Brian Leiter has posted the “speciality rankings for epistemology”:http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2004/11/how_to_read_the_1.html in his upcoming survey. They mostly seem reasonable, though I was struck by one of the rankings.

Michigan was not in the top 30 for epistemology, if one goes by median scores. This seems a little ridiculous to me, if one understands epistemology suitably broadly. It is true that Michigan isn’t as strong as some of its rivals in some core areas of epistemology, particularly theory of knowledge and theory of justification. But it’s as just about as good as anywhere in the world I’d think on other areas of epistemology, in particular work on the nature of epistemic values and on formal epistemology. It’s a matter of taste how much weight you want to give to these areas, but they seem relevant to me.

The interesting point here isn’t whether there are outliers on Leiter’s survey. It’s a survey, so there will always be outliers. The interesting point rather is what this says (if anything) about what is regarded as epistemology these days. If the work of people like Allan Gibbard and Jim Joyce isn’t regarded as epistemology, and very important epistemology at that, I’d regard that as a damaging development for the field.

(Disclaimer: If you’re a grad student in epistemology trying to decide between Michigan and Cornell, disregard everything I’ve said here. The survey is right: they suck.)