Friday, June 13, 2008

Experimental Philosophy Survey

Thomas Nadelhoffer has posted a new online survey, and he wants philosophical respondents. Link here. I shouldn't reveal the contents, though lest I worsen the problems of self-selection bias! The survey took me about 15 minutes to complete, going pretty fast.

4 comments:

The Uncredible Hallq said...

Did anyone else finish up this survey, and leave wondering if maybe something was wrong with them?

Anonymous said...

I did not finish the survey, and I still left wondering if maybe something was wrong with it.

I was reminded of something that Deleuze had said: "Questions are invented, like anything else. If you aren't allowed to invent your questions, with elements from all over the place, from never mind where, if people 'pose' them to you, you haven't much to say." And, sure enough, I didn't have much too say -- nothing, at any rate, that obviously resembled any of the answers to pick from. I would prefer to have said that I believe in x, y, and z, and then left it to others to decide for themselves which answers would have been most fitting for me, taking into account all of the elements they bring to bear on their understanding (read: invention) of the questions, since obviously I can't know what those elements are beyond a shifting range of generalities.

Eric Schwitzgebel said...

Yeah, I too had some concerns about the survey -- but I don't want to get too specific about them, since some subjects might read these comments before taking it!

Anonymous said...

I looked out of curiosity. Started it, since they did welcome non-philosophers (though curiously they seemed to assume only philosophers research the history of philosophy). Gave up on it, mainly out of boredom. But I'll second that something wasn't quite right with it, and it wasn't just that it was tedious.