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Most Important Anglophone philosophers, 1945-2000: the top 20

So with over 500 votes, here's the top 20:

1. W.V.O. Quine  (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)
2. Saul Kripke  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 202–174
3. John Rawls  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 200–155, loses to Saul Kripke by 201–180
4. David K. Lewis  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 206–148, loses to John Rawls by 194–163
5. Hilary Putnam  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 269–74, loses to David K. Lewis by 209–134
6. Donald Davidson  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 259–88, loses to Hilary Putnam by 177–148
7. Peter (P.F.) Strawson  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 269–85, loses to Donald Davidson by 196–130
8. Bernard Williams  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 258–99, loses to Peter (P.F.) Strawson by 161–157
9. G.E.M. Anscombe  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 277–88, loses to Bernard Williams by 169–151
10. Noam Chomsky  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 273–80, loses to G.E.M. Anscombe by 166–155
11. J.L. Austin  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 277–61, loses to Noam Chomsky by 155–143
12. Thomas (T.S.) Kuhn  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 271–69, loses to J.L. Austin by 147–141
13. Wilfrid Sellars  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 280–52, loses to Thomas (T.S.) Kuhn by 147–139
14. Thomas Nagel  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 280–75, loses to Wilfrid Sellars by 148–140
15. Michael Dummett  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 284–48, loses to Thomas Nagel by 150–133
16. H. Paul Grice  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 286–42, loses to Michael Dummett by 131–112
17. Jerry Fodor  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 292–41, loses to H. Paul Grice by 134–117
18. Robert Nozick  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 284–62, loses to Jerry Fodor by 144–136
19. Gilbert Ryle  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 300–27, loses to Robert Nozick by 151–123
20. David Armstrong  loses to W.V.O. Quine by 295–36, loses to Gilbert Ryle by 137–110

 At various points, Nelson Goodman and John Searle were in the top 20, and Armstrong and Ryle just outside, but the former pair finished at 21 and 22, respectively, in the final results.  

Inevitably, it turned out that there were omissions of candidates who while perhaps not "top 20" contenders would certainly have rated favorably on the full list.  Examples include Hector-Neri Castenada, J.J.C. Smart, Annette Baier, Ruth Millikan (I had not realized she was over 80), Kurt Baier, among others.  Karl Popper was a tricky case, because his most important work was prior to 1945, but he continued to publish during the period in question.   Comments on the significance of the work of those omitted and on the results welcome.  For my own money, I would have put Hempel and Foot in the top 20 (as well as Goodman and Searle), and dropped Armstrong, Ryle, Nozick and Dummett.  I wonder whether others were surprised by Austin's strong showing?   And ten years ago, would Anscombe have fared so well?  Rorty's rather tepid showing in a poll of actual philosophers is also notable.  (Remember the poll was limited to philosophers no longer living and distinguished living philosophers over 80, with two exceptions:  Kripke and Nagel.)

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17 responses to “Most Important Anglophone philosophers, 1945-2000: the top 20”

  1. AnonJuniorFaculty

    Surprised how well Nagel did given the reception of Mind and Cosmos. I wonder what role having former students and students of former students voting plays in the results.

  2. Dana Scott at 77?! That's just silly.

  3. Nice to see T.S. Kuhn make a strong showing. Opinions on his work vary pretty widely, obviously, but I think it would be difficult to make a case against the importance of his work as it relates to contemporary philosophy of science. I might have expected MacIntyre to do a little better. I think I agree, also, that I would have expected Searle and Goodman to have made the top 20.

  4. Are Stroud, Kim, Fodor, Plantinga, Hacking, Kaplan and Shoemaker really all over 80 years old?

    BL COMMENT: I believe they were all born in 1935 or earlier.

  5. . . . Damn, you're right! (Hacking was 1936, but whatever).

    BL COMMENT: Wrong about Hacking, apparently!

  6. I think I'm most surprised/disappointed by the results with respect to Ruth Marcus and Arthur Prior. Aside from the fact that they had some of the more interesting thoughts on the connection between logic and ethics, I don't understand how Kripke can be as high as he is without these two being higher. Many of Kripke's most well-known ideas were anticipated in one way or another by these two. (Just to be clear, I think Kripke deserves to be very high on this list. Precisely because I think this, though, I think that Marcus and Prior should be much higher than they are.)

  7. Where on the list is Richard Swinburne? He has been a great contributor to the philosophy of religion, space and time, mind, etc. Perhaps he would not have fared well with the current 'Top 20' (or those who just missed their mark), yet he would have received I believe good support from those who were influenced by him in the late 1970's and beyond.

  8. I wonder how this list will look to philosophers in 25 years? I bet it will look very strange outside the top 5.

  9. Swinburne? Isn't he the guy who defended the Holocaust to avoid giving up his guy in the sky?

  10. The top 10 in Google ngram, which obviously isn't necessarily an indicator of importance, though it might be suggestive of (some kind of) influence: http://tinyurl.com/mfcttcv

  11. As with all of these, the hardest part is figuring out what "important" means. Does it mean "likely to have a lasting influence", "likely to be in the canon" (importantly often distinct from having a lasting influence), "was highly influential on the time", "got a lot of things right", "moved the discipline in the right direction", "brought up a lot of ideas or areas of study that proved fruitful", or something else?. While these are not, of course, exclusive, they also don't imply one another in any clear way at all. So, for example, while Bernard Williams had a lot of influence on his time, and brought up a lot of ideas that were influential, my own thought is that he was wrong on pretty much every topic and moved the discipline in the wrong direction on nearly every topic he was influential on. Where should such a person rate? I don't know. I put him fairly low, but obviously that was a minority view. (I voted Anscombe fairly low for similar reasons.) I'm not especially surprised that the more "pure" logicians like Scott, Church, etc. came in fairly low, but think it's unfortunate. I find it implausible that David Armstrong was "more important" than either Goodman or H.L.A. Hart in any plausible sense of "more important". I guess it means that a priori metaphysics still has more hold than I wish it did, but obviously tastes differ. (I'd actually not be surprised if Quine turned out to be the Hermann Lotze of the early to mid 20th century – taken to by his students and those who studied under this students to be very important, but in the end mostly of historical significance and without a huge amount of lasting influence, and rarely read. Of course, that's no more than a guess.)

  12. 'I find it implausible that David Armstrong was "more important" than either Goodman or H.L.A. Hart in any plausible sense of "more important". I guess it means that a priori metaphysics still has more hold than I wish it did, but obviously tastes differ. '

    I ranked Armstrong reasonably highly not because of his work in metaphysics but because of his work in the philosophy of mind, and I expect that some others may have done the same. Armstrong's 'A Materialist Theory of Mind' is a remarkably clear exposition of functionalism about the mind, and gives a really convincing and deep account of why that view is appealing, though of course, Armstrong did not originate the idea. If you think, as many people in the philosophy of mind do, that functionalism is basically the correct account of what mindedness IS, or a large part of the correct account (as even more think), then writing one of the clearest defences of functionalism during the decade in which the view as formed, is nothing to be sneezed at. In addition, Armstrong is also usually credited as a pioneer of the currently popular line that conscious experiences are 'transparent' in the sense that when you try to introspect them, you just attend to the things in the external world (if any) that they are experiences of. This has been a very influential view in work on consciousness and perception since the mid-90s, though of course Armstrong is not the first to defend this sort of view by any means.

  13. Was Dennett's absence simply an oversight? I would have listed him in the top 20, personally.

    BL COMMENT: He is 73 this year, so well below the cut-off.

  14. It doesn't seem to me unfortunate that Church and Scott are rated as minimally influential in philosophy, because most practitioners of mathematical logic (mathematicians, computer science people) have absolutely no interest in philosophy, nor are they particularly profound when they do dabble at it. And I have no idea why philosophers have this odd tendency of deferring to mathematicians (and physicists), when most of them have such a low opinion of philosophy.

    People who knew logic and wrote significantly about things like logical necessity, the status of logical laws, modality, essentialism, etc. are those who approached the subject philosophically: Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and Kripke and Lewis (one may add Carnap, Dummett); unsurprisingly, these are always very favorably represented people in philosophy polls. I also agree, however, that Ruth Barcan Marcus and A. N. Prior (and in the same vein, Hintikka) have been overlooked in relation to their works in modal logic.

  15. Where did G. H. von Wright rank? I would have had him in the top twenty.

    BL COMMENT: He was not in the poll, since not primarily Anglophone.

  16. On the very first comment, the one about Nagel: does controversy over a late life work make all the rest of one's work go away or something?

  17. I am surprised that Richard M. Hare does not figure in the list. His works surely are not less important than those of, say, Jerry Fodor.

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