Philosophy: More Empirical Than Ever

“In the early 1970s, fewer than 10% of articles cited any empirical sources. However, by the 2020s, this grew to over 50%.” That finding is from a new study by Michael Prinzing (Wake Forest University), “The Role of Empirical Evidence in Philosophy,” forthcoming in Synthese. Prinzing used a GPT model to examine the citations in 38,442 articles published across 21 highly-regarded philosophy journals between 1970 and 2024, and then manually classified the most frequently-cited sources in the sample. (He explains in his article the measures he took to ensure the accuracy of the AI tool.) Here are charts showing the rise in articles citing empirical sources and the rise in the empirical sources cited per article: Prinzing also shows that articles that include citations to empirical sources have themselves been cited more than articles that completely lack them: An additional aspect of the study shows a rise in the frequency of terms such as “empirical findings” in philosophical literature over the past fifty years. What should we take from this? Prinzing writes: If a sizeable and influential portion of mainstream philosophy engages with empirical research, then this gives us good reason to think that empirical methods and evidence play an important role in philosophical inquiry… [S]uch descriptive facts about philosophical practice shift the burden of proof in debates about whether empirical methods and evidence should play an important role in philosophical inquiry. The present findings indicate that, in recent years, articles published in prestigious, generalist philosophy journals were more likely than not to cite at least one empirical source, and the average number of empirical sources cited is about 4 or 5. Moreover, philosophy articles that cite empirical sources are themselves cited more often, indicating that they are more influential than less empirically engaged articles. Finally, a smaller, though non-trivial proportion (about 20%) of recent articles have discussed empirical research under that description, using phrases like “empirical findings, “empirical evidence,” and “empirical studies” in the text of the article itself. Together, these findings strongly suggest that a sizeable and influential portion of mainstream philosophy does engage with empirical research. It follows that we have good reason to think that empirical methods and evidence do play an important role in philosophical inquiry... The post Philosophy: More Empirical Than Ever first appeared on Daily Nous.