Longtime reader Michael Bramley, who studied philosophy as an undergraduate, writes:
Dear Prof Leiter,
Please allow me to express my support over the recent rankings nonsense by venting my frustration at the campaign to remove you from the PGR and the campaign to stop all rankings in philosophy. A move which, it is obvious, is for the benefit of those who do not score highly and not for the benefit of students.
Talk about the perfect being the enemy of the good. Plato could not have done a better job of convincing everyone that everything is worthless and shit until and unless we can all apprehend the Form of the Good Ranking System.
The PGR is largely an informed-opinion poll: what do the philosophy professionals think of certain philosophy departments? This is interesting and good to know. If those for whom the PGR is intended are unable to understand what an opinion poll is, then they should demand a refund from their undergraduate education for having failed to teach them basic critical thinking. And if the professors who oppose it do so because they think opinion polls/reputational surveys do not capture adequately the real picture, then they are free to construct ways to capture this ‘real picture’ that they are so worried about missing with the PGR.
There seems an underlying assumption that no one over at New Apps has come out and said which is this: ‘Everyone apart from philosophy professors is too stupid to be entrusted with a ranking system – and here only the subset that reject the idea of ranking at all.’ This, despite there being multiple ranking systems already around, but usually imposed and rated from without.
And of course the laziest philosophical trick since the rise of the importance of data: poisoning the well by inventing hypothetical morons who will think that there is only one tool on Earth worth using – the PGR – and only one number in the PGR – the department ranking; has such a moronic philosophy graduate ever existed?
All this hand wringing over general, broad points that may or may not apply: how some things are hard to rank, some things are irrelevant that are ranked, some things that are relevant are not ranked, some things are hard to compare, the difference in ordinal ranks might masks difference in quality etc. And of course the old favourite, ‘Well how do you put something so coarse and grotesque as a NUMBER on something so artful and subtle as the work WE do?’
It’s the professorial equivalent of the freshman who, having discovered Hume, says only, ‘Well how do you KNOW? It MIGHT be a dream, or…’ etc. and refuses to engage.
Seen from outside this is so laughable as to be pathetic: coming from a discipline the bread and butter of which is grappling with concepts that are hard to define and issues that people go to war over, where we can get chapters from a luminary on the word ‘the’. One can imagine the students of these professors sat there, arms folded, for four years, refusing to engage until the professor defines a clear, unbiased, universally agreed ranking system for what is worse: war or cuddles; murder or sunbathing. Well it’s all just so difficult, isn’t it? Why bother stating even an opinion on which is better!
If any of the following are true:
a) There is something philosophy departments try to achieve,
b) There is something philosophy professors try to achieve,
c) There is something philosophy students should get from studying in philosophy departments,
then ranking is not ridiculous because measurement is legitimate.
Whether it is to give some things to people who don’t possess them, or to increase them in those who do have them, or to increase the frequency with which these are expressed, or whatever, then departments will achieve these things or they won’t. They will achieve them as well as others or they won’t. Or are we still worried about the paradox of the heap, here? Perhaps they want physics-level precision?
And of course, the stupidity of these professors is shown up when they point to *gasp* the GRE rankings as evidence of how well philosophy teaches analytical writing skills! Oh my! How odd! A claim that philosophy departments DO something, and do it WELL, based on a RANKING, between different subjects? So measuring philosophy against engineering is legitimate, but measuring philosophy against philosophy is impossible? Right.
The PGR is yours: you invented it, you have run it, you still run it. If people don’t like it, they don’t have to use it. They can make their own. Maybe if they stopped talking among themselves on blogs and wringing their hands, they could ask, oh I don’t know, someone in the statistics or social science department for help. There do exist entire postgraduate degrees in such things, including research or survey methodology. But, as I said earlier, everyone but these concern trolls is apparently too stupid to understand the problems with rankings per se (‘per se’ because all we get are broad brush hypothetical ‘criticisms’ no better than the lazy, ‘You can prove anything with statistics.‘) I bet they continue to grade papers and exams though.
This all reminds me of when I talk with the pseudoscience crowd who want to insist that there exist various mystical entities and that their own brand of treatments and practices really do have a real and noticeable effect on these mystical entities. But, of course, things like numbers and measurement and human observation (when in the laboratory) are too coarse and blunt, and rational people too close-minded and obtuse to be able to recognise the truth. Just like philosophers who try to grapple with rankings to help students – there is real gold out there in (their) philosophy departments and these professors just know it in their little souls apriori because it is self-evident. Only they can’t point it out to you or evidence it in any way, and you are a philistine and a moron for daring even to try. Unless it’s MCAT/GRE rankings, etc. Obviously.
And in a follow-up, Mr. Bramley wrote:
Before I take any more of your time I must say just this: the PGR is a collection of a large number of informed - expert - opinions of department reputation. Students will ask their professors for advice about where to go for graduate school. Unless these professors will refuse to even answer their students' questions, then professional opinions on departments re. graduate training are legitimate. So it seems this whole thing amounts to exactly this: 'by all means have your opinions and even offer them to students - but for the love of humanity, do not put them in one place and record them on paper!'
Unbelievable.
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