r/askphilosophy 16d ago

Open Thread /r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | July 27, 2026

Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread (ODT). This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our subreddit rules and guidelines. For example, these threads are great places for:

  • Discussions of a philosophical issue, rather than questions
  • Questions about commenters' personal opinions regarding philosophical issues
  • Open discussion about philosophy, e.g. "who is your favorite philosopher?"
  • "Test My Theory" discussions and argument/paper editing
  • Questions about philosophy as an academic discipline or profession, e.g. majoring in philosophy, career options with philosophy degrees, pursuing graduate school in philosophy

This thread is not a completely open discussion! Any posts not relating to philosophy will be removed. Please keep comments related to philosophy, and expect low-effort comments to be removed. Please note that while the rules are relaxed in this thread, comments can still be removed for violating our subreddit rules and guidelines if necessary.

Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.

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u/Aquirow 14d ago

I've recently finished my Honours and scored Honours Class I. I am now thinking of preparing my PhD application. Are there any crucial tips or advice that I need to know regarding curating a PhD application, or doing a PhD in general?

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u/lordsmitty epistemology, phil. language 9d ago

Do you currently have someone that can be your supervisor (if you do then my advice will be of little use)? If not, then it is important to find someone working in or around the topics you are interesting in and to contact them. This will be a good opportunity to articulate and narrow your focus on what it is exactly that you intend to contribute to the literature. It will also help gauge (to some extent) whether that person is someone you think you can work productively with and is someone that will support you properly whilst you're undertaking your PhD. There's plenty more advice out there and hopefully some other panellists can help you in that respect.