Online research in philosophy

The metasurvey idea is fun. It would be nice to subject the answers to some statistical analysis. One question one would like to have answered is what kind of mistakes do we tend to commit in our predictions of the views of others. Do we err in assuming that others share our views or in assuming that they don't? There is a room for a meta-metasurvey here, by the way ...

Two links on the web page are broken: The first two links under 'Discussion and analysis' namely

• On the conception and design of the Survey: Editors' thoughts
• On the results of the Survey: Editors' thoughts

I was surprised to see the words 'error' or right/wrong here. I had thought the survey was asking what individuals thought, not what they thought others thought.

Perhaps I misread the instructions, in which case none of my answers is relevant.

Aaron

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for this.  It looks like the broken links are due to the way some browsers handle relative links.  We've changed them to absolute links.

The Survey asked what respondents thoughts, while the Metasurvey asked them to predict responses to the Survey.   The talk of "error" concerns the Metasurvey, not the Survey.

If I were a freshman beginning to study philosophy, I would use the survey results to get started with a set of philosophical opinions.  I bet many students don't have strong philosophical convictions, even after reading a few papers. Some are not sure what to think. Many are unduly influenced by the professors who teach them. A much better method would be to start with the most widely accepted opinions and engage with the literature (and professional philosophers) from that point of view. It would not be the end of inquiry, but a principled way to begin. A better method than relying on intuition or influence.