Another Plug for the Berkeley Logic Group

Since application deadlines for graduate school are nearing, I’ll link to my post from last year where I pointed out that it’s indefensible (in my mind, in any case) not to rank the Group in Logic and the Methodology of Science at UC Berkeley in the mathematical logic category in the Gourmet Report. I argued there that it is still one of the top places to study logic especially if you’re interested in a career doing logic in philosophy departments, and pointed out that most of the departments ranked for logic have Berkeley PhDs teaching there. Let me add that, conversely, most of the Berkeley graduates now teaching at top-ranked philosophy departments were former students in the Logic Group. So if you’re looking to get a PhD doing some techy philosophy, consider applying to L&M.

3 thoughts on “Another Plug for the Berkeley Logic Group

  1. Indeed, they don’t look too bad. They have quite a few good people in model theory, and logic in computer science. So, at least, they should score well on mathematical logic. Is it perhaps because of Tarski is no longer there? [Note: most, if not all, of Tarski’s students left for other universities, e.g., Keisler is at Wisconsin, Feferman is at Stanford.] Posted by Anthony Widjaja To

  2. Tarski has been dead for twenty years, and Berkeley was still ranked top in mathematical logic in the 02-04 edition of the Gourmet Report. And Tarski’s students are getting to be retirement age (both Keisler and Feferman are retired).  Posted by Richard Zach

  3. I think Berkeley gets hurt in the Leiter rankings by not having John Steel and Hugh Woodin listed either in the department or affiliated. I’m sure Tony Martin is much more closely affiliated with the UCLA department than either of those two is with Berkeley’s philosophy department, but Steel has certainly been quite available to me in the Logic Group. But (guessing purely based on what little I know of his work), I would suppose Boris Zilber is not terribly closely involved in the Oxford philosophy department, but they still get the bonus for having such a top-notch model theorist listed as “affiliated”.I wonder how much this technicality of being “affiliated” or not affects specialty rankings for things like phil of biology, mind, language, and other subjects that could easily benefit from having somewhat philosophically-minded people in a different department, that the Gourmet Report might not know about? Posted by Kenny Easwaran

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