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What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

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Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#91

Post by manicbovine »

RivieraKid wrote: post #66
kruhft wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> People that pull the switch are thought to have more sociopathic tendencies That's interesting. Do you know what is the rationale behind this?

In addition to the aforementioned Charlie Rose episode, I recently saw Kevin Dutton talk about this in a short Big Think video [1] (or rather, the converse). I have no idea if it's valid.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUsGDVOCLVQ

Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#92

Post by manicbovine »

sramsay wrote: post #41
knowtheory wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one hypothesis. An alternative hypothesis would be to suggest that the more educated one becomes in philosophy the less that religion makes sense, and the clearer it becomes that there is no evidence for theism. (Note, I'm not advocating for either of these hypotheses, but correlation is not causation.)

I seriously doubt that. Most "professional philosophers" these days are doing analytical philosophy, and it's been at least 500 years since a non-crazy person has been persuaded one way or the other about God by studying logic. I suppose Georg Cantor might be an exception to this.

Gödel had an unpublished ontological "proof" [1] that's fairly simple to understand. It hinges on two things: 1.) accepting a logical system in which possibly necessary truths are necessary; 2.) accepting his argument that it's possible for god to exist.

But I guess you said non-crazy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6dels_ontological_proof

Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#93

Post by manicbovine »

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?

Metaphysical possibility is a slightly stronger version of logical possibility (although there is some debate about the exact relation.) For example, it is metaphysically possible for information to be transmitted faster than the speed of light.

There is a stronger version of possibility: nomological possibility, which means something like "possible under the laws of nature". It is nomologically impossible for information to be transmitted faster than the speed of light.

In the context of the philosophy of mind, this question is about whether or not it's possible (in some metaphysically possible world) for there to be fully functioning humans, but minus experience. If so, then experience is a true explanandum.

See [1] for an account of these modal truth states, [2] for an account of philosophical zombies.

[1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modality-epistemology/

[2] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/

Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#94

Post by glomph »

memla wrote: post #57
gadders wrote: post #51

I was hoping to see absolute or relative moral values, but couldn't find it on there.

No, but there is a question concerning moral realism. Since moral relativism is a type of moral anti-realism which is entertained by 27.7% of respondents, it follows that less than 27.7% philosophers are relativists.

Many formulations of relativism are actually pretty unpopular when compared anti-realism.

Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#96

Post by protomyth »

tocomment wrote: post #82
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?

Humans fail(1) quite a bit on this problem when it comes to animals. One case I remember was a driver who avoided a dog on the highway which resulted in the driver and 3 teenage girls dying.

I am not sure what a self-driving car is going to do.

1) "fail" as in get the car load of people killed.

Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#97

Post by nemo1618 »

Wintamute wrote: post #67
patdennis wrote: post #39

Here's one of my favorites. Glad to see the pros are evenly split, because this one really toasts my brain too. Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? Accept or lean toward: survival 337 / 931 (36.2%) Other 304 / 931 (32.7%) Accept or lean toward: death 290 / 931 (31.1%)

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 :)

Fun fact: there are 18.5 million billion trillion quadrillion Planck times per second. So you can think of the universe as a simulation that runs at 1.85*10^43 FPS, where each "frame" sees all light-speed particles move one Planck length in their direction of travel.

Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#98

Post by lurkinggrue »

Jacquass12321 wrote: post #87
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.

It's well know that most philosophers were heavy drinkers, I mean... Immanuel Kant was a real pissant, Who was very rarely stable.

Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#99

Post by deadairspace »

nemo1618 wrote: post #97
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 :)

Fun fact: there are 18.5 million billion trillion quadrillion Planck times per second. So you can think of the universe as a simulation that runs at 1.85*10^43 FPS, where each "frame" sees all light-speed particles move one Planck length in their direction of travel.

Is there any actual justification for viewing spacetime as being discrete, with unit 1 Planck length/time? As far as I'm aware, the Planck length is just a length you get when you multiply a load of constants together.

Re: What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

#100

Post by Apocryphon »

sramsay wrote: post #41
knowtheory wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one hypothesis. An alternative hypothesis would be to suggest that the more educated one becomes in philosophy the less that religion makes sense, and the clearer it becomes that there is no evidence for theism. (Note, I'm not advocating for either of these hypotheses, but correlation is not causation.)

I seriously doubt that. Most "professional philosophers" these days are doing analytical philosophy, and it's been at least 500 years since a non-crazy person has been persuaded one way or the other about God by studying logic. I suppose Georg Cantor might be an exception to this.

How about Bayes's theorem for proving the existence of God? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Swinburne
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