Show Me the Argument: Empirically Testing the Armchair Philosophy Picture

Abstract

Many philosophers subscribe to the view that philosophy is a priori and in the business of discovering necessary truths from the armchair. This paper sets out to empirically test this picture. If this were the case, we would expect to see this reflected in philosophical practice. In particular, we would expect philosophers to advance mostly deductive, rather than inductive, arguments. The paper shows that the percentage of philosophy articles advancing deductive arguments is higher than those advancing inductive arguments, which is what we would expect from the vantage point of the armchair philosophy picture. The results also show, however, that the percentages of articles advancing deductive arguments and those advancing inductive arguments are converging over time and that the difference between inductive and deductive ratios is declining over time. This trend suggests that deductive arguments are gradually losing their status as the dominant form of argumentation in philosophy.

Is Philosophy Exceptional? A Corpus-Based, Quantitative Study

“…According to Ashton and Mizrahi (2018a, p. 62), "if philosophy is indeed a priori, and in the business of discovering necessary truths from the armchair, we would expect philosophers to advance mostly deductive, not inductive, arguments." Consistent with the view that philosophy is an a priori discipline, Ashton and Mizrahi (2018a) find that the proportion of philosophy articles in which deductive arguments are made is higher than that of philosophy articles in which inductive arguments are made. However, contrary to the view that philosophy is an a priori discipline, Ashton and Mizrahi (2018a) also find that the proportions of philosophy articles in which deductive arguments are made and those in which inductive arguments are made are converging over time and that the difference between the ratios of inductive arguments and deductive arguments is declining over time.…”

“…This evidence leads Knobe (2015, p. 38) to conclude that there has been "a strong shift [in method] toward the use of systematic empirical data, including original experiments conducted by philosophers." 2 In another empirical study, Ashton and Mizrahi (2018a) test the view that philosophy is essentially an a priori discipline empirically. According to Ashton and Mizrahi (2018a, p. 62), "if philosophy is indeed a priori, and in the business of discovering necessary truths from the armchair, we would expect philosophers to advance mostly deductive, not inductive, arguments."…”

Philosophical reasoning about science: a quantitative, digital study

“…However, there is some empirical evidence to suggest that academic philosophy (and so, presumably, academic philosophy of science as well) is undergoing a methodological change of some sort. For example, using digital, corpus-based methods similar to the ones used in the present study,Ashton and Mizrahi (2018) find evidence suggesting that deductive arguments are gradually losing ground to inductive arguments as the dominant form of argumentation in academic philosophy. Similarly,Fletcher et al (2021) find that the proportion of papers published in Philosophical Studies that use probabilistic methods, as opposed to formal methods, increased threefold during the first decade of the twenty-first century.…”

“…2 Now, we can use these deductive indicators and inductive indicators to look for deductive arguments and inductive arguments in philosophical texts in much the same way that students use them to look for arguments in any text. In that respect, we are following Ashton and Mizrahi's (2018) methodology, but with a novel addition. That is, to the aforementioned deductive and inductive indicator words, we have added indicator words for abductive arguments, i.e., arguments in which the conclusion is supposed to be the best explanation for some phenomenon (Govier 2013, pp.…”

Proof, Explanation, and Justification in Mathematical Practice

“…Ashton and Mizrahi (2018a) use a similar methodology and the tools of data science to investigate appeals to intuition in philosophy. See alsoAshton and Mizrahi (2018b) andMizrahi (2019).…”