Conference papers

What makes for a succesful conference paper? And do such papers do anything to contribute to our understanding and to the art of teaching? Why do so many papers turn out to be a waste of time?

These are the questions that once again came to my mind, this time as I was sitting in on the Ancient Philosophy Society meeting the week before last. While there were some good papers (especially the one by Denis O'Brien), others were not so good.

With the custom of presenting papers at conferences comes the bad habit of reading the paper rather than presenting a lecture--because of the very nature of the format, authors of papers usually have the tendency to focus on their writing and creating a product as something to be read, rather than something to be heard. Instead of developing a succinct presentation of arguments, one feels free to craft in accordance with the demands of his own writing style and those of "conventional" prose, ignoring the impact of the finished text on the listener.

A related problem is that when one is focused on writing, rather than drafting an oral presentation for an audience, length is not the concern that it should be, especially if one is thinking of getting the paper published later. When the paper becomes too long for a live presentation, one must do some editing, either incorporating those changes into the text itself and then using this abridged version for the presentation, or one leaving notes and directions on the original paper (especially if he is a procrastinator), eliminating chunks of text as one reads the paper, and summarizing those texts as best as possible. This makes for a rather awkward presentation, as one is compensating for these edits as one reads the paper.

Rhetorical and lecturing skills become irrelevant when one is just reading from essay or paper. Even if the paper in itself is interesting and could even aid our comprehension of the topic, when we are reading it ourselves and can mull over it slowly and write notes, it is possible that it becomes a dreadful bore when read aloud. There are certain things that can be done to lead a reader to understanding that can't be done with an audience.

1. One source of failure is trying to do too much in a paper, especially by making a grand summary of the arguments in order to characterize a thinker or to attach a label to him, some sort of -ism.

2. Providing a good, thorough commentary of a "systematic" text may be more successful. But for this to be of use to the audience, they should already have a very good knowledge of the texts and of the puzzles. It is best to reduce the amount that listeners have to take on faith or trust. Then they can concentrate on relating what they are hearing to reality once they have determined that the commentary is good. (If they are not familiar with the author or the text, they can still refer what is being said to reality and judge its import, but they will be unable to determine the worth of the commentary and its accuracy. It is presumably the intention of the commentary's author to set forth a valuable commentary for its own sake, but that must still be judged by a greater good or end, namely that of philosophy itself, to which the writing of commentaries is ordered.)

3. Works that are not systematic are especially problematic for conference papers, as they require of the listeners an even greater familiarity of the texts in order for them to judge well the claims that are being made. (Is the problem made worse by questions of interpretation?) In order to be thorough, one will need to give a summation of the relevant texts, and refer to them. It should be obvious that this can be too overwhelming for the audience, unless they are given a list of the texts as a handout.

4. If it is necessary to refer to secondary literature, this should be done as sparingly as possible, at least while one is reading the paper. (The publication of the paper will facilitate an investigation of secondary sources.) Unless the subject of one's paper is precisely what someone else has written about a particular philosopher ot text in order to object to it, too many citations to secondary sources and diverging opinions can confuse the audience and obscure the main points one is trying to make.

Papers could be instantly improved if the author were to insert summaries and recapitulations into the text--this would be of benefit to an audience that is more intent on listening than on taking detailed notes. (Without those notes, it would be difficult to give an adequate response and critique--it is usually the case that during the Q&A session people ask for clarification and even a reiteration of the main points.)

Another strategy is to focus on select point (or a few points) that is under dispute, or to make what is implicit in a text explicit (with the purpose of showing that the text is still relevant today, if what is explicit is insufficient). While I like an authentic live disputation, it is not clear to me if the format of a disputed question for organizing one's paper would be acceptable to one's peers. Still, such a clear presentation of arguments and objections would be beneficial to beginners in philosophy. Similarly, a compare-and-contrast of two or more philosophers should be attempted only if one can be both brief and thorough. In general and not only in papers, psychologizing (trying to read the author's mind and guess how he would react to such a question, or looking at the psychological causes that led him to hold a position) or speculative genealogies should be avoided. (This is not the same as looking at the principles that the philosopher endorses and then drawing conclusions from them--this is certainly valuable in showing that he is inconsistent, if what he explicitly holds contradicts what flows from his premises.)

The importance of defining terms cannot be emphasized enough; this basic step is so often ignored by philosophers today, perhaps revealing the confusion that exists in their own minds. The necessity of definitions will depend on the audience--some audiences may share the same lexicon. Nonetheless, this cannot even be assumed of all academics.

Analytic philosophers tend to rely on their own made-up jargon; can it be said that most analytic philosophers strive to use words univocally, and are thus forced to make up new words? It is easier to use common words as much as possible, along with analogical naming and figurative speech. However, it is true that some do not understand analogical naming and believe that all naming must be univocal. They may need to be disabused of this prejudice.

That's enough for now... more later if I think of anything more to say.