Survey questions
The 2020 PhilPapers Survey included 100 multiple-choice philosophical questions. We expanded the 30 questions asked on the 2009 PhilPapers Survey to a list of 40 main questions that would be asked of all participants, and added a further group of 60 additional (often more specialized) questions that would be asked of one-sixth of participants each. As a result, each participant was asked to answer a minimum of 50 questions (40 main questions and 10 additional questions). Participants were given the option of answering some or all of the other 50 additional questions if they chose to, with a maximum of 100 philosophical questions per participant. About half of the participants completed 50-99 questions and half completed all 100 questions. The 70 new questions were selected through consultation with many philosophers from a wide range of areas. For some reflections on the questions, see editors' thoughts from 2009 and 2020.
In addition to the 100 philosophical questions, the survey included questions regarding the philosophical background and demographic characteristics of respondents. The following information was collected:
- Area(s) of specialization
- Nationality
- Country of primary affiliation
- Country of PhD institution
- Gender
- Year of birth
- Philosopher(s) identified with
- Philosophical tradition
See the demographics results page for more detail.
List of philosophical questions
- Main Questions
- A priori knowledge: no or yes?
- Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?
- Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?
- Aim of philosophy (which is most important?): wisdom, understanding, truth/knowledge, happiness, or goodness/justice?
- Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?
- Eating animals and animal products (is it permissible to eat animals and/or animal products in ordinary circumstances?): vegetarianism (no and yes), omnivorism (yes and yes), or veganism (no and no)?
- Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?
- Experience machine (would you enter?): yes or no?
- External world: skepticism, non-skeptical realism, or idealism?
- Footbridge (pushing man off bridge will save five on track below, what ought one do?): don't push or push?
- Free will: compatibilism, no free will, or libertarianism?
- Gender: unreal, biological, social, or psychological?
- God: atheism or theism?
- Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?
- Knowledge claims: relativism, contextualism, or invariantism?
- Laws of nature: non-Humean or Humean?
- Logic: classical or non-classical?
- Meaning of life: objective, nonexistent, or subjective?
- Mental content: internalism or externalism?
- Meta-ethics: moral anti-realism or moral realism?
- Metaphilosophy: non-naturalism or naturalism?
- Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?
- Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?
- Moral motivation: externalism or internalism?
- Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?
- Normative ethics: consequentialism, virtue ethics, or deontology?
- Perceptual experience: sense-datum theory, representationalism, qualia theory, or disjunctivism?
- Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?
- Philosophical methods (which methods are the most useful/important?)
- Philosophical progress (is there any?): a lot, a little, or none?
- Political philosophy: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?
- Proper names: Millian or Fregean?
- Race: unreal, social, or biological?
- Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?
- Teletransporter (new matter): death or survival?
- Time: B-theory or A-theory?
- Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): don't switch or switch?
- Truth: epistemic, correspondence, or deflationary?
- Vagueness: epistemic, semantic, or metaphysical?
- Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?
- Abortion (first trimester, no special circumstances): permissible or impermissible?
- Aesthetic experience: sui generis, pleasure, or perception?
- Analysis of knowledge: other analysis, justified true belief, or no analysis?
- Arguments for theism (which argument is strongest?): design, cosmological, ontological, moral, or pragmatic?
- Belief or credence (which is more fundamental?): neither, credence, or belief?
- Capital punishment: permissible or impermissible?
- Causation: nonexistent, counterfactual/difference-making, primitive, or process/production?
- Chinese room: doesn't understand or understands?
- Concepts: empiricism or nativism?
- Consciousness: functionalism, eliminativism, dualism, panpsychism, or identity theory?
- Continuum hypothesis (does it have a determinate truth-value?): indeterminate or determinate?
- Cosmological fine-tuning (what explains it?): no fine-tuning, design, multiverse, or brute fact?
- Environmental ethics: non-anthropocentric or anthropocentric?
- Extended mind: no or yes?
- Foundations of mathematics: set-theoretic, formalism, constructivism/intuitionism, logicism, or structuralism?
- Gender categories: revise, preserve, or eliminate?
- Grounds of intentionality: phenomenal, primitive, inferential, interpretational, or causal/teleological?
- Hard problem of consciousness (is there one?): yes or no?
- Human genetic engineering: impermissible or permissible?
- Hume (what is his view?): skeptic or naturalist?
- Immortality (would you choose it?): yes or no?
- Interlevel metaphysics (which is the most useful?): grounding, supervenience, identity, or realization?
- Justification: infinitism, reliabilism, nonreliabilist foundationalism, or coherentism?
- Kant (what is his view?): one world or two worlds?
- Law: legal non-positivism or legal positivism?
- Material composition: restrictivism, nihilism, or universalism?
- Metaontology: anti-realism, deflationary realism, or heavyweight realism?
- Method in history of philosophy (which do you prefer?): contextual/historicist or analytic/rational reconstruction?
- Method in political philosophy (which do you prefer?): ideal theory or non-ideal theory?
- Mind uploading (brain replaced by digital emulation): survival or death?
- Moral principles: moral particularism or moral generalism?
- Morality: non-naturalism, constructivism, expressivism, naturalist realism, or error theory?
- Normative concepts (which is most fundamental?): ought, reasons, value, or fit?
- Other minds (for which groups are some members conscious?)
- Ought implies can: no or yes?
- Philosophical knowledge (is there any?): none, a little, or a lot?
- Plato (what is his view?): knowledge only of forms or knowledge also of concrete things?
- Politics: capitalism or socialism?
- Possible worlds: concrete, abstract, or nonexistent?
- Practical reason: Kantian, Humean, or Aristotelian?
- Principle of sufficient reason: false or true?
- Properties: transcendent universals, immanent universals, nonexistent, tropes, or classes?
- Propositional attitudes: representational, phenomenal, nonexistent, or dispositional?
- Propositions: structured entities, nonexistent, acts, sets, or simple entities?
- Quantum mechanics: hidden-variables, epistemic, many-worlds, or collapse?
- Race categories: revise, eliminate, or preserve?
- Rational disagreement (can two people with the same evidence rationally disagree?): non-permissivism or permissivism?
- Response to external-world skepticism (which is strongest?): semantic externalist, pragmatic, contextualist, dogmatist, abductive, or epistemic externalist?
- Semantic content (which expressions are context-dependent?): minimalism (no more than a few), radical contextualism (most or all) , or moderate contextualism (intermediate)?
- Sleeping beauty (woken once if heads, woken twice if tails, credence in heads on waking?): one-half or one-third?
- Spacetime: substantivalism or relationism?
- Statue and lump: one thing or two things?
- Temporal ontology: presentism, growing block, or eternalism?
- Theory of reference: causal, deflationary, or descriptive?
- Time travel: metaphysically impossible or metaphysically possible?
- True contradictions: possible but non-actual, impossible, or actual?
- Units of selection: genes or organisms?
- Values in science (is ideal scientific reasoning necessarily sensitive or insensitive to non-epistemic values?): necessarily value-laden, can be either, or necessarily value-free?
- Well-being: hedonism/experientialism, desire satisfaction, or objective list?
- Wittgenstein (which do you prefer?): early or late?