One respect in which Less Wrongers resemble mainstream philosophers is that many mainstream philosophers disparage mainstream philosophers and emphasize the divergence between their beliefs and those of rival mainstream philosophers. Indeed, that is something of a tradition in Western philosophy.
I've posted brief explanations for some of the questions as replies to those questions. I haven't posted explanations for those questions that I believe the vast majority of LW users will understand. 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.
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).
Beware that some words might mean different things to different communities. For example, if a philosopher calls himself/herself an "anti-reductive naturalist," there's a good chance they are a strict reductionist in the LW sense. It may help to read the "thoughts on specific questions" section of this page of the PhilPapers Survey site.
I've tried to do that already, adding comments below each question that I think might be confusing.
Stop saying these questions are false dichotomies! None of them are, because they all have an 'other' option!
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.
Consequentialism: The morality of actions depends only on their consequences.
Deontology: There are moral principles that forbid certain actions and encourage other actions purely based on the nature of the action itself, not on its consequences.
Virtue ethics: Ethical theory should not be in the business of evaluating actions. It should be in the business of evaluating character traits. The fundamental question of ethics is not "What makes an action right or wrong?" It is "What makes a person good or bad?"
All three in weighted combination, with consequentialism scaling such that it becomes dominant in high-stakes scenarios but is not dominant elsewhere. I believe that consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics are mutually reducible and mutually justifying, but that flattening them into any one of the three is bad because it raises the error rate, by making some values much harder to describe and eliminating redundancy in values that would have protected them from corruption.
Thinking about this...
So, yes, in many cases I make decisions based on moral principles, because the alternatives are computationally intractable. And in a few cases I judge character traits as a proxy for doing either. And I endorse all of that, under the circumstances. Which sounds like what you're describing.
But if I discovered that one of my moral principles was causing me to act in ways that had consequences I anti-value, I would endorse discarding that principle. Which seems to me like I'm a consequentialist who sometimes uses moral principles as a processing shortcut.
Were I actually a deontologist, as described here, presumably I would shrug my shoulders, perhaps regret the negative consequences of my moral principle (perhaps not), and go on using it.
Admittedly, I'm not sure I have a crisp understanding of the distinction between moral principles (which consequentialism on this account ignores) and values (on which it depends).
I lean toward Consequentialism but I support something like deontology/virtue ethics for reasons of personal computability.
I don't know the definition of any of the "-ism"s. Should I not answer the questions? I imagine that others will be in the same position as I am.
EDIT: Thanks to pragmatist for the explanations!
[EDIT: The way I had initially described the distinction was misleading, as pointed out by thomblake. I apologize for potentially skewing the results of the poll, although I don't think my revised version is that far off from the earlier version. Still, I should have been more careful.]
Moral realism: There are objective moral facts, i.e. there are facts about what is right and wrong (or good and bad) that are not constituted by a subject's beliefs and desires.
Moral anti-realism: The denial of moral realism.
Meta:
IAWYC but it is slightly problematic that the Philpapers survey polls the opinions of all philosophers, rather than those in a specific field. I am unsure if the opinions on current debates in metaphysics held but political philosophers will be much better than an average college graduate's. It might be interesting to contrast the 'lesswrong position' on question X with the position of 'mainstream philosophers' who study the relevant sub-field.
You can filter the survey results by specialization. Use the AOS (Area of Specialization) drop down menu.
All I can say is that you're not going to be happy with the 'philosophy of religion' statistics.
It's too late now, but if you put all the questions in the same comment then it's less work to vote in all of them and you can see correlations between answers to the different questions.
Scientific anti-realism: While there may be strong reasons to believe in the empirical predictions of our best scientific theories, there are no strong reasons to believe in their theoretical claims about unobservable entities (such as quarks).
Scientific realism: There are strong reasons to believe in the theoretical claims about unobservable entities made by our best scientific theories.
Note: I don't think most theistic philosophers would consider the simulation hypothesis to be a variant of theism.
That's because they say "theism" but they mean "traditional religion". They probably wouldn't accept a reification of Azathoth either, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
"Gods are ontologically distinct from creatures, or they're not worth the paper they're written on." -- Damien Broderick.
Can anyone exhibit an actual theist who says that a Matrix Lord composed of non-mental, non-mysterious parts counts as a God? So far as I know this position is held solely by people who want to mock the Simulation Hypothesis.
Pretty sure the Mormons qualify. I'm not one myself, but I used to live next door to a few, and this looks like a fair representation of their beliefs. The money quote:
Mormons believe that human beings are children of God, and as such, have within them the potential to become like God. Got it? Let me say it more clearly. We believe that we can become Gods....Here’s shocker #2–we believe God used to be a man, just like us.
I just hit "Accept: Theism" by accident. Yes, accident, not divine providence, thank you very much. Is there a way to revote?
Humeanism: The laws of nature are compressed descriptions of salient patterns in the distribution of physical events.
Non-Humeanism: The laws of nature are not mere descriptions. They determine the distribution of physical events.
B-theory: Specifying the temporal ordering of all events in space-time exhausts all the objective temporal facts about those events.
A-theory: Specifying the temporal ordering of all events in space-time does not exhaust all the objective temporal facts about them. There is a further temporal fact about a given event: whether it is in the past, in the present or in the future. These are objective facts that are not fixed by merely specifying which events happen earlier or later.
Lean toward B-theory if pushed to answer, but I wonder what cognitive algorithm even generated this as a possibly interesting question.
Also, who the hell has invented the names for that?
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?
[pollid:105]
Externalism: It is possible for a person to sincerely hold a moral belief (or make a moral judgment) without feeling any motivation to adhere to that belief/judgment. The claim is not just that the motivation might be trumped by other motivations, it is that it is possible for there to be no motivation at all.
Internalism: It is impossible to sincerely make a moral judgment without being motivated to act in accordance with it, although it may be the case that the motivation is trumped by other countervailing motivations.
Other: This is a not-very-interesting definitional question as to exactly which kind of mental states should be counted as "sincerely making a moral judgement".
General defense of the above type of reply: Voting "Other" on questions that seem to you confused or seem to turn on irrelevant matters of small definitions, rather than making up a definition and running with it, etcetera, is probably a good barometer of LW-vs.-philosophy opinion.
The subject matter of humanity::morality is a mathematical object which Clippy could calculate, if it ever had any reason to do so, which it wouldn't, but it could, without being at all motivated to do anything about that. However, if "morality" is being given an agent relative definition then no, whatever you're not motivated to do anything about, even in the slightest, doesn't seem like it should be called Alejandro::morality.
Is there somewhere a glossary for all the questions? That would be very helpful (beyond this survey).
Also - there was already a similar thread:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/56q/how_would_you_respond_to_the_philpapers_what_are/
The comments have some answers (though not in a convenient machine readable form).
A few problems with this LW survey:
Most of the interesting options in the original PhilPapers Survey are collapsed into 'Other'. This makes it needlessly tempting to side with one of the named positions in order to make one's answer usefully contentful. It also makes our comparisons to the original poll much cruder. The original survey provided (regularly used) options for: 'accept all', 'reject all', 'accept an intermediate view', 'accept an alternative', 'the question is too unclear to answer', 'there is no fact of the matter', 'insufficiently familiar
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?
[pollid:109]
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.
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.
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching): straight or turn?
[pollid:93]
Trolley problem: There is a trolley traveling along a set of tracks. The driver has lost control of the trolley. On the track ahead of the trolley are five people who cannot get off the track in time and will all die if the trolley gets to them. You are standing next to a lever that can switch the track the trolley will take, preventing the deaths of the five people. On the other track is a single person who also cannot get away in time and so will die if you switch the track. Do you refrain from switching the track ("straight") or do you switch the track ("turn")?
Me: I didn't mean to two-box!
Omega: Why would you share an excuse with an omniscient agent?
Me: Because even if there is no causal connection between me giving an excuse, and me being excused, there may be a logical connection. Also, why would an omniscient agent ask a question?
Omega: Due to meta-level concerns. Obviously.
An abstract object is an object that does not correspond to any pattern of matter and energy in space-time. Purported examples of abstract objects are numbers, properties, sets, etc. An object that does correspond to some concentration of matter/energy in space-time is called a concrete object.
Nominalism: Abstract objects do not exist.
Platonism: Abstract objects exist.
Still not sure what this means. Is there some sense in which this distinction pays rent in anticipated experience?
Using my recent attempt at (partially) tabooing "exists" to translate:
Nominalism: We can't rationally care about abstract objects.
Platonism: We can rationally care about abstract objects.
So far Platonism appears to be "winning" according to this definition since UDT is Platonist in this sense, and there isn't really a "nominalist decision theory" that's equivalent or seems as promising.
Other: I think it's a false dichotomy. I think that an ideal system of government will probably sometimes have to sacrifice libertarian principles in favor of egalitarian ones, and sometimes have to sacrifice egalitarian principles in favor of libertarian ones.
How happy, safe, productive, etc. people are. I don't see either libertarianism or egalitarianism as terminal values.
Ideal in terms of fulfilling my terminal values, which contain a term for the satisfaction of others.
Other: "Justification" is just another complicated pre-Bayes way of trying to understand what belief is.
Externalism: A subject's belief can be justified even if the justification is not consciously available to the subject. For instance, if the belief is formed on the basis of a reliable perceptual faculty, it may be a justified belief even if the subject is not aware that the relevant faculty is reliable or even that the relevant faculty is the source of the belief.
Internalism: A subject's beliefs are justified only if the subject has conscious access to the justification.
Aren't these just different definitions of the word "justified", rather than arguments about what is actually "justified"?
Voted for "externalism", but caring about whether a belief is "justified" is probably a mistake.
Yes: There are certain sentences which are true solely by virtue of the meanings of the words involved, so these sentences are not subject to empirical falsification. Example: "All bachelors are unmarried." It is impossible for this sentence to be false, provided the words retain their ordinary meaning.
No: Every sentence is potentially open to empirical falsification. [EDIT: I guess the "No" answer would also be appropriate for those who believe that no sentence is open to empirical falsification, although I would be very surprised if anyone on this site fits that description.]
Externalism: The representational content of our mental states (e.g. what objects our beliefs are about) is dependent upon properties of our external environment, not just upon properties of our brain state.
Internalism: The representational content of our mental states is fixed by our brain state.
This looks like an unheard falling tree problem, the problematic term being "the representational content of our mental states".
Agreed with Richard above, it's hard to know what to do with "the representational content of our mental states". How would I know if the representational content of one of my mental states had changed? What would I expect to observe differently?
That said, I voted "internalism", roughly on the grounds that while I can posit things that might deserve the label "an aspect of the representational content of a mental state that depends on properties of my external environment," I don't actually seem to care about any of them.
Physicalism: A physical duplicate of our world (i.e. a world in which all the same physical properties are instantiated at the same space-time locations) must necessarily also be a mental duplicate (i.e. all mental states instantiated in that world must be identical to the mental states instantiated in this one).
Anti-physicalism: The denial of physicalism.
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")?
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.
Meta-poll: this is not one of the original poll questions. It's just something I wanted to ask.
What is your opinion of modern philosophy, if the questions in this survey are taken as representative, important, unresolved issues in the field?
Interesting questions: most open philosophical problems are meaningful, useful, or interesting, and it is worthwhile to research them. If philosophers come to a broad agreement on a currently open issue, non-philosophers should pay attention.
Interesting debate: most philosophical problems are confused debates, e.g. over...
Russellianism: The meanings of our (referential) words are the objects to which they refer. When I say "Socrates is mortal", the meaning of the word `Socrates' in that sentence is a particular person who lived in ancient Greece.
Fregeanism: The meanings of our words are not directly objects in the world but the particular way we conceive of those objects. Two words referring to the same object can have different meaning since they correspond to different ways of conceiving the object. For instance, "morning star" and "evening star" both refer to to the same object (Venus), but they have different meanings.
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.
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.
I think for future polls like this, mandate in the OP that all comments about questions be ROT13ed in order to avoid priming future respondents.
Physical view: The maintenance of personal identity requires bodily continuity. So, for instance, one cannot preserve a person by downloading their psychological state into a computer.
Psychological view: The maintenance of personal identity requires continuity of psychological states. As long as there is a continuing stream of psychological states with the appropriate causal relations between them, the person persists.
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.
Empiricism: Our only source of novel information about the world is sensory experience.
Rationalism: There is some information about the world that we can arrive at by rational cogitation, without having to rely on sensory experience.
This position is basically rationalism. Contemporary rationalists don't deny the possibility of empirical knowledge. That would be a fairly absurd position to hold in the present. They say that there are also non-empirical sources of knowledge. Empiricists deny the existence of non-empirical sources of knowledge.
Incompatibilism: One cannot have free will in a deterministic universe.
Compatibilism: One can have free will in a deterministic universe.
Other: "Free will" is a confused term, so the question is unanswerable. If one takes the mechanism that results in the confusion about free will and labels that "free will", then of course compatibilism holds.
Retracted. Sorry. Didn't read post properly.
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.
Normative ethics: consequentialism, deontology or virtue ethics?
[pollid:86]
Depends again on the level of discourse. Ultimately consequentialism, but a whole lot of deontology and virtue ethics in "real life".