Sometimes we stumble onto some inspiration that we don’t necessarily have something to add to, but we want to share it with our newsletter readers anyway. This week that is just the case. This month the 2020 PhilPapers Survey results dropped. In sequel to the last (2009) edition, nearly 1,800 English-speaking philosophers from around the world were surveyed on 100 philosophical questions. These questions polled the opinions of philosophers on an extremely wide range of topics like ethical dilemmas (the Trolley problem, vegetarianism, and abortion), or more abstract topics like consciousness, aesthetics, truth, and metaphysics. For example, roughly 63% of philosophers would pull the switch on the trolley problem to change the train from the track with five to the track with only one person, but only 21% would push a man off the bridge to save the same amount of people.
It is incredibly interesting to see what the general consensus (or lack thereof) is among the exact people that spend big parts of their lives thinking about these problems. And how it shifted since 2009.
We definitely recommend taking a look at the results if you have a minute to spare.
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