Philosophers are doing something different now: Quantitative data

•Two samples of philosophy papers were compared, one from 1960 to 1999, the other from 2009 to 2013.•Within the 1960–1999 sample, the majority of papers (62%) used purely a priori methods.•Within the 2009–2013 sample, only a small minority (12%) used purely a priori methods. The philosophical study of mind in the twentieth century was dominated by a research program that used a priori methods to address foundational questions. Since that time, however, the philosophical study of mind has undergone a dramatic shift. To provide a more accurate picture of contemporary philosophical work, I compared a sample of highly cited philosophy papers from the past five years with a sample of highly cited philosophy papers from the twentieth century. In the twentieth century sample, the majority of papers used purely a priori methods, while only a minority cited results from empirical studies. In the sample from the past five years, the methodology is radically different. The majority of papers cite results from empirical studies, a sizable proportion report original experimental results, and only a small minority are purely a priori. Overall, the results of the review suggest that the philosophical study of mind has become considerably more integrated into the broader interdisciplinary field of cognitive science.