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? | Accept: yes | | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Lean toward: Platonism | | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: objective | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Lean toward: yes | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Accept both | Internalism applies to the justifiability of commitment to truth-claims (entitlement to take it to be true that p); but *states* of belief can have epistemic value of an externalist kind. | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Accept: non-skeptical realism | | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Accept: compatibilism | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: theism | I believe in God, but reject the existence of the supernatural personal omni-God (I'm 'an omni-God atheist'), and am thus committed to understanding God according to some alternative conception (which I draw from a certain interpretation of the object of worship in the Judaeo-Christian tradition). | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | The question is too unclear to answer | | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Lean toward: contextualism | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Lean toward: non-Humean | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Accept: moral realism | I'm inclined to think that the most sophisticated forms of moral anti-realism come remarkably close to (the best version of) moral realism. | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | The question is too unclear to answer | Not sure that I understand the question: but if being a naturalist is taking it that our metaphysics has to be consistent with the view of the world that is presupposed by our best scientific theories, then I am certainly a naturalist. This is consistent with holding (as I do) that there is more to the world than can be known through natural science. | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept: physicalism | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Accept: cognitivism | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: externalism | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Lean toward: two boxes | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Accept another alternative | I'm inclined to think that what is ethically fundamental is the notion of right relationship. | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Lean toward: disjunctivism | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Lean toward: psychological view | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: communitarianism | | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
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 | | |
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch? | Lean toward: switch | | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Reject one, undecided between others | I reject epistemic accounts, but am not sure about how to choose between correspondence and deflationary accounts. | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Lean toward: conceivable but not metaphysically possible | | |