Know Thyselfby Silenos Works

Mind & Meaning

Philosophical Worldview

Answer the big questions and meet the philosophers who agree with you

  • About 13 minutes
  • 50 questions
  • 12 dimensions
  • 21 illustrated results
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Illustration: Philosophical Worldview

This test asks the questions philosophers have argued about for twenty-five centuries: what is real, what can we know, are we free, is morality objective, is there a God, what makes a life good. There are no right answers; for every option you will find great minds who chose it.

The questions are grouped by area. Pick the answer closest to your view even when none fits perfectly, and choose "unsure" only when you truly have no leaning. At the end you will see your positions, a map of your worldview on twelve axes, the schools of thought nearest to you and the philosophers who would most often agree with you.

What it measures

Source of knowledge

Experience ↔ Reason

Whether knowledge rests ultimately on the senses and experiment, or on reason and insight that reach beyond them.

Nature

More than nature ↔ Nature is all

Whether the natural world studied by science is the whole of reality, or there is also mind, soul, spirit or the divine beyond it.

Reality

Constructed ↔ Mind-independent

Whether the world, truth and its kinds exist independently of our minds, languages and practices, or are partly shaped by them.

Values

Made by us ↔ Objective

Whether moral and aesthetic values are objective features of reality, or human creations: feelings, agreements, cultures, choices.

Free will

Determined ↔ Genuinely free

Whether our choices are fixed by prior causes, compatible with them, or genuinely open.

Ethics

Duty and character ↔ Consequences

Whether actions are right because of their results, or because of duties, virtues and relationships that results cannot override.

God

Atheism ↔ Theism

Whether a God, especially a personal creator, exists and can be known.

Cosmic order

Indifferent universe ↔ Meaningful cosmos

Whether meaning, purpose and order are built into reality, or the universe is silent and meaning is something humans make.

The self

No fixed self ↔ Enduring self

Whether there is a real, enduring self or soul, or the self is a changing process, a bundle or a construction.

Society

Individual ↔ Community

Whether the good life and political legitimacy start from the free individual or from community, roles and shared tradition.

Knowledge claims

Skeptical ↔ Confident

How far you think we can reach secure knowledge, versus suspending judgement or treating every view as revisable.

The good life

Engagement ↔ Equanimity

Whether the good life lies in striving, changing the world and becoming oneself, or in acceptance, tranquillity and letting go.

Possible results

About this test

The questions are inspired by the PhilPapers Survey, which asked thousands of professional philosophers where they stand on the central debates of their field (first in 2009, again in 2020). Here they are rewritten in plain language and extended with themes from Chinese, Indian and Islamic philosophy and from the philosophy of life: death, meaning and the good life.

Each answer moves you along twelve dimensions that together sketch a worldview: where knowledge comes from, whether nature is all there is, whether reality and values exist independently of us, free will, duty versus consequences, God, cosmic order, the self, individual versus community, confidence in knowledge, and striving versus equanimity. Your profile is compared with the typical profile of twenty-one schools of thought, and the nearest becomes your result. Separately, your choices are compared question by question with the positions of forty-six historical philosophers. Only questions where a thinker's view is well attested are used, some answers count as near misses for half credit, a thinker is ranked only when you share at least six questions, and scores are pulled slightly toward the average when a thinker's documented positions cover only a few questions, so a lucky match on a handful does not outrank a strong match on many.

Honest caveats: schools are broad traditions with internal disagreements, so their profiles are simplifications. The philosophers never faced these questions in these words, and many of them, Plato and Kant above all, are read in more than one way. No living people are included. Scores are relative to the range of possible answers, not to any population. Treat the result as an invitation to read, not a verdict.

References

For self-reflection and curiosity, not diagnosis. Scores describe how you answered, relative to the possible range; they are not compared with population norms.

Philosophical Worldview

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About 13 minutes · 50 questions

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