Three subjects. Your commitments.

Philosophy Profile

Who should hold power? What makes an action right? What are we? Choose a question worth arguing about.

Three quizzes to discuss

Enable JavaScript for interactive questions and results, or use the questions below for discussion.

Political Philosophy · 24 questions

How should we live together?

Society's basic rules should be acceptable even if you did not know which social position you would occupy.
A distribution can be just even when very unequal, if it arose through just acquisition and genuinely voluntary transfers.
A fair society must ask what people can actually do with their resources, not simply whether they receive the same amount.
When choosing public policy, the strongest reason is that it will produce the greatest overall wellbeing for everyone affected.
Avoiding violent conflict gives people a strong reason to authorise one common power whose decisions settle public disputes.
Political authority should ultimately belong to citizens acting together to make laws for their common good.
Two systems protect equal basic liberties and fair opportunities. One makes already wealthy people richer but leaves the least advantaged worse off.
That system is fairer if it produces a much higher average income.
A collection was stolen before passing through several buyers who acted in good faith. Its original owners can still be identified.
The present owner's lawful purchase removes any need to consider repairing the original theft.
Two people receive identical travel budgets. Only one can use the available transport; the other needs an accessible service that costs more.
Giving them the same budget is enough to establish equal travel opportunities.
A policy can remain unjust even when it produces the best overall welfare, because some individual rights must not be traded for a larger total.
A common authority keeps the peace and protects people's lives. One group dislikes a ruling and wants to enforce its own decision by force.
Their disagreement alone is enough to justify taking enforcement into their own hands.
A ruler claims to know the public good better than the citizens and asks them to give up their role in making laws permanently.
Their one-off agreement would be enough to make this permanent surrender of self-government legitimate.
With equal liberties and fair opportunities secured, higher pay for a scarce job would improve essential services and make the least advantaged better off than any feasible equal-pay system.
The pay difference can be just even though it increases inequality.
Starting from just holdings, many people freely pay a musician a small fee. The musician becomes much wealthier than everyone else.
The resulting inequality alone gives no reason to take the musician's earnings away.
A town makes education and political participation genuinely available, while allowing adults to decide whether to take part.
Securing these real choices matters even when some people choose not to use them.
A limited public budget can fund one of two projects. After all effects are considered, one creates substantially more wellbeing, although fewer people use it.
The project with the greater overall benefit should be chosen; popularity alone should not decide.
A settlement has rules everyone agreed to, but nobody has the power to enforce them. People start breaking agreements because they fear others will do so first.
Creating an effective common enforcer is necessary for these agreements to provide dependable security.
Citizens debate a general law that applies to everyone. Each is asked to consider their shared interests rather than vote for a personal favour.
This is a better basis for legitimate law than bargaining over which group can win the most special treatment.
A government could raise everyone's income by removing political rights from a small unpopular group.
The economic improvement could make that loss of equal basic rights a fair bargain.
A society starts from just holdings. Its government repeatedly takes wealth from voluntary exchanges solely to restore its preferred income pattern.
Maintaining that pattern is sufficient justification for these transfers, even without anyone having been wronged.
A country becomes much richer, but many residents still cannot access basic healthcare, education or personal safety.
The higher national income alone is enough to show that the country has become a just society.
A new transport policy gives each commuter a small benefit but imposes very large losses on a smaller group. The total losses exceed the total benefits.
The policy is justified simply because more people gain than lose.
The government has permanently lost the ability to protect a community, leaving its people exposed to attack.
The community still owes it obedience on exactly the same grounds as when it provided protection.
A majority votes to grant itself special privileges at the expense of everyone else.
The vote must express the common good simply because most citizens supported it.

Moral Philosophy · 16 questions

What makes an action right?

The right action is the one expected to produce the best overall balance of benefit over harm for everyone affected.
I should act only on principles I could reasonably want everyone in the same situation to follow.
Knowing what is right requires good character and practical judgement, as well as knowing rules or predicting outcomes.
A person's dependence on me can create responsibilities that a rule treating everyone identically would miss.
Some actions remain wrong even when they would definitely produce better consequences for everyone affected.
A team could gain a major advantage by deceiving one member into taking a risk they would refuse if told the truth.
The advantage could make that deception right, even though it treats the person merely as a means to the team's goal.
If someone reliably does the correct thing, their motives and character add nothing to whether they are a morally good person.
A sound moral decision should give no weight to existing relationships or to the trust people have placed in a particular carer.
You promised to help a friend move. An unexpected chance to help several people in serious need arises, and nobody else can take your place.
You should break the promise if doing so clearly prevents much more harm overall, including the damage to your friend's trust.
Someone returns a lost wallet although they would rather keep it, because they believe its owner has a right to it.
Acting from that sense of duty gives the action moral worth, even without warm feelings towards the owner.
A friend needs an honest response to work they care about. Brutal bluntness would crush them; empty praise would leave them unable to improve.
A good response requires judging how honesty and kindness fit this person and this moment.
Someone you support refuses the help you planned. They explain that a different kind of help would meet their needs better.
Caring well means taking their response seriously and adapting, even if your original plan looked best on paper.
Giving up a small luxury would prevent a stranger's serious suffering. You know the help would work and would produce a much better overall outcome.
Keeping the luxury is morally just as good as helping, simply because the money belongs to you.
You need a loan and know you will never repay it. A false promise would persuade someone to lend you the money.
It is acceptable to make the promise if the lender is unlikely ever to discover the lie.
A novice volunteers for a dangerous rescue despite lacking the training to help and being likely to need rescuing too.
The greater the risk they are willing to take, the more courageous and admirable their choice must be.
A support service gives everyone identical appointments. Some people cannot communicate what they need in the time allowed.
Giving everyone exactly the same arrangement is enough to show that the service has fulfilled its responsibility of care.

Metaphysics & Ontology · 36 questions

What exists, and what are we?

Everything about a person's mental life is physical or wholly depends on what is physically happening.
The conscious subject is a non-physical thing, distinct from the brain and body.
What makes a state a belief or a pain is the role it plays in a whole thinking system, rather than the particular material it is made from.
Reality is fundamentally minds and what is experienced, rather than mind-independent material substance.
I remain the same individual as long as the same living human organism continues, even if my memories and personality change greatly.
What principally connects me to my earlier self is the continuing pattern of memory, intentions and character, rather than the same body alone.
A decision can be free even if prior causes determine it, provided I act from my own reasoning and wishes without being forced.
Some of my choices are genuinely free, and their outcomes are not completely fixed by the past and the laws of nature.
Our choices are completely determined by prior causes, and for that reason we lack the free will needed to be ultimately deserving of blame or praise.
Imagine two people who are exactly alike in every physical respect, including their brains and surroundings.
Their conscious experiences could still differ, with no physical difference anywhere to explain it.
A person consists entirely of physical things and their activities; there is no separate non-physical thinker.
An alien has no human neurons, but an internal state has the same complete causal role that pain has for us.
It cannot count as pain simply because the alien is made from a different material.
Material objects could exist in exactly the same way in a universe containing no minds or experiences at all.
A person's memories, intentions and personality are transferred into another body, while the original living organism continues without them.
The person has moved to the new body rather than remaining with the original organism.
Someone's psychological life is irreversibly replaced by an entirely unrelated set of memories, intentions and character, while the living body continues.
The same body alone settles that the very same person continues, regardless of that complete psychological break.
Someone acts willingly after careful thought. Suppose the complete past and laws of nature made that decision inevitable.
That inevitability alone means the decision cannot have been free.
Every human decision is completely fixed by the past and the laws of nature, with no genuinely open outcome left for the person to settle.
A person's action was fully determined by causes extending before their birth, but it expressed their wishes without anyone forcing them.
They can still deserve blame in their own right simply because the action expressed those wishes.
A treatment changes brain activity and a person's experience of pain changes with it.
In principle, the complete explanation of this experience could be entirely physical, even if we do not yet know how to give it.
Someone imagines every part of their body being destroyed while they continue to think and experience.
This describes a genuine possibility, even if it could never happen under ordinary conditions.
A person's neurons are gradually replaced by devices that preserve all their causal connections and responses within the thinking system.
Their mental states could continue because the relevant organisation and roles are preserved.
People encounter a stable, orderly world that none of them can change just by wishing.
That shared world could be real even if its foundation were entirely mental rather than material.
An adult remembers nothing from infancy and has very different interests, but the same living organism has developed continuously.
That bodily continuity is enough to make the infant and adult the same individual.
Your mental life continues in one new body through a process that genuinely preserves your memories, intentions and character; there is no second successor.
There is a strong reason to say you continue in the new body rather than disappear with the old one.
One person keeps a promise because they want to; another is physically forced to do the same thing. Both actions have complete causal histories.
The difference in how they act can still make the first action free and the second unfree.
You face a difficult choice between telling the truth and protecting yourself. Imagine returning to exactly that moment with exactly the same past.
At least sometimes, you could freely settle on either option without any prior difference making the outcome inevitable.
Someone causes harm through a decision fully determined by their history and the laws of nature.
We may need to protect others and change their behaviour, but they do not ultimately deserve suffering for a choice they could not freely settle.
Every physical part of a person has ceased functioning, and no physical system preserves their mental life.
That person's conscious thinking could nevertheless continue in a wholly non-physical form.
A future science explains every brain process involved in your reasoning.
There cannot also be a distinct non-physical subject doing the thinking, because you are wholly a physical being.
Two states feel equally unpleasant, but they have completely different roles in perception, memory, reasoning and behaviour.
Their identical unpleasantness alone proves they are the very same kind of mental state, regardless of those roles.
You leave a room and the table remains where it was.
The table's continued existence must ultimately depend on material substance independent of every possible mind.
A perfect digital copy reproduces someone's memories and personality while their living body remains unharmed.
The copy is the original individual, rather than a new being similar to them.
Over several decades, a person's memories overlap in a chain: each period connects to the next, although the oldest events are now forgotten.
Forgetting those early events by itself means the present person cannot be the same person as the child.
In a fully determined world, someone hears a new argument and changes their mind through ordinary reasoning.
Because the world is determined, responding to the argument cannot be an exercise of their freedom.
A random event in someone's brain selects an action independently of their reasoning or control.
The randomness alone is enough to make the action an exercise of free will.
A person carefully weighs reasons and makes a difficult decision.
The fact that they deliberated shows that their decision cannot have been fully determined by prior causes.

After the answer

Find your next disagreement

You can agree with a philosopher about one question and reject their answer to another. Each result gives you a position to examine, the answers that supported it, and a difficulty it still has to face.

Mind, identity and freedom receive separate results. Agreement with one position does not rule out every other position in the quiz.

Your answers stay in this browser tab and are not sent to us.

Philosophy Profile

Choose your quiz

Political Philosophy

Moral Philosophy

Metaphysics & Ontology

Which commitment matters most to you?

John Rawls

Robert Nozick

Martha Nussbaum

Jeremy Bentham

Hobbes

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jeremy Bentham

Immanuel Kant

Aristotle

Nel Noddings

Smart

René Descartes

Putnam

George Berkeley

John Locke

David Hume

What makes the rules fair?

Justice as fairness

Entitlement theory

Capability approach

Utilitarian justice

What gives a government the right to rule?

Security and sovereign authority

Popular sovereignty

What should guide a difficult choice?

Consequentialism

Kantian duty ethics

Virtue ethics

Care ethics

How does mind fit into reality?

Physicalism

Substance dualism

Functionalism

Idealism

What makes you the same person through change?

Bodily continuity

Psychological continuity

What would make a choice free?

Compatibilism

Libertarian free will

Hard determinism

Find your next disagreement