Study: Neurodiversity among Philosophers
A new study is underway to learn about neurodiversity in philosophers.
The eventual aim is to discover whether and how neurodiversity is related to different philosophical views.
One of the researchers involved in the study, Thomas Nadelhoffer (College of Charleston), writes:
My collaborators and I are conducting research on neurodiversity in professional philosophers (and those training to be philosophers) and in the general population. Neurodiversity encompasses the varied neurological makeup of all individuals, but it is frequently associated with autism and other neurological or developmental traits like ADHD.
Our plan is to first recruit current and future professional philosophers through philosophy blogs. That’s where you come in! The survey contains a battery of psychometric scales that measure different cognitive styles and abilities. Then, there are two short thought experiments, each followed by a few questions. Once we have collected data from philosophers, we will collect a matched data set from the general population.
Our long-term goal is to investigate whether neurodiverse traits (in philosophers and in the general population) predict different philosophical intuitions and views. The survey should take less than fifteen minutes to complete. Once we have collected and analyzed the data, we will share the findings with the philosophical community. The study has been approved by IRB at College of Charleston. If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know: Thomas Nadelhoffer, Dept. of Philosophy, College of Charleston, [email protected]
That’s neat, cool questions and design. Looking forward to the write-up!
A very cool project! I wonder about selection effects; I’m too (irrationally) neurotic to ever voluntarily take a test measuring my cognitive abilities, even if the information were to be totally anonymized etc. Maybe I’m the only one? Perhaps not, though, in a field like ours that exhibits a sometimes toxic obsession with assessing and praising intelligence
FWIW you don’t get to see your own ‘results’. You won’t be told whether you have any neurodiverse traits or which ones. I also suspect, though here I’m not sure, that the data is not just anonymized but aggregated — that the survey will not output any individual profile.
Good to know! But for me, the hesitation is partly just about the fact of being measured. I have no idea how idiosyncratic that is.
That makes sense.
It is a general limitation of surveys that they fail to capture the part of the population that is aversive to surveys. This is usually fine unless the surveys try to measure traits of interest that correlate with aversion to surveys, which might be the case here. That’s a good point.
Plot twist: it’s actually a survey on soup preferences and they’re using subterfuge to get more objective results.
It’s well known that all philosophers have an opinion on soup.
How funny; I was just thinking to myself how I seem to always arrive late to the party so to speak, (a late bloomer of sorts) yetI came across this survey the same morning it was posted. Looking forward to seeing the published results!
I’m an unprofessional autodidact philosopher so I’m not sure my involvement would be appreciated or needed.
It seems to me that the study would probably benefit from a datapoint from that perspective. There is certainly space within the survey to give that information.
Check out those with temporal lobe epilepsy
I have temporal lobe epilepsy so I’m curious about your comment. Do you think people with temporal lobe epilepsy might have unique intuitions?
Apparently it leads to increased religiosity, something about it being responsible for religious experiences.
Hmm, unfortunately I just get intense fear. No fun religious experience there, lol.
This is interesting. I’ve suspected for awhile that the majority of philosophers have neurodiverse traits. If so, I’m curious what significance that would have for the long term goals of the study.
Good grief! What a bundle of assumptions about self, identity, consciousness, reflexivity, presumed trait theory, biological based of behaviour, psychometrics & god knows what pseudoscientism . Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. Good luck in your life’s quest.
Care to elaborate?
A really interesting and ambitious study. I’m an autistic philosopher and I wonder how one extrapolates metaphysical proclivities through quantitative responses on pretty simple thought experiments–offering only two at the end. Wouldn’t qualitative responses give more insight there? Im also curious as to how one ties those quantitative responses back to the immense diversity in neurodivergent folks.
I also wonder if there are any neurodivergent folks on the study itself.
Nonetheless, its an interesting starting point.
That was fun! I look forward to the results and analysis.
Id be interested to know if in further studies, if they find there is a reasonably high correlation between neurodivergence and interest in philosophy, that philosophy night not cause some neurodivergent traits, or reinforce pre-existing ones, change them, etc. and not just *be caused* by neurodivergence. I don’t think I’m the target since I’m not a professional philosopher and more of an enthusiast or armchair philosopher (however you put it,) and anyways I was born f***in’ weird, but hey…could be cool, and I’d love to internally argue with the results/assumptions of this study and any such that follow
I have aphantasia i recommend checking out dualistic unity 🙂 help clarify your thoughts
This is exciting!
I love the design and generally thing the questions were well designed. I do wish that, for the ones comparing childhood to adulthood there were ways to indicate magnitude of the issues at each time, as for many of them I put that the statement was true for both times, but couldn’t say that they either became more true or less true over time.
I also wish there was space to share what neurodivergent diagnoses we officially have. I feel that might be pertinent or at least useful information.