PhilPapers Survey 2020: Discussion Document
Introduction
In November 2009, David Bourget and U conducted the first PhilPapers Survey of the philosophical views of professional philosophers. We wrote an article on the results ("What Do Philosophers Believe?", published in Philosophical Studies 170:465-500, 2014) and made various other information available. We're now launching a second survey in October 2020.
Below is the list of questions we will ask, after many rounds of suggestions and feedback (see e.g. the PhilPeople discussion group PhilPapers Survey 2020 and also the longer list of potential questions below).
Questions from the 2009 PhilPapers Survey
- A priori knowledge: yes or no?
- Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?
- Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?
- Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?
- Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?
- External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?
- Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?
- God: theism or atheism?
- Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?
- Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?
- Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?
- Logic: classical or non-classical?
- Mental content: internalism or externalism?
- Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?
- Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?
- Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?
- Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?
- Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?
- Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?
- Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?
- Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?
- Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?
- Political philosophy: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?
- Proper names: Fregean or Millian?
- Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?
- Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?
- Time: A-theory or B-theory?
- Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch?
- Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?
- Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?
Answer options included "Accept" or "Lean toward" any of the options listed, and other responses as follows (with minor variations for non-binary questions):
(1) Accept both
(2) Reject both
(3) Accept an intermediate view
(4) Accept another alternative
(5) The question is too unclear to answer
(6) There is no fact of the matter
(7) Insufficiently familiar with the issue
(8) Agnostic/undecided
(9) Other
(10) Skip
There were also some background questions: area of specialization, philosophical tradition (analytic, continental, other), affiliation/role, year of birth, nationality, gender, consent. We also asked: "With which nonliving philosophers X would you
describe yourself or your work as X-ian, or the equivalent? List in
order, and choose "other" to specify a new option." Answer options
(see here
for criteria) were: Anscombe, Aquinas, Aristotle, Augustine, Berkeley,
Carnap, Davidson, Descartes, Frege, Hegel, Heidegger, Hobbes, Hume,
Husserl, Kant, Kierkegaard, Leibniz, Lewis, Locke, Marx, Mill, Moore,
Nietzsche, Plato, Quine, Rawls, Rousseau, Russell, Socrates, Spinoza,
Wittgenstein. We also conducted a
Metasurvey
where respondents predicted the percentage responses to the main
survey questions.
Changes
We will ask the same 30 questions (largely unchanged to enable
longitudinal comparisons) plus 70 new questions. We will tweak the
answer options in order to allow people to select multiple answers
more straightforwardly (for every question, there will be a "select
multiple answers" option that allows people to accept/reject/lean for
or against multiple answers). We won't conduct a Metasurvey this time
as it would be less interesting now that the results of the first
Survey are well known. We'll ask the same demographic questions.
We will add more options to the "nonliving philosophers" question:
Dewey, Foucault, James, Merleau-Ponty, Peirce, Popper, Reid, Rorty,
Sellars, Whitehead (the ten most popular write-in choices in 2009),
Parfit, Putnam (the leading candidates per previous criteria who died
in the last decade or so), Arendt, Avicenna, Beauvoir, Buddha,
Confucius, Deleuze, Derrida, Du Bois, Laozi, Nagarjuna, Rand, Sartre,
Wollstonecraft (to expand coverage of other traditions).
Additional main questions
We will add ten main questions to be asked of everyone.
Aim of philosophy (which is most important?): truth/knowledge, understanding, wisdom, happiness, goodness/justice?
Eating animals and animal products (are they permissible in ordinary circumstances?): omnivorism (yes and yes), vegetarianism (no and yes), veganism (no and no)
Experience machine (would you enter?): yes or no?
Footbridge (pushing man off bridge will save five on track below, what ought one do?): push or don't push?
Gender: biological, psychological, social, unreal?
Meaning of life: subjective, objective, nonexistent?
Philosophical method (which methods are the most useful/important?): conceptual analysis, conceptual engineering, empirical philosophy, experimental philosophy, formal philosophy, intuition-based philosophy, linguistic philosophy? [allow multiple answers]
Philosophical progress (how much is there?): none, a little, a lot?
Race: biological, social, unreal?
Vagueness: epistemic, metaphysical, or semantic?
Additional questions
We will add another 60 questions that will be asked of at least one-sixth of respondents each. Each respondent will answer at least 10 additional questions on top of the 40 main questions for a total of 50. We will also give respondents the option to answer the remaining 50 additional questions for a total of 100.
Many of these questions come from suggestions made on the 2009 survey and from recent discussion online. These questions aim for a reasonable coverage of areas of philosophy and may be somewhat more specialized that the main survey questions.
Abortion (first trimester, no special circumstances): permissible or impermissible?
Aesthetic experience: perception, pleasure, or sui generis?
Analysis of knowledge: justified true belief, other analysis, no analysis?
Arguments for theism (which is strongest?): cosmological, design, ontological, pragmatic, moral?
Belief or credence (which is more fundamental?): belief, credence, neither?
Capital punishment: permissible or impermissible?
Causation: counterfactual/difference-making, process/production, primitive, or nonexistent?
Chinese room: understands or doesn't understand?
Concepts: nativism or empiricism?
Consciousness: dualism, eliminativism, functionalism, identity theory, panpsychism?
Continuum hypothesis (does it have a determinate truth-value?): determinate, indeterminate?
Cosmological fine-tuning (what explains it?): design, multiverse, brute fact, no fine-tuning?
Environmental ethics: anthropocentric or non-anthropocentric?
Epistemic justification: coherentism, infinitism, nonreliabilist foundationalism, reliabilism?
Extended mind: yes or no?
Foundations of mathematics: intuitionism/constructivism, formalism, logicism, structuralism, or set-theoretic?
Gender categories: preserve, revise, or eliminate?
Grounds of intentionality: causal/teleological, inferential, interpretational, phenomenal, primitive?
Hard problem of consciousness (is there one?): yes or no?
Human genetic engineering: permissible or impermissible?
Hume (what is his view?): skeptic or naturalist?
Immortality (would you choose it?): yes or no?
Interlevel metaphysics (which is the most useful?): grounding, identity, realization, supervenience?
Kant (what is his view?): one world or two worlds?
Law: legal positivism or legal non-positivism?
Material composition: nihilism, restrictivism, or universalism?
Metaontology: heavyweight realism, deflationary realism, anti-realism?
Method in history of philosophy (which do you prefer?): analytic/rational reconstruction or contextual/historicist?
Method in political philosophy (which do you prefer?): ideal theory or non-ideal theory?
Mind uploading (brain replaced by digital emulation): survival or death?
Moral principles: moral generalism or moral particularism?
Morality: non-naturalism, naturalist realism, constructivism, expressivism, error theory?
Normative concepts (which is most fundamental?): fit, ought, reason, or value?
Other minds (for which groups are some members conscious?): adult humans, cats, fish, flies, worms, plants, particles, newborn babies, current AI systems, future AI systems [allow multiple answers].
Ought implies can: yes or no?
Philosophical knowledge (how much is there?): none, a little, a lot
Plato (what is his view?): knowledge only of forms, knowledge also of concrete things?
Politics: capitalism or socialism?
Possible worlds: abstract, concrete, or nonexistent?
Principle of sufficient reason: true or false?
Properties: classes, immanent universals, transcendent universals, tropes, nonexistent?
Practical reason: Aristotelian, Humean, or Kantian?
Propositional attitudes: dispositional, phenomenal, representational, nonexistent?
Propositions: sets, structured entities, simple entities, acts, nonexistent?
Quantum mechanics: collapse, hidden-variables, many-worlds, or epistemic?
Race categories: preserve, revise, or eliminate?
Response to external-world skepticism (which is strongest?): abductive, contextualist, dogmatist, epistemic externalist, semantic externalist, pragmatic?
Rational disagreement (can two people with the same evidence rationally disagree): uniqueness or permissiveness?
Semantic content (which expressions are context-dependent?): minimalism (no more than a few), moderate contextualism (intermediate), radical contextualism (most or all)
Sleeping beauty (woken once if heads, woken twice if tails, credence in heads on waking?): one-third or one-half?
Spacetime: relationism or substantivalism?
Statue and lump: one thing or two things?
Temporal ontology: presentism, eternalism, or growing block?
Theory of reference: causal, descriptive, or deflationary?
Time travel: metaphysically possible or metaphysically impossible?
True contradictions: impossible, possible but non-actual, actual?
Units of natural selection: genes or organisms?
Values in science (is ideal scientific reasoning necessarily sensitive or insensitive to non-epistemic values?): necessarily value-free, necessarily value-laden, can be either?
Well-being: hedonism, desire satisfaction, or objective list?
Wittgenstein (which do you prefer?): early or late?
Target population
Our aim is a broad survey of professional philosophers in the
Anglophone philosophical world. We are constrained by the need for a
well-controlled target population for whom we have reliable lists of
names and contact information. In the 2009 survey, this was limited
to 99 leading departments, but now that PhilPeople has its own broader
faculty lists (especially in Anglophone countries), we can drop that
restriction.
The restriction to the Anglophone philosophical world mainly
because (1) we do not have reliable information about non-Anglophone
philosophers, and (2) many non-Anglophone philosophical traditions are
different enough that it would not make sense to ask these questions
to philosophers in those traditions. At some future point it might be
interesting to conduct a truly global survey, but it would have to be
a different sort of thing. Still, we aim to include many philosophers
in non-Anglophone countries who publish Anglophone philosophy.
More precisely, the main target group will include (1) in the US,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and Ireland: regular faculty
(tenure-track or permanent) in BA-granting philosophy departments with
four or more regular faculty members, (2) in the rest of the world:
Anglophone-publishing regular faculty in BA-granting philosophy
departments (or the equivalent) with four or more
Anglophone-publishing regular faculty members. Here an
Anglophone-publishing philosopher is one who has published at least
one item (according to PhilPapers records) in a list of Anglophone
journals or with an Anglophone book publisher. On current figures our
target list includes around 6300 philosophers in group (1) and 1500
philosophers in group (2).
Aside from the main target population, we will report results for a
number of other groups in addition. At the broadest level, we will
advertise the survey on PhilPapers and other outlets, and anyone
interested in philosophy is welcome to take the survey. We will also
report results for all philosophy faculty and graduate students who
respond. More narrowly, for valid longitudinal comparison to the 2009
survey results we will have a list of philosophers in 100 leading
departments compiled using standard rankings.
Previous draft of possible additional questions (by area)
This a list (from a previous draft of this document) of most of the
questions that we have considered or that have been suggested,
arranged by area. Many of these questions come from suggestions made
on the 2009 survey and from recent discussion online.
Within each area, we've listed (**) main questions from the
original thirty, followed by (*) questions from among the new 70,
followed by () questions we considered but aren't including in the
end.
Philosophy of mind
- **Mental content: internalism or externalism?
- **Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?
- **Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?
- **Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?
- *Consciousness: dualism, eliminativism, functionalism, identity theory, panpsychism? [idealism, mysterianism, neutral monism, Russellian monism?]
- *Grounds of intentionality: causal/teleological, inferential, interpretational, phenomenal, primitive?
- *Propositional attitudes: dispositional, phenomenal, representational, nonexistent?
- *Extended mind: yes or no?
- *Artificial consciousness: possible or impossible?
- *Chinese room: understands or doesn't understand?
- *Hard problem of consciousness (is there one?): yes or no?
- *Other minds (for which groups are some members conscious?): adult humans, cats, fish, flies, worms, plants, particles, newborn babies, current AI systems, future AI systems [allow multiple answers].
- *Concepts: nativism or empiricism? [or: are any nonsensory concepts innate?]
- Perceptual content: conceptual or nonconceptual?
- Nonsensory cognitive phenomenology: yes or no
- High-level contents of perception: yes or no
- Cognitive penetration of experience: yes or no?
- Human-level artificial intelligence: possible or impossible
- Swampman: has beliefs, has no beliefs?
- Group minds: yes or no?
- Collective intentionality: reducible or irreducible?
- Mary (on seeing red for the first time): learns a nonphysical fact, learns an old physical fact a new way, learns abilities but not facts, learns nothing
- Disembodiment: possible, conceivable but not possible, inconceivable?
- Consciousness outside attention: yes or no
- Consciousness: higher-order, representational, relational?
- Science of consciousness: global workspace, integrated information, biological, quantum, fundamental
- Infant consciousness (are newborns conscious?): yes or no
- Unconscious mentality: yes/no, dependent/independent of consciousness?
- Transparency (not aware of experiences, only objects?): yes or no?
- Self: nonexistent, primitive, narrative, ...?
- Self-knowledge (what is it based in?): Observation, transparency, rationality, agency/expression, ...?
- Introspection: reliable or unreliable?
- Emotion: perception, judgment, or sui generis? [or: reducible to belief/desire, reducible to perception, sui generis]
- Moods: representational or nonrepresentational
- Pain: perceptualism, evaluativism, imperativism, adverbialism?
- Cognitive architecture: classical, connectionist, ...?
- Language and thought:(which is prior?): thought, language, both/neither [discussion]
- Innateness: Nativism or empiricism? [about concepts, about reasoning, about language, ...]
- Modularity of mind: Nonmodular, some modularity, massive modularity
- Theory of mind: direct perception, simulation theory, theory theory?
- Implicit attitudes: beliefs or associations?
Metaphysics
- **Abstract objects: nominalism or platonism
- **Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?
- **Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?
- **Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?
- **Time: A-theory (moving now) or B-theory (block universe)?
- *Material composition: nihilism, restrictivism, or universalism? [discussion]
- *Statue and lump: one thing or two things? [discussion]
- *Properties: nominalism, universals, tropes [or: divide universals into immanent/transcendent, divide nominalism into classes/nonexistent?]
- *Metaontology: heavyweight realism, deflationary realism, anti-realism [discussion]
- *Temporal ontology: presentism, eternalism, or growing block?
- *Mind uploading: survival or death?
- *Causation: difference-making, production, primitivism, or nonexistent?
- *Possible worlds: modal realism, modal ersatzism, modal fictionalism [or: concrete, abstract, fictions?]
- *Interlevel metaphysics (which is the most useful?): grounding, identity, supervenience, realization?
- Causation: Humean, non-Humean, eliminativism?
- Causal relevance: counterfactual dependence, probability-raising, intervention, nomological relation, connecting process
- Persistence: Endurance or perdurance (or: three-dimensionalism or four-dimensionalism?
- Colors: dispositional, physical, primitive, nonexistent
- The world and its parts: monism or pluralism
- Time travel: metaphysically possible or impossible?
- De re modality: transworld identity or counterpart theory?
- Does everything exist necessarily?: Necessitism or contingentism?
- Truthmakers (do all truths have them?): yes or no?
- Causation: counterfactual or productive
- Causation: reductionist or nonreductionist
- Causation: regularity, law, counterfactuals, probabilities, powers, mechanisms, intervention?
- Essence: essentialist or anti-essentialist?
- Objects: Substances or bundles?
- Collective entities (do they exist?): yes or no?
- Social entities (reducible to individuals?): reductionist or nonreductionist?
- Natural kinds: objective, subjective, nonexistent?
- Nonexistent objects: Meinongianism or anti-Meinongianism?
- Universals: Aristotelian or Platonic? (or: immanent or transcendent?)
- Ontological questions: No answers, trivial answers, substantive answers
- Ontology (what is it about): existence, grounding, ...?
- Ordinary objects: eliminativism, permissivism, or conservatism
- States of affairs: structured or simple
- Events: reducible or irreducible
- Resemblance: subjective or objective (or: sharing properties or distance?)
- Grounding: primitive or not? (useful or not, explanatory or not?)
- Individual identity: haecceitism or anti-haecceitism?
- Property identity: quidditism or anti-quidditism?
- Laws of nature: metaphysically necessary or metaphysically contingent
Philosophy of language
- **Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?
- **Proper names: Fregean or Millian?
- **Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?
- *Propositions: sets, structured entities, simple, or acts? [or: Fregean, Russellian, Lewisian, or primitive?; or: sets of worlds, structures of objects and properties, sense-involving, primitive -- and/or pleonastic, dynamic, act-based, two-dimensional, sets of probability spaces, ...] [discussion]
- *Theory of reference: causal, descriptive, or deflationary?
- *Semantic content (how many expressions are context-dependent?): minimalism (no more than a few), moderate contextualism (intermediate), radical contextualism (most or all)
- *Vagueness: epistemic, metaphysical, or semantic?
- Indicative conditionals (what are their truth-conditions?): material conditionals, possible-worlds truth-conditions, no truth-conditions?
- Meaning: truth-conditional or non-truth-conditional? [or: use, conceptual role, dynamic, ...]
- Meaning: holism or atomism?
- Normativity of meaning: yes or no?
- Speaker meaning (what is its basis?): Intentions, thoughts, language, ...?
- Does linguistic meaning reduce to speaker meaning?: yes or no?
- Meaning and use (what is prior?): Meaning, use, both/neither?
- Grammar: Minimalist, lexical functional, or construction/cognitive? [discussion]
- Descriptions: Predicates, terms, quantifiers?
- Indicative conditionals: ...?
- Objects of de se thought: properties or propositions?
- Illocutionary acts: intentions, conventions, constitutive norms, commitments, functions?
- Language: social, psychological, abstract?
- Truth-value of propositions: temporalism or eternalism?
- Slurs (what explains their offensiveness): semantic or pragmatic?
- Tense operators (are there any in English?): yes or no?
- Monsters (are there any in English): yes or no?
- Demonstrative reference (fixed solely by intentions?): yes or no?
- Answering machine case ("I am not here now"): semantically true or false?
Epistemology
- **A priori knowledge: yes or no?
- **Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?
- **External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?
- **Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?
- **Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?
- **Epistemic justification: coherentism or foundationalism (or: coherentism, classical foundationalism, reliabilist foundationalism)
- **Response to external-world skepticism (which is strongest?): abductive, contextualist, dogmatist, externalist, pragmatic? [rationalist, theist, semantic/epistemic externalist, relevant alternatives, disjunctivist, transcendental?]
- *Rational disagreement (can two people with the same evidence rationally disagree): uniqueness or permissiveness? [or: uniqueness (no), strong permissivism (yes, rationality requires only formal coherence), weak permissivism (yes, although rationality involves constraints beyond formal coherence)] [discussion]
- *Sleeping beauty (woken once if heads, woken twice if tails, what's your credence in heads on waking?): one-third or one-half? [discussion]
- *Belief or credence (which is more fundamental?): belief, credence, neither?
- *Analysis of knowledge: justified true belief plus fourth condition, other analysis, unanalyzable? [or: JTB, split "unanalyzable but not primitive" and "primitive"?]
- Knowledge-first: yes or no?
- Peer disagreement (shared first-order evidence, A has responded rightly to it, should A reduce confidence?): conciliate fully (equal weight), conciliate somewhat, stand fast? [discussion]
- Testimony: reductionist or nonreductionist?
- Knowing how: propositional or nonpropositional? (knowing-that or ability? reducible or irreducible to knowing that?)
- Modal epistemology: rationalist or empiricist? (conceivability, intuitions, counterfactual-based, ...)
- Immediate justification (are beliefs immediately justified by something other than beliefs?): yes or no?
- Lottery proposition (can you know you'll lose?): yes or no?
- Fake barn case (barn amidst fake barns, you believe it's a barn): knowledge or mere belief?
- Norm of assertion: knowledge, justified belief, belief, truth?
- Norm of belief: knowledge, justification, truth?
- Knowledge entails belief: Yes or no?
- Practical reasons for belief (can they be epistemic reasons?): Yes or no?
- Epistemic reasons: evidentialist, explanationist, reliabilist, conservatist?
- Reasons: mental states, propositions, or facts?
- Epistemic value: veritism or not?
- Epistemic value of understanding: intrinsic or instrumental?
- Memory: transmits justification or generates justification?
- Belief at will: possible or impossible?
- Default entitlement: Yes or no?
- Virtue epistemology: reliabilist, responsibilist, skeptical?
- Standpoint epistemology: ...?
- Knowledge first: yes or no?
- Epistemic injustice: ...?
Philosophy of action and decision theory
- **Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?
- **Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?
- *Practical reason: Aristotelian, Humean or Kantian?
- Humean theory of reasons (desires explain reasons): yes or no [discussion]
- Humean theory of motivation (desires explain motivation): yes or no?
- Rational requirements: narrow scope or wide scope? [discussion]
- Decision theory: causal or evidential?
- Psychological egoism (ultimate motivation is always self-interest): yes or no?
- Intention: reducible or irreducible (to belief and desire)?
- Reasons: causes or not
- Weakness of will: impossible, possible but always irrational, possible and sometimes rational?
Philosophy of religion
- **God: theism or atheism?
- *Cosmological fine-tuning (what explains it?): design, multiverse, nothing
- *Arguments for theism (which is strongest?): cosmological, design, ontological, pragmatic, moral?
- Strongest argument against theism: argument from evil, simplicity, divine hiddenness, religious disagreement?
- Omnipotence: coherent or incoherent?
Philosophy of science, math, logic
- **Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?
- **Logic: classical or non-classical?
- *Quantum mechanics: collapse, hidden-variables, many-worlds, or epistemic? [discussion]
- *Spacetime: relationism or substantivalism?
- *Units of natural selection: genes, organism, or groups?
- *Foundations of mathematics: constructivism/intuitionism, formalism, logicism, structuralism,or set-theoretic? [discussion, discussion]
- *Values in science (is ideal scientific reasoning necessarily sensitive or insensitive to non-epistemic values): necessarily value-free, necessarily value-laden, sometimes both?
- *True contradictions: impossible, possible but non-actual, actual?
- *Continuum hypothesis (does it have a determinate truth-value?): determinate, indeterminate? [discussion]
- Probability: subjective, objective, logical, ... ? [discussion]
- Species: real or unreal?
- Scientific representation: truth/knowledge, verisimilitude, structural
isomorphism, empirical adequacy?
- Aim of science: truth, empirical adequacy, pragmatic?
- Explanation: pragmatic, epistemic, or metaphysical? (or: causal, unificational, ...?)
- Liar sentence: neither true nor false, but true and false, not truth-apt ...?
Ethical theory
- **Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?
- **Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?
- **Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?
- **Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?
- **Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch?
- *Meta-ethics: non-naturalism, naturalist realism, constructivism, expressivism, error theory?
- *Moral principles: moral generalism or moral particularism?
- *Practical reason: Humean or Kantian? (redundant with previous?)
- *Footbridge (pushing man off bridge will save five on track below, what ought one do?): push or don't push?
- *Ought implies can: yes or no?
- Humean theory of reasons (desires explain reasons): yes or no [discussion]
- Moral properties: non-naturalist realism, reductive realism, anti-realism
- Humean theory of motivation (desires explain motivation): yes or no?
- Supererogation: possible or impossible?
- Moral justification: intuitionism, moral perception, coherentism, infinitis, ... ?
- Moral knowledge (is there any?): none, a little, a lot
- Moral knowledge: empiricism or rationalism
- Moral judgment: relativism or nonrelativism?
- Moral judgment: sentimentalism or rationalism
- Moral judgment: truth-apt or non-truth-apt?
- Moral reasons: authoritative or overridable?
- Open question argument: good or bad [discussion]
- Goodness: primitive, ...? [discussion]
- Is doing harm worse than allowing harm: Yes or no? [discussion]
- Doctrine of double effect: true or false?
- Moral worth:
- Moral status: all-or-nothing or a matter of degree?
- Non-identity problem:
- Envy: rational or irrational?
- Evil: Banal or not?
- Normative ethics: Agent-neutral act consequentialism, agent-relative act consequentialism, rule consequentialism, Kantianism, Rossian intuitionism, contractualism, Neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, agent-based virtue ethics, instrumentalism, recursive virtue ethics, anti-theory
Value theory
- *Meaning of life: subjective, objective, nonexistent? [discussion]
- *Experience machine (would you enter?): yes or no?
- *Well-being: hedonism, desire satisfaction, objective list?
- *Immortality (would you choose it?): yes or no?
- Consciousness and value (is there value outside consciousness?): yes or no [discussion]
- Pleasure: phenomenological theory or desire theory?
- Death (is it a harm): yes or no?
- Virtue (is it necessary or sufficient for happiness): necessary, sufficient, both, neither
Applied ethics
- *Eating animals and animal products (are they permissible in ordinary circumstances?): omnivorism (yes and yes), vegetarianism (no and yes), veganism (no and no) [discussion]
- *Abortion (first trimester, no special circumstances): permissible or impermissible? [discussion]
- *Environmental ethics: anthropocentric or non-anthropocentric?
- *Human genetic engineering: permissible or impermissible?
- Selling bodily organs: permissible or impermissible?
- Euthanasia: permissible or impermissible?
- Animal rights: ...?
- Speciesism (human interests count for more): acceptable or unacceptable
- Cognitive enhancement (through drugs): morally problematic or not?
- Infanticide: impermissible or sometimes permissible?
- Psychopaths: mad or bad?
- Environmental ethics: holist or individualist (or: anthropocentrist, biocentrist, ecocentrist, sentientist) [discussion]
- Effective altruism: required or optional?
- Privacy: intrinsic value or instrumental value? (or: moral right or legal right only?)
- Moral status: sentientism, rationalism, biocentrism, speciesism, relational view? [or: condition for moral status: consciousness, rationality, life, species membership, relationships]
Political philosophy
- **Political philosophy: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?
- *Politics: capitalism or socialism?
- *Capital punishment: permissible or impermissible?
- *Method in political philosophy: ideal theory or non-ideal theory?
- Criminal punishment (what is its primary justification?): Retribution, restoration, rehabilitation, deterrence? [incapacitation, expression, shaming/signalling, rights forfeiture? -- too many options to work!]
- Immigration: open borders, some restrictions, heavy restrictions
- Form of government: Elected representative democracy, direct democracy, metitocracy/epistocracy, benevolent dictatorship? [lottocracy, ...]
- Global justice obligations: ...?
- Global egalitarianism: yes or no?
- Imprisonment: permissible or impermissible?
- Political contractarianism: yes or no?
- Philosophical anarchism: yes or no?
- Political authority: ...?
- Politics: progressive, conservative?
- Welfare rights: enforceable or unenforceable?
Legal philosophy
- *Law: legal positivism or legal non-positivism? [natural law, interpretivism?]
- Moral duty to obey the law: yes or no?
- Justification of contract law: natural promissory duties, artificial practice, hybrid
- Purpose of tort law: optimal deterrence, corrective justice, hybrid
- International law (is it genuine law?): yes or no?
- Global distributive justice: cosmopolitanism or statism
- Constitutional interpretation: originalism or non-originalism?
- Free speech (what is its basis?): marketplace of ideas or autonomy/liberty
- Purpose of legal systems: efficiency/optimal deterrence, protection of rights, hybrid
- Justification for state coercion: harm, offense, paternalism, moralism?
- Privacy rights: ...
- Free speech: ...
- Hate speech protected as free speech: yes or no?
Social philosophy
- *Gender: biological, psychological, social, unreal? [discussion]
- *Gender categories: preserve, revise, or eliminate? [discussion]
- *Race: biological, social, unreal? [discussion]
- *Race categories: preserve, revise, or eliminate? [or: conservationism, revisionism, eliminativism?] [discussion]
- Metaphysics of gender: essentialist realism, constructivist realism, other forms of realism, anti-realism? [discussion]
- Man/woman: biological, psychological, social, unreal?
- Disability: mere-difference, ...?
- Epistemic injustice: ...?
Aesthetics
- **Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?
- *Aesthetic experience: perception, pleasure, or sui generis?
- Aesthetic facts: are there any?
- Seeing-in: seeing or imagining?
- Intrinsic aesthetic value: pluralism or monism
- Pictorial representation: resemblance, experiential or structural theory?
- Intentionalism (about art): actual, hypothetical or anti-?
- Fiction: imagination or not?
- Morally bad artworks: aesthetically worse, better or worse, no relationship
Metaphilosophy
- **Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?
- *Aim of philosophy: truth, knowledge, understanding, wisdom, happiness, goodness, or justice?
- *Philosophical knowledge (is there any?): none, a little, a lot?
- *Philosophical progress (is there any?): none, a little, a lot [discussion]
- *Philosophical methods (which methods are most useful/important?): conceptual analysis, empirical philosophy, experimental philosophy, formal philosophy, intuition-based philosophy, linguistic philosophy? [allow multiple answers]
- Value of philosophy: none, a little, a lot
- Should philosophy respect common sense?: yes or no
- Future of academic philosophy: optimistic, pessimistic, neither?
- Philosophical methods (which methods are most useful/important?): conceptual analysis, deconstruction,
empirical philosophy, experimental philosophy, feminist philosophy,
formal philosophy, historical philosophy, intuition-based philosophy, linguistic
philosophy, phenomenology, pragmatism, reflective equilibrium, thought experiments, transcendental arguments, ...? [on reflection we probably won't include big traditions like phenomenology, pragmatism, feminism since these are a slightly different sort of things and numbers won't be comparable]
[discussion]
History of philosophy
- *Methodology for history of philosophy: analytic/rational reconstruction or contextual/historicist?
- *Kant: one world or two worlds?
- *Hume: skeptic or naturalist?
- *Wittgenstein: early or late?
- *Plato: knowledge only of forms, knowledge also of concrete things?
- Aristotle (does he think virtue is necessary or sufficient for happiness): necessary, sufficient, both, neither?
- Plato: one world or two worlds?
- Plato (objects of doxa vs. objects of episteme): disjoint, overlapping, the same?
- Plato (does he show that virtue is worth having for its own sake?): yes or no
- Aristotle: Inclusivism or exclusivism about happiness? (i.e. is happiness just contemplation or also moral virtue?)
- Socrates: Ironic or sincere?
- Empiricism/rationalism distinction (in history of modern philosophy): helpful or misleading?
- Kant: moral realist or constructivist?
- Hume: causal realist or nonrealist?
- Descartes' cogito: inference or intuition?
- Kant's idealism: metaphysical or epistemological?
- Leibniz: idealism or corporeal substances
- Berkeley (do unperceived objects exist): yes because God perceives them, yes because finite minds could perceive them, no?
- Berkeley (do tables and chairs exist): yes or no?
- The self is social: Fichte or Hegel?
- Hegel: metaphysical or Kantian idealist?
- Yogacara "mind only" (cittamātra): metaphysical or phenomenological?
- Madhyamaka: skepticism, anti-realism, or quietism?
- Confucian ethics: virtue ethics or something else?
- Better exemplification of Daoism: Laozi or Zhuangzi?
- Hobbes' materialism: metaphysics or scientific hypothesis?
- Rousseau's general will: democratic or totalitarian?
- Kantian vs Hegelian aesthetics: universal or historical conditions of taste?
- Epicurus (Does he equivocate about pleasure?): yes or no
- Stoics (Do they think you should extirpate their emotions?): yes or no?
- Academic skeptics (do they avoid dogmatic commitment): yes or no?
- Heidegger: metaphysically realist or anti-realist?
- Continental philosophy: metaphysically realist or anti-realist?
- Continental philosophy (preferred approach): Hegelian or Kierkegaardian?