Most cited papers in Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
What are the most cited papers in Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics?
The most cited paper in Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics is "DESCARTES' ERROR: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain" (Elwin Marg, 1995), with 8,192 citations. Next come "A perspective on judgment and choice: Mapping bounded rationality." (5,582) and "Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language." (3,914).
Showing 50 of 99 papers. Every paper with more than 515 citations is listed.
| # | Paper | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DESCARTES' ERROR: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain Elwin Marg · Optometry and Vision Science | Nov 1995 | 8,192 |
| 2 | A perspective on judgment and choice: Mapping bounded rationality. Daniel J. Kahneman · American Psychologist | 2003 | 5,582 |
| 3 | Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. William P. Alston, John Rogers Searle · The Philosophical Quarterly | Apr 1970 | 3,914 |
| 4 | Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Edmund L. Gettier · Analysis | Jun 1963 | 3,113 |
| 5 | Agreeing to Disagree Robert J. Aumann · The Annals of Statistics | Nov 1976 | 2,509 |
| 6 | Scorekeeping in a language game David Lewis · Journal of Philosophical Logic | 1979 | 2,461 |
| 7 | MATERIALISM AND QUALIA: THE EXPLANATORY GAP Joseph S. Levine · Pacific philosophical quarterly | Oct 1983 | 2,124 |
| 8 | The Terms of Agreement: Indexing Epistemic Authority and Subordination in Talk-in-Interaction John C. Heritage, Geoffrey Raymond · Social Psychology Quarterly | Mar 2005 | 1,744 |
| 9 | Epistemic Vigilance Dan Sperber, Fabrice Clément, Christophe Heintz et al. · Mind & Language | 20 Aug 2010 | 1,697 |
| 10 | Knowing with certainty: The appropriateness of extreme confidence. Baruch Fischhoff, Paul Slovic, Sarah Lichtenstein · Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance | Nov 1977 | 1,435 |
| 11 | The Explanation of Social Behaviour. Alan Ryan, Rom Harré, Paul F. Secord · The Philosophical Quarterly | Oct 1973 | 1,383 |
| 12 | KNOWLEDGE AND LOTTERIES DONALD P. SMITH · Philosophical Books | 30 Mar 2005 | 1,295 |
| 13 | Can human irrationality be experimentally demonstrated? L. Jonathan Cohen · Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Sep 1981 | 1,228 |
| 14 | A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value Sharon Street · Philosophical Studies | 23 Oct 2005 | 1,210 |
| 15 | How to Make Cognitive Illusions Disappear: Beyond “Heuristics and Biases” Gerd Gigerenzer · European Review of Social Psychology | 1991 | 1,170 |
| 16 | Mental contamination and mental correction: Unwanted influences on judgments and evaluations. Timothy D. Wilson, Nancy Brekke · Psychological Bulletin | 1994 | 1,150 |
| 17 | Common Ground ROBERT C. STALNAKER · Linguistics and Philosophy | Dec 2002 | 1,129 |
| 18 | The Skeptic and the Dogmatist James Pryor · Noûs | Dec 2000 | 1,125 |
| 19 | Insight and Responsibility Fred H. Frankel, Erik Homburger Erikson · Psychosomatic Medicine | May 1965 | 1,067 |
| 20 | Philosophical explanations Ezra Talmor · History of European Ideas | 1986 | 1,066 |
| 21 | PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS J. E. Llewelyn · Philosophical Books | Oct 1977 | 1,049 |
| 22 | Ambiguity Aversion and Comparative Ignorance Craig R. Fox, Amos Tversky · The Quarterly Journal of Economics | Aug 1995 | 1,043 |
| 23 | First Impressions Matter: A Model of Confirmatory Bias Matthew Rabin, John L. Schrag · The Quarterly Journal of Economics | Feb 1999 | 1,031 |
| 24 | A Puzzle about Belief Saul A. Kripke | 13 Nov 2007 | 963 |
| 25 | Rationality and relativism Ian Charles Jarvie · Boston studies in the philosophy of science | 1983 | 944 |
| 26 | Coordination in Fast-Response Organizations Samer A Faraj, Yan Xiao · Management Science | 28 Jul 2006 | 942 |
| 27 | Ordinal Conditional Functions: A Dynamic Theory of Epistemic States Wolfgang Spohn | 1988 | 935 |
| 28 | How to Defeat Opposition to Moore Ernest Sosa · Noûs | Oct 1999 | 914 |
| 29 | Identifying reference and truth‐values Peter Frederick Strawson · Theoria | Aug 1964 | 889 |
| 30 | What is structural realism? James Ladyman · Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A | Sep 1998 | 883 |
| 31 | Probabilities of Conditionals and Conditional Probabilities David M Lewis | 1976 | 879 |
| 32 | Experts: Which Ones Should You Trust? Alvin I. Goldman · Philosophy and Phenomenological Research | Jul 2001 | 863 |
| 33 | Inductive Risk and Values in Science Heather Douglas · Philosophy of Science | Dec 2000 | 863 |
| 34 | Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning George Pólya · CERN Document Server (European Organization for Nuclear Research) | 1954 | 859 |
| 35 | WHAT IS COMPUTER ETHICS?* James H. Moor · Metaphilosophy | Oct 1985 | 856 |
| 36 | Judging interpretations: But is it rigorous? trustworthiness and authenticity in naturalistic evaluation Thomas A. Schwandt, Yvonna S. Lincoln, Egon G. Guba · New Directions for Evaluation | 29 May 2007 | 854 |
| 37 | Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time Theodore Sider · Digital Access to Libraries (Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), l'Université de Namur (UNamur) and the Université Saint-Louis (USL-B)) | 7 Feb 2002 | 850 |
| 38 | How we know—and sometimes misjudge—what others know: Imputing one's own knowledge to others. Raymond S. Nickerson · Psychological Bulletin | Nov 1999 | 823 |
| 39 | The Rejection of Consequentialism ELIZABETH TELLER · Philosophical Books | Jul 1983 | 821 |
| 40 | PRACTICAL REASON AND NORMS R. G. Frey · Philosophical Books | Oct 1976 | 790 |
| 41 | Scalar Implicatures in Complex Sentences Uli Sauerland · Linguistics and Philosophy | 9 Apr 2004 | 786 |
| 42 | No Work for a Theory of Grounding Jessica Wilson · Inquiry | 24 Jun 2014 | 781 |
| 43 | Variants of uncertainty Daniel J. Kahneman, Amos Tversky · Cognition | Mar 1982 | 773 |
| 44 | A Nonpragmatic Vindication of Probabilism James M. Joyce · Philosophy of Science | Dec 1998 | 769 |
| 45 | Two reasons to abandon the false belief task as a test of theory of mind Paul Bloom, Tim P. German · Cognition | Oct 2000 | 766 |
| 46 | A Subjectivist’s Guide to Objective Chance David Lewis | 1980 | 763 |
| 47 | Contextualism, Skepticism, and the Structure of Reasons Stewart Cohen · Noûs | Oct 1999 | 741 |
| 48 | Deciding to trust, coming to believe Richard H. Holton · Australasian Journal of Philosophy | Mar 1994 | 734 |
| 49 | Epistemic injustice in healthcare: a philosophial analysis Havi Carel, Ian James Kidd · Medicine Health Care and Philosophy | 16 Apr 2014 | 731 |
| 50 | Evidence, Pragmatics, and Justification Jeremy Fantl, Matthew McGrath · The Philosophical Review | 2002 | 725 |
Citations are OpenAlex's own counts, from its 2026-09-23 snapshot, so the ranking can differ from Google Scholar or Web of Science. A paper is listed for a field when OpenAlex files it under one of the field's topics; retracted papers and papers whose citation count cannot be traced to citing works are left out, and a preprint and the article it became are shown once. Release dates are OpenAlex's: where a source gave only a month or a year, that is what is shown. How the lists are chosen.