Treatment of Philosophy in Planned National Research Council Rankings (Leiter)

Ned Block (NYU) alerts me to the fact that the new National Research Council study of graduate programs (the last one came out in 1995) proposes to divide Philosophy into the following subfields for evaluation purposes:

Continental Philosophy

Epistemology

Esthetics

Ethics and Political Philosophy

Feminist Philosophy

History of Philosophy

Logic and foundations of mathematics

Metaphysics

Philosophy of Language

Philosophy of Mind

Philosophy of Science

Ned notes that, "Ancient philosophy is listed under classics."  (There is more information about taxonomies here and about the planned questionnaires here.)  As things stand now, it is not clear that the NRC will undertake the most valuable part of their prior studies:  namely, a survey of expert opinion.  After the 1995 NRC Report, two Vanderbilt professors (not in philosophy) launched a campaign in favor of the kinds of "objective" measures that are increasingly popular in the sciences and in other fields (including law).  (Schools like Vanderbilt did not fare so well by reputational measures.)  It appears they have successfully conned the NRC panels into dropping what remains the most informative measure of quality, namely, evaluation by experts.  (There is no mention of reputational surveys here.)  Of course, for obvious reasons, philosophy is less in need of reputational surveys, but other fields, especially in the humanities, will no doubt be harmed by the absence of such data.

Putting aside the issue of the kinds of data the NRC proposes to request, Ned Block thought it might be useful to solicit comments on the proposed categories for philosophy.  There is still time for feedback from professional philosophers to make a difference here.  (Do look at the taxonomies for some other fields:  it seems unlikely the large number of fine-grained categories the PGR uses will be possible here--8-12 subfields seems fairly typical.)  Comments are open; no anonymous postings.  If there is hope that the NRC will take this feedback seriously, it needs to be signed.  Please post only once; comments may take awhile to appear.