The Philosophical Survey

David Bourget and I have recently launched a new PhilPapers project: the Philosophical Survey.  This is a survey of the philosophical views of members of the philosophy profession and others.  We encourage all professional philosophers, graduate students, and interested others to take part.

The survey contains thirty questions, each giving a choice between 2-4 views on a philosophical issue.  Respondents can indicate that they accept or lean toward one of the options or can give one of a variety of "other" answers.  We have kept the questions as simple as possible, as clarification would be a never-ending process.  The survey also asks for some optional background information.

We have already launched the survey by e-mail to philosophers in 99 leading departments and to users of PhilPapers, and so far we have had responses by around 1000 professional philosophers and 700 others.  We are now opening up the survey publicly so that anyone can take it. The questions focus on issues in analytic philosophy, and will make most sense to those with some experience in the area, but anyone is welcome to take it.  We will publish results for the population of professional philosophers, graduate students, and other groups.

You can take the survey here.  Note that to take the survey, you must either have a PhilPapers account or  create a guest survey account, which will require a valid email address.  If you have received a direct email invitation to take the survey, please use the unique link found in that email instead.  These measures allow us to minimize survey abuse and to maximize the reliability of responses.  For further information about privacy concerns and about the methodology of the survey, see the survey's information page.

Comments

[Clayton]

Great fun, thanks for putting it together.

Can you do more of these? I'd like to see more data on experimental philosophy and epistemology.

[Beresen Senali]

Jumpin' Jesus,

This sounds like experimental philosophy---and to what end? Hope to strike another's conceptual gold vein beyond the scope of your own ideas?
Marketing for some book selling scheme? Determine the majority party so you may join it? Find out if your ideas are being ignored?
ha!

[djc]

Clayton: We may do a follow-up of some sort (perhaps in a different format) next year.

Beresen: Mainly curiosity about the sociology of philosophy. Not philosophy per se, and no particular connection to my own ideas. Still, data about the sociology of philosophy is relevant to the first-order practice of philosophy in various ways -- we'll have something about that online soon.