The Forty Most-Cited Contemporary Authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
As part of my background work on discussion arcs, I compiled all the bibliographic entries in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, excluding the purely historical entries, and I noted which philosophers were cited in the most different entries.
(Some obvious shortcomings of the method: It favors breadth of influence over depth, the distribution of entries might differ from the distribution of philosophical research energy, and it might favor the perspectives and writings of the SEP editors. My aim, I should emphasize, is to generate a list of people whose discussion arcs might be interesting, not to generate a definitive measure of philosophical prominence. I'm sure I have also made some coding errors; corrections welcomed.)
With those caveats, then, here are the top forty contemporary philosophers on the list (in parens are the number of SEP entries citing them; I examined 664 SEP entries in total; "contemporary" means born 1900 or later).
1. Lewis, David (162)
2. Quine, W.V.O. (133)
3. Rawls, John (95)
4. Davidson, Donald (93)
5. Putnam, Hilary (88)
6. Kripke, Saul (84)
7. Armstrong, David (72)
7. Nagel, Thomas (72)
9. Fodor, Jerry (70)
10. Dennett, Daniel (69)
10. Jackson, Frank (69)
10. Williams, Bernard (69)
13. Nozick, Robert (68)
13. Searle, John (68)
15. Chisholm, Roderick (67)
16. Harman, Gilbert (60)
17. Dummett, Michael (58)
18. Dworkin, Ronald (57)
19. Nussbaum, Martha (55)
19. Raz, Joseph (55)
19. Van Fraassen, Bas (55)
22. Dretske, Fred (54)
22. Van Inwagen, Peter (54)
24. Chalmers, David (52)
24. Goldman, Alvin (52)
24. Kitcher, Philip (52)
27. Goodman, Nelson (51)
28. Strawson, P.F. (50)
29. Parfit, Derek (49)
29. Sober, Elliott (49)
31. Stalnaker, Robert (48)
32. Williamson, Timothy (47)
33. Geach, Peter (46)
33. Scanlon, T.M. (46)
35. Burge, Tyler (45)
35. McDowell, John (45)
37. Mackie, J.L. (44)
38. Plantiga, Alvin (43)
39. Adams, Robert (42)
39. Gibbard, Allan (42)
39. Lycan, William G. (42)
I find one omission particularly striking: Thomas Kuhn, cited in only 29 entries. (Karl Popper is a near miss at 37 entries.) Kuhn's omission probably reflects, in part, the SEP's underweighting of issues in general philosophy of science; it probably also reflects this measure's favoring of breadth over depth of influence.
The absence of "continental" figures like Foucault (13 entries) and Sartre (23 entries) reflects the generally "analytic"/anglophone pespective of the SEP (though Foucault and Sartre do have historical entries devoted to them).
Comparing these results with Brian Leiter's informal survey last year, the top three results are the same (setting aside Wittgenstein, Russell, and Heidegger, who are not "contemporary" by the present standard), though Leiter has Rawls beating Quine.
UPDATE, May 7:
Let me emphasize that I excluded historical entries, so historians of philosophy will be underrepresented in the data. Also, the SEP bibliographies strongly favor recent work, with the work from the year 2000 being the most cited (cited 2.5 times as often as the year 1980, for example). Here's a chart of citation year in the SEP:
That might be another factor influencing the poor showing of Kuhn (whose most cited work was in 1962) and, as Brian Leiter points out, of Hart, whose most cited work was in 1961 -- though Quine (1960) still does very well.
SECOND UPDATE, May 7:
I have expanded the list to 200.