What has surprised me the most recently is reading this THINK document about the huge effects that self-improvement can have on one’s ability to change the world for the better.
I was also surprised to learn that 25% of the philosophers that responded to Brian Leiter’s ‘Philosophers, Eating, Ethics’ poll said they were vegetarian and an additional 8% said they were vegan. In other words, a whopping one third of respondents reported being either vegans or vegetarians. The proportion of vegetarians in this sample is about eight times larger than that of the general American population; the proportion of vegans is 10-20 times larger.
I agree with gwern. Perhaps a more credible source of scepticism about the poll’s results is that they have been biased by self-sampling. Vegetarians care more about vegetarianism than meat-eaters care about meat-eating, so it’s plausible to suppose that vegetarians are overrepresented in the sample.
Many non-philosophers read Leiter, yes; but it’s worth remembering that his blog is possibly the most popular academic philosophy blog out there, I have seen it said.
(Plus, non-philosophers responding can be expected to dilute the vegetarian philosophers since vegetarian is so rare unless you have some good reason to expect the non-philosophers to be even more skewed vegetarian.)
The people who vote on a poll don’t have to be regular readers. People who want to promote veganism as being ethical have an incentive to tell their friends to vote on the poll. It takes a handful of well connected vegans to get 100′s of votes via twitter and facebook.
Even if you grant that the people who respond to the poll are infact philosophers, I would estimate the response rate of vegetarians and vegan to be higher than the response rate of people who don’t make deliberate choices about their diet.
100s of votes which presumably all ignored “Please only answer if you are a philosophy student or teacher.” And does a vegan Twitter or FB appeal for meatpuppets also explain why more than half the carnivore respondents reported ethical qualms?
Reporting ethical qualms and actually changing your behavior based on your ethical qualm are two different things.
I vaguely remember a study that concluded that philosophers are bad at changing their eating behavior based on their own ethical considerations. Unfortunately I don’t find it at the moment.
Maybe someone could persuade Leiter to run something like the LessWrong survey with his readership?
I vaguely remember a study that concluded that philosophers are bad at changing their eating behavior based on their own ethical considerations. Unfortunately I don’t find it at the moment.
The poll had exactly one question. The LessWrong survey had 106. If Leiter would have made a survey with multiple questions, one of those questions would be the amount of academic philosophy education that the respondend got.
We could focus on those people to answer the question whether academic philosophers have different views on being vegan than the general population.
A survey with a lot of questions is also less likely to be the target of meatpuppet voting.
What has surprised me the most recently is reading this THINK document about the huge effects that self-improvement can have on one’s ability to change the world for the better.
I was also surprised to learn that 25% of the philosophers that responded to Brian Leiter’s ‘Philosophers, Eating, Ethics’ poll said they were vegetarian and an additional 8% said they were vegan. In other words, a whopping one third of respondents reported being either vegans or vegetarians. The proportion of vegetarians in this sample is about eight times larger than that of the general American population; the proportion of vegans is 10-20 times larger.
I don’t think there a valid reason to assume that all people who responded to Brian Leiter’s internet poll are philosophers.
There a good chance that the poll isn’t representative of the general population of philosophers.
I agree with gwern. Perhaps a more credible source of scepticism about the poll’s results is that they have been biased by self-sampling. Vegetarians care more about vegetarianism than meat-eaters care about meat-eating, so it’s plausible to suppose that vegetarians are overrepresented in the sample.
Many non-philosophers read Leiter, yes; but it’s worth remembering that his blog is possibly the most popular academic philosophy blog out there, I have seen it said.
(Plus, non-philosophers responding can be expected to dilute the vegetarian philosophers since vegetarian is so rare unless you have some good reason to expect the non-philosophers to be even more skewed vegetarian.)
The people who vote on a poll don’t have to be regular readers. People who want to promote veganism as being ethical have an incentive to tell their friends to vote on the poll. It takes a handful of well connected vegans to get 100′s of votes via twitter and facebook.
Even if you grant that the people who respond to the poll are infact philosophers, I would estimate the response rate of vegetarians and vegan to be higher than the response rate of people who don’t make deliberate choices about their diet.
100s of votes which presumably all ignored “Please only answer if you are a philosophy student or teacher.” And does a vegan Twitter or FB appeal for meatpuppets also explain why more than half the carnivore respondents reported ethical qualms?
Reporting ethical qualms and actually changing your behavior based on your ethical qualm are two different things.
I vaguely remember a study that concluded that philosophers are bad at changing their eating behavior based on their own ethical considerations. Unfortunately I don’t find it at the moment.
Maybe someone could persuade Leiter to run something like the LessWrong survey with his readership?
I guess you didn’t even read the link, then.
I didn’t read every word of the article but I skimmed it.
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/10/philosophers-eating-ethics.html seems to be the post that had the poll.
The poll had exactly one question. The LessWrong survey had 106. If Leiter would have made a survey with multiple questions, one of those questions would be the amount of academic philosophy education that the respondend got.
We could focus on those people to answer the question whether academic philosophers have different views on being vegan than the general population.
A survey with a lot of questions is also less likely to be the target of meatpuppet voting.