Jason Stanley, guest-blogging at Leiter Reports, reveals the new ranking of Philosophy of Language programs in the upcoming new edition of the Philosophy Gourmet Report. The top five programs are:
Group 1 (1-5) (mean of 4.5)
Massachussetts Institute of Technology (4.5)
New York University (4.5)
Rutgers University, New Brunswick (5.0)
University of California, Los Angeles (4.5)
University of Southern California (5.0)
Jason adds this commentary:
I can’t really imagine how it would be possible for anyone with any knowledge of this area to give USC less than a 5.0. I mean really folks, that’s absurd. USC has Jim Higginbotham, Jeff King, and Scott Soames on their faculty (not to mention a great linguistics department). Even if one of these folks stole your lunch money in grad school, at least you’ve got to like two of the others. For those of you who inexplicably gave USC less than a 5, I repeat for you the words of my colleague Ted Sider: Don’t be a hater, be a participator!
MIT has excellent people in philosophy of language. But I suspect the very high ranking of MIT in this area was also due to the fact that (as I’ve heard) they listed their superstar linguists as affiliate members of the philosophy department. It’s hard for people like me not to rank a department very highly in philosophy of language that lists Irene Heim, Kai von Fintel, and Danny Fox as affiliate faculty. But other departments didn’t exploit their linguists as cleverly. If people ranking a department continue to take into account affiliated faculty in linguistics, then this a strategy to exploit for other departments seeking to move up in this area that are in universities with excellent linguistics departments.
Finally, sage words of advice — it’s fun to talk about all of this, but in fact it’s actually very difficult in practice to rank philosophers.
Do I feel cleverly exploited? No. More comments on request.
Update: Jason has edited his post somewhat.
I do not want to rank or rerank the aforementioned institutions. It would be easy for me to give all of them an A+. But the last remark by Jason intrigues me in one aspect:
Is there an issue of Philosophy of Language which is not a Semantic issue too or has nothing to do with Semantics?
Take, for instance, your paper on the modal and quantifier scope relation. It is not difficult to extend it to some philosophical problem of a more general nature. So, if inter-disciplinary coloboration counts, that is an advantage for your Department. But that does not mean that other Departments have not their own advantages too.
November 17th, 2004, at 9:23 am #“Do I feel cleverly exploited? No. More comments on request.”
OK, I’ll bite.
November 17th, 2004, at 2:13 pm #I don’t think that in the case of MIT, it’s a clever exploit to list semanticists as affiliated faculty in the philosophy program. We regularly have philosophy grad students in our semantics and pragmatics courses (from the intro level through advanced seminars). We meet with philosophy grad students to talk about their research. We attend philosophy colloquia and participate in the discussions. We are consulted on faculty hires and promotions in areas of philosophy that we have connections to.
If there were no or few such interactions, it would be a ploy to list us, but that’s not the way things are.
Having said that, I could easily see philosophy of language being even stronger here through one or two inspired hirings. Then, I would even defend a 5.0 rating for MIT in this area. As things stand now, 4.5 seems right and not something that was achieved through a clever exploit.
November 17th, 2004, at 3:21 pm #I have to say I am a little disappointed! I was hoping for a reply along the lines of “The exploitation wasn’t at all clever, for reasons A, B, C, …” But you’ve just given us a serious and reasoned kind of reply. (sigh….)
November 17th, 2004, at 3:43 pm #Just to give an extra example in favour of what Kai von Fintel and me think: Glanzberg is his paper on the Liar’s paradox quotes many linguists to elaborate his initial ideas. This is just one among the recent evidences of the strong and firm colaboration between the two halves of the Department.
November 17th, 2004, at 9:56 pm #Tony,
Of course, Glanzberg worked with the linguists. If he was now at MIT, or someone like him, of course they would deserve to be in group they now are. But he isn’t — he teaches at UC Davis, and MIT hasn’t replaced him with a philosopher of language. The idea that the MIT philosophy department, judged as a philosophy department for working on the philosophy of language, ranks ahead of Cornell (Graff, Szabo, Weatherson), Texas (Asher, Bealer, Dever), or Michigan (Thomason, Ludlow, Gillies) just seems incorrect to me, and to many linguistically-oriented philosophers of language I know.
I doubt Kai is disagreeing with me — even he says that MIT needs one or two philosophers of language to be on the top rank. But they are now listed on the top rank, and that is my objection — I don’t see how they could have gotten there except by listing Kai, Irene, and Danny as affiliate faculty members.
Of course, MIT was once perhaps the world’s foremost training ground for philosophers of language, and Stalnaker, who advised all of us, is still on the faculty. All of us who graduated from that institution count Irene as one of our formative influences (and those who came after me, count Kai as well). So perhaps it’s perfectly legitimate to use Irene and Kai and Danny (who was two years behind me, so I don’t count him as one of my formative influences!) in this regard.
But the fact is that the philosophy department has taken deliberate steps to move away from the philosophy of language, and re-establish itself as a department of metaphysics. They have not bothered to replace philosophers of language who have left (Higgy, Glanzberg, Horwich, Cartwright), and Stalnaker works less and less in this area. Other departments also with excellent linguistics departments have stepped up in their place with deliberate efforts to recruit philosophers of language who work with linguists (Rutgers, USC, Cornell). I just don’t see how it’s interesting or helpful for anyone to deny that.
November 20th, 2004, at 10:46 am #This is almost as much fun as talking baseball statistics. Almost, but not quite.
Jason is complaining that MIT tilted the scales by listing their semanticists as affiliated faculty, which he thinks had the effect of MIT undeservedly being scored a 4.5 in Philosophy of Language. This put MIT only behind Rutgers and USC, on a par with NYU and UCLA, and ahead of Cornell, Texas, and Michigan.
I would submit that a Philosophy of Language program needs to be assessed at least partly according to its integration with a local linguistics program, in particular with the local semanticists. And I can’t imagine that competent judges in the PGR wouldn’t do that, no matter whether the program lists their local semanticists as affiliated faculty or not. No competent philosopher of language could possibly ignore the fact that Cornell has Mats Rooth and Dorit Abusch on the faculty, that UCLA has Philippe Schlenker and Daniel Büring, etc. So, I would suggest that these affiliations must already be factored into the scoring. Otherwise, I would question the competence of the judges — but perhaps that’s really Jason’s thrust. In any case, MIT certainly did nothing unsavory by listing us as affiliated faculty.
What would my ranking be?
Rutgers 5.0
USC 4.5
MIT 4.5
UCLA 4.5
Cornell 4.5
NYU 4.0
Texas 3.5
Michigan 3.5
In these scores, I’m taking into account what I know about philosophy of language at those institutions but also what I know about the semantics programs and their interaction with philosophy.
Again, this is just like talking about baseball. Don’t take any of this too seriously. All of these are great places to do serious research. Any of them (with the exception of Rutgers, it must be lonely at the top, Jason) could move up easily with one or two inspired hires (philosophers of language in the case of MIT, and semanticists in the case of Michigan, for example).
Red Sox or Yankees? Don’t ask me. You know the answer.
November 22nd, 2004, at 9:05 am #