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.

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.

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.

OK, I’ll bite.

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.