And so the chorus points to a secret joke
People often wonder about the actual value of the Philosophical Gourmet Report, aka PGR, aka Leiter Report, after its founder. Does it really, these curious folk ask themselves, make sense to rank graduate schools or philosophy departments? What about all those that are left off? Disserves it not the students, and causes it not various other ill effects not mentionable in polite company, or, indeed, among philosophers?
Perhaps—if one uses it in the wrong way. The Leiter Report is not, I hypothesize, meant to be taken as Word, immutable and true; rather, the student wishing to maximize its value should allow him or herself to be reoriented by it. True, there is a big list of rankings, but the student need not base h/h applications solely thereon, but can rather take it as an indication of the, if you will, lay of the land; a map at that level of generality, though, ought not be followed too closely. Indeed, we see Leiter's own advice on how to use the Report advocating using it basically to get one's bearings and then to toss it away:
3.It can make good sense to choose a much lower ranked program (say, more than 1.0 or more apart) over a higher ranked program if that program meets your special interests. Because Departments are increasingly specialized in their coverage and methodologies, it is quite possible for a lower-ranked program to offer a stronger program in a sub-field than a higher-ranked one. Where you already have a specialized philosophical interest (e.g., ancient philosophy or Kant or philosophy of biology), you should certainly consider choosing a program that is weaker overall, but stronger in your specialty, than others to which you are admitted.
He persists in such locutions as "weaker overall", but the conflict between the general drift of his words here, and that locution (as well as the list of rankings itself), will only make more apparent to the attentive student that the entire business is, strictly speaking, nonsense—but not, for all that, ineffectual.
The encounter with the Leiter Report will be of service to the student applying to graduate programs in philosophy, no doubt, but the student must also remember that, once having gleaned what information h/s can from it, h/s ought not lean on it as a crutch, but rather set it aside.
Comments
on 2006-12-12 18:02:21.0, 1234chainsaw commented:
So does this mean that PGR is like Wittgenstein's Tractatus?
and, further, on 2006-12-12 20:23:30.0, ben wolfson commented:
The only possible correct answer to the above question is this one.