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Meta-philosophy
History of philosophy
Philosophical method
Citation analysis
Experimental philosophy
Abstract:
Many philosophers agree that philosophical inquiry has become more reliant on scientific research in recent decades. Some go so far as to speak of a methodological revolution. However, there is almost no systematic evidence about when, where and in what way these changes took place—if indeed, they did. To change this, we made use of citation analysis. We collected a large corpus of 9954 articles published in three high-profile generalist philosophy journals (Noûs; Philosophical Studies; Synthese) since 1971. We then extracted reference lists from these articles and associated references to articles with their academic discipline(s) based on the publication they appeared in. We find that the overall proportions of articles from the sciences broadly understood and of articles from disciplines that primarily output empirical research referenced in these journals has seen little change over the last 50 years. At the same time, we also find that there have been major changes with respect to the specific disciplines philosophers cite from: disciplines that focus on the (empirical) study of human thought and behaviour have gained in importance, while the importance of the formal and physical sciences has been declining. We discuss the implications of our findings, and address potential criticisms and limitations of our research and the conclusions we draw from it.
