Monographs and citation patterns, 1980-2010

UPDATED! NOW MORE COMPLETE THAN EVER!

(As comments and email give me more info, I'll be updating this post off and on during the week. If you see an oversite or erroneous info—especially omission of your book!—feel free to email me directly at <[email protected]> or comment below, as you prefer. Ideally, give me <author, title, year of pub>. Thanks.)

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This is one of those “sociology of the profession” posts that Real Philosophers should scrupulously avoid reading, because of its déclassé nature. So, read on my friends.

A little more than four years ago, at the Garden of Forking paths blog, I wrote up something on the most frequently cited free will (and moral responsibility-oriented) monographs (in English) published between 1980-2005. Making use of The Google, in its then-recently launched “GoogleScholar” guise I generated a list of citation counts. Like all citation counts, these things are fallible and limited in various ways. However, citation counts do give some (imperfect) sense about which ideas have been influential, for good or ill.

So, I’ve decided to update the monograph list, partly out of curiosity about whether there have been interesting or notable changes, and if so, what that might say about the state of Ye Olde Free Will World. An even more telling list might be one that looked at journal articles and citation impact, since that's where so much of the action is in the field. My bet is some high citation figures on my list below would be much less well-represented on such a list, but that other figures would go up by a large margin. 

Anyway, the observations below are something of a prelude to a forthcoming post about what counts as a position or a parameter in the literature. Before you make the jump, I invite you to ask yourself what you think the most heavily cited books are, and which books have climbed the most in citations over the past five years. After the list, I have some observations and thoughts about the details. 

Format: 

Author, Title, (publication year): # of citations in 2009 survey (if included)/ # of citations as of Oct. 2013. 

If the book didn’t appear in the prior list, it is marked as having x citations in the previous list. Asterisks indicate collapses of multiple entries in Google Scholar to what appear to be the same work. I’ve included the Wegner book, as a sober reminder about our comparative visibility. 

1. Wegner, Illusion of Conscious Will (2002): 706/1785
2. Dennett, Elbow Room (1984): 629/1157
3. van Inwagen, An Essay on FW (1983): 413/920
4. Kane, Significance of Free Will (1996): 366/870
5. Fischer & Ravizza, Responsibility and Control (1998): 320/840
6. Dennett, Freedom Evolves (2004): 332/822
7. Hampton & Murphy, Forgiveness and Mercy (1990): x/736
8. Allison, Kant's Theory of Freedom (1990): x/673
9. Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (1994): 228/595
10. Duff, Punishment, Communication, and Community (2001) x/531
11. Pereboom, Living Without FW (2001): 166/524
12. Wolf, Freedom Within Reason (1990): 193/512
13. Moore, Placing Blame (1997): x/483
14. Mele, Autonomous Agents (1995): 191/470
15. Fischer, Metaphysics of Free Will (1994): 196/449
16. G. Strawson, Freedom and Belief (1986): 194/441
17. Darwall, Second-Person Standpoint (2006) x/409
18. Ginet, On Action (1990): 173/388
19. Pettit, A Theory of Freedom (2001), x/347
20. O'Connor, Persons and Causes (2000): 127/334
21. Mele, Free Will and Luck (2008) x/249
22. Arpaly, Unprincipled Virtue (2002) x/248
23. Korsgaard, Self-Constitution (2009) x/233
24. Clarke, Libertarian Accounts of FW (2003):79/228
25. Scanlon, Moral Dimensions (2009), x/221
26. Honderich, A Theory of Determinism (1988): 100 /208*
27. Smilansky, Free Will and Illusion (2000): 67/195
28. Lucas, Responsibility (1993): x/192
29. Kane, Free Will and Values (1985): 80/191
30. Double, The Non-Reality of Free Will (1991): 76/167
31. Zimmerman, An Essay on Moral Responsibility (1988) x/165
32. Walker, Moral Repair (2006) x/161
33. Ekstrom, Free Will a Philosophical Study (2000): 50/146
34. Hurley, Justice Luck and Knowledge (2005): 55/143
35. (tie) Searle, J. Freedom and Neurobiology (2008) x/141 
    (tie) Zagzebski, L. Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge (1991) x/141
36. Lucas, The Freedom of the Will (1970) x/139
37. Haji, Moral Appraisability (1998): 66*/137
38. Flint, Divine Providence (1998), 46/128
39. Bok, Freedom and Responsibility (1998): 49/121
40. Mele, Effective Intentions (2010) x/110
41. Holton, Willing, Wanting, Waiting (2009) x/94
42. Walter, Neurophilosophy of free will (2001): 36*/92
43. Russell, Freedom and Moral Sentiment (1995): x/89
44. Berofsky, Liberation from self (2007), x/87
45. Haji, Deontic Morality and Control (2002) x/81
46. Pink, Free Will: A Very Short Introduction (2004) x/71
47. Sher, In Praise of Blame (2006) x/70
48. Moore, Causation and responsibility (2009) x/67
49. Double, Metapilosophy and free will (1996): x/54
50. Arpaly, Merit, Meaning, and Human Bondage (2006) x/53
51. Corlett, Responsibility and Punishment (2006), x/50
52. Berofsky, Freedom from Necessity (1987), x/49
53. Harris, Of Liberty and Necessity (2008) x/49
54. Sher, Who Knew?: Responsibility Without Awareness (2009) x/48
    

[If you think I missed something, please look up said author/volume in Google Scholar and verify that it has more than 45 citations. If it does, please post the correction below, because I'm sure I missed some obvious works. Also, bear in mind that this is monographs only, so collections of papers, anthologies, and so on, aren’t generally included. I haven't included books that have some engagement with free will/moral responsibility but that don't present themselves as centrally concerned with those issues.]

Some observations: 

What stood our for me, as I was thinking about what I was going to try to blog about, is that most of these people don’t regularly blog or comment on blogs except under duress, or because of fits of pity. Also, the group at the top is mostly the same. The biggest mover is Derk’s book. There is a clear band of big citation-getting books at the very top (800+ citations), and then things seem to spread out more evenly after that. In philosophy world, time since publication certainly helps with the total number of citations.

Having cog sci/psych readers clearly helps for citations. Normatively oriented books have become a more pronounced part of the citation pattern (presumably, in part because they pick up citations from the larger ethics literature; but it surely makes a difference that many of those authors are independently very visible in ethics and political philosophy).

The 200+ citations set is occupied entirely by people with positions in departments with a Ph.D. program.

Of almost 40 entries, women make up only 7 entries (or 17.5%). That figure makes things seem better than they are, though: Nomy's work accounts for two of those entries, and Hurley is deceased, so only 5 living women are on the list, assuming I didn’t screw up my math. [UPDATE: These numbers change a bit, with the addition of more ethics-y and political texts; the numbers remain quite low for free will-focused texts, as opposed to responsibility-focused texts.]

In that spirit, let’s just say members of racial/ethnic minorities (by U.S. standards) make up a dramatically smaller percentage of the list. Representation strongly skews to the U.S., but there are a variety of folks who are from or teach in institutions outside of the U.S.

There are clearly people who have been massively influential but never wrote monographs (Frankfurt and Watson are especially prominent cases, I would think). Also, the surge in empirically-oriented work hasn't yet really hit monographs citation patterns (two obvious exceptions: the Wegner book and Mele's Effective Intentions, which is still pretty new.). Philosophical "comets" in the free will solar system (i.e., philosophers who haven't published many articles in peer-reviewed journals on free will, but go on to write monographs on it) don't seem to get as many citations as one might have thought, given their wider professional visibility—although, I say this because of some entries that didn't make the cut-off. The one exception here is of course on the normative side of things: if you are a Gran Fromage in a normative field, you can be a pretty successful comet, if we are looking at raw citation count. 

Anything jump out at you about this list? Surprises? 

Comments

[Dan Speak]

Two important points. First, PvI's Essay was originally published in 1983... giving him a few more years of citationing. Second, every time I look at that picture of you above, it looks like you have on one of those beaded eye-glass chains I associate with librarians. Needless to say, you are pulling it off.

[Manuel "Librarian Chic" Vargas]

Good catch—I've updated the publication date on PVI's book. Also, I'll look into a beaded eye-glass chain. Or maybe a monocle.

UPDATED: Also, just updated with the Zagzebski book.

[Dan Speak]

Here's an even more important point (that helps our grotesque gender numbers a little). If Tom Flint's book meets the subject matter criteria, then so should Linda Zagzebski's 1991 Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, which looks to have 141 citations.

[Justin "Hey, what about those of us who work on MR but aren't primarily interested in metaphysics?" Coates]

If Scanlon's _Moral Dimensions_ meets the criteria of a book on fw and mr, I think Korsgaard's _Self-Constitution_ (2009) should probably also be on the list. It has 233 cites.

Relatedly, since the main connection with Scanlon's book to moral responsibility is the chapter on blame, maybe include George Sher's _In Praise of Blame_, which has 70 cites.

And while we're on that subject, George Sher, _Who Knew?: Responsibility Without Awareness_ (2009) just squeaks in with 48 cites.

Some more:

Michael Zimmerman, _An Essay on Moral Responsibility_ (1988) has 165 cites.

Richard Holton, _Willing, Wanting, Waiting_ (2009) has 94 cites.

What about Hampton and Murphy's _Forgiveness and Mercy_? It has long discussions of blame, resentment, etc. This suggests it also deserves to be on the list even though it's not dealing with the more traditional aspects of the debate. It has 736 cites. Once you let this in, there are a number of other books on topics like forgiveness, moral repair, reconciliation, etc that should probably be included. Margaret Urban Walker's _Moral Repair_ (2006) has 161 cites and Linda Radzik's _Making Amends_ (2009) will soon break the 45 citation barrier (it currently has 40 cites). And indeed, what I think you'll find is that if we construe the fw/mr debates in a more inclusive way (and not so narrowly such that only work on the metaphysics of fw/mr "counts"), the list will include a better (though still too low) percentage of women.

Moreover, there are a number of books at the intersection of phil law and fw/mr that also might make it. Michael's Moore's _Placing Blame_ (1997), Antony's Duff's _Punishment, Communication, and Community_ (2001), J. R. Lucas' _Responsibility_ (1993) all fit this bill and they all have significantly more than 45 citations.

Finally, there are many historical treatments of issues in fw/mr that should count. Paul Russell's _Freedom and Moral Sentiment: Hume's Way of Naturalizing Responsibility_ (1995) has 89 cites, and Henry Allison's _Kant's Theory of Freedom_ (1990) has 673 cites. Folks more familiar with the historical literature than I will no doubt be able to multiply such examples.

As to other sociological stuff, I wonder if the massive increases in cites between your last list and this one of some of the classics is due to the huge growth of philosophical publishing generally, or if fw and mr has started getting a lot more attention.

[Tamler Sommers]

How is Bruce Waller not on that list? That's crazy. I also think Double's two books are way too low... Both of them have been perpetually underrated and undercited in my view, although that's changing for Bruce (thankfully) with all the attention to his new book.

[Manuel "Big Tent" Vargas]

Awesome! Thanks for all the excellent updates. I'll get those up shortly.

Tamler: Bruce's book wasn't on the list, but it should have been.

Justin: Thanks so much for all these entries. The initial list was defective partly as a matter of its reliance on the prior list and the feedback I got on it, and the extraordinarily unreliable procedure of me taking ten minutes to add some names that happened to occur to me off the top of my head. But yeah, lots of major omissions on that first draft that your work helps repair (thanks!).

I can imagine someone complaining that there is a big difference between books that in some substantive way engage with the free will literature that is the focus of most who blog here and some of the texts listed (whether in my initial list or yours). That said, I doubt there is any good principle that even most of us will agree on. So, I'm going the big tent route here and putting anyone on with a plausible reason to be on the list. This way, folks can (if they wanted) break out sublists in any way they like.

[Manuel "Cite This" Vargas]

Re: Justin's question about why the surge in citation numbers. I think there are several things going on here. Partly, it is just that more stuff has fallen under the gaze of the great eye of Mordor. So, the numbers got bigger across the board. But I also suspect you are right that there are just more people working on these things than there used to be. Indeed, the enormous number of monographs that have just come out or that will be coming out in the next 3 years suggests strongly suggests that this area has become "hot," philosophically speaking. Finally, my sense is that folks with a foot in the empirical world just cite more than the rest of philosophy does, so there may be some rising tide for some works, inasmuch as the empirically-minded folks highlight them.

I have to say that the additions have raised another thought for me: there is just a ton of really great work out there by a lot of thoughtful folks. On the one hand, it is disheartening because there is so much good stuff out there that doesn't get read or cited as much as it probably deserves. On the other hand, it does seem to me manifestly great that there really is this much good work out there that philosophers have read and reacted to in one way, shape, or form.

On Tamler's thought about under-cited work: I suspect we could have a whole thread about work that doesn't get read or cited as much as it deserves. Feel free to nominate more work here.

[Tamler Sommers]

Oh ok, sorry, I didn't understand. (I think I do now but I'm not sure.) I thought there was a cut-off just based on numbers.

[Manuel "Don't Cite This" Vargas]

Hi Tamler: The list just reports the number of citations Google has found for each listed text. There is a further question (which I take you to have been raising) about whether there are works that merit more citations than they have actually received, and the extent to which attention to monographs actually reflect influence (in philosophy or the larger world).

I'm confident that given the way attention works in the academic world, it would be weird if everything received exactly the amount of academic attention it deserved, given the philosophical virtues of the work. I'm skeptical that the invisible hand of the academic market place is perfectly meritocratic in its actions. At the very least, I suspect that being located outside the U.S. and the U.K. will work against you, as will non-participation in the conference circuit. Other things equal, I expect that visibility (and thus, citations) is better for people in Big Time places, both because invites to lecture, keynote etc., come more easily but also because Big Time philosophers are more likely to be coming though giving talks, having conversation over dinner, and so on. Maybe folks whose careers have been distinguished by moves up (or down?!) the academic food chain can confirm?

None of this is to deny that quality of work is hugely important. However, I take it as obvious that quality of work is only one factor among many driving citation patterns.

[Justin "I have a lot of reading to do" Coates]

Manuel,

I also feel a kind of ambivalence towards all the work being done in free will and moral responsibility. I think we really are in a golden age of sorts (and there will only be more evidence of this when the new books by you, Tamler, Nelkin, Levy, McKenna, Vihvelin, etc. get time to get read and cited appropriately), so that's exciting. But it's also daunting.

And as for under-cited, I will never tired of telling people to read Angie Smith's work.

[Eddy "Wasting Time" Nahmias]

I’m not sure what your larger goals are in doing citation counts, Manuel, but why not look at articles? (Well, other than the time suck.)

I did some searches on google.scholar and these are the ones I found with 150+ cites, including a few science cites to reinforce the worry you mention about their oversized influence, and I didn’t limit myself to 1980 start date. I also add one science book that I bet wins the 20th century. I do not take this list to be exhaustive!

Skinner Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1972): 4740
Libet “Unconscious Cerebral Initiative…” (1993?): 1255
Soon et al “Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain” (2008): 566
Greene and Cohen “For the law neuroscience changes nothing and everything” (2004): 284
Vohs and Schooler “Value of Believing in Free Will” (2008): 212

Frankfurt “Freedom of the Will and Concept of Person” (1988?): 2368!!
PF Strawson Freedom and Resentment and other essays (book 2008): 1816!!
Frankfurt “Alternate possibilities and MR” (1969): 1013!!
Watson “Free Agency” (1975): 595
Nagel “Moral Luck” (1982): 376
Austin “Ifs and Cans” (1961): 281
Chisholm “Human Freedom and the Self” (1964): 263
Nichols and Knobe “MR and Determinism” (2007): 247
G Strawson “The impossibility of MR” (1984): 239
Davidson “Freedom to Act” (1980): 236
Fischer “Recent work on MR” (1999): 235
Ayer “Freedom and Necessity” (1954): 220
Wolf “Sanity and Metaphysics of Responsibility” (1987): 211
Lewis “Are We Free to Break the Laws” (1981): 191
Van Inwagen “Incompatibility of FW and Determinism” (1975): 194
Hobart “Free will as involving determination” (1934): 176
Watson “Free action and free will” (1987): 172
Kane “Responsibility, Luck, and Chance” (1999): 171
Smart “Free-will, praise, and blame” (1961): 156
Watson “Two Faces of Responsibility” (2010): 155
Van Inwagen “Free Will Remains a Mystery” (2000): 155
Nahmias, Morris, Turner, Nadelhoffer “Surveying Freedom” (2005): 150

The only comment I’ll make for now is that I include my article in this list to make the point that citation counts seem to be a problematic way to measure the importance of an article or its substantive impact! (Note the names that are missing from this list, some of which at least appear on Manuel’s list of monographs.) And Frankfurt's cite counts are even higher than I thought they'd be.

[Manuel "Count It" Vargas]

Justin- I feel the same way about both the amount of reading I have to do, and that people should read more of Angie's stuff.

Eddy- I think that raw citation counts aren't super-indicative, and that one needs a relevant comparison class to have some sense of what it means. That said, I think it is pretty obvious that your empirical work has had a huge impact on the literature in a relatively short period of time, and that the citations bear it out. So I take your purported counterexample as prima facie evidence for the importance of citations.

I'm not at all surprised by the Frankfurt citations. People keep sending me Frankfurt case articles to review. But yeah, given that Frankfurt never had a monograph on free will, he isn't going to show up on a monograph-focused survey. If one looks at paper collections, I imagine that some of the citation counts would be quite large (Davidson, Frankfurt, Velleman, Bratman, Fischer, Watson, off the top of my head, should all have huge numbers.)