'd be ok, and kept insisting we should continue.

I remember the feelings clearly; how it felt like he wasn't really talking to me, like I was just remembering or imagining the conversation as it unfolded in front of me, like watching a video of myself having a conversation I'd forgotten about. It felt like I wasn't really there and my mind wasn't my own; like there was a blocker between me and my own actions and what I said. I remember having to cover up my eyes just to block out my visual perceptions which was so distracting, just so I could listen to what he said.

Anyway, I said I thought I couldn't continue with the seminar - but then changed my mind, and somehow did, although now, my memories of the content of what we talked about is something like this: something about a sweaty American politician... something about jelly babies... something about my sister's spending habits... something about a child waking up at 6am... something about eating someone else's lunch as they always bring too much. I reckon that's the sum total of memories of the content of what we discussed. Not exactly useful stuff. Hopefully my memory will return, or maybe that it's stored in my subconscious.

So it must have been pretty hellish for J, trying to do a seminar with only one student, who is a blithering idiot in a state of temporary psychosis, sitting with her face in her hands for most of the time, all while he was unwell himself. Poor guy! But he performed admirably.

A day later I realised that the tablets I'd got from the chemist were not supposed to be taken alongside another medication which I also take - and now I know why they say don't take them together! My mind is gradually returning to normal now (2 days later), and I'm trying to see the funny side of it all.

So that was the weirdest seminar ever. And I was the source of the weirdness. I'm glad that only J saw me in that state and not the other three in the class. It was a pretty horrible experience to feel that reality isn't really real. Cartesian scepticism will never be the same again.