The chart below summarizes the reader poll conducted over the past month or so--all got between 1200 and 1700 responses, roughly. Readers can scroll through to find the precise wording, but in each case there were five choices: a "central, foundational" part of the discipline; a major area of research; "useful when" either integrated with pertinent sciences (e.g., metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, language, mind) or integrated with contemporary philosophcial questions (e.g.,. logic, history).
|
Area/Opinion |
Central, foundational |
Major research area |
Useful when… |
Minor area |
(Dismissive option) |
|
Metaphysics |
29% |
21% |
21% |
8% |
20% |
|
Epistemology |
56% |
14% |
13% |
3% |
15% |
|
Philosophy of Language |
31% |
21% |
21% |
7% |
21% |
|
Philosophy of Mind |
34% |
25% |
28% |
5% |
8% |
|
Ethics (theoretical, not applied) |
54% |
22% |
11% |
4% |
9% |
|
History of Philosophy |
55% |
25% |
12% |
6% |
2% |
|
Logic |
51% |
12% |
23% |
5% |
9% |
Judging from hiring patterns, it would seem that top-ranked PhD programs take a different view of what is central and foundational than the readership as a whole--not surprising, given that the readership is much broader than faculty and grad students at top PGR departments. What do readers make of the results? (I'll be running some more polls, on more specialized sub-fields [e.g., X-phil, phenomenology, feminist philosophy etc.] soon.)
Because I am on the road, comments may take awhile to appear--please post them only once.
UPDATE: Thanks to reader Rashed Ahmed for this nice diagram of the results.
