Doctoral Dilemma
Now that the thesis is submitted, I'm busily writing up my PhD applications. But I'm still dithering over exactly what I'm going to be doing. I did my Honours year in Psych, but my Science Bachelorate had a second major in the History and Philosophy of Science (HPS). I had a meeting with the head of the HPS department yesterday, and I'm meeting with a Neuroscience/Psychopharmacology professor tomorrow. Both of 'em look like they'd be very keen to have me in their departments.
If I take the psych/neuro side of things, I'll be spending the next three years cutting up the brains of rats after feeding them party drugs. If I take the HPS option, I'll be spending the next three years writing a book about the ethical and practical implications of modern cognitive science on the criminal justice system.
I'll be putting in applications to both and leaving the decision until as late as possible, but I'm going to have to make a decision eventually. So far, the arguments for and against each look something like this:
Psych: Get to do research that might actually have an impact on the real world. May get to contribute to finally getting some proper understanding of how the brain works; may find some things that provide genuine benefits to neurological medicine.
HPS: The most academic of academic disciplines, ignored even within the academy. The problems it addresses are fascinating, but they're fairly spectacularly obscure. Unless I turn out to be the next Thomas Kuhn (or Peter Singer or Dava Sobel...), almost nobody is going to listen to what I have to say (and even Tom ain't that well known out in the real world...).
Psych: Good employment prospects for someone with my record; neuroscience-based cognitive science departments tend to be fairly well resourced and large. Plenty of jobs at almost any university in the world, as well as the potential for non-academic psych work (clinical neuropsych, forensic, etc.) further down the track.
HPS: A lot of universities don't even recognise it as a discipline; of those that do, quite a lot place it as a subsection of "normal" philosophy. The Psych faculty at my university occupy several shiny new buildings; the HPS faculty just got moved into an old storeroom in the basement of the Mathematics building. I'd still probably be able to get an academic job, but my options would be a lot more limited career-wise.
Psych: Much of the reading is technical and rather dull, but the best of it is brilliant.
HPS: Most of the reading is cool, but the worst of it is vile.
Psych: Likely to be relatively difficult and possibly un-fun to teach; psych tutorials tended to be either frantically rushed or painfully quiet during my degree. A lot of science students are too afraid of getting things wrong to be willing to speak up.
HPS: I can't think of anything that would be as much fun to teach as the philosophy of science. It's full of classic philosophical headfuckers, but it's close enough to the real world that relatively untrained folks can get a handle on it. HPS tutes tend to be full-bore debating sessions, mixed in with periods of people going cross-eyed as their get their head around a really twisty idea. Fun fun fun.
Academically wise, I'm fairly even between the two. I found HPS a lot easier than Psych, but I still managed a top-ranked average in both of them. Most of what was hard about Psych was just the stats, anyway (not a fan of the math; I had a ten year gap between high school and university, and remembering what I'd forgotten was rather painful).
Anybody wanna chuck in their ten cents worth here? Y'all here are obviously likely to have a certain bias, but I'm balancing it out by throwing the question to the philosophy groups as well. All points of view welcome...
If I take the psych/neuro side of things, I'll be spending the next three years cutting up the brains of rats after feeding them party drugs. If I take the HPS option, I'll be spending the next three years writing a book about the ethical and practical implications of modern cognitive science on the criminal justice system.
I'll be putting in applications to both and leaving the decision until as late as possible, but I'm going to have to make a decision eventually. So far, the arguments for and against each look something like this:
Psych: Get to do research that might actually have an impact on the real world. May get to contribute to finally getting some proper understanding of how the brain works; may find some things that provide genuine benefits to neurological medicine.
HPS: The most academic of academic disciplines, ignored even within the academy. The problems it addresses are fascinating, but they're fairly spectacularly obscure. Unless I turn out to be the next Thomas Kuhn (or Peter Singer or Dava Sobel...), almost nobody is going to listen to what I have to say (and even Tom ain't that well known out in the real world...).
Psych: Good employment prospects for someone with my record; neuroscience-based cognitive science departments tend to be fairly well resourced and large. Plenty of jobs at almost any university in the world, as well as the potential for non-academic psych work (clinical neuropsych, forensic, etc.) further down the track.
HPS: A lot of universities don't even recognise it as a discipline; of those that do, quite a lot place it as a subsection of "normal" philosophy. The Psych faculty at my university occupy several shiny new buildings; the HPS faculty just got moved into an old storeroom in the basement of the Mathematics building. I'd still probably be able to get an academic job, but my options would be a lot more limited career-wise.
Psych: Much of the reading is technical and rather dull, but the best of it is brilliant.
HPS: Most of the reading is cool, but the worst of it is vile.
Psych: Likely to be relatively difficult and possibly un-fun to teach; psych tutorials tended to be either frantically rushed or painfully quiet during my degree. A lot of science students are too afraid of getting things wrong to be willing to speak up.
HPS: I can't think of anything that would be as much fun to teach as the philosophy of science. It's full of classic philosophical headfuckers, but it's close enough to the real world that relatively untrained folks can get a handle on it. HPS tutes tend to be full-bore debating sessions, mixed in with periods of people going cross-eyed as their get their head around a really twisty idea. Fun fun fun.
Academically wise, I'm fairly even between the two. I found HPS a lot easier than Psych, but I still managed a top-ranked average in both of them. Most of what was hard about Psych was just the stats, anyway (not a fan of the math; I had a ten year gap between high school and university, and remembering what I'd forgotten was rather painful).
Anybody wanna chuck in their ten cents worth here? Y'all here are obviously likely to have a certain bias, but I'm balancing it out by throwing the question to the philosophy groups as well. All points of view welcome...