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The reader polls so far: a summary of the results

Brian Leiter

The chart below summarizes the reader poll conducted over the past month or so–all got between 1200 and 1700 responses, roughly.   Readers can scroll through to find the precise wording, but in each case there were five choices:  a "central, foundational" part of the discipline; a major area of research; "useful when" either integrated with pertinent sciences (e.g., metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, language, mind) or integrated with contemporary philosophcial questions (e.g.,. logic, history).

 

Area/Opinion

Central, foundational

Major research area

Useful when…

Minor area

(Dismissive option)

Metaphysics

29%

21%

21%

8%

20%

Epistemology

56%

14%

13%

3%

15%

Philosophy of Language

31%

21%

21%

7%

21%

Philosophy of Mind

34%

25%

28%

5%

8%

Ethics (theoretical, not applied)

54%

22%

11%

4%

9%

History of Philosophy

55%

25%

12%

6%

2%

Logic

51%

12%

23%

5%

9%

 

Judging from hiring patterns, it would seem that top-ranked PhD programs take a different view of what is central and foundational than the readership as a whole–not surprising, given that the readership is much broader than faculty and grad students at top PGR departments.  What do readers make of the results?  (I'll be running some more polls, on more specialized sub-fields [e.g., X-phil, phenomenology, feminist philosophy etc.] soon.)

Because I am on the road, comments may take awhile to appear–please post them only once.

UPDATE:  Thanks to reader Rashed Ahmed for this nice diagram of the results.

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11 responses to “The reader polls so far: a summary of the results”

  1. kent

    Offering a summary of the summary. Counting "Central, foundational" as being equivalent to an "A", "Major research area" as a "B", and all the way down to the dismissive option as being worth an "F", I let excel calculate the following Grade Point Averages for each branch. In order, so far we have:

    History of Philosophy 3.25
    Ethics 3.08
    Epistemology 2.95
    Logic 2.91
    Philosophy of Mind 2.72
    Philosophy of Language 2.36
    Metaphysics 2.29

    (You're welcome!)

    –Kent

    (Just a former ethics professor who likes to see things summarized neatly.)

    Reply
  2. philosophy of mind grad student

    Personally, I never read the "useful when integrated with the pertinent sciences" column as a C grade. In philosophy of mind, for example, integration with the cognitive sciences is an extremely important driver of research in the discipline; the same goes for metaphysics and epistemology (if these fields are construed as including various parts of philosophy of science, which was not included as its own category). Philosophy of language also benefits from integration with the language science. Even ethics benefits from input from cognitive science. If anything, integration with the sciences is a sign of vitality in a philosophical sub-discipline.

    Reply
  3. Christopher Hitchcock

    On all of these polls I found I wanted an option that combined three of the choices: A foundational part of the discipline when informed by the relevant empirical science; worthless BS when not so informed.

    Reply
  4. John Turri

    The philosophy of mind grad student and Christopher Hitchcock raise excellent points. Really, at least three separate issues should be distinguished and measured separately.

    1. Is the area central to philosophy?
    2. To the extent that the area is central, does its centrality depend on being well integrated with empirical science.
    3. Is work in the area well integrated with empirical science?

    Reply
  5. Susan M. Purviance

    What is central and foundational to philosophy is Metaphysics, of course, and the other stuff is about how to study it, or how to formalize it, or what value it has, etc. But since Philosophy departments are no longer interested in or able to practice Philosophy, perhaps because Philosophy is essentially over, or dormant, this study is not going to get at these matters.

    Reply
  6. Lawrence Schrenk

    Given that the history of philosophy often seems to be relegated to a level beneath contemporary philosophy, it is interesting that it is the least 'dismissed' area surveyed, that is the smallest number of respondents placed it in the lowest two categories (8%).

    Reply
  7. David Chalmers

    There's obviously a graining issue here. "History of philosophy" is a broad category many of whose subspecialties (ancient Greek philosophy, early modern philosophy, etc) are of roughly similar size and grain to metaphysics, philosophy of mind, etc. The same goes to a lesser extent for theoretical ethics (meta-ethics, normative ethics, at least some of political philosophy). And it's natural to suppose that the breadth of an area will correlate with how central/major/etc the area is taken to be. So my guess is that if the survey had asked about individual subspecialties of history and ethics the results would have been somewhat less positive, and that if it had asked about say "metaphysics and epistemology" as a whole the results would have been somewhat positive than about the subspecialties. If that's right, not much can be read into the differences here.

    Reply
  8. MA Graduate Student

    Just a thought, but what about using the Condorcet method for ranking the various specialized sub-fields rather than singular polls? I feel like on a singular basis, the responses to each field won't be too terribly interesting. I imagine most responses will simply be "x is a minor area of research, because I find it agreeable", or "x is , because I find it disagreeable."

    In contrast, with the major fields of philosophy there was a singular interest in seeing what people thought about the field, whether they thought it was central to the discipline, a major area of research, a minor area, or disagreeable. The biggest interest with the specialized sub-fields will be once everything is concluded, and seeing how much more disagreeable one specialized sub-field was to another.

    Reply
  9. Jason Stanley

    Social and Political Philosophy? I hear some good philosophers used to work on that area.

    Reply
  10. Anand Vaidya

    I am curious. Can we get a poll on comparative philosophy / cross-cultural philosophy? Or even just a poll on non-Western philosophy?

    Reply
  11. Mayo

    I guess Philosophy of Science is not included?

    BL COMMENT: We'll get there!

    Reply

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