How would you make a Philosophy test?

[Cognisant]

Not a test as in like a mathematics test you did in school, a test like a MBTI test.

Should the test be categorical or percentile? For example to me whether or not cognition is embodied is a yes or no question, it either is or it isn't, but then again arguably cognition could merely be the catch all term for an assortment of processes/influences of which some are embodied and possibly some aren't. So for someone with that viewpoint it isn't a matter of whether it is or isn't true but rather a degree of certainty by which they consider one answer or the other to be true, for example they believe cognition is almost entirely embodied so they strongly, but not entirely, agree with that assertion.

I think a categorical test is going to end up being a flowchart with one long path leading dead straight to a strictly empirical and materialistic conclusion (the scientific consensus) and every other path leading to some variation of theology and/or sophism. Whether that's because there's only one reality and every other theory is in some form a deviation from that reality, or it's just the nature of a categorical test to go into more detail with reductionist philosophies because such pedantry is the nature of reductionism, well I'm sure in any case it will be a lively debate.

A test that outputs an answer as a percentile allows for more nuance and enough data we will probably find demographics correlating to particular schools of thought, which is interesting for whoever reviews that data in aggregate but I don't think it'll be very useful or satisfying for the people taking the test as it doesn't really tell them anything about their views that they didn't already know. Whereas a categorical test by virtue of lacking nuance forces people to make decisions, to pick a side so to speak, and in that way it could be very useful for helping people who don't already have a well developed framework to see what schools of thought their views currently align with.

Indeed the process of making a categorical test could be elucidating, as we make such a flow chart I'm sure the more questions we ask and the more specific those questions become the more unexplored paths we will discover which could lead us to conclusions that no on in their right mind would have considered but could be insightful none the less.

 

[BurnedOut]

Well, the primary question is how will you design the test. Most people should not be assumed to spewing various philosophical theories. Many theories overlap.

First of all, all the philosophies which are related to lifestyles should be contextually analyzed. Clear labels should be established and they should be scored. For example, Liberalism: Openness, Individualism, Autonomous, etc. Care should be taken to exclude the political theories from philosophical ones. For example, it will be incorrect to label someone as communist but it is alright to call someone 'relatively more eusocial' with reference to collectivism. Then moral systems should be similarly categorized and ultimately styles of thinking. Quite an interesting exercise.

 

[mikrokosmos]

Creating such a test would be a trying task, for sure. So many factors come into play.

"Yes or no" questions limit nuance, while scenario-based questions

1) Compel the person taking the test to pick from a limited set of answers (again, limiting nuance and personal judgment)

2) Require more interpretation on the test designer's part (the designer must carefully analyze many schools of thought, draw conclusions from those philosophies, and construct scenarios/answers that best represent their interpretation -- an interpretation that will inevitably be tinged by bias, possible misunderstandings, and only represent one part of the wider academic discourse)

and 3) To improve accuracy, scenario-based questions would have to be extremely detailed, allowing the person taking the test the clearest picture possible

We could also ask, is the test revealing what we already believe to be true or is it drawing conclusions from the actions we take? The questions would have to change accordingly. Action and belief do not always match up, I've found.

 

[Black Rose]

philosophy is all by far metaphysical questions. and some debates are towards the nonreality of metaphysical. a philosophy test must ask is philosophy real? which is asking is this test valid. do you think it is. a real subject.

 

[Beliefofmine]

philosophy is all by far metaphysical questions. and some debates are towards the nonreality of metaphysical. a philosophy test must ask is philosophy real? which is asking is this test valid. do you think it is. a real subject.

Agreed. I think the subject of philosophy there are no concrete answers. It's like art. You can trace or copy an image, and be judged on how close to the original you are. However in art it is subjective, and is more about creating new things.

It would have to be more of a test of cognition and the ability to take a stance and defend it with some form of logic. And in that application the person scoring the test would likely have to have some back and forth with the person taking the test, in order to challenge their assertations. Because if an argument quickly falls apart under scrutiny I think it missed the mark.

You'd likely want to score it on how well their mind can think about, articulate, and argue abstract ideas. And that's going to be completely subjective.

 

[scorpiomover]

Not a test as in like a mathematics test you did in school, a test like a MBTI test.

What exactly would you be testing?

MBTI tests are designed to not tell you what type someone is, but what type someone wants you to think they are. That's great for jobs like being part of a sales team, because they don't really care if you're a born salesman or not, so long as you follow the script and are prepared to muck in and work with the other members of the team.

It doesn't work so well for "programmer", because so much of it is about the actual mental effort you have to put in to each project, rather than following a script. When it comes to programming, you still get tests, but they are tests of how well you can follow symbolic logic or how well you can solve problems laterally.

So if you are testing using a test like an MBTI test, you could test if someone wants people to think they're a liberal. But it would be very difficult with a test like that, to know if they're actually liberal or just pretend to be liberal.

 

[∴∴∴]

I'm going to try to reply to your post first, then read the other responses.

I'm also going to assume there are some constraints, like what I can reasonably expect test-takers to complete and test-assessors to assess. An ideal "comprehensive" test would probably take each and every person's whole lifetime at minimum and that's just stupid.

But also, we can assume we're not talking like... a test we need to market or have be popular or able to fit in to some specific purpose (work, school, courtroom, etc) or even be completely understood at first by every person who takes (or assesses) it, though some efforts will be made. The INTP of tests, if you will.

As you already mentioned, type of assessment is going to pose some problems for a huge question like "what's this person's philosophical outlook". There's just too many different variables and the bounds of "philosophy" itself are porous and kind of (as far as I know) came to be understood through a historical/cultural process repeated many times, in many different ways, around the world and then smashed together in more recent times. And we all go "yeah that makes sense, I know what philosophy is" but really? A big mess.

What's remembered, who it's attributed to, what philosophy-equivalent things don't get included just because of their odd origins or having some different social "lineage" completely separate from the "usual philosophers", how all that influences our perception of everything... I mean you'd need to make a test on people's opinions on your test itself by the end of it. Which I guess could improve (or, at least, contribute to) the test.

Which is the first of my ideas - assessors as test takers and test takers as assessors. Of themselves, and each other. As in, you can't (really) take the test in full without also assessing other people's test responses, which then feedback into your response by being public to your "profile" or record of contributions, and other people can give an assessment of your assessments (and what it means for your philosophical view).

How to implement this...It's clear I'd like to use the internet/computer program to create a big filter system, you review 1 person's initial responses, and your shit gets sent to 1 other person's review queue they can pick from... you get someone else's response to your initial responses, and you have a chance to respond to that. Never to delete, only to add. If you contradict yourself, you contradict yourself - though if you want you can note it's a change you're aware of vs something you don't comment on (leaving people to speculate).

There are a few different reasons I think of it as a "filter system". It is a filter for your thoughts, putting you through the process of articulating, expressing, and (if you want) defending them or amending them. One assessor is going to be an equal part of your "results" as you are, but many, many assessors? That approaches a clearer picture of you (and society lol but we can't escape) especially if those results are rich feedback, not just someone ticking off the boxes for cateloging you. Though I entirely advocate for us having some box ticking option. And developing a more rigorous "taxonomy" off of that for some laughs (and something useful? It's unclear).

It would also be a filter of interest - do you really want to get to the heart of your philosophy or not? Though I am trying to hold myself back and not demand something like a year plus of engagement before you get results, which just wouldn't work... I will say, ok this will be a bit more like what iNaturalist is to biologists, less like what MBTI tests is to typology. So, more like what (productive) forum discussions of type are to typology??

It's open-ended. There's a result, but it's a result that can change and be refined the more you are able and want to engage, and the more other people are able and want to engage with you.

I'd want entries to be able to be submitted in a wide variety of formats. For one thing, this will best stand a chance at covering the huge variety of philosophical traditions and ways of being, thinking and for a second thing, cool.

So, there would be a selection of templates for uploads... more quiz question types, essay questions to respond to, you can key in a response to any known/listed philosophical work or post your original material. And also, visual art, music/audio recordings of speech, documents with hypertext, more, possibly.

This is something I want, but accept would be extremely difficult to implement, particularly at a large scale where everyone can interact with everyone and not just 1 philosophy class registering together and only able to see and respond to each other, or something. To host it would be difficult, and to keep it from being used for all sorts of shit not philosophy related, too, would be a stretch. Who would keep it running? But maybe it could work. Forums work, vaguely speaking. Communities dedicated to all sorts of scientific data work, again, generally.

Cutting it down to the bare essentials, I'd keep a mix of quizzes (multi-choice answers and limited character box type answers both), flow chart type quizzes, and simple text essay submissions.

For browsing, and encouraging higher quality respones, the site could copy over and make use of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (plus maybe an in-house one we all edit? wikipedia clone or wikipedia itself? ... again I am slightly basing this idea on iNaturalist and that's what they have for each taxon page). This way the people using the site can make common reference to definitions. This is the weakest part of the idea, as far as I'm concerned, because I hate the idea of making any source "our definitive source" or "our commonly accepted source" from the top down in the implementation.

And yet I don't want people running around defining shit stupid or for us all to get into a swamp of basically speaking incommensurable languages without admitting or being aware of it any more than is strictly necessary. I guess just having a lot of different references, and accepting people defining things differently (especially if they point it out clearly, ideally with a bit on why) could help split the difference there.

Responses should include:

- ticking of boxes in a big list of "best fit" labels and connections to existing philosophical traditions and "known thinkers", including sliders as options. Think someone fits entirely? Slide that to 100%. Think it's almost a match? Put like 90% and say why (or not) in a text response later on. Maybe there could be a small text box per one of these that says "Basically, why?" and gives them a short # of characters to say something right then, to stave off people forgetting later in the process or giving no response rather than a simple response.

- creation of quiz questions in a variety of formats (including the ones you outlined! I like the idea of flow-chart structured quizzes that narrow down what questions you get as you go, rather than comprehensive) to send back to the initial person, to refine their thought or to seek clarification, also, a chance to suggest reading and possibly request a response to some specific work or passage.

- essay responses!! These would be like someone writing about what they think you think, where they think it fits in existing philosophical traditions, or if it's any good, or all of the above. This is the rich feedback everyone who really wants to get into philosophical thought dreams of. Finally, you are the essay subject matter, and not just the essayist having to review something from Plato for the hundredth time.

There's something to make people stick around. The chance to hear - You did it!! You are a philosopher!!

And that is exactly the kind of encouraging text I think could be put up once people reach such and such numbers of responses rated above a certain level. I think it helps motivate most people to know there's some kind of check point built in everyone has agreed = basically, you participated well, if you like you can take your results thus far, and go.

This seems like a weird outlook to me, because I see it all as naturally endless and am comfortable just winging my own cut off point (if any), but how else will we make it less of an echochamber if not thinking of the preferences and needs of others quite different from ourselves? I don't want me and my 10,000 personality-clones around the world's philosophy, I want the world's philosophy represented. Of course, we can't get that, but we could give it a good try and its best chance.

So, about the rating system. Two main types, a subjective notion of quality without any respect to agreement (as much as that's possible) ... and we are in accord rating, which could be an interesting way to find people you agree with on some particular thing and see what else they think. This would also be like a % vote ranking but also people can leave brief feedback on quality or agreement if they so choose.

Having a feature like you discussed for categorical test making ... and a resulting "taxonomy of philosophy" both individually and collaboratively (open to edits, either just like all edits, or edits then moderated by the original test creator) could be nice. Really I think of things like this as providing a structure - tools and platform - for what the people then come and build (and rebuild).

 

[∴∴∴]

philosophy is all by far metaphysical questions. and some debates are towards the nonreality of metaphysical. a philosophy test must ask is philosophy real? which is asking is this test valid. do you think it is. a real subject.

... all of ethics, slain by this brutal assessment ...................
epistemology, whomst? though I guess that one's more clearly connected to metaphysics/ontology

But yes absolutely - I strongly agree any test like this, no matter how plural, flexible, and self-creating from a community, would itself pose a strong question-answer combo to "What is philosophy?" ... which seems stressful when I first think about it, but once you're peaking "under the hood" of any given subject, that's what happens.

Take my area (biology). How can (or should) we make a taxonomy of life? What all do we even want to count as life? Prions? Viruses? Certain clay mineral silicates? Where should we put the boundaries for "an organism" vs "its environment" or "its fellow organisms"? Oh, and can we have multiple working definitions for different purposes, or are we going to hold ourselves to some universal one? Why? Why do we end up defining it how we do? Now let's turn to the history, or even just the popular understanding of "life" ... how did those ideas arise (many times)? How has it changed? Does it reveal anything significant about us, or a good definition for life, or no? Do our various language and cultural backgrounds inform, enrich, confuse, or limit us? All of the above, perhaps, but how?

Now, ironically, those are all metaphysics or epistemology questions. The closest hint of ethics is in that bit about if greater diversity of thought is inherently beneficial, harmfully confusing, or both... because that could tell us "what's good" socially or in terms of personal conduct. Which is kind of making me turn around to agreeing with you that "it's all (meta)physics" ... it all, including ethics, follows from "what is" (or, what we're pretty sure is).

So I guess I see what I think you mean?

Except frequently people don't (think they) derive their ethics/morality from metaphysics, they even leave it all completely incompatible and mixed up. Which... gross (summary ethical judgement).

 

[∴∴∴]

philosophy is all by far metaphysical questions. and some debates are towards the nonreality of metaphysical. a philosophy test must ask is philosophy real? which is asking is this test valid. do you think it is. a real subject.

Agreed. I think the subject of philosophy there are no concrete answers. It's like art. You can trace or copy an image, and be judged on how close to the original you are. However in art it is subjective, and is more about creating new things.

It would have to be more of a test of cognition and the ability to take a stance and defend it with some form of logic. And in that application the person scoring the test would likely have to have some back and forth with the person taking the test, in order to challenge their assertations. Because if an argument quickly falls apart under scrutiny I think it missed the mark.

You'd likely want to score it on how well their mind can think about, articulate, and argue abstract ideas. And that's going to be completely subjective.

I'm not sure what we mean by concrete answers, exactly. But I'll go ahead and say we can at least get 1) a sense of better and worse coherency and accuracy of our thinking, 2) an explanation of why we define coherency and accuracy as important, and 3) a framework for assessment of ourselves, others, and other sources of information. I suppose that means, answers, but squishy.

I think it's interesting to bring in the idea of testing people's cognition as a whole along with their views within the traditional bounds of and terms of philosophy. If anything, creates a chance to compare various (presumed) psychological measures with (presumed) agreement with certain known philosophical categories. Kind of reminds me of that whole area of moral psychology, for the ethics-cognition link, but this would be wider in scope.

Cool that we had some of the same idea with there ideally being a back-and-forth between assessor and the assessed! I'm not sure if I'd call someone's assessment of "how well their mind can think about, articulate, and argue abstract ideas" completely subjective. Seems harsh. What are you even intending on measuring or assessing based on (were you to participate as an assessor) if it is completely subjective? What your parents told you? Which they got from their parents, and on and on? Or maybe with random mutations along the way.

How does any argument fall apart for you if all you think we can do is "trace or copy an image, and be judged on how close to the original you are" ... Or am I misreading how strongly you think philosophy is "like" art? Does "the original" we're judged against mean the universe ("objective reality") or does it mean other people's internal systems/ideas (ideologies) to you? If the former, ok, yeah I agree vaguely with that. If the latter... yeah we'd all just need to give up claiming philosophy was more than one funky field of culture. And science, probably. I meanwhile assert that just because my house is moldy, does not mean it is not a house.

It could be this was all just a strong way of saying "yeah there will always be some imperfections in the assessor's ability to see and understand everything" or "there's always some biases to perception" which, yes, but it doesn't collapse everything.

Otherwise, if you really do mean it, I'd say that would mean we can just ignore all this philosophy business and merely adopt the philosophy of encouraging others to do the same, and admit it's all art (expression a consciousness gives meaning) or something and do it for the aesthetics.

I'll add now that while I like philosophy I'm actually in the position of not bothering much to remember the official terms or theories for any particular system or tradition of it (yet). So anyone who notices anything wonky or rudimentary, that's what that's about.

 

[Black Rose]

A place to start I suppose is epistemic Truth.

They can be categorical as.

nihilism
theological
science

each is grounded in a certain nature of reality.

the ones most disagreed upon.

but they are what we think is "true".