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What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

philpapers.org

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Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#81

Post by Zikes »

goldfeld wrote: post #75
Wintamute wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lean towards a sort of death. But perhaps we're all dying and reanimating in between each Planck time instant anyway, in which case we shouldn't worry about it too much :)

That quite defines how I think about it. The current "me" is as different from the me within a second from now as from a theoretical me at the other end of a teleportation device that delivers me there within a second. The three selves are all distinct from each other and in fact are as distinct (and as close) to each other as from any other human being, with the caveat that the 'me's a second from now inherit all th…

Depending on granularity, your comment was written by a number of people approaching infinity?

Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#82

Post by tocomment »

chime wrote: post #30

I was surprised to see so many leaning towards the switch in the Trolley problem. I still haven't made my mind on that.

I think it's interesting that self driving cars will have to decide this themselves someday. What do you think we'll have them do?

Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#83

Post by goldfeld »

Zikes wrote: post #81
goldfeld wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quite defines how I think about it. The current "me" is as different from the me within a second from now as from a theoretical me at the other end of a teleportation device that delivers me there within a second. The three selves are all distinct from each other and in fact are as distinct (and as close) to each other as from any other human being, with the caveat that the 'me's a second from now inherit all th…

Depending on granularity, your comment was written by a number of people approaching infinity?

Yes. And I really do think it approaches infinity, or else our wetware has a limited clocking speed and that would define a single atomic moment of awareness (seems more likely since we're highly advanced computers, but computers nonetheless.) Even as I was writing the comment several clocks might have been spent not on it, but picking up ambient sound and other stimulae. To the extent that I'm half conscious to these other things, I was actually fully conscious to them though for only a few number of clocks, whereas things on which I seem to be fully conscious are demanding the majority of my (multi)processor clocks. There's the case for whether we can truly multitask--are we multi-core? We definitely are as to the many functions done subconsciously, but what about the conscious regions of the brain? But to simplify the thought experiment, we can simply think that we can only really spend any single moment of awareness on a single atomic thing, and like a computer we juggle attention between various things so fast as to make it seem we're doing them all concurrently (like the various applications simultaneously running on a computer.)

The upside, of course, is that my philosophy frees me up for gultfree teletransportation. Bring it on!

Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#84

Post by Herring »

knowtheory wrote: post #73
Herring wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you're running experiments you're called a scientist. Talking about has limited utility.

It's sad that more people don't study the philosophy and sociology of Science, especially people in engineering and the sciences. Scientists make ontological and metaphysical claims about the nature of the universe, and unless they avail themselves of the philosophy of science there are a lot of arguments that one can't defend against.. There are a lot of fundamentalists who avail themselves of Thomas Kuhn's argument…

I don't know if it's sad really. I guess it depends what your priorities are. There's fighting off philosophical arguments, and there's getting things done. Too much emphasis on either one reduces your ability to do the other.

Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#85

Post by Jayschwa »

kruhft wrote: post #64
RivieraKid wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple, switching results in fewer deaths.

But switching requires an action that will cause the death of another. Rational people look for a lower number of deaths and the less rational (emotional) look to avoid action creating the misery of someone else. People that pull the switch are thought to have more sociopathic tendencies even though doing the action would result in a lower overall number of deaths.

> Rational people look for a lower number of deaths and the less rational (emotional) look to avoid action creating the misery of someone else.

Whether or not the action is rational depends on the underlying principles. If the most important thing is to minimize lives lost, then the moral math of causing harm to one for the benefit of many is simple. However, not everyone would agree with this principle. It's not necessarily more emotional.

Inaction vs. action is an important distinction to some.

Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#86

Post by aaimnr »

gizzlon wrote: post #7

Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? Accept or lean toward: [..] Accept or lean toward: metaphysically possible 217 / 931 (23.3%) Uhm.. ? :) What does "metaphysically" mean in this context?

Another phil major here...

For all interested in the zombies, check out David Chalmers website: http://consc.net/zombies.html

The guy has stated one of the most famous arguments about the consciousness in his book The Conscious Mind.

Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#87

Post by Jacquass12321 »

adbge wrote: post #24

There's quite a bit of further discussion (including explanations of a number of the questions) scattered across a couple different LessWrong threads. Explanations of many of the questions: http://lesswrong.com/lw/emj/poll_less_wrong_and_mainstream_p... What do professional philosophers believe, and why? http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/hbw/what_do_professiona... Here's a list of links to more discussions: http:/…

Survey of eating habits among philosophers: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/10/philosophers-e....

I assumed they all starved because one guy never passed the fork.

Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#88

Post by aaimnr »

RivieraKid wrote: post #47
pessimizer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Content of consciousness is the only thing that we can be sure of. Let's say I'm scared. This fact is true no matter if I'm in a dream or hallucinating. I admire your confidence.

Thanks :)

The admiration seems to be sarcastic, though...

Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#90

Post by rthomas6 »

adbge wrote: post #24

There's quite a bit of further discussion (including explanations of a number of the questions) scattered across a couple different LessWrong threads. Explanations of many of the questions: http://lesswrong.com/lw/emj/poll_less_wrong_and_mainstream_p... What do professional philosophers believe, and why? http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/hbw/what_do_professiona... Here's a list of links to more discussions: http:/…

Is there a better source for the economists survey? That is very interesting and I'd like to see more details about the study. Specifically, how many economists were surveyed, and how were the questions asked?
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