In a recent post, Brian Leiter asked what is hot in philosophy of mind. Declan pointed out that while it's fun to know what's hot and what's not, writing papers or dissertations on what's hot probably isn't a good idea. By the time you have researched the area fully and completed your paper or dissertation, the area that once was super-hot probably is now only lukewarm.
In general, I recommend against contributing to, or planning to contribute to, what's hot merely because it's hot. In fact, if you are seriously wondering about what sub-sub-sub-area you can contribute to, then you are already going down the wrong track. Don't think about what you can contribute to. Instead look for an area in need of a mister (excuse my gendered language, which I only use for the sake of simplicity). What do I mean by that? While this may sound incredibly frivolous, can you (without Googling names and without spending more than a few seconds completing this drill) think of one or more people who would qualify as Mr. Paraconsistent logic? How about Mr. Rigid designator? Or Mr. Modal realism? Or Mr. Donate to charity? Actually, let's make this an exercise to be completed by the reader while (still) digesting turkey and tryptophan (hint: there can, of course, be more than one person for each category and more than one category for each person and just in case you are still wondering, I use "Mr." in a gender-neutral way. Please substitute Ms. when appropriate. Finally, I am not providing any kind of exhaustive list, and I apologize in advance for leaving out your favorite topic).
You probably didn't have to think for very long before assigning one or more people to a number of these categories. You and your friends may have assigned different people to several of these categories. But it doesn't matter. The exercise still succeeds in making my point. If you write replies to, criticisms of, alternatives to or improvements of the views expressed by the main players in these categories, your work is unlikely to become highly cited, highly recognized or high anything else. If you are extremely lucky, you could end up being one of the people well known in a field already occupied by some hot names. But this is extremely unlikely. What you want to do is find a niche in need of a mister. Not any old niche will do (Mr. What Kaplan says on pages 510-511 in Demonstratives won't do, Mr. Monster might). So it's not a simple task. It requires a lot of thought. But if you find it (or create it by coining a new term) and that niche has some general interest, you may have found one of the few short-cuts to citation, credit and acclaim.
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