The Development of Experimental Philosophy

A latest survey of publications in experimental philosophy offers an image of the sector’s development and vary.

In “Twenty Years of Experimental Philosophy Research,” printed lately in Metaphilosophy, Jincai Li (Regular College) and Xiaozhen Zhu (Guangdong College) take a bibliometric take a look at X-phi.

They write:

X-phi has undergone roughly 4 developmental levels over the previous twenty years, specifically, the initiation interval (2000–2005), the event interval (2006–2010), the enlargement interval (2011–2015), and the plateau interval (2016–2020). Though works within the first interval had paved the way in which for later growth of this experimental method to philosophical inquiries, the important thing umbrella time period “experimental philosophy” didn’t come into widespread use till 2006. Since then, it has remained on the middle of heated dialogue. Over the following fifteen years or so, x-phi developed from unfavorable analysis packages with the slogan of “burning the armchair” to the extra optimistic and interdisciplinary tasks that embrace extra armchairs, changing into an interesting a part of the broad enterprise of cognitive science. This attribute change of x-phi is showcased partially by the big range of analysis matters lined on this space and partially by the various tutorial journals that host the scholarly output on these matters. 

Let’s flip to the info. Right here’s a take a look at x-[hi’s growth, in terms of numbers of publications, since 2000:

The most popular of x-phi’s subfields is ethics, Li and Zhu find, followed by epistemology and philosophy of mind:

Number of experimental works in each subcategory published in the period 2000 to 2020. (From “Twenty Years of Experimental Philosophy Research” by Jincai Li and Xiaozhen Zhu.)

In which journals is x-phi typically published? Philosophical Psychology, Review of Philosophy and Pyschology, and Mind and Language lead the list, report Li and Zhu:

The authors also provide a list of the thirty most “influential” publications in experimental philosophy, using citation rates adjusted to take into account the “time effect of publishing”. Their metric, “relative citation rate” (RCR) is arrived at by dividing the number of citations of a work by the average citations of any paper in the same year it is published. Here are the top ten from that list:

In discussing their findings, Li and Zhu say that “To move out of the plateau stage and make further progress in a sustainable manner, experimental philosophers need to expand their research territory and upgrade their tool kits.” You can read the whole article here. Discussion welcome.