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.
Not in and of itself.
Suppose a psychopath says "I know killing people is wrong but I don't care" and kills someone. Wearing an externalist hat, I say "See? They made a moral judgment, but it doesn't constrain their behavior." Wearing an internalist hat, I say either "Maybe it did constrain their behavior, just not enough to prevent them from killing someone, because other factors motivated their behavior that aren't present in non-psychopaths" or "Maybe it wasn't a sincere moral judgment, they were just echoing what they've been told, like a blind person saying stop signs are red."
That said, I can imagine well-designed experiments that would be evidence for one or the other. E.g., if we identify what parts of the brain are generally engaged during moral judgments, and what parts of the brain are engaged during recitation of memorized facts, and determine that when psychopaths say "killing people is wrong" the latter brain areas are engaged but the former are not, I would consider that evidence that psychopaths don't in fact make sincere moral judgments when they say that.
We know from the effects of morphine that it is possible to experience "pain" without it "hurting". (I wonder if any philosopher foresaw that this is even possible?) Given that, it is quite conceivable to me that a psychopath might experience the feeling of "moral wrongness" without the motivation "I shouldn't do this". Maybe that isn't what's going on, but no process of reasoning about morality can rule it out.
Philosophers, even materialist ones, are apt to think of the mind as being some sort of logical entity, abo... (read more)