Then there’s the religion quiz on the same site. (Also how to pick a name for your baby, and which dog is right for you!) I came up “Liberal Quaker” for the second time! (I also tried the religion quiz on Beliefnet and got Liberal Quaker.)
Liberal Quaker (score=100)
Baháí (score=92)
Islam (score=92)
Orthodox Judaism (score=92)
New Age (score=81)
Unitarian Universalist (score=80)
Neo-Pagan (score=77)
Reform Judaism (score=76)
Orthodox Quaker (score=70)
Mainline to Liberal Protestant (score=65)
This suggests I’m one crazy mixed-up guy. Neopagan alongside Orthodox Jewish!?!?! Like a lokh in kopf I need that! One thing’s for sure, according to this: I’ve successfully shaken my Catholic upbringing. That was way down the list. But I don’t even know what the heck a Liberal Quaker is, or how that differs from Regular Quaker! I hope Nixon wasn’t one of them. Somebody please tell me Nixon wasn’t one!
I really haven’t studyed philosophy to any extent, but after taking that quiz, I’ve developed absolutely no further interest in the subject whatsoever.
I wouldv’e guessed Sarte, and as it turned out, I would’ve guessed right:
Sartre (100%) Click here for info
Mill (90%) Click here for info
Kant (89%) Click here for info
Bentham (88%) Click here for info
Epicureans (76%) Click here for info
Rand (75%) Click here for info
Prescriptivism (67%) Click here for info
Aquinas (48%) Click here for info
Aristotle (47%) Click here for info
Spinoza (46%) Click here for info
I should print the list out, then the next time someone confueses “skeptic” with “cynic,” I can prove 'em wrong. “No, no,” I’ll say, “I’m only 17% cynic!”
The OP pitched this thread & quiz as about “philosophy” per se—without any qualifying terms. What I found when I went there was that it’s limited to ethical philosophy. I never really studied ethics and can’t say I know much about the subject. I would much rather check out metaphysics, ontology, cosmology, or epistemology.
Or even logic, since I’m pointing out the fallacy implied by the thread title. Pars pro toto.
Well, I must say that I disagree with you on the importance of ethics in philosophy. Metaphysics (I would say that ontology and cosmology fall under that general heading) and epistemology are certainly important portions of philosophy, but they are certainly rather abstract considerations. I consider ethics a more important study because it provides a consistent guideline to the more concrete situations that humans encounter in their daily lives. Likewise, I feel that ethics would be the way to best match people to a given philosophy and an excellent starting point to begin their studies and then the other ideas can be added into the mix.
I admit that the questions can be rather poorly written (for example, question #12 implies a reason/passion dichotomy that I don’t believe exists), but all in all it’s a very good guideline. The choices that I see come up are quite interesting…less homogenous than the Objectivist loop where Rand and Aristotle topped everyone’s list ;). Incidentally, for those of you confused about getting such high scores for Thomas Aquinas, Aquinas was an exceptionally rational individual and well…it’s quite a shame that Christianity diverged away from his thinking…otherwise I imagine there would be a lot more Christians in the world :).