Blogospher philosophers have responded to my plea: here is Weatherson (note his comments esp. on the misleading nature of the results), Bertram, and Holbo (and note esp. Cosma’s comments about the possible bias of the survey). (Apologies to others I may have missed.) All the philosophers are in the libertarian/left quadrant, as befits their superior intellectual discipline.

UPDATE: On the Weatherson site (above), David Velleman is in another tizzy about my posting on the philosophy hierarchy, the posting Brian Weatherson had referenced simply in passing as “excellent.” David doesn’t share this view (in fact, he’s so adamant about not sharing it that he posted his comments in two different places on Weatherson’s site! In neither place, were they relevant.). (Sidenote to those new to the world of Vellemania: David Velleman has had a longstanding obsession with me and the PGR, for reasons I do not really understand–though I’m grateful he’s given up sending me insulting e-mails accusing me of moral defects for publishing the PGR. Hell hath no fury like an enraged Kantian….) David is apparently unaware that rankings of philosophy programs have been published since the early 1960s, rankings which my observations simply tracked (except for the 1950s, which I arrived at by extrapolation from the 1964 study by a predecessor of the National Research Council). He is also oddly in denial, it appears, about the obvious fact that during the era in which philosophy became professionalized—namely, the last fifty years—it began to make sense to talk about rankings of programs.