The 233 Most-Cited Works in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Last summer my son David and I scraped the bibliographies out of the massive Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to generate a list of the 295 most cited contemporary authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia. I have found that this approach gives more plausible results as a measure of influence in mainstream Anglophone philosophy than do other quantitative bibliometric approaches (like Google Scholar rankings or Web of Science).

Last fall, I'd meant to do one more project with the data -- but things pulled me away, and I'm only now returning to it. That's a list of most cited works in the Stanford Encyclopedia. My most-cited authors approach, at least as I implemented it, might have tended to overplay the impact of philosophers with moderate contributions to several fields relative to philosophers who published one or two field-changing works. (Thomas Kuhn, for example, ranks only #75 on last year's list, despite his transformative impact on philosophy of science.) Also, tracking influential works is an interesting project in its own right, separate from the project of tracking influential philosophers.

Before proceeding to the list, notes and caveats.

(1.) Each work counts once per main-page bibliographic entry in the SEP. Thus, a work with a total of 33 is cited in 33 different main page entries. Subpage entries are not included.

(2.) What counts as the "same work"? The distinction admits vague and contentious cases, and implementing it mechanically raises further problems. Here's what I did: To count as the same work, the work had to begin with exactly the same title words (excluding punctuation marks, "a", "an", or "the"). Later editions were counted as the same work as earlier editions (including in a few cases of "such-and-such revisited" or the like) and articles republished in collections were counted as the same work if the particular article rather than the collection as a whole was cited. Also, works that appeared first as articles then later were expanded into books with the same or similar title were counted as the same work. Multi-volume works counted as the same work if citations were generally to all volumes as a single bibliographic entry (Parfit's On What Matters); but not if citations were generally to a specific volume (Lewis's Philosophical Papers). A specific paper in a volume (e.g., "Causation" in Philosophical Papers, Vol 2) would then be classed as the "same work" as the Journal of Philosophy article of the same title rather than as the same work as a general citation of that volume.

(3.) Historical philosophers, especially non-Anglophone philosophers, have low counts for several reasons. First, historical entries often treat primary texts in a separate section, not listing those texts among the bibliographic sections we scraped. Second, historical texts are often cited under different titles that my procedure would not match (e.g., in the original language, or in translation, or in different translations, or in differently titled collections). Also, in general, non-historical entries in the Stanford Encyclopedia vastly disproportionately cite recent work. See my notes at the end for further reflections.

(4.) Citations in the role of editor are not included.

(5.) Please excuse the haphazard cut-and-paste formatting. Dates are sometimes first appearance, sometimes later appearance or edition or translation.

(6.) Corrections welcome, as long as they are consistent with the principles above and don't constitute a distortive general revision, unsystematically applied on one author's behalf, of the method described in the technical details at the end of the post.

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The 233 Most-Cited Works in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

1. (cited in 115 main-page entries) Rawls, J. (1972), A Theory of Justice.
2. (cited in 88) Kripke, S. (1980). Naming and Necessity.
3t. (63) Lewis, David, 1986, On the Plurality of Worlds.
3t. (63) Nozick, Robert, 1974, Anarchy, State and Utopia.
3t. (63) Quine, W.V.O., 1960, Word & Object.
6. (62) Parfit, Derek, 1984, Reasons and Persons.
7. (56) Scanlon, T.M., 1998. What We Owe to Each Other.
8. (55) Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1953, Philosophical Investigations.
9. (53) Chalmers, D., 1996, The Conscious Mind.
10. (48) Rawls, John, 1993, Political Liberalism.
11. (47) Kuhn, T.S., 1970 [1962], The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
12. (45) Putnam, Hilary, 1975, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”.
13t. (43) Moore, G. E., 1903/1993a, Principia Ethica.
13t. (43) Quine, W. V. O., 1953, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”.
15. (41) Russell, Bertrand, 1903, The Principles of Mathematics.
16t. (40) Sidgwick, H. (1907), The Methods of Ethics.
16t. (40) Williamson, Timothy, 2000, Knowledge and Its Limits.
18t. (39) Hume, David, 1978, A Treatise of Human Nature.
18t. (39) Jackson, F., 1998, From Metaphysics to Ethics.
18t. (39) van Fraassen, Bas C. 1980, The Scientific Image.
21. (38) Kaplan, David, 1989, “Demonstratives”.
22t. (37) Carnap, R., 1956, Meaning and Necessity.
22t. (37) Lewis, David, 1973, Counterfactuals.
24t. (36) Nozick, Robert, 1981, Philosophical Explanations.
24t. (36) Russell, B., 1905. ‘On Denoting’.
26. (35) Fodor, J., 1987, Psychosemantics.
27t. (34) Popper, Karl, 1934, The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
27t. (34) Raz, J., 1986. The Morality of Freedom.
27t. (34) Ross, W. D., 1930, The Right and the Good.
30t. (33) Ayer, A.J., 1936, Language Truth, and Logic.
30t. (33) Ryle, Gilbert, 1949. The Concept of Mind.
32. (32) Evans, Gareth, 1982, The Varieties of Reference.
33t. (31) Korsgaard, Christine M. (1996). The Sources of Normativity.
33t. (31) Locke, John (1690/1975), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
35t. (30) Dretske, F., 1981, Knowledge and the Flow of Information.
35t. (30) Gauthier, David, 1986. Morals by Agreement.
35t. (30) Mackie, J., 1977, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong.
35t. (30) Russell, B., 1912. The Problems of Philosophy.
39t. (29) Armstrong, David M., 1968, A Materialist Theory of Mind.
39t. (29) Armstrong, D.M., 1997, A World of States of Affairs.
39t. (29) Goodman, N., 1954, Fact, Fiction and Forecast.
39t. (29) Lewis, David, 1969, Convention, a Philosophical Study.
39t. (29) Plantinga, Alvin, 1974, The Nature of Necessity.
39t. (29) Wittgenstein, L., 1921, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
45t. (28) Dummett, M., 1973, Frege, Philosophy of Language.
45t. (28) Rawls, John, 2001, Justice as Fairness.
45t. (28) Wiggins, D., 1980, Sameness and Substance.
50t. (27) Dennett, D.C., 1991. Consciousness Explained.
50t. (27) Gibbard, Allan, 1990, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings.
50t. (27) McDowell, J., 1994a. Mind and World.
50t. (27) Nagel, T., 1986, The View From Nowhere.
50t. (27) Searle, John R., 1983, Intentionality.
50t. (27) Strawson, P. F., 1959, Individuals.
50t. (27) Woodward, J., 2003, Making Things Happen.
55t. (26) Davidson, D., 1980. Essays on Actions and Events.
55t. (26) Jackson, F., 1982. ‘Epiphenomenal qualia’.
55t. (26) Millikan, R. G., 1984. Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories.
55t. (26) Williams, Bernard, 1985. Ethics and the Limit of Philosophy.
59t. (25) Butler, Judith, 1990, Gender Trouble.
59t. (25) Chisholm, R., 1977, Theory of Knowledge.
59t. (25) Lewis, D., 1973, “Causation”.
59t. (25) van Inwagen, 1990, Material Beings.
63t. (24) Putnam, H., 1981. Reason, Truth and History.
63t. (24) Smith, Michael, 1994, The Moral Problem.
63t. (24) Stalnaker, R. 1987. Inquiry.
63t. (24) Young, Iris Marion, 1990, Justice and the Politics of Difference.
67t. (23) Anderson, Elizabeth. 1999. “What is the Point of Equality”.
67t. (23) Brandom, R. 1994, Making it Explicit.
67t. (23) Carnap, R. 1962. Logical Foundations of Probability.
67t. (23) Dretske, F., 1995, Naturalizing the Mind.
67t. (23) Gilligan, Carol, 1982, In a Different Voice.
67t. (23) Hare, R.M., 1952, The Language of Morals.
67t. (23) Lewis, D., 1983. “New Work For a Theory of Universals”.
67t. (23) Nagel, Ernest, 1961, The Structure of Science.
67t. (23) Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat?
67t. (23) Russell, B., 1918, “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism”.
67t. (23) Sellars, Wilfrid. 1963. “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”.
67t. (23) Tye, Michael, 1995, Ten Problems of Consciousness.
67t. (23) Whitehead, A. N. and B. Russell (1925). Principia Mathematica.
80t. (22) Blackburn, S., 1998, Ruling Passions.
80t. (22) Burge, T., 1979, “Individualism and the Mental”.
80t. (22) Dworkin, Ronald, 1977. Taking Rights Seriously.
80t. (22) Fodor, J. A., 1975, The Language of Thought.
80t. (22) Hart, H.L.A., 1994. The Concept of Law.
80t. (22) Jeffrey, R., 1983, The Logic of Decision.
80t. (22) Kneale, W. and Kneale, M., 1962, The Development of Logic.
80t. (22) Pearl, J., 2000, Causality.
80t. (22) Quine, W. V. O., 1948. ‘On What There Is’.
80t. (22) Quine, W. V. O., 1970, Philosophy of Logic.
80t. (22) Ramsey, F. P., 1926, “Truth and Probability”.
80t. (22) Rawls, J., 1999, The Law of Peoples.
80t. (22) Spirtes, Peter, Clark Glymour, and Richard Scheines, 1993, Causation, Prediction, and Search.
80t. (22) Zalta, E., 1983, Abstract Objects.
94t. (21) Anderson, A.R., Belnap, N.D. Jr., and Dunn, J.M., 1992, Entailment.
94t. (21) Chisholm, Roderick M., 1976, Person and Object.
94t. (21) Dupré, John, 1993. The Disorder of Things.
94t. (21) Dworkin, R., 2000, Sovereign Virtue.
94t. (21) Kant, Immanuel, 1781/87 [1987], Critique of Pure Reason.
94t. (21) Kripke, S., 1982. Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language.
94t. (21) Nussbaum, M., 2000, Women and Human Development.
94t. (21) Pogge, Thomas, 2008. World Poverty and Human Rights.
102t. (20) Brink, David, 1989. Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics.
102t. (20) Chisholm, R., 1957, Perceiving.
102t. (20) Dancy, J., 2006, Ethics without Principles.
102t. (20) Finnis, J., 2011, Natural Law and Natural Rights.
102t. (20) Gettier, E. (1963). Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?
102t. (20) Grice, H. P., 1989. Studies in the Way of Words.
102t. (20) Griffin, J., 1986. Well-Being.
102t. (20) Hempel, C., 1965, Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science.
102t. (20) Kitcher, P., 1993. The advancement of science.
102t. (20) MacIntyre, Alasdair, 1984, After Virtue.
102t. (20) Quine, W.V.O, 1961, From a Logical Point of View.
102t. (20) Searle, John, 1963, Speech Acts.
102t. (20) Sider, T., 2001, Four-Dimensionalism.
102t. (20) Swinburne, Richard, 1977, The Coherence of Theism.
102t. (20) Williamson, Timothy, 2007, The Philosophy of Philosophy.
117t. (19) Anscombe, G. E. M., 1963. Intention.
117t. (19) Blackburn, Simon, 1984, Spreading the Word.
117t. (19) Brandt, R., 1979. A Theory of the Good and the Right.
117t. (19) Dennett, Daniel, 1987, The Intentional Stance.
117t. (19) Dretske, Fred, 1988, Explaining Behavior.
117t. (19) Fischer, John Martin and Mark Ravizza, 1998, Responsibility and Control.
117t. (19) Fodor, Jerry, 1983, The Modularity of Mind.
117t. (19) Frankfurt, Harry, 1971. ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person’.
117t. (19) Hare, R. M., 1981, Moral Thinking.
117t. (19) Okin, Susan, 1989, Justice, Gender and the Family.
117t. (19) Shafer-Landau, Russ, 2003, Moral Realism: A Defence.
117t. (19) Strawson, P.F., 1962, “Freedom and Resentment”.
117t. (19) Tarski, A., 1956, Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics Papers from 1923–1939.
117t. (19) Turing, Alan M., 1936, “On Computable Numbers with an Application to the Entscheideungproblem”.
131t. (18) Armstrong, David Malet, 1978, Universals and Scientific Realism.
131t. (18) Austin, J.L., 1962, How to do Things with Words.
131t. (18) Davidson, D., 1963, “Actions, Reasons and Causes”.
131t. (18) Dawkins, R., 1976. The selfish gene.
131t. (18) Fodor, J.A., 1974, “Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis)”.
131t. (18) Hobbes, T., 1968, Leviathan.
131t. (18) MacKinnon, C., 1989, Toward a Feminist Theory of State.
131t. (18) Nussbaum, Martha C., 2006, Frontiers of Justice.
131t. (18) Parfit, Derek, 2011, On What Matters.
131t. (18) Priest, Graham, 2006, In Contradiction.
131t. (18) Rorty, Richard, 1979, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.
131t. (18) Savage, Leonard, 1972, The Foundations of Statistics.
131t. (18) Searle, J., 1992, The Rediscovery of the Mind.
131t. (18) Street, S., 2006, “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value”.
131t. (18) van Fraassen, B., 1989, Laws and Symmetry.
131t. (18) Wright, C., 1983. Frege’s Conception of Numbers as Objects.
147t. (17) Axelrod. R., 1984, The Evolution of Cooperation.
147t. (17) Carnap, R., 1950. ‘Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology’.
147t. (17) Cartwright, N., 1983, How the Laws of Physics Lie.
147t. (17) Davidson, D., 1971, ‘Mental events'.
147t. (17) Davidson, D., 1984, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation.
147t. (17) Dummett, Michael, 1991, The Logical Basis of Metaphysics.
147t. (17) Feyerabend, P., 1975, Against Method.
147t. (17) Field, Hartry, 1989, Realism, Mathematics and Modality.
147t. (17) Fine, K., 1994. “Essence and Modality”.
147t. (17) Fodor, Jerry, 1990, A Theory of Content and Other Essays.
147t. (17) Goodman, N. (1976), Languages of Art.
147t. (17) Grice, H. P., 1975. “Logic and Conversation”.
147t. (17) Hacking, I., 1983. Representing and Intervening.
147t. (17) Hintikka, Jaakko (1961), Knowledge and Belief.
147t. (17) Lewis, David K., 1991, Parts of Classes.
147t. (17) Lycan, W.G., 1996, Consciousness and Experience.
147t. (17) Machamer, P. K., Darden, L., and C. Craver, 2000, “Thinking About Mechanisms”.
147t. (17) Noë, Alva, 2004, Action in Perception.
147t. (17) Perry, J., 1979, “The Problem of the Essential Indexical”.
147t. (17) Rawls, J., 1955, ‘Two Concepts of Rules’.
147t. (17) Salmon, Nathan U., 1986, Frege’s Puzzle.
147t. (17) Shannon, C. E. 1948. “A Mathematical Theory of Communcation”.
147t. (17) Stalnaker, Robert, 1968, “A Theory of Conditionals”.
147t. (17) Stich, S., 1983, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science.
147t. (17) Tarski, A., 1933, “The Concept of Truth in Formalised Languages”.
172t. (16) Armstrong, D.M., 2004, Truth and Truthmakers.
172t. (16) Blackburn, Simon, 1993, Essays in Quasi-Realism.
172t. (16) Bratman, M., 1987, Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason.
172t. (16) Cartwright, N., 1999, The Dappled World.
172t. (16) Dummett, M., 1978. Truth and Other Enigmas.
172t. (16) Field, H., 1980, Science Without Numbers.
172t. (16) Geach, Peter T., 1980, Reference and Generality.
172t. (16) Goldman, Alvin I., 1999, Knowledge in a Social World.
172t. (16) Harman, Gilbert, 1986. Change in View.
172t. (16) Hilbert, David and William Ackermann, 1928, Grundzüge Der Theoretischen Logik.
172t. (16) Hume, David, 1751 [1975], Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals.
172t. (16) Keynes, John Maynard, 1921, A Treatise on Probability.
172t. (16) Lehrer, Keith, 2000, Theory of Knowledge.
172t. (16) Longino, Helen E., 1990. Science as Social Knowledge.
172t. (16) McMahan, J., 2003, The Ethics of Killing.
172t. (16) Parsons, T., 1980, Nonexistent Objects.
172t. (16) Peacocke, Christopher, 1992, A Study of Concepts.
172t. (16) Prior, A.N., 1967, Past, Present and Future.
172t. (16) Salmon, Nathan, 1981, Reference and Essence.
172t. (16) Sandel, Michael J. (1982). Liberalism and the Limits of Justice.
172t. (16) Schneewind, J. B., 1998, The Invention of Autonomy.
172t. (16) Sober, Elliott, and David Sloan Wilson, 1998. Unto Others.
172t. (16) Taylor, C., 1989. Sources of the Self.
172t. (16) Tye, M., 2000. Consciousness, Color, and Content.
172t. (16) Walzer, Michael, 1983. Spheres of Justice.
172t. (16) Williams, B., 1981a. Moral Luck.
198t. (15) Alcoff, Linda Martín (2006). Visible Identities.
198t. (15) Annas, J., 1993, The Morality of Happiness.
198t. (15) Armstrong, D.M., 1989, Universals: An Opinionated Introduction.
198t. (15) Bell, J.S., 1987, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics.
198t. (15) Block, N. (1995). “On a Confusion About A Function of Consciousness”.
198t. (15) Broad, Charles Dunbar, 1925, The Mind and Its Place in Nature.
198t. (15) Butler, Judith, 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”.
198t. (15) Chomsky, N., 1965, Aspects of a Theory of Syntax.
198t. (15) Churchland, P. (1981). Eliminative Materialism and Propositional Attitudes.
198t. (15) Clark, A. (1997). Being There.
198t. (15) Dancy, J., 1993, Moral Reasons.
198t. (15) Darwall, Stephen, 2006, The Second Person Standpoint.
198t. (15) Fodor, J. 1998. Concepts.
198t. (15) Gibbard, A., 2003. Thinking How To Live.
198t. (15) Glymour, Clark, 1980, Theory and Evidence.
198t. (15) Goldman, Alvin, 1979. “What is Justified Belief”.
198t. (15) Graham, A.C., 1987, Disputers of the Tao.
198t. (15) Harman, G., 1990. ‘The intrinsic quality of experience’.
198t. (15) Howson, C. and P. Urbach, 2006, Scientific Reasoning.
198t. (15) Kane, R., 1996, The Significance of Free Will.
198t. (15) Kleene, S., 1952, Introduction to Metamathematics.
198t. (15) Lipton, P., 2004. Inference to the Best Explanation.
198t. (15) Longino, H. E., 2002, The Fate of Knowledge.
198t. (15) Marr, D., 1980. Vision.
198t. (15) Merleau-Ponty, M. 1945/1962. Phenomenology of Perception.
198t. (15) Pateman, Carole, 1988, The Sexual Contract.
198t. (15) Ross, W.D. (1939), Foundations of Ethics.
198t. (15) Russell, Bertrand, 1927, The Analysis of Matter.
198t. (15) Russell, B., 1914, Our Knowledge of the External World.
198t. (15) Schaffner, K., 1993, Discovery and Explanation in Biology and Medicine.
198t. (15) Singer, P., 1993. Practical Ethics.
198t. (15) Strawson, P., 1950. ‘On Referring’.
198t. (15) van Inwagen, Peter, 1978. An Essay on Free Will.
198t. (15) von Neumann, J. and O. Morgenstern, 1947. Theory of Games and Economic Behavior.
198t. (15) Wright, Crispin, 1992, Truth and Objectivity.

A Few Observations

(1.) As in the author-based SEP analyses, there are few women, people of color, and non-Anglophone philosophers on the list. The highest-ranked work by a woman is Korsgaard's Sources of Normativity (tied for 33), ETA: and a first-pass count suggests 20-22 works (9-10%) with a woman as author or co-author (among other things, I'm unclear on whether Butler should classed as nonbinary). I'm hesitant to make racial judgments -- and please let me know if I'm missing someone! -- the list appears to be entirely non-Latinx White, with the exception of Linda Martín Alcoff.

(2.) Bertrand Russell has seven works on the list, Jerry Fodor and David Lewis each have six, and David Armstrong and W.V.O. Quine have five. Russell's showing is surprising to me, given the relatively weak showing of works by other historical figures. Russell's Analysis of Matter appears on the list, but not for example Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals or Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. This highlights several limitations of the method for older and non-English works. A search of "groundwork of the metaphysics of morals" or "groundwork for the metaphysics of morals" yields 39 main page hits -- enough to rank 18th on the current list if all hits were included. But the references are split among references broken into "primary sources" sections (which were not systematically enough formatted to be scrapable), references citing the German title first, references citing one of the English titles first (which are close enough they were merged for analysis), and cases in which the work is mentioned but not included in the reference list (perhaps because it's assumed that readers will be familiar enough with it not to require reference?). The Nicomachean Ethics had all these disadvantages plus also the disadvantage of often not being bibliographically formatted in the standard way, with publication and/or translation year before the title, which led to its being disproportionately missed (see 5 below). Mill's Utilitarianism is another conspicuous absence, despite being in English (a search for Mill and utilitarianism yields 105 main page hits) -- partly because citation is sometimes absent or in primary sources sections and partly because some citations are of volumes in the collected works instead. A final factor that might partly explain Russell's commanding presence is the arguably disproportionately large number of SEP entries devoted to formal philosophy (logic, math, and such), where Russell had great influence.

(3.) As a fan of Chinese philosophy, I was pleased to see that a work on the history of Chinese philosophy made the list: A.C. Graham's career-culminating Disputers of the Tao. In general, however, historians of philosophy are not well represented on this list.

(4.) As one might expect, this list has weaknesses complementary to the author-based list. If an author returns to an issue multiple times in different works, or publishes an idea both in a standalone article and as a chapter in a book with a different title, SEP citations might be distributed more thinly across those works than they would be if the author had instead expressed the same idea in a single, definitive treatment.

(5.) Technical details: The matching algorithm looked for matches in the first four letters of the author's name and the first five letters of the first text appearing after numbers, punctuation marks, "the", "an", or "a", which for standardly formatted entries is the title. I then alphabetically sorted and hand-checked all bibliographic lines with at least 15 exact matches of both of the two parameters. This took several hours and was probably imperfect, but was not as difficult as it might seem. Note also: The scrape was conducted last summer, so recent entries and recent updates won't figure into the totals.

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