As a philosophical resource FB is indispensable -- for me, at least. Im sure I could do the same things without Facebook but I happen to use Facebook to do a lot. I met philosophers on Facebook, folks working on similar stuff. Facebook is where I get the general rundown of whats up in the philosophical world: what my philosophy friends are writing about, what conferences are coming up, etc. I belong to a FB group -- The Philosophical Underclass -- where folks from smaller schools with limited resources (like me) can get articles that they might not be able to easily get through their own library. I can just scan the recent requests if I want to get an idea of what folks are working on, generally speaking. Being in the middle of nowhere it makes me feel a bit more plugged in. There are other examples, like signing up for regular posts from the APA, the Chronicle for Higher Education, etc. Can you do philosophy on FB? This is an interesting question because it depends on what you mean by doing philosophy. If you think that the primary expression of philosophy is an article or a book, then perhaps you cant do philosophy on FB. Even here you can start doing philosophy. Ive thrown out ideas on Facebook to which others have responded and some of them have eventually found their way in print, or in referee reports, or whatever. What I like about FB as opposed to, say, a blog is that you can just switch to message (ironic since that is more difficult now) to continue the conversation in more detail with particular people. So theres a way to transition from the public conversation to the private written piece. But what if philosophy isnt about writing philosophy articles books? I tend to think of the quintessential philosophical expression as coming in the form of a conference presentation. Philosophy is not just the article. It is the article, followed by the commentary, followed by the Q&A. Philosophy is that and more and in some respects I think it is best done in a public setting. Of course, the articles and books are philosophy, too. But the best of those are good precisely because they help to create these further contexts of group discussion and debate. Lastly, blogs do not provide a perfect agora, to use Sauls helpful phrase, and neither does FB. But I find the imperfections on FB sweet whereas those on blogs I find irksome, perhaps because I come into the latter with greater expectations. As for the former, Ill often post a philosophical idea that is too new to ever mention to my philosophy friends -- put the flag up to see if anyone salutes -- but perfectly acceptable on FB, at least among my friends! More often than not I get responses from my non-professional friends who give responses that are awesome but would likely not be acceptable at the Eastern APA. Comments about philosophy that areed totally unexpected, totally delightful, and often make me think about the issue in some new way, even if its just a little bit. They might not find their way into my research papers but they make me realize why I got into philosophy in the first place.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 23:24:00 +0000
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