[Poll] Less Wrong and Mainstream Philosophy: How Different are We?

Jayson_Virissimo

Despite being (IMO) a philosophy blog, many Less Wrongers tend to disparage mainstream philosophy and emphasize the divergence between our beliefs and theirs. But, how different are we really? My intention with this post is to quantify this difference.

The questions I will post as comments to this article are from the 2009 PhilPapers Survey. If you answer "other" on any of the questions, then please reply to that comment in order to elaborate your answer. Later, I'll post another article comparing the answers I obtain from Less Wrongers with those given by the professional philosophers. This should give us some indication about the differences in belief between Less Wrong and mainstream philosophy.

Glossary

analytic-synthetic distinction, A-theory and B-theory, atheism, compatibilism, consequentialism, contextualism, correspondence theory of truth, deontology, egalitarianism, empiricism, Humeanism, libertarianism, mental content externalism, moral realism, moral motivation internalism and externalism, naturalism, nominalism, Newcomb's problem, physicalism, Platonism, rationalism, relativism, scientific realism, trolley problem, theism, virtue ethics

Note

Thanks pragmatist, for attaching short (mostly accurate) descriptions of the philosophical positions under the poll comments.

Post Script

The polls stopped rendering correctly after the migration to LW 2.0, but the raw data can be found in this repo.

Glossary

Note

Thanks pragmatist, for attaching short (mostly accurate) descriptions of the philosophical positions under the poll comments.

Post Script

The polls stopped rendering correctly after the migration to LW 2.0, but the raw data can be found in this repo.

Free will: incompatibilism or compatibilism?

[pollid:82]

I like the idea of pulling some language from logic and saying we have "bound will," not "free will."

This may well be compatibilism as intended by its defenders, but that isn't the impression I've ever had from their papers.

I would [very] roughly describe bound will with the following two claims: My will is free from Susie's will. Neither Susie's will nor my will is free from physical causes.

Notice that such a term doesn't care whether the universe is strictly deterministic or merely stochastic.

2asparisi14y

I said "Lean toward: incompatibalism" because I assume you are talking about Libertarian or Contra-Causal Free Will when you talk about Free Will, but are also including less-strong theses about Free Will. If you are not including contra-causal free will, change it to "Accept Compatibalism" if you are ONLY talking about contra-causal free will, change it to "Accept Incompatibalism."

9bramflakes14y

Other, purely because in reading pragmatist's definitions I also accidentally read two other comments which confused me. My position is that we do not have contracausal free will, yet our decisions feel like that from the inside, and that indeed the question itself is usually a disguised query for whether we can ever be morally responsible for things, which I believe is a separate question.

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[Poll] Less Wrong and Mainstream Philosophy: How Different are We?

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[Poll] Less Wrong and Mainstream Philosophy: How Different are We?

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