I think your point on the lack of consensus in philosophy is somewhat unfair. A lot of questions in the survey were chosen because they were hard or unsolved problems. A similar survey of unsolved hard questions in physics would also produce split answers. (for example ask if there actually an island of stability at higher atomic numbers).
On the easy questions, consensus seemed to be 95%+ once you threw out the 14% of theists (assume them to choose the answer logically required by theism) and people choosing “other”.
These are good thoughts, but my experience in philosophy doesn’t bear them out. You do find people in philosophy claiming “ah, we don’t agree on the big questions, but on these smaller questions there’s a consensus.” In my experience, though, these claims never stand up to close scrutiny.
On your specific suggestion, while theism is certainly correlated with certain positions (like libertarian free will and dualism), the correlation is not as strong as you might think. For example, I think Michael Rae, who was my metaphysics professor at Notre Dame, was a theist and sympathetic to compatibilist views about free will. Peter van Inwagen, a leading metaphysician and philosopher of religion, is a theist but takes a materialist view of the human mind, and sees the afterlife as being purely a matter of God resurrecting people’s physical bodies.
The philpapers survey data bears this out: if you look at the population of philosophers of religion, there are more theists than libertarians or people with non-physicalist views of the mind. And I’m pretty sure that’s in spite of the fact that some of the atheists and agnostics who specialize in philosophy of religion are dualists and/or libertarians: for example, Paul Draper is an agnostic and a libertarian.
Even ignoring that, not quite sure how you got the “95%+ if you ignore theists” conclusion. On free will, ignore the libertarians if you like but the compatibilists outnumber the no-free-will folks 5:1, not 20:1. Or in philosophy of mind, you could subtract 14% from the “non-phsycalism” number and only get about a 4:1 ratio of physicalists:non-physicalists.
Based on your claim that many theists don’t hold the views that seem to obviously pair with theism, my whole approach may be off, but for the sake of transparency the questions I looked at for my (admittedly loosely calculated) claim of “95% on easy questions excluding theists and other” were as follows:
All results sorted by course rather than fine
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?
Accept or lean toward: scientific realism 699 / 931 (75.1%)
Other 124 / 931 (13.3%)
Accept or lean toward: scientific anti-realism 108 / 931 (11.6%)
I kicked out other and assumed strong overlap with theists and opposing scientific realism
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?
Accept or lean toward: physicalism 526 / 931 (56.5%)
Accept or lean toward: non-physicalism 252 / 931 (27.1%)
Other 153 / 931 (16.4%)
I kicked out other and assumed strong overlap with theists and non physicalism. This is slightly below average for the level of consensus among things I was thinking about
God: theism or atheism?
Accept or lean toward: atheism 678 / 931 (72.8%)
Accept or lean toward: theism 136 / 931 (14.6%)
Other 117 / 931 (12.6%)
I kicked out other and theists and shockingly got near 100% agreement afterwards.
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?
Accept or lean toward: compatibilism 550 / 931 (59.1%)
Other 139 / 931 (14.9%)
Accept or lean toward: libertarianism 128 / 931 (13.7%)
Accept or lean toward: no free will 114 / 931 (12.2%)
I kicked out other and assumed strong overlap with theists and libertarianism. I further grouped no free will and compatibilists since compatibilists basically believe “no free will” if you interpret the phrase as having its common language meaning. Compatibleism claims the common langue concept is somewhat incoherent and offers a different but related concept that gets the same name but doesn’t mean the same thing. If you reduce the question to a binary, compatbislm is on the other side from libertarianism.
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?
Accept or lean toward: non-skeptical realism 760 / 931 (81.6%)
Other 86 / 931 (9.2%)
Accept or lean toward: skepticism 45 / 931 (4.8%)
Accept or lean toward: idealism 40 / 931 (4.3%)
~22% of theists are physicalists. The ratio of physicalists:non-physicalists among atheists is about 3:1.
Only 50% of theists accept the libertarian view of free will, but hardly any (<8% of) atheists do.
Theism is slightly correlated with scientific anti-realism, but only slightly. 70% of theists are scientific realists and and >10% of atheists are scientific anti-realists.
Shockingly, to me, ~17.7% of theists are moral anti-realists. Unlike the free will and philosophy of mind cases, I have no idea who these people are or what they’re thinking.
Also, you’re making some questionable assumptions about compatibilism. Many compatibilists would claim their definition of free will does match the common language understanding, and there’s some x-phi work that backs this up (done by Eddy Nahmias).
Shockingly, to me, ~17.7% of theists are moral anti-realists. Unlike the free will and philosophy of mind cases, I have no idea who these people are or what they’re thinking.
“There’s no objective morality, but God has the biggest stick”? That’s my best guess, anyway.
Wow! Those correlations are very surprising to me. I didn’t bother checking because it had seemed obvious to me that a theist must believe in a non physical enduring self or moral realism. I’m glad you asked me for more detail because my initial assumptions were way off.
On free will, ignore the libertarians if you like but the compatibilists outnumber the no-free-will folks 5:1, not 20:1.
Not sure what you think this means, aside from the fact that philosophers use a lot of confused terminology. The point about physicalism seems more disturbing.
By the way, I was also unpleasantly surprised to look at this recommended article from Nous—the supposedly high-quality philosophy periodical—and see no mention of Judea Pearl, nor any obvious discussion of the fact that people may have different goals or interests. The author doesn’t give me the impression she’s trying to solve the (alleged) problem of Sobel counterfactuals.
I think your point on the lack of consensus in philosophy is somewhat unfair. A lot of questions in the survey were chosen because they were hard or unsolved problems. A similar survey of unsolved hard questions in physics would also produce split answers. (for example ask if there actually an island of stability at higher atomic numbers).
On the easy questions, consensus seemed to be 95%+ once you threw out the 14% of theists (assume them to choose the answer logically required by theism) and people choosing “other”.
These are good thoughts, but my experience in philosophy doesn’t bear them out. You do find people in philosophy claiming “ah, we don’t agree on the big questions, but on these smaller questions there’s a consensus.” In my experience, though, these claims never stand up to close scrutiny.
On your specific suggestion, while theism is certainly correlated with certain positions (like libertarian free will and dualism), the correlation is not as strong as you might think. For example, I think Michael Rae, who was my metaphysics professor at Notre Dame, was a theist and sympathetic to compatibilist views about free will. Peter van Inwagen, a leading metaphysician and philosopher of religion, is a theist but takes a materialist view of the human mind, and sees the afterlife as being purely a matter of God resurrecting people’s physical bodies.
The philpapers survey data bears this out: if you look at the population of philosophers of religion, there are more theists than libertarians or people with non-physicalist views of the mind. And I’m pretty sure that’s in spite of the fact that some of the atheists and agnostics who specialize in philosophy of religion are dualists and/or libertarians: for example, Paul Draper is an agnostic and a libertarian.
Even ignoring that, not quite sure how you got the “95%+ if you ignore theists” conclusion. On free will, ignore the libertarians if you like but the compatibilists outnumber the no-free-will folks 5:1, not 20:1. Or in philosophy of mind, you could subtract 14% from the “non-phsycalism” number and only get about a 4:1 ratio of physicalists:non-physicalists.
Based on your claim that many theists don’t hold the views that seem to obviously pair with theism, my whole approach may be off, but for the sake of transparency the questions I looked at for my (admittedly loosely calculated) claim of “95% on easy questions excluding theists and other” were as follows: All results sorted by course rather than fine
I kicked out other and assumed strong overlap with theists and opposing scientific realism
I kicked out other and assumed strong overlap with theists and non physicalism. This is slightly below average for the level of consensus among things I was thinking about
I kicked out other and theists and shockingly got near 100% agreement afterwards.
I kicked out other and assumed strong overlap with theists and libertarianism. I further grouped no free will and compatibilists since compatibilists basically believe “no free will” if you interpret the phrase as having its common language meaning. Compatibleism claims the common langue concept is somewhat incoherent and offers a different but related concept that gets the same name but doesn’t mean the same thing. If you reduce the question to a binary, compatbislm is on the other side from libertarianism.
Kick out other
So I hadn’t checked this, but it turns out the survey did report correlation data. Link to correlation data for belief in God.
Some highlights:
~22% of theists are physicalists. The ratio of physicalists:non-physicalists among atheists is about 3:1.
Only 50% of theists accept the libertarian view of free will, but hardly any (<8% of) atheists do.
Theism is slightly correlated with scientific anti-realism, but only slightly. 70% of theists are scientific realists and and >10% of atheists are scientific anti-realists.
Shockingly, to me, ~17.7% of theists are moral anti-realists. Unlike the free will and philosophy of mind cases, I have no idea who these people are or what they’re thinking.
Also, you’re making some questionable assumptions about compatibilism. Many compatibilists would claim their definition of free will does match the common language understanding, and there’s some x-phi work that backs this up (done by Eddy Nahmias).
“There’s no objective morality, but God has the biggest stick”? That’s my best guess, anyway.
If a physicalist can think ethical subjectivism can work, why not a thesis?
Wow! Those correlations are very surprising to me. I didn’t bother checking because it had seemed obvious to me that a theist must believe in a non physical enduring self or moral realism. I’m glad you asked me for more detail because my initial assumptions were way off.
Not sure what you think this means, aside from the fact that philosophers use a lot of confused terminology. The point about physicalism seems more disturbing.
By the way, I was also unpleasantly surprised to look at this recommended article from Nous—the supposedly high-quality philosophy periodical—and see no mention of Judea Pearl, nor any obvious discussion of the fact that people may have different goals or interests. The author doesn’t give me the impression she’s trying to solve the (alleged) problem of Sobel counterfactuals.