Some of the comments here indicate that their authors have severely misunderstood the nature of those seven “major components”, and actually I think the OP may have too.
They are not clusters in philosopher-space, particular positions that many philosophers share. They are directions in philosopher-space along which philosophers tend to vary. Each could equivalently have been replaced by its exact opposite. They are defined, kinda, by clusters in philosophical idea-space: groups of questions with the property that a philosopher’s position on one tends to correlate strongly with his or her position on another.
The claim about these positions being made by the authors of the paper is not, not even a little bit, “most philosophers fall into one of these seven categories”. It is “you can generally tell most of what there is to know about a philosopher’s opinions if you know how well they fit or don’t fit each of these seven categories”. Not “philosopher-space is mostly made up of these seven pieces” but “philosopher-space is approximately seven-dimensional”.
So, for instance, someone asked “Is there a cluster that has more than 1 position in common with LW norms?”. The answer (leaving aside the fact that these things aren’t clusters in the sense the question seems to assume) is yes: for instance, the first one, “anti-naturalism”, is simply the reverse of “naturalism”, which is not far from being The Standard LW Position on everything it covers. The fourth, “anti-realism”, is more or less the reverse of The Standard LW Position on a different group of issues.
(So why did the authors of the paper choose to use “anti-naturalism” and “anti-realism” rather than “naturalism” and “realism”? I think in each case they chose the more distinctive and less usual of the two opposite poles. Way more philosophers are naturalists and realists than are anti-naturalists and anti-realists. I repeat: these things are not clusters in which a lot of philosophers are found; that isn’t what they’re for.)
This is very lucid; upvoting so more people see it. I worry even the images I added for fun may perpetuate this mistake by treating the dimensions as though they were discrete Tribes. I may get rid of those.
Some of the comments here indicate that their authors have severely misunderstood the nature of those seven “major components”, and actually I think the OP may have too.
They are not clusters in philosopher-space, particular positions that many philosophers share. They are directions in philosopher-space along which philosophers tend to vary. Each could equivalently have been replaced by its exact opposite. They are defined, kinda, by clusters in philosophical idea-space: groups of questions with the property that a philosopher’s position on one tends to correlate strongly with his or her position on another.
The claim about these positions being made by the authors of the paper is not, not even a little bit, “most philosophers fall into one of these seven categories”. It is “you can generally tell most of what there is to know about a philosopher’s opinions if you know how well they fit or don’t fit each of these seven categories”. Not “philosopher-space is mostly made up of these seven pieces” but “philosopher-space is approximately seven-dimensional”.
So, for instance, someone asked “Is there a cluster that has more than 1 position in common with LW norms?”. The answer (leaving aside the fact that these things aren’t clusters in the sense the question seems to assume) is yes: for instance, the first one, “anti-naturalism”, is simply the reverse of “naturalism”, which is not far from being The Standard LW Position on everything it covers. The fourth, “anti-realism”, is more or less the reverse of The Standard LW Position on a different group of issues.
(So why did the authors of the paper choose to use “anti-naturalism” and “anti-realism” rather than “naturalism” and “realism”? I think in each case they chose the more distinctive and less usual of the two opposite poles. Way more philosophers are naturalists and realists than are anti-naturalists and anti-realists. I repeat: these things are not clusters in which a lot of philosophers are found; that isn’t what they’re for.)
This is very lucid; upvoting so more people see it. I worry even the images I added for fun may perpetuate this mistake by treating the dimensions as though they were discrete Tribes. I may get rid of those.
I think that it might help to use the label “Rationalism” instead of “Rationalists” if you talk about dimension as opposed to clusters.
This post should be quoted at the very top of the article, I didn’t understand what I was reading about until I read this.