Recent history of philosophy (and other thoughts)

Words in Philosophical Studies 1980-2019

word usage

history of analytic

Some graphs about word frequencies in Philosophical Studies from 1980-2019.

12-May-2025

The Worlds of Negative Dominance

ethics

games and decisions

Tarsney, Lederman, and Spears have recently argued against the possibility that lives, and worlds, can have incomparable value. Their argument turns on a principle they call Negative Dominance. In this note I argue that we should reject that principle.

28-Apr-2025

Comments on Alexander Wentzell’s “An Argument for Mentalism About Epistemic Justification”

epistemology

Comments for a session next week at the APA Pacific.

11-Apr-2025

Which articles have recently been cited a lot

history of analytic

citations

I just downloaded citation data through 2024, and this post goes over some of the basic facts about the data.

08-Apr-2025

Citations in recent philosophy journals

citations

history of analytic

A list of the most cited works in recent philosophy journals, with a couple of observations. The top of the list has lots of epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of science. It has much less mind, language, ethics and (recent) political philosophy. The list is very white, male, and not particularly young. That said, the list of younger authors on the list is much more diverse than the list as a whole.

24-Mar-2025

Most cited recent philosophy books

citations

books

Which books have been cited at the highest rate in recent years?

22-Mar-2025

The Demographics of Grand-Citations

citations

The most depressing citation study I’ve ever done.

25-Feb-2025

A Puzzle about Online First

citations

Why do journal articles sit in Online First for so long?

20-Feb-2025

The Outer Limits of Analytic Philosophy

history of analytic

What would it take for analytic philosophy to end?

12-Feb-2025

Who is an Analytic Philosopher?

keynes

history of analytic

Thinking a bit about how the choice of focus in the question makes a difference to the answer.

11-Feb-2025

Lengths of Philosophy Articles

word usage

history of analytic

Are articles getting longer? Yes, yes they are. A lot longer.

10-Feb-2025

Word Counts over Time

word usage

history of analytic

Some graphs about changes in word frequencies over 1980-2019 in twenty leading philosophy journals.

07-Feb-2025

Most Cited Articles at the Time

citations

history of analytic

Imagine people at different times over the past half-century asking the following question: What philosophy journal article, published less than ten years ago, has the most citations in philosophy journals? That’s a pretty good operationalisation of the question, what current philosophy work are philosophers talking about the most. It isn’t a great guide to what the best work is, or what the most important work will turn out to be, but it does say something important about how philosophy felt at different times. In this note I run through some data on that question.

12-Jan-2025

Most Cited Articles

history of analytic

An automated post listing (with correct bibliographic information) the top 500 articles in the citation database I’m using, plus graphs of their absolute and relative citation rates over time. The study is of articles published from 1965 onwards, and cited from 1980 onwards.

12-Dec-2024

Changes in Citation Patterns

citations

history of analytic

Which journal articles are cited surprisingly often in recent times, given how often they were cited soon after publication? Conversely, which articles have a lot more citations soon after publication than you’d expect from their current prominence. This note goes over some data on these questions.

01-Dec-2024

The Modal Era in Analytic Philosophy

history of analytic

An attempt at a periodization of recent Anglophone philosophy.

26-Aug-2024

Some Data about Citation Trends

history of analytic

In the future I plan to write something substantive about trends in citations in philosophy journals. This is a presentation of some of the underlying data, with some small remarks about the big picture trends. (I earlier published a version of this that used data starting in 1976. I’ve now added 20 years more data.)

25-Jun-2024

A Question about Inaccuracy

probability

In which I hope someone can solve a mathematical problem that looks simple, but which I haven’t actually figured out.

30-Apr-2024

Bandwidth and Learning

non-ideal decision theory

Another way in which minds and organisations are similar.

29-Feb-2024

Decisions, Knowledge, and Close Calls

epistemology

interest-relativity

My preferred version of interest-relative epistemology leads to odd results in ordinary situations when paired with standard models of decision. Happily, those standard models are wrong.

01-Jan-2024