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Specialty Areas in the PGR

Brian Leiter

There are curretly 31 specialty areas evaluated in the PGR, plus two others (Indian Philosophy and Chinese Philosophy) evaluated in informal consultation with the Board and scholars in the field.  (We simply did not get enough respondents to the surveys in those areas.)

Here is the basic question:  should there be fewer specialty areas, on the theory that undergraduates have less well-defined interests, or should we leave the list as it is, since it allows students to identify programs, especially programs less highly ranked overall, that would meet their interests?

The 31 areas currently covered are:  Philosophy of Language; Philosophy of Mind; Metaphysics; Epistemology; Philosophical Logic; Philosophy of Action (incl. free will); Philosophy of religion; Normative Ethics & Moral Psychology; Metaethics; Political Philosophy; Philosophy of Law; Applied Ethics; Philosophy of Art; Philosophy of Science; Philosophy of Biology; Philosophy of Physics; Philosophy of Cognitive Science; Philosophy of Social Science; Decision, Rational Choice and Game Theory; Philosophy of Mathematics; Mathematical Logic; Ancient Philosophy; Medieval Philosophy; Early Modern Philosophy:  17th Century; Early Modern Philosophy:  18th Century (excluding Kant); Kant and German Ideailsm; 19th Century Continental Philosophy after Hegel; American Pragmatism; History of Analytic Philosophy (incl. Wittgenstein); 20th-Century Continental Philosophy; Feminist Philosophy.

These 31 areas are grouped into four broad categories:  Metaphysics & Epistemology; Theory of Value; Philosophy of the Sciences and Mathematics; and History of Philosophy.  It seems obvious that those categories are far too broad to admit of meaningful evaluation. But a possible restructuring might look like this:

In the M&E family:  Phil of Language & Logic; Metaphysics & Epistemology; Philosophy of Mind and Action; Philosophy of Religion.

In the Value Theory family:  Ethics; Applied Ethics; Political & Legal Philosophy; Philosophy of Art.

In the Phil of the Sciences:  Philosophy of Science (incl. physics, biology, economics, etc.); Philosophy of Mathematics; Decision, Rational Choice & Game Theory.

In History:  Ancient Philosophy; Medieval Philosophy; Early Modern Philosophy; Kant; Continental Philosophy; History of Analytic Philosophy.

I myself think this too dramatic a truncation, but I am curious what readers think, or what alternative suggestions they have.  Please post only once; comments may take awhile to appear.

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50 responses to “Specialty Areas in the PGR”

  1. Matt Lister

    I'd vote against the consolidation. It seems to me that more information is generally better than less and that there isn't an unworkable amount in what we have now. This consolidation would hide information- I'm not sure what its total score would be in "Political/Legal philosophy" but, for example, the fact that Illinois has a good legal philosophy group but not much in political philosophy would surely be harder to tell under the proposed system. While what Heidi Hurd, Michael Moore, Larry Solum, etc. do has implications for political philosophy it wouldn't be a great choice. Similarly with the philosophy of science category- it makes a big difference if you want to study philosophy of physics or philosophy of biology, so why not make the information explicit? Given this, I'd rather not see the consolidation.

    Reply
  2. Keith DeRose

    should there be fewer specialty areas, on the theory that undergraduates have less well-defined interests…?

    I think things should be kept as they are, so long as there are enough respondents to support the larger menu of areas rated. The interests of potential students tend to be undefined in the sense that they're unsure which of several areas they're going to end up specializing in. But most have a good idea which several areas do interest them, and also which don't. And their grasp of which tend to me their areas is often (usually, I'd say) more fine-grained than would be served by the proposed shorter list of specialty areas. For instance, the proposed shorter list does "metaphysics and epistemology" together, but there are many prospective grad students whose interest in one of those areas is greater than their interest in another, and who are well served by getting separate evaluations of those areas.

    I think the evaluations of the specialty areas is one of the most helpful aspects of the PGR. (And it plays a large role in what I think is the best way for students to use the PGR – explained here.) I think the change being considered would make it considerably less helpful.

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  3. Eric

    I vote against the consolidation, because there are plenty of students who are in Postbac and MA programs (as well as undergraduates who do have well-defined interests) who would like to know the difference between, say, a program strong in Philosophy of Art but weak in Applied Ethics rather than just seeing "Value Theory" and a strong rating.

    But, wouldn't a reasonable compromise be to summarize things as you've broken them down (in the four categories) in a sort of 'rough and ready' way, for those who don't have specific interests while leaving the specialty categories as they are? This way, the undergrad who just knows she wants to do something in the Philosophy of Science and Mathematics, broadly construed, has a place to look, but so does the student who wants to specialize in Philosophy of Biology?

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  4. George Christodoulatos

    A more detailed breakdown may be quite useful to people interested in pursuing Ph.D studies in some of the more "technical" areas of Philosophy (at the interface with non-philosophical disciplines), like Mathematical Lobic, Decision/Game Theory, Formal Epistemology, etc., and who may already include in their possible employment options or later on decide to work in other departments (e.g Govermnent, Computer science, Psychology, etc.). In such cases, ranking in specialty areas may, perhaps, be more relevant to a prospective graduate student than the overall ranking of a department. E.g. we have Carnegie-Mellon ranked just into the top-40, but with an excellent ranking in Mathematical Logic, or UCI, with several top-ranked specialties in the category of Phil. of the Sciences, but ranked 20th overall.

    Furthermore, a broad category, such as Phil. of the Sciences, may conceal high spreads in the rankings of specialty areas within the categories per department. Again, Carnegie-Mellon has a top-ranked department for Math. Logic, but nothing as exciting in the other specialty areas within this category.

    Finally, increasingly undergrads cannot, plausibly, be said not to have well-defined interests, at least to a certain degree (and pardon my taking some leave from the "well-defined" concept), given that the share in admissions of those who have followed a terminal MA program after their first degree in Philosophy seems to be on the rise. Also, one might as well consider the fact that some of the prospective Ph.Ds coming into philosophy are coming from non-philosophical backgrounds that may, quite likely, have shaped their specific preferences and/or areas of strength in regards to specialty.

    Overall, I agree with the above comments that this feature of PGR is one of the most useful, and should be kept, logistical considerations permitting of course (as I am not sure about what the logistics of this endeavour involve).

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  5. Jason Brennan

    I like the system as it currently stands. I'd say one consideration in deciding what to have as specialties would be this: What sorts of specialties do you see in Jobs for Philosophers? I wouldn't say that's the only consideration, but it seems like an important one. If a subfield is too specialized ever to appear in JFP, then that's at least some reason not to rank that subfield. On this criterion, though, pretty much all of the current rankings would stay.

    (By the way, thanks for all your efforts regarding the PGR. It was a great help to me back when I was a college senior.)

    Reply
  6. Andrei Buckareff

    I agree with the sentiments expressed thus far. I can think of a couple more reasons for keeping things as they are. Students in PhD programs often find that their interests are moving in a particular direction and they are not well served where they are at. Having the sub-area rankings may help them make an informed choice if they elect to transfer to apply to transfer into another program. Also, it does help those of us who teach at undergraduate-only institutions who are offering advice to students, many of whom have varied interests. This helps advisors give informed advice and enables the students to make informed choices.

    Regarding Eric's proposal, there may be something to be said for ranking schools broadly and also providing a breakdown in terms of more narrow sub-areas. But it seems that persons can get a sense of the best schools in the broader areas already by simply noting how a department does in the various sub-areas that constitute a broader area in philosophy.

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  7. Ross Cameron

    Keep it as it is. I don't think anything can be gained from cutting down, and lots of info can be lost. Even if an undergrad doesn't know whether they want to work in, say, metaethics or normative ethics, it's not too much trouble to look at both rankings and see how the departments they're looking at do in each.

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  8. Jo Wolff

    Not sure what I think, but I have been struck that a number of mid-ranked departments are advertising their position in the speciality ratings in the attempt to attract students in particular areas. With such fine-grained rankings a large number of departments are able to say that they do well in some speciality or other, even if they are relatively undistinguished in other respects. Is this a welcome development?

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  9. Wes

    I was hoping the categories would be expanded, not restricted, in future PGR incarnations.

    As others have pointed out, many of us have well-defined interests when we enter grad school and find the extra information very helpful.

    Additionally, I would think the information would be helpful to search committees. I've noticed in the past few "Jobs for Philosophers," there has been a lot of interest in areas such as "Business Ethics," "Environmental Ethics," and "Bioethics," for example. A search committee looking to hire someone in these disciplines might be interested in knowing which departments have excellent faculty for these specific areas (instead of relying on the less specific "Applied Ethics" category).

    At the very least, please don't give us less information.

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  10. Gabriel Gottlieb

    I agree with some of the comments above, and I don't think a consolidation would benefit undergraduates. I do remember a number of years ago the PGR listing Critical Theory or some similar category. I thought this was a good idea since it is more specific than 20th-Century Continental Philosophy. I take it that the importance of having Critical Theory as a category is that it allows students interested in 20th Century German and French political and social philosophy to discover the schools where that material is being successfully taught and researched. I could imagine one reason for not listing Critical Theory is that it falls under political philosophy, but I believe, though I could be wrong, most programs excelling in political philosophy are not, for whatever reason, teaching what is typically considered Critical Theory. One might also say Critical Theory just falls under 20th-Century Continental Philosophy, but I think then 20th-Century Continental Philosophy as a category is being asked to do too much work, and in some ways is not has helpful as it could be. Philosophy departments do use Critical Theory as a category when hiring or some variant on it, and many programs have established courses in the area. If my memory serves me right and Critical Theory at one point was listed, then I'm curious why it is no longer listed.

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  11. Paul

    I agree with Eric's suggestion to include rankings of the truncated categories as well. Since the PGR provides very general rankings (ranking the department as a whole) and very specific rankings (ranking 31 specialty areas), I assume that both the general the specific are thought to provide useful data-points. Including something in between presumably would provide another useful data point. Of course, you can go too far with this, but ranking something in between "whole department" and "31 subfields" does not strike me as excessive.

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  12. Carl

    I agree that the current, larger list of specialty areas is useful and I would encourage you not to cut the number down. I fall into a number of the categories mentioned above (undergrad degree in another field, terminal MA, then PhD transfer from one institution to another), and while I was too early (read: I'm too old) to benefit from the PGR rankings, I do periodically consult it for other purposes, for example when I want to get a feel for the literature in a specialty that I'm not trained in or when I'm thinking about larger dynamics in the field. Thanks for the efforts you took to develop and maintain it.

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  13. Hugh

    "It seems obvious that those categories are far too broad to admit of meaningful evaluation."

    But evaluations for the even broader "overall" category are sufficiently meaningful?

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  14. Alex Leibowitz

    It's useful to know, for instance, which schools have good programs in medieval philosophy. And it is also possible that some school which is in other respects only average will have a very good medieval focus — in which case, their strength might diminish or even disappear in a more general grouping.

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  15. Daniel Harris

    I'll add my name to the list of status-quo supporters. Also, two points:

    With Carl, I'll second the point that the PGR has uses which go beyond choosing PhD programs to apply to. I discovered the site as my interest in philosophy was initially beginning to form, and it helped me to acquaint myself with the profession and its disciplinary sub-categories, as well as providing helpful clues as to what topics were current. Of course, these clues were indirect, i.e. resulting from noticing which problems the philosophers at top departments were working on within specific sub-genres, but I still think the PGR is among the most helpful resources in this regard, especially since the main ranking list links to departmental websites.

    If there is one area in which the report could be improved (although I'm not sure if this is feasible), it would be to help PhD applicants get a feel for the reputation and level of philosophical collaboration of departments in cognate fields at various schools. As someone interested in philosophy of language and logic, I'm thinking of linguistics, computer science, and math departments, but there are several other fields of interest to ethicists, philosophers of mind (etc.) as well. Of course I realize that the PGR would do well to stick to what it knows best, but even a few links to trustworthy resources on these other topics could be invaluable.

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  16. Jason

    Within value theory, I certainly think that the more detailed rankings are helpful to students. In fact, the current categories may be too broad: "normative ethics and moral psychology" lumps together things that are really quite different. Additionally, it would be nice to have some indication of which departments are strongest in which particular areas of applied ethics (bioethics, business ethics, environmental ethics), although I suppose this information is not really that hard to get by searching department websites.

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  17. prospectivegradstudent

    As an undergrad/prospective graduate student, the breakdown of each program by specialty has been of great use. It has made the process of searching for grad programs much easier than to look through every department's faculty list and check for several, prominent professors working in your area(s) of interest.

    I am almost positive that I want to work in the areas of philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. I also know other people who know what areas they want to work in, so there are undergrads out there with more narrowed interests and benefit from the specialty breakdown. The PGR has helped us to find the programs that match with our interests. However, it's not uncommon for students to change their interests throughout their graduate career as others have already mentioned. But there are some who pursue their original interests the whole way through. And the PGR specialty breakdown also helps students to find programs strong in their sub-interests. So if the student were to change their main interest (language) to a sub-interest (Kant), their sub-interests could be accounted for during the search for grad programs, which would allow them to find departments that are good in several areas in which they may choose to pursue.

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  18. Charles

    Cutting down the number of specialty areas would surely result in a less informative list. If the choice is between reducing the list and leaving it as is, it is natural that a consensus should emerge to leave it as it is. But there are more options than these two. When we're talking about breaking philosophy down into specialty areas, we could produce a list with as few as 3 categories, or as many as thousands. So it seems to me there are two important questions to ask:

    1) What number of specialty areas would be ideal for PGR? (Presumably this would require us to balance the benefits of increased information against whatever costs are involved in expanding the list.)

    2) What is the most even way of breaking down the diverse fields of philosophy into the number of categories decided in (1)?

    So far on this thread, I've heard little discussion of either question. Are there reasons why 30 is ideal? We could make finer distinctions and make PGR even more informative; or, for the same reasons we'd argue against this, we might argue the ideal number is closer to 20. Given 30, is this really the most even way of breaking down philosophy? I'm inclined to think the list makes finer distinctions in the philosophy of science than in other fields. It's true these distinctions are informative and useful, but the question we must ask is whether they're the most informative given that we're only going to make 30 slices.

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  19. Margaret Atherton

    Because I am bucking the tide here, I thought I would put out a few thoughts I have about why narrower rather than broader categories might be less useful to students applying for graduate schools. The first is that students who are very narrowly focussed when they apply to graduate school make me nervous. I am afraid that they don't really know enough about their chosen area to know that this is what they want to spend the rest of their lives specializing in and I am afraid that a student who has made such a decision might be employable at only a few institutions. I think students are better off if they think in broader terms and choose a program where there might be a significant number of people they might like to work with. When we deal with very specific areas, in an awful lot of cases, we are actually talking about one person, and this can make comparative judgments a little tricky. Focussing too narrowly can also serve to hide strengths in a department. In my own field, Early Modern, the separation into 17th and 18th century can hide the fact that a given department might be a better place for a student interested in early modern to go because it has people in both areas, and to be honest, most people who write about the 18th century know about and can teach 17th century and vice versa. So I would like to at least throw out the possibility that narrower categories are not always the most informative.

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  20. Juan

    I vote for not consolidating. In particular, grouping metaphysics and epistemology together borders on ridiculous.

    Reply
  21. Grad Student

    In general, I agree that consolidation would be a bad thing.

    But, as someone who is primarily interested in early modern philosophy I was wondering if there could be a bit of discussion about that. What is the impetus for having 17th cent and 18th cent split up? Any why not have them grouped together? It seems (broadly speaking) that those interested in one would be interested in the other.

    One might think that 17th would apply more to the rationalist tradition (Descartes, Cartesianism, Spinoza, Leibniz) and 18th more to the empiricist tradition (Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Reid). But this is not going to work very well. For example, Newton, Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke will all end up in the wrong place. And this would not be helpful for people interested in, say, the influence of Bayle and Malebranche on Hume, Rousseau, Cambridge Platonism, or mechanistic thinking in France (La Mettrie or whatever).

    So I was hoping someone could give me an explanation of why 17th and 18th century are not grouped together.

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  22. Brian

    I like PGR as it stands. You're right in thinking that the list probably isn't very useful for undergrad students, but it's very helpful to MA students, many of whom rely on PGR in researching PhD programs. Indeed, I think trimming the list would constitute loss of a real benefit for MA students.

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  23. Les Green

    Uncharacteristically, I favour the status quo.

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  24. Eremita

    As a student who used PGR to help sort through the mountain of information on graduate schools, I would recommend not changing the categories. Like many of the comments above, I think the stratification isn't hurting students using the information, and a lot of times it can help. Though undergrads might not have such developed interests as to settle on one particular specialty area, they have spent some time narrowing and eliminating possible fields. The variety of areas now in PGR certainly helped direct me to a school whose high marks concentrated around the fields I knew were important to me.

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  25. Christopher Hitchcock

    In response to Eric (and others) — I think that the proposal Brian mentions (but doesn't endorse) is to have rankings in the 17 specific sub-fields mentioned, not just in the four broad areas (I would add philosophy of psychology/cog sci, which is pretty distinct from philosophy of mind).

    I like Eric's idea of including some kind of general summary of strengths in broad subject areas in addition to rankings in more specific sub-fields. Otherwise it can be hard to see the forest for the trees. For instance, on quick inspection, a department with strengths in action theory, philosophy of art, and history of American Pragmatism (perhaps resulting from just one individual in each field) can looks as strong as a department with strengths in metaphysics, political philosophy, and early modern.

    In response to Wes — however the categories are broken down, I think it might be helpful to include additional notes on strengths in sub-areas where appropriate. E.g. if 'applied ethics' is a category, but one department is especially strong in environmental philosophy, that could be noted with an asterisk in the specialty rankings.

    In response to Jason — I think many of the current PGR categories are narrower than you find in the vast majority of adds in JFP. How many adds does one see for philosophical logic? action theory? metaethics? philosophy of physics? 18th century excluding kant?

    I would add that I think that the extent to which one's interests are likely to fungible within a category are not simply a function of the breadth of the category, or their overall representation within the profession. For example, students interested in philosophy of science or history of philosophy are more likely to have specialized interests because of the 'entrance costs' required for entering those areas (technical background, language skills, etc.). By contrast, I think it is relatively easier for a student initially interested in one 'core' area to migrate to another. I think that this is also reflected in job ads. You are more likely to see ads specifically for ancient or medieval philosoph, than for normative ethics or meta-ethics; more likely to see ads for philosophy of mathematics than philosophy of action. This is not to say that there aren't jobs for people working in meta-ethics or philosophy of action, just that jobs are more likely to be listed as 'ethics' or 'philosophy of mind and/or language.'

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  26. Patrick R. Leland

    I disagree with what appears to be an assumption in Prof. Wolff's comment above. He writes, "Not sure what I think, but I have been struck that a number of mid-ranked departments are advertising their position in the speciality ratings in the attempt to attract students in particular areas. With such fine-grained rankings a large number of departments are able to say that they do well in some speciality or other, even if they are relatively undistinguished in other respects. Is this a welcome development?"

    Perhaps Prof. Wolff has in mind departments which misrepresent the significance of the sub-specialty rankings in which they excel. But, if not, then I ask: isn't excellence in a recognized sub-specialty a sufficient condition for having that excellence recognized in the PGR? *For the purpose of the sub-specialty rankings*, is it really necessary for a department which excels in, say, the study of medieval philosophy to have expertise in another sub-specialty? Obviously, greater breadth of coverage is desirable. But it hasn't been the purpose of the sub-specialty rankings to track directly breadth of coverage, nor do I think it should be.

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  27. Christopher Hitchcock

    I must confess that I was initially in favor of consolidation — not to four categories, but from 31 to say, 20. It seems I am in a minority. But following up on comments by Charles and Grad Student, perhaps it would be better not just to ask the question about more vs. fewer categories, but to discuss whether there are specific categories that should be sub-divided or joined. I had wondered myself about the division between 17th and 18th Centuries. This is not my area, but I would have thought that a division between the British Isles and the Continent would be a more natural division. But perhaps it does not make sense to divide up this category at all?

    Several readers suggested splitting off bio-ethics from the rest of applied ethics. A quick perusal of last November's JFP suggests that this might be a good idea.

    Let me suggest one general principle: it makes sense to divide an area into sub-specialties if the set of people working in more than one is very small. For example, as a philosopher of science, it strikes me as sensible to split off philosophy of biology and physics, since very few people work in both areas. Thus a student who was interested in philosophy of biology and went to Michigan (which I expect to come out on or near the top of next year's philosophy of physics ranking) would be at a loss. But I wonder about the necessity of having, e.g. philosophy of action as a separate category. If a student interested in action theory went to a department that was strong in metaphysics and philosophy of mind, I suspect that she would come through OK.

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  28. Craig

    Why not have a menu of boxes you can check to average the rankings of all the areas in which you're interested. For example, if someone is interested in two or three (or more) areas, say Philosophy of Science, Logic, and Metaphysics, it would be neat to be able to check those boxes, click submit, and the group rankings of those particular fields would be averaged into one super group ranking, PhilScience-Logic-Metaphysics. I'm not sure HOW valuable this feature would be, but it would sure give me a good reason to procrastinate. It might also cause quite a bit of controversy (if one checks all the specialty boxes–or all those specialties that one takes to properly count as `philosophy'–and the school that comes out on top is ranked 12th in the overall PGR, or vice versa, what to do?). But controversy isn't always a bad thing: more controversy, more hits on this blog, more advertisements…

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  29. Roger Ariew

    I also favor the status quo. As for the kind of argument that one need not distinguish between 17th and 18th century philosophy because most people who write about the 18th century know about and can teach 17th century and vice versa, one should point out that similar things can be said about Medieval and Ancient, 17th century and Medieval, Kant and 18th century, and 19th century and Kant. But I wouldn't be tempted to collapse any (or all) of these specialties together as a result of such arguments. The set of scholars who teach these specialties are sufficiently distinct that pointing to one subset as opposed to another as distinguished is likely to be good advice.

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  30. Andrei Buckareff

    Regarding Christopher Hitchcock's remark about narrowing the PGR, but not too much, his example is evidence of the need to keep some of the areas separate. A student working in action theory may elect to go to a department that is good in metaphysics or philosophy of mind, but there may be no one in the department who has any interest in action and knows next to nothing about the current state of the field. Just because a department is good in one of those areas does not mean it is a good place to study action. Philosophy of action increasingly has a life of its own apart from mainstream mind and metaphysics (and moral philosophy)–even if it is a sub-area of one or both of them. The same is true of moral psychology. In fact, some of the best places to study action are not listed among the top places in the current PGR for mind and metaphysics (e.g., FSU and Auckland).

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  31. Grad Student

    In (respectful) response to Professor Ariew:

    What, precisely is the valuable distinction between 17th and 18th century philosophy? I agree with your point that people writing in history of philosophy often have the ability to talk, teach, and write about many areas. But the distinctions between Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern, Kant, 19th Century, and History of Analytic have the dual virtues of being well-established and very useful. To my mind, the distinction between 17th and 18th cent lacks these virtues.

    Whatever rationale backs splitting 17th cent from 18th cent might also back the splitting of Ancient into Pre-Socratics, Plato, and Aristotle. It might also back the splitting of Medieval into Scholastic and non-Scholastic. And so on. I take it that this would not be a welcome development.

    So I guess there are two pieces. The first piece: is it necessary or useful to break early modern philosophy into more than one group? My hunch here is no. Giving prospective graduate students a list of places with strong early modern faculties should be enough. They can discern who those faculty are, and what they work on, on their own. But, if there are sound reasons for splitting them I would be very eager to hear them.

    The second piece: If early modern does need to be split up, then what is the best way of doing it? My hunch here is that, if it does, a distinction between 17th and 18th century is not the best way. But if it is, I would like to hear why. Some others have proposed a split between Rationalist and Empiricism. What do people think of this? It strikes me that this approach has serious problems as well.

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  32. doris

    I'm not sure I see the benefit of consolidation. It seems to me the finer grained categories convey useful information. Indeed, as with some other posters, I think further subdivisions might be helpful. For example, in my patch, I think the conjunction "Normative Ethics & Moral Psychology" is problematic; it is not obvious that excellence in these two areas is strongly associated. Many of the currently central figures in moral psychology (e g., Knobe, Nichols, Prinz, Stich) do not have a presence in classic areas of Normative Ethics such as Kantianism v. Utilitarianism, while many people in Normative Ethics (e. g., Norcross, Kagan) are not deeply involved with many of the current issues in moral psychology. If a department does have a strong presence in both areas, this information would not be lost on a finer grained scheme. I expect the same is true in other cases, such as Metaphysics and Epistemology.

    jmd

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  33. Thom Brooks

    I, also, favour the status quo.

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  34. Jordan

    I'll toss my hat into the ring for keeping things more or less the way they are. Many of the consolidations will make it harder for an incoming student to get information quickly. I think it would be a fine idea, however, to have the 4 supercategories do a bit more work, and have a separate LEMMing ranking, Value Theory ranking, etc. Of course, that ranking could easily be found by anyone visiting the site if we implemented Craig's idea, which I think is perfect and would make the PGR much more easy to get around.

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  35. Daniel

    No one has yet mentioned one other reason against (this) truncation: American Pragmatism and Feminist Philosophy both disappear, and cannot be subsumed under any of the new categories–at least, they can't be subsumed uncontroversially.

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  36. Cian

    I think that most of the current categories are useful, though I'm inclined to agree with Grad Student's remarks about the 17th-18th century divide. Let me put another couple of specific amalgamations on the table for discussion.

    (i) Philosophical Logic and Mathematical Logic. While there is a fair amount of divergence between the two rankings, I also see, for example, that NYU gets ranked at 4.5 in mathematical logic even though as far as I can see, almost everything the relevant people have written about logic is more naturally classified as philosophical logic than as mathematical logic. Is that a sign that the borderline between these two areas is too wide and fuzzy for the distinction to be worth making by the PGR?

    (ii) Metaethics vs. Normative Ethics and Moral Psychology. My guess is that the divide between Metaethics and Moral Psychology is much too unclear to be useful. There might be a better case for lumping moral psychology together with metaethics and keeping normative ethics on its own. But I suspect that even with such a grouping, you'd get the same phenomenon I was noting above with NYU, whereby departments would end up being highly ranked in one subspecialty even though, if one had to classify the relevant publications by the relevant people, one would classify almost all as belonging to the other subspecialty. It seems clear, anyhow, that the divide between these subdivisions of ethics is vastly less clear than the divide between metaphysics and epistemology. And it's not like it would be some kind of insult to Value Theory to cut it up less finely than the other broad categories!

    (iii) I wonder if we have reached the point where the distinction between Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Cognitive Science has become too permeable to be useful?

    Consider this an invitation for specialists in these areas to weigh in.

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  37. PJ

    One category that seems to combine highly diverse interests is "20th Century Continental Philosophy." I'm not sure how best to break it up, but it seems valuable to distinguish at least between, broadly, Phenomenology and Hermeneutics (the tradition stemming from Husserl and Heidegger) and Critical Theory (the tradition stemming from Marx, Freud, and structuralism).

    Of course one could make a similar case for many of the other historical categories, so maybe this is not the best way to include this information. Analytic philosophy is ranked as both a historical category, to capture those interested in understanding its origins and development, and in terms of sub-disciplinary breakdowns, for people who continue to develop this tradition in various, specific ways. The sub-rankings make no distinction of this kind for the the Continental tradition of the same historical period. Prospective students, I believe, would be well-served by sub-rankings that distinguished between, say, the good places to do research on phenomenological accounts of intentionality and the good places to research psychoanalytically informed critiques of capitalist society.

    In any case, the list (and your blog!) has been incredibly helpful to me as is, and I thank you very much for all your work in maintaining it.

    Regards–

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  38. Tom Hurka

    About moral psychology: it's always been a problem because it has two parts, one closer to metaethics and one closer to normative ethics. The first part has to do with practical reasoning, moral motivation, etc. and, yes, the divide between it and metaethics isn't too clear. The other has to do with, e.g., analysis of the virtues, issues about responsibility and excuses, and so on, and is closer to normative ethics. I don't think putting moral psychology with normative ethics was great, but putting it with metaethics isn't any better: it just straddles the two. So why not just drop the reference to moral psychology, and have metaethics and normative ethics, with each understood as including the part of moral psychology relevant to it?

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  39. Undergrad student

    Applied ethics seems to be an overly broad category. How about a sub-category for technology/engineering ethics, as distinct from, say, bioethics?

    I am an undergrad looking a grad programs, and I (will) have a double degree in engineering and philosophy. Any advice for someone like me?

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  40. Brian

    One quick comment on PJ's observation that,

    "Analytic philosophy is ranked as both a historical category, to capture those interested in understanding its origins and development, and in terms of sub-disciplinary breakdowns, for people who continue to develop this tradition in various, specific ways. The sub-rankings make no distinction of this kind for the the Continental tradition of the same historical period."

    I don't believe this is an accurate description of the relevant categories. "History of Analytic Philosophy" refers to work on Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, and Logical Positivism, among others, yet there is little overlap (sometimes none) between this work and contemporary work in most of the specialty areas evaluated. By the same token, many of those working in "moral psychology," "philosophy of mind," "philosophy of cognitive science," and "political philosophy" are working with and drawing upon Continental figures like Freud, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Marx, and Habermas, among many others.

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  41. Margaret Atherton

    In response to grad student: I agree with you, as I said earlier, that the practices of the field don't warrent splitting early modern. But on occasions where it does make sense (like when you wnat to teach two courses instead of one) then I think the only division that makes any sense is the temporal one. Loosely speaking, VERY loosely, the people working at the end of the 18th century have more in common with each other than they do with the people working at the beginning of the 17th century. Many people have grave doubts that categories that pick out doctrinal differences like Rationalism and Empiricism illuminate rather than confuse, and, given that intellectual life at the time had no respect for geographical borders, geographical distinctions are I think worst of all.

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  42. PJ

    Hi Brian,

    Fair enough. We're all philosophizing about the same world, whatever our first language. As long as the composition of the evaluating boards is sufficiently diverse to assess the quality of relevant work situated more in the Continental tradition, I agree that this is best way to do it.

    In this case, however, I wonder in if there should be an additional category for hermeneutics. Work inspired by Gadamer or the early Heidegger doesn't seem to fit as nicely into the existing sub-categories as, for instance, phenomenology or critical theory do. (At least this is how it seems to me, just having finished my undergraduate work.)

    Also, to rename the political philosophy sub-category "social and political philosophy" might help to open it up a bit to include some more Continental work. Research on cultural memory, for instance, is about the social world and so has political implications, yet isn't exactly political philosophy, as I understand the term. But this is just a quibble.

    Best–

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  43. Grad Student

    First off, apologies for being such a bore and not letting this issue drop!

    As I said earlier, I too have serious doubts about the Rationalism/Empiricism split being a good one. And I agree that geographical and even linguistic boundaries were not important during the period. But these proposals are not entirely without merit and seem to have at least as many virtues as the 17th/18th century one. So back to my previous two points. One, is it necessary to split the field up? Perhaps. Two, if it is necessary, what is the best way of doing it?

    So far, I still think the case has yet to be made for 17th/18th century being the -best- split. I would like to see more precise and developed discussion of its merits. In the meantime, here are four other proposals. They're offered in the spirit of brainstorming in the hope that they will provoke further thought and discussion.

    1) Use Jonathan Israel's distinction between Mainstream Enlightenment and Radical Enlightenment. Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, etc. would be in the former. Some Cartesians, Spinoza, Hume, etc. would be in the latter.

    2) Use a date other than 1700 (which seems quite imprecise and arbitrary). This proposal begs the question of which date to pick. Some ideas. 1690: Locke's Essay. 1670: The Collapse of Cartesianism. 1688: Glorious Revolution. 1687: Newton's Principia Mathematica.

    3) Let the breakdowns be "Early Modern M&E" and "Early Modern Ethics". This might play a bit off of the work of Schneewind. A downside to this proposal would be that the number of scholars in the second group would be small (perhaps an indictment of scholars of early modern).

    4) Let the breakdowns be "Early Modern Philosophy" and "Early Modern Science and Philosophy of Science". I think that this distinction conforms neatly to the actual state of the discipline and represents a more natural break.

    Of course none of these proposals are perfect (1- How to deal with Berkeley?! 2- Dates are overly rigid. 3- What about all the Hume people? 4- They didn't really recognize a clear distinction, why should we?) But I hope that the merits and demerits of these proposals can be the starting point for more discussion.

    On a final, and unrelated, note, it is worth looking at the lists of evaluators for 17th and 18th cent on the most recent PGR. The large degree of overlap might represent a good argument for collapsing the two into one.

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  44. Christopher Hitchcock

    Following up on Cian's point (i), another area where the present breakdown seems to have led to some confusion is philosophy of science. As someone who ranks this area, I have always assumed that this category meant general philosophy of science (confirmation, explanation, realism, etc.), excluding philosophy of physics, biology, etc. The reason for this assumption is that no other category being ranked includes other categories. But looking at the rankings, I suspect others have not interpreted it this way. E.g. Pittsburgh, which comes out on top of the philosophy of science ranking, has fewer good people working in general philosophy of science than e.g. CMU or Wisconsin. However, Pittsburgh was (as of 2006) the very top place for philosophy of physics, so I suspect that this skewed the philosophy of science rankings in their favor.

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  45. Anon future grad student

    Just a general question..

    How close does increasing the number of specialty-ranking subdivisions bring us to ranking Individual Philosophers? I know that in general, our community considers departments the sum of their parts (thus, a big name leaves -> ranking drops, and vice versa). However, it does seem that one or two departments have held onto a high Overall Ranking via past prestige, despite a general downturn in the breadth of its members' expertise. Does increasing the specialty rankings make things more fair, esp. for departments on an "upward swing?"

    Pulling the other way, I wonder…does specialty ranking, given its focus on individual philosophers, ignore a key virtue of any good philosophy departments: how well its philosophers will train and help to place graduate students?

    I personally think it would be a bad thing if placement-related rankings were incorporated in the PGR..possibly hindering the mobility of graduate programs. At the same time, if a good deal of our reflection on the topics at hand must take into account the interests of graduate students, training and the help a student will get in going on the job market are clearly very important things to consider.

    Of course, different personalities mix…differently. The fact that Established Professor X (no X-men jokes, please) hasn't trained many successful students doesn't _necessarily_ mean that he or she won't be the best possible advisor for you. But it may be something to take into account.

    Feel free to respond to and/or attack any of my comments and thoughts. On the run now.

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  46. Jason S.

    I have to concur on a point that Daniel Harris made: I would also like to see some sort of guide that would help PhD applicants get a feel for the reputation and level of philosophical collaboration of departments in cognate fields.

    As someone who is interested in an interdisciplinary approach to various issues in the philosophy of mind, I am very much interested in attending a program that is well respected in philosophy of mind/cognitive science AND has a reputation for high levels of collaborative work with highly regarded individuals in cognate fields.

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  47. Karl S.

    A brief note on the early modern issue. I agree that the distinction between Empiricists and Rationalists is the source of a number of important confusions. And I wouldn't make anything much of it from a scholarly point of view. But it seems to me that if we're interested in splitting the early modern period into two groups – and perhaps we shouldn't be – this distinction captures something more useful *to the prospective grad student* than the distinction between the 17th and 18th centuries (or the other distinctions noted above) does. But maybe I'm just a reactionary about these things?

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  48. Eric Schliesser

    A while back there was a discussion on this list that was started by a letter by Alison Wylie, Paul Roth, and Jim Bohman about philosophy of social science, which has a rough divide between formal approaches (game theory, decision theory, etc) and Theory/HPS-style approaches. Has that had any influence on the future of specialty rankings in that area?

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  49. Kathryn Norlock

    Last one to the party, perhaps, but I want to add that for so many of us, as undergrads (or in my case, nontraditional student(s)), the breakdown by specialty on the PGR was our first glimpse into the professional world of philosophy, for better or for worse. The absence of feminism in the breakdown, back in the old days, was of interest to me, and the presence of other fields, of which I had little idea, was highly informative. Dare I say – I do, I do daresay, darn it – the breakdown by specialties serves a didactic function, even if/when the breakdowns are wrong. Perhaps it was never intended to, but since it does, what that breakdown reveals to prospective grad students is worth considering. Now that I serve undergraduates, I hear from them often that they're looking at the PGR as intently as I did. I don't know enough about the 30+ subfields listed to recommend which to combine, add or subtract, but given the above, I recommend erring on the side of more information, not less. I say this with all due awareness of the inevitable imperfection of the breakdown, of course. But as long as our students find it a source of insight, best to provide them with information as well as possible.

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  50. doris

    On the comments of Cian and Tom regarding eliminating moral psychology as a specialty area by subsuming it under meta and normative ethics: I'm not sure why observing that an area has affinities with two areas, but is not neatly assimilated into either, is reason for eliminating it. For example, I suppose there are substantial stretches of Social/Political that have strong overlap with both meta and normative ethics (eg, concerns in both sorts of areas might emerge through consideration of Rawls) but I doubt that this is a compelling reason for eliminating Social/Political as an area of specialization. I assume the reason for this is that's there's lots of goings on in the field, and lots of prospective students interested in these goings on, that are not neatly subsumed into the familiar (if problematic) bifurcation of ethics into meta and normative. Similar considerations seem to me to apply to Moral Psychology (another area where Rawls resonates, btw); I think the argument for elimination requires argument that there are no substantial "left over" goings on or student constituents that cannot be neatly packaged into the big two categories of ethics. I rather doubt this, but perhaps there are arguments I've missed.

    On Cian's remarks on CogSci and Phil Mind: It seems there are considerable numbers working in Phil Mind who don't do much with science, and considerable numbers working in Cogsci who don't do much with traditional problems in Phil Mind. Thus it seems quite possible to have single departments with considerably different representations in the two areas, which could certainly be a relevant consideration for students.

    jmd

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