Results from the 2020 PhilPapers survey, with responses from nearly 1,800 philosophers (mainly from North America, Europe, and Australasia), to questions on a variety of philosophical subjects and problems, have now been published.

In their commentary on the survey, David Bourget (Western University) and David Chalmers (NYU) explain the its value:

Surveys like this can play at least three roles within philosophy. First, todays sociology is tomorrows history, and these resultsmay be of some use to future historians of philosophy. Second, philosophers often appeal to sociological claims about the distributions of views among philosophers, for example in justifying which views should be taken seriously, and it makes sense for these claims to be well-grounded. Third, if philosophy has any tendency to converge to the truth, then philosophers views might provide some guidance about the truth of philosophical views. It is not clear whether philosophy tends to converge to the truth, so we dont make the third claim about guidance, but surveys can clearly play the first two roles in philosophical practice.

The survey asked 40 main questions and 60 additional questions.

Here are the results of the main questions:

Bourget and Chalmers note that the results reported above cannot be directly compared to the 2009 results, owing to the change in the population surveyed. Still, they noted some of the largest shifts in responses among those who took both surveys. These include swings:

See their write-up for a more detailed longitudinal analysis of philosophers views.

Here are a few results from the newly added questions:

Bourget and Chalmers also include information about which answers to different questions are correlated. For the complete set of results and additional analysis, go here.

Discussion welcome.

Note:The post was edited to make clear that the 2020 data cannot be directly compared to the 2009 data, owing to changes in the survey population.

See original here:

What Philosophers Believe: Results from the 2020 PhilPapers Survey - Daily Nous