title: Philosophers are doing something different now: quantitative data.
abstract: The philosophical study of mind in the twentieth century was dominated by a research program that used a priori methods to address foundational questions. Since that time, however, the philosophical study of mind has undergone a dramatic shift. To provide a more accurate picture of contemporary philosophical work, I compared a sample of highly cited philosophy papers from the past five years with a sample of highly cited philosophy papers from the twentieth century. In the twentieth century sample, the majority of papers used purely a priori methods, while only a minority cited results from empirical studies. In the sample from the past five years, the methodology is radically different. The majority of papers cite results from empirical studies, a sizable proportion report original experimental results, and only a small minority are purely a priori. Overall, the results of the review suggest that the philosophical study of mind has become considerably more integrated into the broader interdisciplinary field of cognitive science.
authors.affiliation: Program in Cognitive Science and Department of Philosophy, Yale University, United States. Electronic address: joshua.knobe@yale.edu.
authors.forename: Joshua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Knobe
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D019336:Cognitive Science; D006801:Humans; D010684:Philosophy
keywords: Bibliometrics; Philosophy of cognitive science; Philosophy of mind