<p>I am looking for two things that I an unable to find.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>A &quot;survey&quot; or &quot;quiz&quot; that attempts to determine the degree one's support for various theories of consciousness. I could imagine a series of statment on a Likert scale: &quot;It is possible to upload a mind into a computer&quot;, &quot;If Mary knows <em>X holds</em> and Mary knows <em>if X holds then Y holds</em>, Mary therefore necessarily knows <em>Y holds</em>&quot;, &quot;It is possible to tell the difference between true and artificial consciousness through a keyboard-mediated conversation&quot; etc. After taking the quiz, it could tell you, &quot;you support a cognitivist theory of consciousness&quot;, or whatever the case may be.</p>
</li>
<li><p>Results on correlations between support for various theories of consciousness and things like educational background, age, religious affiliation, socioeconomic status, and so on. For instance, one might discover that engineers who make less than $80K per year tend to be more supportive of functionalism than those with a PhD in classic literature. I'm just making things up, but these are the kinds of things I am interested to see if there are results on.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>I'm not even necessarily curious about which theories of consciousness are correct, but more so the (possibly implicit) beliefs <em>about</em> theories of d consciousness held by people across cultures and social groups and how to measure the degree of those beliefs.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-07-06T06:41:38.033Z
I think it's certainly interesting, but beware of your level of abstraction. I could interview a bunch of 7 year olds about the physics behind the sun and I might get a lot of *interesting* answers but that doesn't mean I've learned much about stellar fusion, I've just learned a lot about how 7 yr olds think (which, again, is really interesting, but that all depends on what the goals are)
Bryan Krause
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-07-06T07:05:18.123Z
See the final paragraph of my question. My goal is not (necessarily) to learn about how minds work, but to know how people *think* they work. I'm surprised that I can't find much on how people (non-experts) *think* minds work. BTW, this still might reveal something about how minds work, given that introspection about thinking is a mental exercise itself. Your analogy doesn't work; 7-year-old's takes on how the sun works does not teach us about stellar fusion, stellar fusion is not happening in their minds, whereas thinking is indeed happening when we ask people how they think minds work.
user10108
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-07-06T16:42:18.077Z
Just because people think about minds using their minds doesn't mean they gain special insight into how that works; if anything, they may gain irrelevant confidence.
Bryan Krause
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-10-11T05:35:22.050Z
This [survey](https://philpapers.org/surveys/) comes close - it includes some non-professionals and some consciousness-related questions.
Arnon Weinberg
<cognitive-psychology><consciousness><attitudes>
Are there surveys and results on degree of support for different theories of consciousness with correlations to demographic or other characteristics?
user10108
# Are there surveys and results on degree of support for different theories of consciousness with correlations to demographic or other characteristics?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-07-05)

I am looking for two things that I an unable to find.

1. A "survey" or "quiz" that attempts to determine the degree one's support for various theories of consciousness. I could imagine a series of statment on a Likert scale: "It is possible to upload a mind into a computer", "If Mary knows *X holds* and Mary knows *if X holds then Y holds*, Mary therefore necessarily knows *Y holds*", "It is possible to tell the difference between true and artificial consciousness through a keyboard-mediated conversation" etc. After taking the quiz, it could tell you, "you support a cognitivist theory of consciousness", or whatever the case may be.
2. Results on correlations between support for various theories of consciousness and things like educational background, age, religious affiliation, socioeconomic status, and so on. For instance, one might discover that engineers who make less than $80K per year tend to be more supportive of functionalism than those with a PhD in classic literature. I'm just making things up, but these are the kinds of things I am interested to see if there are results on.

I'm not even necessarily curious about which theories of consciousness are correct, but more so the (possibly implicit) beliefs *about* theories of d consciousness held by people across cultures and social groups and how to measure the degree of those beliefs.

**Tags:** cognitive-psychology, consciousness, attitudes

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: I think it's certainly interesting, but beware of your level of abstraction. I could interview a bunch of 7 year olds about the physics behind the sun and I might get a lot of *interesting* answers but that doesn't mean I've learned much about stellar fusion, I've just learned a lot about how 7 yr olds think (which, again, is really interesting, but that all depends on what the goals are)  
> **username_0**: See the final paragraph of my question. My goal is not (necessarily) to learn about how minds work, but to know how people *think* they work. I'm surprised that I can't find much on how people (non-experts) *think* minds work. BTW, this still might reveal something about how minds work, given that introspection about thinking is a mental exercise itself. Your analogy doesn't work; 7-year-old's takes on how the sun works does not teach us about stellar fusion, stellar fusion is not happening in their minds, whereas thinking is indeed happening when we ask people how they think minds work.  
> **username_1**: Just because people think about minds using their minds doesn't mean they gain special insight into how that works; if anything, they may gain irrelevant confidence.  
> **username_2**: This [survey](https://philpapers.org/surveys/) comes close - it includes some non-professionals and some consciousness-related questions.  

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## 0 answers

