But then the way to get such broader-but-not-yet-overall evaluations would seem to be to ask the evaluators how each dept. is in the broader areas: Since we are ultimately relying on the evaluators anyway, might as well let (each of) them decide how much weight to give each component — and how to take into account the work that falls in the areas of overlap.

In the end, I doubt it would be worth it. For while for some, an MEML evaluation might be important, each potential grad student has her own mix of interests, so best just to give evaluations for lots of smaller areas (as are on the PGR currently) & let each student figure out for herself which mixes of strengths make sense for her. That’s basically what potential students do — though probably without working out all the math — when they use the PGR in the way that I think is most helpful for them. I advise students to go through the specialty rankings, and look for the departments that show up strong in the areas of most interest to them. That’s a great way of coming up with, or adding to, a list of programs to check out further.

Sorry, I miswrote. I thought my intention was clear. Obviously, there is fairly frequent use of ‘causation’. But there is little metaphysical analysis of what causation is. My point is that many areas in history of analytic philosophy and philosophy of cognitive science are far more relevant to philosophy of language that are many areas in metaphysics, such as metaphysical accounts of causation and natural laws.

This is kind of true, maybe, but I don’t know what it establishes. I think students interested in anything can benefit from a lot of things, and I don’t think what’s included in M&E really captures what would most benefit people. Here are some kinds that seem better to me:

phil language, phil mind, phil logic, phil cog sci, math. logic, metaethics, history analytic

phil mind, phil language, phil cog sci, phil sci, metaphysics, early modern phil, modern phil

epistemology, phil. sci, phil mind, phil language, metaphysics, early modern, modern, kant, ancient

metaphysics, phil sci, phil mind, epistemology, metaethics, ancient, early modern, modern

I think most of the choices of inclusion are obvious. Maybe metaethics is less so. But that field, I think, has made far more wide-ranging contributions to M&E in the last century than has the philosophy of religion or philosophy of action: many trace the notion of supervenience to metaethics. And, unless I’m getting the details mixed up, quasi-realism originated in metaethical debates.

To motivate some of the exclusions: I would prefer a philosophy of language that was well-informed by cognitive science and the history of analytic philosophy and ignorant of, say, mereology or causation. I’ve never come across any mention of mereology or causation in my readings of, say, the semantics of natural languages. But the history of analytic philosophy (especially Frege and Russell) comes up fairly frequently.

And much work in epistemology (for example, self-knowledge, and the McDowell-Brandom exchange) is closely connected to the philosophy of mind and therefore to philosophy of cognitive science. Philosophy of mind without philosophy of cognitive science is just a bad idea.

I’ll take some, not all your, points in order.

The first point I find very puzzling. We long ago decided against excessive paternalism, i.e., not sharing data because the innocent might misuse it. We have always tried to present the data clearly, with appropriate caveats, as in this case. Why you think those discussing it would ignore the bolded caveat is a bit mysterious. The entire discussion on this blog is testimony to the fact that in discussing a list like this people note these, and other, caveats about the limitations of this measure.

Second: Princeton is not ranked that low. Princeton is, in fact, much smaller than both Texas and Notre Dame. It was ranked only one-tenth of a point behind Texas. Texas performed better than Princeton for the specialty rankings in philosophy of language and philosophical logic, and was outperformed by Princeton in metaphysics and epistemology (I haven’t seen the phil of mind results, though based on 2004 I’d expect they’re at least competitive, perhaps Texas even came out ahead). Where Texas gets the extra edge is in virtue of its size, with people working in phil of religion and phil of action.

Third: obviously “M&E across all the areas” lumped together in the PGR isn’t a natural kind; but you can’t really think that, e.g., “philosophy of language” is a natural kind either, do you? All these fields involve some arbitrary line-drawing (e.g., where does work on “vagueness” go? Phil of language? Metaphysics? Philosophical logic? In fact, it tends to turn up in all the assorted Blackwell Companions on these subjects). This aggregated category involves more arbitrary line-drawing than some of the existing specialty categories, but surely phil of action and phil of religion belong in M&E, and are often put there? Perhaps what is driving your comments is your low opinion of these fields, compared to “metaphysics proper” or epistemology; but that is consistent with the caveat I posted. Someone who is mainly interested in epistemology shouldn’t heed this list. But someone with wide-ranging interests in M&E might benefit from noticing how strong Oxford and Notre Dame and Rutgers are across this wide swath of fields. (The “phil of action” category was defined as to include work on “free will.” My guess from the results is that most evaluators did not take it to encompass moral psychology.)

Fifth: of course the category is sensitive to what it measures. That’s why I mention what it measures. The categories are ones the Advisory Board settled on some time ago, and I assume they are familiar ones to everyone.

Sixth: your hypothetical scenarios are not the actual ones.

Your seventh point may be correct.

Eighth: following this suggestion would be FAR more contentious. Why not just say explicitly: phil of action and religion aren’t as important as metaphysics and epistemology, therefore one should ignore any aggregation that includes all these fields on a par. That does seem to me to be what this (apart from your 7th point) boils down to.

But back to the beginning: I don’t think these aggregations are as informative or useful as the overall or specialty rankings. But I’m not in a position to release any of the latter rankings yet. Those will continue to be the primary evaluative information in the PGR. What may prove useful and striking about the aggregated categories is the extent to which they will highlight programs with strengths in broader sub-fields: e.g., departments with a strong investment in history of phil (e.g., Chicago); departments with a strong investment in phil of the sciences and mathematics (e.g., Irvine); departments with a strong investment in value theory (e.g., Michigan and North Carolina).

I think the second would lead to absurd consequences. We wouldn’t count work in philosophy of physics for the philosophy of science evaluation. And we wouldn’t count work on free will or religion towards the metaphysics category. This would be very odd practice indeed. I’ll just say that I certainly took work on free will and philosophy of religion into account when evaluating how strong departments are in metaphysics. And I took work in decision theory into account in the epistemology rankings, when it was epistemologically relevant. It would be very bad to not do this I’d think.

(1) Do evaluators assigned to evaluate philosophy of action know that moral psychology is assigned to normative ethics?

I assume they do: to evaluate departments in a given category implies knowing which category one is evaluating. And the category in question is \‘Normative Ethics and Moral Psychology\’ (see here)

Even if they did, why should they accept this categorization as determining that excellent work in moral psychology does not strengthen a department in philosophy of action?

I would say that if they don\‘t accept the categorization, then they shouldn\‘t evaluate departments in the categories whose boundaries they contest.

(1) Do evaluators assigned to evaluate philosophy of action know that moral psychology is assigned to normative ethics? (I think they don’t necessarily know that, especially if it is a new category; they are just given the list of categories for which they are to evaluate.)

(2) Even if they did, why should they accept this categorization as determining that excellent work in moral psychology does not strengthen a department in philosophy of action? Suppose you are deciding how to advise a student who is interested in philosophy of action about whether to go to a particular department which has someone doing very good work in moral psychology, which you think would be important for that student’s education in philosophy of action. Do you say to yourself, “well, moral psychology is really a part of ethics, so I won’t tell the student about that”? Of course not. Yet that is what you’re doing, in effect (remember, one primary user of PGR is the student thinking about graduate schools) by ignoring moral psychology in ranking schools’ strength in philosophy of action.

Evaluators might have paid attention to moral psychology when assessing departments in philosophy of action. My point is that if they did, they shouldn’t have. In my intuitive understanding of the system of categorization adopted by the Report, explicitly including an area in a category tacitly excludes it from all the others. So, when there is a separate category for a particular specialty area, you are not supposed to subsume this area under any of the other available categories.

it is absurd that work on the metaphysics of free will should be three times as important to metaphysics and epistemology as work on scepticism

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Agreed. Work in free will is no more than twice as important.