The answers shown here are not necessarily the same provided as part of the 2009 PhilPapers Survey. These answers can be updated at any time.
Question | Answer | Comments | |
A priori knowledge: yes or no? | Lean toward: yes | | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Reject both | I accept the existence of abstract objects, but do not accept Platonism, since that is a metaphysical conception. | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: objective | I think aesthetic value claims can be objectively true, but there are some claims for which there might be faultless disagreement, and objective truth or falsity goes by the wayside | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Accept: yes | Nevertheless, the distinction allows for indeterminate cases. | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | There is no fact of the matter | No fact of the matter in the sense that my view is that actually, there is no nature about justification to be uncovered. I know this sounds a bit vague. | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Lean toward: non-skeptical realism | | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Lean toward: no free will | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Lean toward: atheism | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | There is no fact of the matter | | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Lean toward: invariantism | I think I want to embrace an expressivist treatment of knowledge claims, and that, I think, excludes relativism and contextualism. | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Reject both | Global expressivism again: it infects my views across the board. I defend expressivism about talk of physical necessity. | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Accept: non-classical | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Reject both | I think there is no theory about what mental content is, or theory of constitution of the mental. | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Accept: moral realism | Yet, I reject any metaphysics of value: realist but anti-metaphysical. I am an expressivist. | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Accept: non-naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Lean toward: non-physicalism | But not as a metaphysical thesis. I suppose have deeply anti-metaphysical inclinations. | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Accept: cognitivism | But I am an expressivist. Think that one can be an cognitivist and an expressivist. That is not a contradiction. | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: externalism | Defend externalist expressivism. I know that sounds implausible, but I think it can be done. | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Lean toward: two boxes | Rationality is being punished | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Accept more than one | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Reject all | I think I currently like a kind of neutral monism--the qualia are not inherently subjective or objective. | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Reject all | Irreducible, but not metaphysically primitive. Why? Consequence of global expressivism. | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: egalitarianism | | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Reject both | Don't believe meaning is a property name is constituted by referents or senses. I want to be an expressivist about meaning claims and embrace a speech-act theoretic theory of language activity. | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Accept: scientific realism | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Lean toward: survival | | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Lean toward: A-theory | But I think presentism and growing block are false. | |
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch? | There is no fact of the matter | | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Lean toward: deflationary | I don't like this term--deflationary--but I am expressivist about truth. | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | There is no fact of the matter | I have real doubts about metaphysical possibility | |