New Undergraduate Philosophy Journal Attracts Papers from Universities Nationwide and Abroad

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. -- The brand-new Rutgers Undergraduate Philosophy Journal has drawn submissions from around the country and overseas in its first call for papers. As of Feb. 29, their submission deadline, the editors had received 32 papers.

“One thing that really makes me happy is that we got so many submissions from other universities – from Princeton, UC Berkeley, and Cambridge, among others,” said Paul Chiariello, a junior double major in philosophy and cultural anthropology, and founding editor of the journal. Chiariello expects to publish only five or six of the 32 papers received.

 The topics of the submitted papers range across the philosophical spectrum, Chiariello says, but most popular seem to be epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge) and ethics. Among the titles are “Is the Extinction of Species Always a Bad Thing?” and “Purpose in a Causally Connected Universe.”

From what his editors tell him, the quality of the papers varies, too, Chiariello said. Some seem to be mere book reports. Others, he said, are top-notch. “I want original, creative undergraduate essays that clearly give intelligent arguments, and the first criterion is just as important as the second,” he said.

 The idea for the journal came to Chiariello last spring, while he was participating in the Semester at Sea, a summer undergraduate program sponsored by the University of Virginia. He and a shipboard classmate published a creative writing magazine that drew several submissions and even made a little money. So, in the fall he raised the idea of an undergraduate philosophy journal with some like-minded friends – some of them, members of the undergraduate Philosophy Club; others, residents of the philosophy section in special-interest housing at Rutgers’ Demarest Hall.

Eventually, the members of the Philosophy Club elected an editorial board that included Chiariello; Max Bialek, leader of the philosophy section at Demarest; Kamil Kaczynski and Rachel Saitzyk and helped to recruit additional editors. Most, like Chiariello, Bialek and Kaczynski, are philosophy majors. The rest, like Saitzyk, a senior at Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts, are philosophy minors. The journal has been an officially registered student organization since the fall and has a faculty sponsor, Martin Lin, associate professor of philosophy.

 The students called for papers by pasting up handbills, asking professors to publicize the journal and, ultimately, flooding the undergraduate philosophical universe with e-mail. “I sent about 40 e-mails to philosophy departments around the English-speaking world,” Bialek said. The students had agreed upon epistemology as a general theme but decided to broaden the scope of the publication, and Chiariello said they probably wouldn’t bother with a theme next year.

The Rutgers Department of Philosophy, part of the School of Arts and Sciences, is rated second in the English-speaking world by the influential Web site philosophicalgourmet.com and has seen a doubling in the number of seniors preparing to graduate as philosopohy majors over the past seven years, from 50 students in 2002 to 100 students today. Many, like Chiariello, are double majors. Chiariello, from Fanwood, is headed either for Teach for America or the Peace Corps after graduation, and then to graduate school.

Some have gone through other majors to get to philosophy.           

Bialek, a senior who grew up in Princeton and whose father teaches physics at Princeton University, started off wanting to design computer games. He found himself wondering why people play games as they do, and then why people do anything the way they do. This took him to physics as a major, then to mathematics, and an abiding interest in cognitive science. Finally, one semester shy of graduating from Rutgers with a degree in mathematics, he changed his major to philosophy. “I took a philosophy course, Theory of Knowledge, from Brian Loar,” Bialek said. “And I said to myself, ‘This is it! I can use this to answer those questions!’”  Bialek aims for graduate school, too. And when he’s asked what he wants to be after that, he says, “Well, a philosopher, I hope.”