I'm surprised it has taken so long for this piece from the Boston Globe to reach my desk. For those who don't know, Brian Leiter is a well-known philosopher of law who runs an influential philosophy blog, The Leiter Reports. The blog serves as one of the profession's main sources of helpful news and (sometimes helpful) gossip concerning faculty hires and moves, job placement, academic freedom issues, "academic bill of rights" debacles, anti-science (ooppps... sorry-- I meant "design science") movements, and other stuff.
Leiter is also the founder of the institution known as the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR), a peer-ranking (by faculty reputation) of most of the Ph.D. programs in Philosophy in the English speaking world. The PGR is widely despised and reviled among those who don't bother to understand its methodology or its clearly stated purpose. So Leiter spends lots of time swatting down misplaced and uninformed criticisms and the people who push them.
Anyway, what's interesting (read: nauseating) about the piece is the author's need to appear "fair and balanced" by introducing at the end unsubstantiated hackneyed criticisms: Leiter's blog "alternates philosophy with verbal soccer hooliganism" and so Leiter is a "troglodyte in cyberspace" who may be "demeaning" the profession. I, personally, think that philosophy isn't enough like verbal soccer hooliganism. If anything demeans the profession, it's the sickly pall of civility.
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8 comments:
Spiros,
I, too, love pugilistic philosophizing. I also think BL's PGR is valuable.
However, there's much about BL and the culture surrounding the PGR that gets on my tits, most of which has to do with sustaining the kind of social bullshit that doesn't much separate us from baboons.
Take, for example, how much fucking glee BL takes in shit like the recent McGinn/Honderich flare-up. Or the delight BL takes in pointing out how scathing Maudlin's review in NDRB of a recent anthology on truth is. I see one baboon clapping while another two fling crap at each other.
Another irritating BL habit is when he relays questions from students at mid-ranked or top-ranked schools as such, e.g. "a student at a mid-ranked department asks...". I often have difficulty seeing any justification in bringing up PGR rankings in such contexts. More baboon stuff, as far as I can tell.
But back to the good stuff: "The less they know, the less they know it" and all of the various other open attacks on the stupids is wonderful stuff. Long live BL.
Imipolex:
I'm on the side of the baboons, I guess. I *loved* that McGinn review, and I couldn't give a crap about consciousness.
Do you have a general view re the PGR (rather than a view about when it is and is not relevant)?
Spiros:
I think the PGR is a pretty reliable guide to the quality of departments as wholes and the availability of this information aids applicants to graduate programs and departments in their dealings with deans and provosts.
I'm skeptical of the reliability of using PGR rankings to evaluate individuals. I doubt we can with any reliability say that if two profs or two students are at differently ranked departments then one individual is a better (qua prof or student) than the other.
The main thing I like about the PGR is its function as a reality check, given both its better and worse aspects, when it comes to advising students at my own institution about what is involved in deciding to apply to graduate programs and continue on in the field. Even the way that BL addresses students by rank in the program, as Impolex_g-unit points out, is actually very valuable for me, when I am in the position of having to explain to students at an institution like mine, exactly what they are up against, and why even exceptional grades and letters from faculty may fail them, bolstering my absolute insistence that they perform outstandingly well on the GRE. Likewise, it comes in just as handy, when advising poorly performing students who are often out-of-touch with reality, and somehow believe that they can grow up and be a philosopher someday if they just wish hard enough, that philosophy isn't for them. No matter how many tattoos one gets of cool philosophical phrases, a GPA of 1.5 and F's in philosophy will not make one a professional philosopher. The PGR is really good for these cases.
Imipolex:
Agreed.
729:
Right. I think a lot of the opposition comes from faculty who don't like the fact that their ug students have access to better sources of information. They like having students at their mercy in these matters. What a disgrace.
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