I did this at Certain Doubts for top-rated epistemologists by this metric, so for fun I thought I'd do it here. I didn't really try to get a comprehensive list of people in philosophy of religion, but simply used the Leiter Report specialty rankings for philosophy of religion departments, and gleaned likely suspects from faculty lists for those departments. So people at non-PhD programs will be slighted here, but I'll be happy to insert any such philosophers into the list when the omissions are noticed. Anyway, the list is below the fold, for what it is worth. But first: I hereby disavow the implication that I myself think such metrics measure something important--it is true, however, that more and more administrators are thinking it measures something important, so if one doesn't, it will be useful to become acquainted with the metric and its flaws. The measure used is the Hirsch number, and there are links to more information about it at Certain Doubts; what I've done relies on research citations for people who work in philosophy of religion, excluding citations of edited volumes and other non-research publications.
1 Alvin Plantinga
2 Bill Alston
3 Nick Wolterstorff
4 Antony Flew
5 Robert Audi
5 Richard Swinburne
5 Peter van Inwagen
5 John Hick
9 Keith DeRose
10 John Hawthorne
10 Robert Adams
10 Eleonore Stump
13 John Fischer
13 Jon Kvanvig
14 Bill Craig
14 Trenton Merricks
14 Michael Tooley
14 Ted Warfield
14 Linda Zagzebski
20 Gary Gutting
20 Tim O'Connor
20 Derk Pereboom
23 David Burrell
23 Brian Davies
23 Steve Evans
23 Richard Gale
23 Mike Rea
23 Bill Rowe
23 Quentin Smith
23 Merold Westphal
23 Dean Zimmerman
32 Marilyn Adams
32 Mike Bergmann
32 Stephen Davis
32 Paul Helm
32 Hugh McCann
32 Mark Murphy
32 Graham Oppy
39 David Basinger
39 Fred Freddoso
39 Bill Hasker
39 Ralph McInerny
39 Ed Wierenga
39 Keith Yandell
Hi Jon,
Are the research citations from the work of these authors in philosophy of religion? (I find it difficult to believe that, considering their work in philosophy of religion alone, Audi is ranked even with Swinburne or, for the same reason, that Bill Rowe is ranked 23, below D. Pereboom). My guess is that this is from their work in general, which does not seem relevant to this ranking. Second, unlike the CD ranking, this is not a group whose main work is in the philosophy of religion. Finally, I think I'd include people like Dan Howard-Snyder, Peter Forrest, John Hare, W. Wainwright, J.P. Moreland, John Leslie, David Johnson, J.L. Schellenberg, Tom Morris, J. Howard Sobel and maybe Peter Geach.
Roy Clouser is essential reading in my estimation. The best kept secret of the philosophy of religion world!
http://www.allofliferedeemed.co.uk/clouser.htm
Here, too, Jon? You must have some REALLY onerous grading that you're avoiding by means of these diversions.
Thanks Mike, I knew I was missing some. Sobel and Moreland would be tied with the group at #20, and Forrest tied with the group at #23. I'm not sure why, but I thought Geach wasn't living anymore, but he is tied with the group at #10. The rest I had checked already.
Keith, yes I'm really procrastinating. But I've been goaded as well by the rising influence these numbers have among administrators.
Hi Jon,
Can you use the Hirsch-index for specific books or articles? If you still want to procrastinate some more--those poor students!--you could see which books/articles come out on top. I’d have a good laugh if some of Plantinga’s work beat out the Bible on the Hirsch-index. :)
Jon,
These numbers--just to confirm--are not for work in the philosophy of religion, right? These numbers are for overall philosophical work. Otherwise, it is very hard to make sense of this ranking.
Mike, sorry, I forgot to respond to that part of your message. As you know, it is very hard to find people whose primary scholarly reputation is for work in philosophy of religion, and I made no attempt to sort between citations of work in the area and outside the area. I started out with the idea of sorting, but the data becomes meaningless at that point because all the Hirsch numbers are so low.
Yes, that would skew numbers. But this ranking does too. It is not a ranking of 'top philosophers of religion'; it is a ranking of philosophers in lots of fields that happen to intersect in the philosophy of religion. So a high ranking for some author S on this list does not mean that S's contribution to philosophy of religion (even as measured by a Hirsch number) is especially noteworthy. It means rather that S has made some noteworthy contibution to philosophy and, incidentally, S has published in the philosophy of religion. This makes, for instance, Rowe's and M. Adam's ranking as top philosophers of religion way too low, and several others as top philosophers of religion way too high, but I'm not sure how to remedy that. BTW, I just noticed that Leftow is not on this list.
What about Paul Moser?
The numbers for both Leftow and Moser are below any of those on the list.
What you say is exactly right, Mike, though I'd quibble a bit with the idea that anyone on the list has published only incidentally in philosophy of religion. I explicitly left out some people because, in my judgement, they had published only incidentally in the field (think of David Lewis, for example). Hawthorne is maybe a close call on that score, and maybe Audi as well; but the others aren't. If one wanted to isolate contribution to philosophy of religion itself, probably total citations in the area would be a better route to go--at least on that score, there would be some data differences between people.