Went for "metaphysically possible". I think zombies exist, and we are they.

Other: I wouldn't say it's inconceivable exactly, but I think the thought experiment, in framing the possibility of a decoupling of phenomenal experience from cognitive architecture, primes for some intuitions that don't make a lot of sense to me.

Went for "conceivable but not metaphysically possible".

It seems pretty clear to me that we can and do "conceive" of zombies, or of other puzzles like inverted spectra (you see red while I see green, but we're both looking at the same tree, and both call the tree "green"). However, this is because of a mental trick in the way we conceive mental states.

Basically, for normally-sighted people, it seems that when we imagine a physical object (like a tree), we imagine it from an external perspective. We induce in ourselves a mental state similar to the one we would get from looking at the object concerned (the tree). However, when we imagine a mental state itself (such as an experience of green), we do so sympathetically, or from an internal perspective, by inducing in ourselves the same or a similar mental state.

So this allows us to "mix and match" brain states and mental states. For instance, I can imagine your brain while you are looking at a tree (I have a mental picture of grey matter with lots of neurons firing) while at the same time imagining the mental state of experiencing red. No problem at all... it seems perfectly conceivable that these could happen together; instant inverted spectrum. Or I can imagine the same brain state (same grey matter, same firings) while not imagining a mental state at all (it's all neurons firing in complicated chains, but no-one's at home)... again seems perfectly conceivable that these could happen together; instant p-zombie.

But it's all just a dumb quirk of imagination. Because of the different imaginative techniques, we fool ourselves into conceiving apparent possibilities that aren't really possible after all. One way to debug the imagination is to ask ourselves this: "Suppose I were forced to imagine a mental state from the external perspective, the same way I imagine a tree. What would that look like?" And the short answer is "Well, without scientific evidence, I really don't have a clue. I have no intuition whatseover about what a mental state really looks like from the outside. Up to now, I've always imagined one from the inside. From the outside perspective, it might just as well be a brain state as a soul state or an ectoplasm state. So I'd best follow the science wherever it's pointing".

A zombie is physically identical to a human being but does not possess phenomenal experience. There is nothing it is like to be a zombie.

Inconceivable: We cannot fully conceive of a zombie. If you think you have a coherent conception of a zombie, it is because you haven't thought about your conception carefully enough. Sufficient thought will reveal that your conception is incoherent.

Conceivable but not metaphysically possible: One can arrive at a coherent conception of zombies, but objects that match this conception cannot possibly exist, not even in worlds with different laws of nature than ours.

Metaphysically possible: The existence of zombies is possible.

I think there might be a difference here between truth of a proposition and truth of a sentence.

Ascribing truth to a proposition looks the same as just asserting the proposition (deflationary account).

Ascribing truth to a sentence looks like a combination of mapping it onto a proposition (interpreting the sentence) and then asserting that proposition.

Since I would regard propositions and states of affairs as either the same, or isomorphic, this looks like the correspondence theory of truth for sentences.

Correspondence: A proposition is true if and only if it bears some sort of congruence relation to a state of affairs that obtains. When I say that "P is true", where P is some proposition, I am saying that P stands in this relation to some portion of reality.

Deflationary: Ascribing truth to a proposition amounts to no more than asserting the proposition. It does not mean you are attributing some further property to the proposition (such as congruence with some state of affairs). Saying "P is true" is the same as just saying "P'.

Epistemic: To say that a proposition is true is just to say that it meets a high standard of epistemic warrant, and that we are thereby justified in asserting it. The search for truth and the search for justification are not separate goals. There is no more to truth than sufficiently powerful justification.

Voted Lean: Death but want to change my answer to "have no bloody clue". For the record, when I first thought about this I was accept: death.

Teletransporter: You are placed in a machine that will instantaneously disintegrate your body, in the process recording its exact atomic configuration. This information is then beamed to another machine far away, and in that machine new matter is used to construct a body with the same configuration as yours. Would you consider yourself to have survived the process, and teleported from one machine to the other ("survival")? Or do you think you have died, and the duplicate in the far away machine is a different person ("death")?

Other: both can be true depending on the situation. This can be only meaningfully interpreted as a question of psychology (what goes on in people's heads), there's no way in which one method of ascribing meaning to names is 'truer' than the other so asking to choose between the two looks like a confused question.

This is the same distinction as Russellianism vs. Fregeanism, except applied specifically to proper names. I think in the Philpapers survey, this question replaced the Russellianism vs. Fregeanism one.

Fregean: The meaning of a proper name is a way of conceiving of its bearer. Different names for the same bearer may be associated with different ways of conceiving, and thus have different meanings. For instance, "Superman" and "Clark Kent" have different meanings.

Millian: The meaning of a proper name is its bearer. The meanings of "Superman" and "Clark Kent" are identical.

Ill-formed question. See my other comment.

Other: These are all true for different meanings of "the object of one's perception".

Other: all of these seem like plausible models with a nonzero amount of predictive power. I don't see how the truth of one of these implies that the others are false. Representationalism and sense-datum theory seem the most useful, I guess, but my real answer is "I don't know, ask a neurologist."

Disjunctivism: In normal cases, when a person is perceiving something, the object of their perception is a mind-independent object. The character of the person's phenomenal experience is explained by the properties of the object (for instance, a person perceiving an apple has an experience of redness because the object of their perception -- the apple -- is red). However, when a person is hallucinating or experiencing an illusion, the object of their perception is some sort of mind-dependent entity (perhaps sense-data; see below). So hallucination and veridical perception are substantially different kinds of mental processes.

Representationalism: Perceptual experience is representational. It represents our immediate environment as being a certain way. Since representations can be both accurate and inaccurate, we can understand both veridical perception and hallucination as the same kind of process. The difference is merely in the success of the representation. To be perceiving is to be representing one's immediate environment in certain ways (visually, aurally, etc.), and perception is accurate to the extent that this representation corresponds to reality.

Sense-datum theory: The objects of our perception are not mind-independent entities, they are mind-dependent objects called sense-data. These are objects like "a red spot at such-and-such position in my visual field". We infer the existence of mind-independent objects from patterns in the sense-data we perceive.

Qualia theory: [I don't think I fully understand the claims of qualia theory. I have tried to describe the kinds of things qualia theorists say, but if it appears confused that's because I am confused.] The phenomenal character of our perceptual experience (the particular way our experience feels) is non-representational. We don't infer information about the external world from the particular feel of our conscious experience; rather, our conscious experience is simply what it feels like (from the inside) to be obtaining sensory information about our environment. One way to put is that my conscious experience doesn't tell me that the apple I'm perceiving is red. My conscious experience is just an effect of the particular way in which I am obtaining information about the apple; I am perceiving the apple red-ly.

My interpretation of this question is metaphysical: 'Is reality classical?' This is shorthand for: 'Is there any fact that is fundamentally, objectively, and in principle...

... inexpressible? ... vague? ... contradictory? ... indeterminate? (I.e., neither the case nor not-the-case.) ... etc.

But this is a strange set of questions, and I suspect most professional philosophers and LessWrongers are instead answering a confused mixture of (mostly trivial) questions like 'which logic do I find most useful?'.

Other: The objection to classical logic stated in pragmatist's summary needs to be addressed, but I lack sufficient knowledge of the field to determine whether the best resolution of these objections is likely to take the form of (a) a solution within classical logic or (b) the adoption of a non-classical logic.

Other: probability distributions over world-histories. Otherwise classical.

Other: Different logics are appropriate for modeling how one should infer in different domains. Classical logics are fine for many applications but it is possible (maybe even plausible) that non-classical logics will be better models for certain applications. For instance, fuzzy logic (a many-valued logic) has been successfully employed to control subway systems and build thermostats.

Classical: The standard kinds of logic that you learn in undergraduate logic classes are the best (or right) logics, the ones that best model (ETA: idealized versions of) our inferential processes. Examples of classical logics are Boolean logic and first-order predicate calculus. Classical logics are bivalent (sentences can only be true or false), obey the principle of the excluded middle (if a proposition is not true, its negation must be true) and obey the law of non-contradiction (a proposition and its negation cannot both be true).

Non-classical: The best logic is not classical. Non-classical logics usually reject the principle of the excluded middle or the law of non-contradiction. An example of a non-classical logic is dialetheism, according to which there are true contradictions (i.e. some sentences of the form "A and not A" are true). Proponents of non-classical logics argue that many of our scientific theories, if you probe deeply, involve inconsistencies, yet we don't regard them as trivially false. So they claim that we need to revise the way we understand logic to accurately model our inferential processes.

None of the prior discussion reflects an understanding of 'contextualism' as standardly conceived by philosophers (if the Stanford Encyclopedia exposition is representative of philosophers' views). So I suspect the polling data for this question will need to be tossed out. Here's a clearer explanation of the difference between these doctrines:

contextualism = The semantic thesis that 'x knows y' may vary in truth-value depending on the social and psychological status of the knowledge-attributor. I.e., 'x knows y' often or always fails to have a determinate truth-value, unless it is clear from context that we are really saying 'x knows y relative to evaluator z,' where z is someone evaluating 'does x know y?' Thus, a better name for 'contextualism' would be 'attributor contextualism' (which it has indeed been called).

Note that contextualism does not imply that the distribution of knowledge in the world is arbitrary or just a matter of subjective opinion; there may be very strict constraints on what sorts of 'subjective opinions' held by an evaluator affect knowledge-relative-to-an-evaluator. For instance, it is plausible that 'I know I have hands' would count as true if the evaluator were your psychiatrist, but would count as false if the evaluator were someone with whom you were debating the Simulation Hypothesis. That's not because of the evaluator's mere opinions; it's because there are higher standards for knowledge in metaphysical debates than in everyday conversation. An evaluator with crazy, unrealistic standards wouldn't have his/her own, equally legitimate beliefs about what counts as knowledge; s/he would just be consistently in error.

Nor is contextualism a meta-semantic claim about how the word 'knowledge' varies across linguistic communities; rather, it is the semantic claim that 'knowledge' in all (standard-English-speaking) contexts would frequently be judged to vary based on the state of the evaluator. Contextualism could turn out to be false for purely empirical reasons, if, say, sociological data proved that we don't vary in knowledge-attribution based on the mental state and social context of the attributor.

relativism = The metaphysical thesis that knowledge as such is relative to a standard of assessment. Like contextualists, relativists think 'know' is three-place; but their relation is 'x knows y according to standard z,' not 'x knows y relative to evaluator z.' And whereas there are presumably facts about which agent is evaluating a knowledge-claim in the real world, there are no facts about which standard is the 'right' one; so there simply are no facts about knowledge, or even about knowledge-according-to-an-agent. What there are are facts about 'what certain standards treat as being "knowledge"'.

I said that relativism is a 'metaphysical' view, not a semantic one. This is important. Contextualism can be refuted if it turns out that the English language is invariantist; but relativism can't be so easily refuted, since their claim is not that we think of knowledge as relative, but that knowledge really is relative. Relativism is very close to radical skepticism, just with 'knowledge'-talk preserved as a way of signaling one's chosen standards. Whereas contextualism is just as opposed to skepticism as is invariantism. Speaking of which...

invariantism = The claim that we have knowledge of some things, combined with the semantic thesis that contextualism is false and the metaphysical thesis that relativism is false. According to an invariantist, 'I know I have hands' is either true or false simpliciter; evaluators and standards-of-evaluation might disagree about this statement's truth-value, but that's because some evaluators and some standards are wrong, not because 'knowledge' itself is unsaturated.

Source for all this: Rysiew, "Relativism and Contextualism".

Lean towards contextualism, but with some problems. For instance:

"I know that I have hands" "I don't know that I'm not a brain in a vat"

However, I've just asserted them side by side in the same context (of a Less Wrong discussion). And I don't think relativism helps much either: can the assessor change their epistemic standards so quickly in the space of two consecutive sentences??

Contextualism: The truth of a knowledge claim depends on the context in which it is uttered. A claim such as "Alice knows that she is not in the Matrix" might be true in certain contexts (when explaining to someone in ordinary conversation why Alice didn't lose sleep over the movie Matrix) but false in other contexts (when uttered in an epistemology class in a discussion about the possibility of us being in the Matrix). The usual analysis is that the same sentence about knowledge expresses different propositions in different contexts (just like the sentence "It's raining here" expresses different propositions in different contexts).

Relativism: Whether a subject possesses knowledge of a certain proposition is relative to a set of epistemic standards. Relative to one such set, she might know that the proposition is true, while relative to another set, she does not qualify as knowing this. So, strictly speaking, "knowledge" is a three-place function, taking as arguments a subject, a proposition and a set of standards.

Invariantism: Knowledge claims are either true or false simpliciter. Their truth does not vary depending on context, and they are not relativized to epistemic standards.

EDIT: A couple of people have said that the difference between contextualism and relativism is unclear. I have tried to clarify in this comment.

Non-skeptical realism: A mind-independent reality exists, and we have epistemic access to its structure. We can acquire substantial knowledge about reality.

Skepticism: A mind-independent reality exists, but we lack epistemic access to it. We cannot know the nature of reality. We only have access to how things appear to us, and we should take seriously the possibility that this is very different from how things actually are.

Idealism: Reality is not mind-independent. It is either wholly or partly mentally constituted. We can know about reality because there is not much (or no) distance between how things appear to us and how things actually are.

Of course this question is universally (snerk) misunderstood as "objective" = "universal", which are not actually synonymous.

I'm not sure how anyone could argue that aesthetic value is objective when humans regularly disagree about the aesthetic value of things. It's a pretty stern counterexample.

This is one of those cases where I'm not sure exactly what "objective" and "subjective" are supposed to mean. Probably 2-place words, but probably objective ones.

Other: a complex weighted mixture of both, and varying according to context. Similar to ethical value.

I went with Other because I think aesthetic judgments are mostly the same for humans, but will be whatever evolution spits out for non-humans. There's some objective (aesthetic value is a product of evolution) and some subjective (because it's a product of evolution, it's environment-dependent and subject to variation).

For all I know, though, that position is Accept:subjective, since 2-place words would be a radical new insight to most philosophers who pick Accept:objective.

Other: I'm genuinely undecided about this. I don't think I lean substantially in either direction.

What, precisely, is the distinction between this and the "Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?" question?

A priori knowledge is knowledge from the operation of a mind. It is a sort of sensory experience.

Hasn't this one been resolved by computer science?

Yes: There are certain facts we can come to know for which our knowledge need not be based on sensory experience.

No: The sort of justification that elevates belief to knowledge must always appeal to sensory experience.

All I can say is that you're not going to be happy with the 'philosophy of religion' statistics.

You can filter the survey results by specialization. Use the AOS (Area of Specialization) drop down menu.

There probably is a gigantic bias to the "Uninteresting" amount of responders. If you find those uninteresting, you wouldn't get here in the first place. So, given now it is about 25% "Uninteresting" I'd guess more than 50% LWers are of that opinion.

Other: unanswered philosophical questions are about evenly distributed between interesting questions that will soon be matters of engineering, confused and revealing questions, and historical nonsense. I produced easy examples of all three categories without trying.

This book makes the argument that (paraphrased, and put into LW terms) most philosophy is uninteresting because their curiosity doesn't seek to annihilate itself. Instead of asking "how can we actually improve our knowledge?" they bicker over the definition of JTB.

The tools and insights of philosophy can be useful when you try to answer the practical questions, but most controversial topics are controversial because there are a lot of wrong ideas there, not because it's a hot new empirical question (Higgs: does it exist? If so, how big is it?).

Other: Philosophical problems primarily serve to encourage creative thinking and asking more abstract questions about the world. Philosophical debates primarily serve to remind us that intelligent, well-meaning people can disagree about pretty fundamental things, so we should tread carefully when assuming our "opponents" are idiots or monsters.

This depends a great deal on both which branch of philosophy we're talking about & who is evaluating that particular branch's usefulness.

For example, I find developments in logics, philosophy of science, & general epistemology to be of great interest, and I perceive all three topics to be advancing (listed in order of priority as that goes) as the years go by. I'm sure others feel differently.

It would be hard to get past the fact that, especially between the different branches of philosophy, there is a great deal of "philosophy of language" that is or must be done just to get at what anyone's talking about. But that is, to some extent, true of any field with a technical language.

So I guess all four answers make sense in some sense.

Philosophical problems as a whole are a mix of all 3, and I don't know enough about modern philosophy to empirically determine which answer reigns in the "most." Voted "Other."

Uninteresting artifacts of history. But some (moral realism or not) are vitally important to figuring out effective social engineering.

But I'm in a minority in this community in thinking that social engineering is desirable (other than as an inevitable effect of physical engineering/ technological progress).

ADBOC with talking about "most," so I voted other. But maybe I should have voted "Uninteresting."

"Uninteresting", but perhaps only due to Sturgeon's law.

I voted for "Interesting questions", because a slight majority of the polled questions fall in that category to me, and that matches the literal meaning of "most". But when 30-40% of the key questions of a discipline look "Uninteristing", it is not a great endorsement for it.

Other: I often find these sorts of questions useful as a way of clarifying my own understanding of related subjects, and I think clarifying understanding can lead to pragmatic value even in the absence of an agreed-upon answer.

That is, sometimes it is useful to go from "I am confused about X" to "there are three possibilities (X1, X2, X3) and I know what each one entails but I don't know how to choose among them", even though the question remains equally unanswered.

This is similar to your "interesting debate" option, I suppose, but different enough that I felt uncomfortable picking it.

That would be too cumbersome to use for the commenters.

If you don't understand a question, I'm fairly certain that if you scroll down far enough you'll find a comment from me with an attempt at explication.

Unfortunately, I didn't on the libertarianism/egalitarianism one. (I had a plausible guess, but I wanted to be sure that guess was right.)

While that improves the situation, we're still trusting that the PhilPapers respondents' beliefs about the terms perfectly match the definitions you posted. Too bad we can't survey both groups ourselves (or something).

Thanks for the clarifications, without them the questions made little sense to me. (Well, with them most polls appear poorly defined false dichotomy, but at least this unfortunate fact becomes clear).

It would be interesting to have "how well do you think you understand the question?" parallel to each question. I'd imagine less consistency on questions where most participants had to look up the terms on Wikipedia prior to answering.

I won't object to people attaching polls to my poll comments, but I won't make a precommitment to making use of them in my analysis of the results.

Yes, but then how would you handle the "Other" options?

Psychological view: This question is standing in for a particular question of values. Otherwise it's meaningless.

Other: I suspect the answer to this question depends on the particular question you're asking. Often, I think, this is a values question - e.g. in what form do I want to continue existing?

Other: Leaning toward a causal view. In other words, your past self has to be the cause of your future self, but the specific atoms are irrelevant.

Physical view/other (?). I consider personal identity to be based only on the memory of past self, not actual brain process or existence of memory independent conscious mind. It may be very well that the experience of personal continuity is only an illusion as there is no actual continuity at all, only the recollection of previous events (including the attempts of introspection). An exact copy of me wouldn't be any different than myself.

Other: I think that personal identity is in a certain sort of brain process, rather than a static "brain state." (so, no "static minds") The physical view implies that personal identity can be reduced to certain brain states, and I reject that: a valid sort of active processing is important.

Other: Psychological states include some bodily states like sensory input, and possibly as much as "social contact." There is no firm boundary between physical and psychological. Uploads are possible, but will require emulation of more than just a brain. An atom-by-atom instantiation of the same mind (including enough of the body and environment) will be the same person.

I answered "lean toward psychological view", as I'm about evenly split between the psychological view and just considering the whole concept of personal identity incoherent/a wrong question in the first place.

Other: For everyone else that I observe, an exact atom-for-atom duplicate is the same person as the original. If a copy of me were made, my 'mind' would reside in the original.

I accept that my duplicate would claim to be the original, of course.