Academics of all stripes enjoy conducting informal polls of their peers to gauge the popularity of different stances on controversial issues. But the philosophers — and in particular, David Bourget & David Chalmers — have decided to be more systematic about it. (Maybe they have more controversial issues to discuss?)
They targeted 1,972 philosophy faculty members at 99 different institutions, and received results from 931 of them. Most of the universities were in English-speaking countries, and the others were chosen for strength in analytic philosophy, so the survey has an acknowledged bias toward analytic/Anglocentric philosophy. They asked for simple forced-response answers (no essay questions!) concerning 30 different topics, from belief in God to normative ethics to the nature of time. The answers are pretty intriguing.
Results below the fold. Note that atheism easily trumps theism, and compatibilism is the leading approach to free will (although not by a huge amount). Only about half of the recipients identify as naturalists, which is smaller than I would have thought (and smaller than the percentage of “physicalists” when it comes to the mind, which is surprising to me). When they dig into details, there is a strong correlation between theism and whether a person specializes in philosophy of religion, predictably enough. Among philosophers who don’t specifically specialize in religion, the percentage of atheists is pretty overwhelming.
1. A priori knowledge: yes 71.1%; no 18.4%; other 10.5%.
2. Abstract objects: Platonism 39.3%; nominalism 37.7%; other 23.0%.
3. Aesthetic value: objective 41.0%; subjective 34.5%; other 24.5%.
4. Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes 64.9%; no 27.1%; other 8.1%.
5. Epistemic justification: externalism 42.7%; internalism 26.4%; other 30.8%.
6. External world: non-skeptical realism 81.6%; skepticism 4.8%; idealism 4.3%; other 9.2%.
7. Free will: compatibilism 59.1%; libertarianism 13.7%; no free will 12.2%; other 14.9%.
8. God: atheism 72.8%; theism 14.6%; other 12.6%.
9. Knowledge claims: contextualism 40.1%; invariantism 31.1%; relativism 2.9%; other 25.9%.
10. Knowledge: empiricism 35.0%; rationalism 27.8%; other 37.2%.
11. Laws of nature: non-Humean 57.1%; Humean 24.7%; other 18.2%.
12. Logic: classical 51.6%; non-classical 15.4%; other 33.1%.
13. Mental content: externalism 51.1%; internalism 20.0%; other 28.9%.
14. Meta-ethics: moral realism 56.4%; moral anti-realism 27.7%; other 15.9%.
15. Metaphilosophy: naturalism 49.8%; non-naturalism 25.9%; other 24.3%.
16. Mind: physicalism 56.5%; non-physicalism 27.1%; other 16.4%.
17. Moral judgment: cognitivism 65.7%; non-cognitivism 17.0%; other 17.3%.
18. Moral motivation: internalism 34.9%; externalism 29.8%; other 35.3%.
19. Newcomb’s problem: two boxes 31.4%; one box 21.3%; other 47.4%.
20. Normative ethics: deontology 25.9%; consequentialism 23.6%; virtue ethics 18.2%; other 32.3%.
21. Perceptual experience: representationalism 31.5%; qualia theory 12.2%; disjunctivism 11.0%; sense-datum theory 3.1%; other 42.2%.
22. Personal identity: psychological view 33.6%; biological view 16.9%; further-fact view 12.2%; other 37.3%.
23. Politics: egalitarianism 34.8%; communitarianism 14.3%; libertarianism 9.9%; other 41.0%.
24. Proper names: Millian 34.5%; Fregean 28.7%; other 36.8%.
25. Science: scientific realism 75.1%; scientific anti-realism 11.6%; other 13.3%.
26. Teletransporter: survival 36.2%; death 31.1%; other 32.7%.
27. Time: B-theory 26.3%; A-theory 15.5%; other 58.2%.
28. Trolley problem: switch 68.2%; don’t switch 7.6%; other 24.2%.
29. Truth: correspondence 50.8%; deflationary 24.8%; epistemic 6.9%; other 17.5%.
30. Zombies: conceivable but not metaphysically possible 35.6%; metaphysically possible 23.3%; inconceivable 16.0%; other 25.1%.
Yes, some of the descriptions might not mean that much at first glance. Google is your friend!
I don’t know any philosophers in the department of which I am a part who are not empiricists to some degree, so I’m quite surprised by the claim that there are apparently lot of philosophers around who hate empiricism (although to be fair only 35% in the survey above are straightforwardly empiricist enough to respond that way to a question).
I do, however, know of a mathematical physicist who is an Idealist (he thinks there are only minds), and I’ve met numerous mathematicians who are Platonists.
Ah, free will. That great conundrum. I’m torn.
On the one hand it is clear that the laws of physics, which I believe my brain operates on like everything else does, has no mechanism by which such could exist. Determinism and predictability are red-herrings. You can’t determine precise outcomes, but you can calculate probabilities. A system progressing precisely as the laws of physics dictate isn’t any less contrary to free will just because the laws of physics includes randomness. Putting calls to rand() in my conditionals doesn’t make my computer algorithm “willful” no matter how good a source of entropy powers the random number generator.
On the other hand, it appears to me that I and others have free will, I appear to be able to execute what I feel is free will, and so I will continue to live my life as though I have free will.
What philosophical bucket do I fall in? 🙂
P.S. I’m obviously no philosopher, but it’s still hilarious to me hearing someone try to downplay the importance of philosophy. Logic, aka math, is how you determine what sets of conclusions are true given a set of assumptions. If your conclusion is logically strong — which is to say that it is correct, given the premise — then if the data contradicts the conclusion then one or more of the assumptions are wrong and you need to find new ones. This iterative process of deducing which assumptions about the nature of reality are best, and using those assumption to make useful predictions, is the entirety of science, and it would be impossible without being able to logically deduce consequences.
@CB
This iterative process of deducing which assumptions about the nature of reality are best, and using those assumption to make useful predictions, is the entirety of science, and it would be impossible without being able to logically deduce consequences.
Yes, that is exactly (part of) my point, i.e., that the process of scientific enquiry is much more complex than a linear progression data -> theories by means of “pattern matching”; conceptual structures (mathematical and philosophical) have a fundamental (albeit often “in the background”) role in it, as I pointed out by means of examples (of course mathematics and philosophy are also interesting in themselves). Anyway, the fact which most amuses me is that the preacher above has a most hilarious self-righteous blog on critical thinking 😀 it is indeed amazing what one sees these days.
Facetiousness aside, as far as free will is concerned, I am no expert in the field, so I am not sure I can help you out of your dilemma 🙂 However my two cents are that, if you subscribe to the naturalist view (which I do not), then the most natural hypothesis to formulate would be a reductionist one, i.e., that your intuition of free will, as well as that of consciousness, are at bottom simply an ensemble of neural mechanisms, which cause this intuition of free will in much the same way as they cause your perception of the colour red. Whether these mechanisms be intrinsically deterministic or stochastic, as you said, would not really make a difference in “explaining away” free will. Notice that this conclusion is a direct consequence of a naturalist-materialist standpoint; perhaps the growing cooperation between neuroscientists and philosophers will shed more light on the matter. If one accepts this position, however, then one has to face two further interesting questions to reflect upon, namely:
1) How and why, evolutionarily speaking, did the intuition of free will develop? What is its evolutionary advantage?
2) What do we do with respect to ethical problems? If free will is at bottom just an illusion, so that my actions are the result of a given process of neural computation without “free will element”, then on what basis am I punished for doing wrong?
Cheers,
R.
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