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Accumulation of knowledge in para-scientific areas: the case of analytic philosophy

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Abstract

This study analyzes how the accumulation of knowledge takes place in para-scientific areas, focusing on the case of Analytic Philosophy. The theoretical framework chosen for the analysis is Kuhn’s theory of normal science. The methodology employed is qualitative citation context analysis. A sample of 60 papers published in leading Analytic Philosophy journals between 1950 and 2009 is analyzed, and a specific classificatory scheme is developed to classify citations according to their epistemological function. Compared to previous studies of citation context, this is the first paper that includes the temporal dimension into the analysis of citation context, in order to gain insights into the process of knowledge accumulation. Interestingly, the results show that Analytic Philosophy started accumulating after Second World War, but in a peculiar way. The accumulation was not matched by a corresponding rising consensus. This can be explained by the hypothesis that AP underwent a process of fragmentation in sub-fields during the second half of the century.

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Notes

  1. In this study, no explicit definition of the term “knowledge” will be provided, since any definition is bound to raise difficult epistemological and, more broadly, philosophical problems. However, this study inscribes itself within an approach to knowledge that can be termed “anti-representationalism” (Hacking 1979). Anti-representationalism is rooted in Kant and Hegel’s philosophy of knowledge and at least some of its features have been embraced in the Twentieth century by Popper, Lakatos, Kuhn, and Foucault (see Popper 1979; Lakatos 1978; Kuhn 1970; Foucault 2002). Anti-representationalism considers knowledge as the product of the activity of the knowing subject (be it the individual or a collective entity such as the scientific community), not as a “true representation” of the “world out there” or as a set of “justified true beliefs” held by knowing subjects. According to anti-representationalism, the primary feature of knowledge is its being a (human) product. As a product, knowledge constitutes a “third world” (different from both the “first world”, the physical reality, and the “second world”, the mental reality) that is materially embodied in books, archives, databases and scientific papers (Popper 1979: ch. 3). From this point of view, saying that scientific knowledge grows is the same as saying that scientific literature grows. A full justification of anti-representationalism lies outside the scope of this paper. However, the main motivations for adopting it as a theoretical background are the following. First, it allows to avoid vast philosophical debates about truth and the definition of knowledge as “justified true belief” (an introduction to them can be found in Moran 2010: ch. 11). Second, it allows to focus on the phenomenon of accumulation of knowledge without raising the problem of the advancement towards the “truth” (see Bird 2007 for a recent discussion of the relationship between scientific progress and truth), that is particularly difficult in the case of philosophical knowledge. Finally, it allows to inquire the activity of accumulation of knowledge and track its changes over time, without assuming a teleological drive such as “truth” in the history of knowledge (Kuhn 1970: ch. 3; Bloor 1991).

  2. Kuhn was very clear in distinguishing the accumulation process taking place in the normal science periods from the metaphysical notion of progress, conceived as a movement of approach to the truth. Indeed, he was quite wary about the very idea that science progresses towards the “truth”, because this seems to imply a teleological drive in the development of science—a claim that is difficult to test empirically (see Kuhn 1970: ch. 13; Bloor 1991).

  3. Rarely, citations point out also to the “future”, in the case of references to “forthcoming” publications.

  4. Clearly, this does not exclude the possibility that this research could be of interest for sociologists of science.

  5. This is another feature of AP that suggests an approaching to the normal science style of intellectual production.

  6. http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2015/09/the-top-20-general-philosophy-journals-2015.html.

  7. Buonomo and Petrovich (2018) discuss in detail how to select journals representative of mainstream and “high-quality” research in AP.

  8. Search date: 29.08.2017.

  9. Two papers originally ranked top ten were excluded and substituted with subsequent papers in the ranking: Anderson (1958) and Sen (1985). Even if they were published in philosophy journals, their subject falls outside AP (even in the broad sense), being respectively a result in formal logic for the first and economic welfare theory for the second.

  10. See Chen (2013: ch. 6) for some arguments in favor of the assimilation of high-impact publications to Kuhnian paradigms.

  11. The further question about the reasons an author may have to cite supplementary material (e.g. hidden social-networking purposes) is not pursued in this study.

  12. In this study, only explicit citations were considered, i.e. citations pointing to specific documents. Proto-citations such as “I owe this point to Prof. X”, commonly used in acknowledgements section of recent papers, are not counted. For an interesting study of acknowledgements in philosophy, see the mentioned study conducted by Cronin et al. (2003).

  13. It turned out that no citation could be attributed to more than three categories.

  14. For example, if a reference was mentioned 3 times in the same article, but it played always the same function, it scored 1 point, and not 3 points. On the other hand, if it was mentioned 3 times, each time with a different function, its point was equally divided among the functions it played.

  15. The overall proportion of Critical citations (Table 2) is higher than the result reported by Cullars in his study of philosophy monographs, where 11.1% of citations were classified as critical (Cullars 1998: 62). This is probably due to the fact that papers are more narrow-focused than books, and therefore devote more space to criticism and argumentation.

  16. Unless very loosely, by showing that the author is legitimated to contribute to the debate because she is up-to-date.

  17. As a Reviewer suggested, another hypothesis can be advanced to explain these results, namely that the fragmentation of the field is simply the consequence of the massive amount of information analytic philosophers have to confront with. As Quinn (1987) says: «Having limited time and energy at their disposal, individual philosophers have to focus rather narrowly to keep up with rapid developments in their areas of specialization» (111). A similar idea can be found in Marconi (2014) and Schwartz (1995), both linking the trend towards specialization to the growth of the literature available in AP. This hypothesis is worth considering because it brings into the picture an important factor influencing the citing behavior (i.e. the increase of the available literature). However, we believe this is not in contrast with the hypothesis advanced in this study (i.e. the normalization of AP in the form of the progressive delineation of a background structure of the field): normalization and specialization could be indeed two mutually reinforcing factors shaping contemporary AP. This interpretation is also consistent with Kuhn’s late theory of science (see Kuhn 2000, where the philosopher explicitly linked specialization and normal science; see also Wray 2011). A possible way to check the weight of the different factors could be, as a Reviewer suggested, to classify the contexts citing the 60 articles under consideration, and see if the proportions of categories change over time and across different sub-fields. We leave this for a future work.

  18. However, it is also possible that the understanding of “perfunctory/supplementary” citations used in this study is different from the one employed in previous ones.

  19. I thank an anonymous Reviewer for the expression “soft paradigm”.

  20. I thank an anonymous Reviewer for this suggestion.

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Acknowledgements

My gratitude goes first to Ludo Waltman (CWTS Leiden), who was my supervisor during my visiting period at CWTS, for very helpful advice and precious insights. I would like to thank also my advisor Luca Guzzardi and my colleagues in the Doctoral School in Philosophy and Human Sciences at the University of Milan (especially Valerio Buonomo, Daniele Cassaghi and Emiliano Tolusso) for discussing with me several parts of this research. I would finally like to thank Giulia Petrovich for linguistic revision and two anonymous reviewers for providing useful suggestions.

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Correspondence to Eugenio Petrovich.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Sample metadata

#

Author

PY

Title

Source

Volume

Issue

First page

End page

1950–1959

 1

GRICE, HP

1957

MEANING

Philos. Rev.

66

3

377

388

 2

VENDLER, Z

1957

VERBS AND TIMES

Philos. Rev.

66

2

143

160

 3

SMART, JJC

1959

SENSATIONS AND BRAIN PROCESSES

Philos. Rev.

68

2

141

156

 4

RAWLS, J

1958

JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS

Philos. Rev.

67

2

164

194

 5

QUINE, WV

1956

QUANTIFIERS AND PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDES

J. Philos.

53

5

177

187

 6

SEARLE, JR

1958

PROPER NAMES

Mind

67

266

166

173

 7

FREGE, G

1956

THE THOUGHT—A LOGICAL INQUIRY

Mind

65

259

289

311

 8

SIBLEY, F

1959

AESTHETIC CONCEPTS

Philos. Rev.

68

4

421

450

 9

GRICE, HP; STRAWSON, PF

1956

IN DEFENSE OF A DOGMA

Philos. Rev.

65

2

141

158

 10

DUMMETT, M

1959

WITTGENSTEIN PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS

Philos. Rev.

68

3

324

348

1960–1969

 1

DONNELLAN, KS

1966

REFERENCE AND DEFINITE DESCRIPTIONS

Philos. Rev.

75

3

281

304

 2

DAVIDSON, D

1963

ACTIONS, REASONS, AND CAUSES—SYMPOSIUM

J. Philos.

60

23

685

700

 3

FRANKFURT, HG

1969

ALTERNATE POSSIBILITIES AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

J. Philos.

66

23

829

839

 4

HARMAN, GH

1965

THE INFERENCE TO THE BEST EXPLANATION

Philos. Rev.

74

1

88

95

 5

GRICE, HP

1969

UTTERERS MEANING AND INTENTIONS

Philos. Rev.

78

2

147

177

 6

LEWIS, DK

1968

COUNTERPART THEORY AND QUANTIFIED MODAL LOGIC

J. Philos.

65

5

113

126

 7

DANTO, A

1964

THE ARTWORLD

J. Philos.

61

19

571

584

 8

BENACERRAF, P

1965

WHAT NUMBERS COULD NOT BE

Philos. Rev.

74

1

47

73

 9

STRAWSON, PF

1964

INTENTION AND CONVENTION IN SPEECH ACTS

Philos. Rev.

73

4

439

460

 10

GEACH, PT

1965

ASSERTION

Philos. Rev.

74

4

449

465

1970–1979

 1

NAGEL, T

1974

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A BAT

Philos. Rev.

83

4

435

450

 2

KRIPKE, S

1975

OUTLINE OF A THEORY OF TRUTH

J. Philos.

72

19

690

716

 3

PERRY, J

1979

PROBLEM OF THE ESSENTIAL INDEXICAL

Nous

13

1

3

21

 4

CUMMINS, R

1975

FUNCTIONAL-ANALYSIS

J. Philos.

72

20

741

765

 5

LEWIS, D

1979

ATTITUDES DE-DICTO AND DE-SE

Philos. Rev.

88

4

513

543

 6

GOLDMAN, AI

1976

DISCRIMINATION AND PERCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE

J. Philos.

73

20

771

791

 7

LEWIS, D

1979

COUNTERFACTUAL DEPENDENCE AND TIMES ARROW

Nous

13

4

455

476

 8

DRETSKE, FI

1970

EPISTEMIC OPERATORS

J. Philos.

67

24

1007

1023

 9

LEWIS, D

1976

PROBABILITIES OF CONDITIONALS AND CONDITIONAL PROBABILITIES

Philos. Rev.

85

3

297

315

 10

WRIGHT, L

1973

FUNCTIONS

Philos. Rev.

82

2

139

168

1980–1989

 1

CHURCHLAND, PM

1981

ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM AND THE PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDES

J. Philos.

78

2

67

90

 2

RAWLS, J

1980

RATIONAL AND FULL AUTONOMY

J. Philos.

77

9

515

535

 3

JACKSON, F

1986

WHAT MARY DIDNT KNOW + KNOWLEDGE ARGUMENT AGAINST PHYSICALISM

J. Philos.

83

5

291

295

 4

RAILTON, P

1986

MORAL REALISM + A FORM OF ETHICAL NATURALISM

Philos. Rev.

95

2

163

207

 5

WOLF, S

1982

MORAL SAINTS + IMPLICATIONS FOR MORAL-PHILOSOPHY

J. Philos.

79

8

419

439

 6

BURGE, T

1986

INDIVIDUALISM AND PSYCHOLOGY

Philos. Rev.

95

1

3

45

 7

KIM, J

1984

CONCEPTS OF SUPERVENIENCE

Philos. Phenomenol. Res.

45

2

153

176

 8

BURGE, T

1988

INDIVIDUALISM AND SELF-KNOWLEDGE

J. Philos.

85

11

649

663

 9

MCGINN, C

1989

CAN WE SOLVE THE MIND BODY PROBLEM

Mind

98

391

349

366

 10

BOGEN, J; WOODWARD, J

1988

SAVING THE PHENOMENA

Philos. Rev.

97

3

303

352

1990–1999

 1

DEROSE, K

1995

SOLVING THE SKEPTICAL PROBLEM

Philos. Rev.

104

1

1

52

 2

BRATMAN, ME

1992

SHARED COOPERATIVE ACTIVITY

Philos. Rev.

101

2

327

340

 3

BURGE, T

1993

CONTENT PRESERVATION

Philos. Rev.

102

4

457

488

 4

YABLO, S

1992

MENTAL CAUSATION

Philos. Rev.

101

2

245

280

 5

DENNETT, DC

1991

REAL PATTERNS

J. Philos.

88

1

27

51

 6

EDGINGTON, D

1995

ON CONDITIONALS

Mind

104

414

235

329

 7

DAVIDSON, D

1990

THE STRUCTURE AND CONTENT OF TRUTH

J. Philos.

87

6

279

328

 8

LEWIS, D

1994

CHANCE AND CREDENCE—HUMEAN SUPERVENIENCE DEBUGGED

Mind

103

412

473

490

 9

DEROSE, K

1992

CONTEXTUALISM AND KNOWLEDGE ATTRIBUTIONS

Philos. Phenomenol. Res.

52

4

913

929

 10

GRIFFITHS, PE; GRAY, RD

1994

DEVELOPMENTAL SYSTEMS AND EVOLUTIONARY EXPLANATION

J. Philos.

91

6

277

304

2000–2009

 1

Pryor, J

2000

The skeptic and the dogmatist

Nous

34

4

517

549

 2

Stanley, J; Williamson, T

2001

Knowing how

J. Philos.

98

8

411

444

 3

Lewis, D

2000

Causation as influence

J. Philos.

97

4

182

197

 4

Kolodny, N

2005

Why be rational?

Mind

114

455

509

563

 5

Elga, A

2007

Reflection and disagreement

Nous

41

3

478

502

 6

Nichols, S; Knobe, J

2007

Moral responsibility and determinism: The cognitive science of folk intuitions

Nous

41

4

663

685

 7

Chalmers, DJ; Jackson, F

2001

Conceptual analysis and reductive explanation

Philos. Rev.

110

3

315

360

 8

Rupert, RD

2004

Challenges to the hypothesis of extended cognition

J. Philos.

101

8

389

428

 9

Christensen, D

2007

Epistemology of Disagreement: The Good News

Philos. Rev.

116

2

187

217

 10

Byrne, A

2001

Intentionalism defended

Philos. Rev.

110

2

199

240

Appendix 2: Examples of categories of citation

In this appendix, examples of categories of citations (see Table 1) are reported. However, one should keep in mind that generally it is necessary to consider the whole content of the paper in order to classify plausibly the function of the citations. Very often, in the case of AP the “context” of the citation turns out to be the entire paper.

State of the art citations

Almost all the extensive recent literature seeking alternatives to the orthodox approach – I would mention especially the writings of Bas an Fraassen and Robert L. Martin – agrees on a single basic idea… [Kripke 1975: 698]

For the classic discussion of these problems, see [12] [Perry 1979: 21]

A survey of the recent philosophical literature on the nature of functional analysis and explanation, beginning with the classic essays of Hempel in 1959 and Nagel in 1961, reveals that… [note] [Cummins 1975: 741]

Some philosophers have claimed that people have incompatibilist intuitions (e.g. Kane 1999, 218; Strawson 1986, 30; Vargas 2006); others have challenged this claim and suggested that people’s intuitions actually fit with compatibilism (Nahmias et al. 2015) [Nichols and Knobe 2007: 663]

Supporting citations

I follow Arthur Smullyan’s treatment of scope ambiguity in modal sentences, given in ‘Modality and Description’, Journal of Symbolic Logic, XIII, 1 (March 1948): 31–37, as qualified by Wilson’s objection, in The Concept of Language… [Lewis 1968: 120]

The influence of H. P. Grice’s ‘Meaning’, The Philosophical Review, LXVI (1957): 377–388 will be evident here [Davidson 1992: 311]

Supplementary citations

For my former view, see the treatment of preemption in ‘Postscript E to ‘Causation’’, in my Philosophical Papers, Volume II (New York: Oxford, 1986), pp. 193–212. [Lewis 2000: 1983, in footnote]

Acknowledgement citations

In thinking about the problem of essential indexical, I have been greatly helped by the writings of Hector-Neri Castaneda on indexicality and related topics. Castaneda focused attention on these problems, and made many of the points made here, in [1], [2] and [3] [Perry 1979: 21]

Critical citations

The difficulty one gets into by a mechanical application of the theory of games to moral philosophy can be brought out by considering among several possible examples, R. B. Braithwaite’s study, Theory of Games as a Tool for the Moral Philosopher (Cambridge 1955) […] Braithwaite’s use of the theory of games, insofar as it is intended to analyze the concept of fairness, is, I think, mistaken [Rawls 1958: 176–177]

W. V. Quine, for one, explicitly denies that anything need to be done other than provide a progression to serve as the numbers. In Word and Object (London, 1960, pp. 262–263, he states […] I would disagree [Benacerraf 1965: 51]

Documental citations

While the assimilation is implicit in Bentham’s and Sidgwick’s moral theory, explicit statements of it as applied to justice are relatively rare. One clear instance in The Principles of Morals and Legislation occurs in ch. X, footnote 2 to section XL: […] [Rawls 1958: 184]

Appendix 3: Raw data

In the following table, percentage of citation categories, divided by paper and decade, are reported. Papers’ profiles are available on-line in Petrovich (2018).

# Paper

1950–1959 (%)

1960–1969 (%)

1970–1979 (%)

1980–1989 (%)

1990–1999 (%)

2000–2009 (%)

Supporting citations

 1

0.00

8.33

42.31

52.94

18.84

21.01

 2

66.67

5.56

54.55

20.00

31.37

31.25

 3

87.50

0.00

30.77

42.86

46.00

61.54

 4

32.29

100.00

33.33

52.38

36.05

22.62

 5

100.00

50.00

39.13

0.00

56.25

32.86

 6

50.00

38.64

28.13

66.67

14.22

21.74

 7

0.00

0.00

42.86

24.19

35.96

25.00

 8

35.71

30.00

100.00

61.54

50.00

40.74

 9

0.00

50.00

55.00

87.50

13.16

66.67

 10

0.00

8.33

27.27

35.23

60.00

26.86

 MEAN

37.22

29.09

45.33

44.33

36.19

35.03

 MEDIAN

34.00

19.17

40.72

47.62

36.01

29.06

 MAX

100.00

100.00

100.00

87.50

60.00

66.67

 MIN

0.00

0.00

27.27

0.00

13.16

21.01

Critical citations

 1

100.00

50.00

38.46

47.06

23.91

2.17

 2

16.67

94.44

18.18

26.67

7.84

25.00

 3

8.33

0.00

7.69

57.14

20.67

0.00

 4

15.63

0.00

26.67

14.29

0.00

26.19

 5

0.00

50.00

8.70

7.14

16.67

0.00

 6

25.00

0.00

40.63

22.22

5.60

0.00

 7

0.00

0.00

33.33

6.45

22.81

21.15

 8

28.57

30.00

0.00

23.08

38.24

9.26

 9

100.00

25.00

40.00

0.00

10.53

9.52

 10

12.50

91.67

36.36

22.35

13.33

10.36

 MEAN

30.67

34.11

25.00

22.64

15.96

10.37

 MEDIAN

16.15

27.50

30.00

22.29

15.00

9.39

 MAX

100.00

94.44

40.63

57.14

38.24

26.19

 MIN

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

State of the art citations

 1

0.00

8.33

0.00

0.00

42.75

63.04

 2

0.00

0.00

18.18

9.17

54.90

21.88

 3

4.17

0.00

23.08

0.00

22.67

23.08

 4

18.75

0.00

40.00

0.00

54.65

39.29

 5

0.00

0.00

36.96

64.29

12.50

44.29

 6

25.00

31.82

25.00

13.89

58.19

56.52

 7

0.00

0.00

19.05

53.23

14.91

42.31

 8

35.71

0.00

0.00

23.08

2.94

34.26

 9

0.00

0.00

0.00

12.50

68.42

23.81

 10

50.00

0.00

36.36

17.80

23.33

53.56

 MEAN

13.36

4.02

19.86

19.40

35.53

40.20

 MEDIAN

2.09

0.00

21.06

13.20

33.04

40.80

 MAX

50.00

31.82

40.00

64.29

68.42

63.04

 MIN

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

2.94

21.88

Supplementary/perfunctory citations

 1

0.00

16.67

11.54

0.00

8.70

9.42

 2

0.00

0.00

0.00

20.00

0.00

12.50

 3

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

4.00

15.38

 4

18.75

0.00

0.00

4.76

4.65

7.14

 5

0.00

0.00

4.35

14.29

4.17

14.29

 6

0.00

9.09

6.25

5.56

3.88

15.22

 7

0.00

0.00

4.76

0.00

7.02

11.54

 8

0.00

0.00

0.00

7.69

5.88

9.26

 9

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

 10

0.00

0.00

0.00

20.08

2.22

5.34

 MEAN

1.88

2.58

2.69

7.24

4.05

10.01

 MEDIAN

0.00

0.00

0.00

5.16

4.08

10.48

 MAX

18.75

16.67

11.54

20.08

8.70

15.38

 MIN

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

Acknowledgment citations

 1

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

5.80

0.00

 2

16.67

0.00

9.09

5.00

5.88

0.00

 3

0.00

0.00

38.46

0.00

0.00

0.00

 4

0.00

0.00

0.00

19.05

0.00

0.00

 5

0.00

0.00

6.52

7.14

8.33

8.57

 6

0.00

0.00

0.00

5.56

3.45

0.00

 7

0.00

0.00

0.00

4.84

0.00

0.00

 8

0.00

40.00

0.00

0.00

2.94

0.00

 9

0.00

0.00

5.00

0.00

7.89

0.00

 10

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

1.11

0.00

 MEAN

1.67

4.00

5.91

4.16

3.54

0.86

 MEDIAN

0.00

0.00

0.00

2.42

3.19

0.00

 MAX

16.67

40.00

38.46

19.05

8.33

8.57

 MIN

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

Documental citations

 1

0.00

16.67

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

 2

0.00

0.00

0.00

19.17

0.00

6.25

 3

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

6.67

0.00

 4

14.58

0.00

0.00

9.52

4.65

0.00

 5

0.00

0.00

0.00

7.14

2.08

0.00

 6

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

2.59

0.00

 7

0.00

0.00

0.00

11.29

19.30

0.00

 8

0.00

0.00

0.00

7.69

0.00

6.48

 9

0.00

25.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

 10

37.50

0.00

0.00

4.55

0.00

0.00

 MEAN

5.21

4.17

0.00

5.94

3.53

1.27

 MEDIAN

0.00

0.00

0.00

5.84

1.04

0.00

 MAX

37.50

25.00

0.00

19.17

19.30

6.48

 MIN

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

0.00

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Petrovich, E. Accumulation of knowledge in para-scientific areas: the case of analytic philosophy. Scientometrics 116, 1123–1151 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2796-5

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