Data Skeptic

Today, we are joined by David Bourget. David is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Western University in London, Ontario. David is also the co-director of the PhilPapers Foundation and Director of the Center for Digital Philosophy. He joins us to discuss the PhilPapers Survey project. David began by explaining what the PhilPapers Index is about. At its core, it is a comprehensive bibliography of philosophy and philosophers’ paradigms on issues. He also talked about the PhilPapers survey. The PhilPapers survey aimed to gather philosophers’ opinions on different philosophical topics. David spoke extensively about the survey: the number of questions, the type of questions, the sample size, etc. On the survey results, he discussed situations where there was consensus and where there were diverging responses. The PhilPapers survey was initially taken in 2009, but there was a follow-up survey in 2020. David discussed the need for the subsequent survey and what changed. He mentioned the metric for measuring the