My philosophical views

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.

See also:

QuestionAnswerComments
A priori knowledge: yes or no?Lean toward: no
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Lean toward: Platonism
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?Lean toward: objective
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?Accept an intermediate viewWould see it as resting on conventional decisions and methodology, procedues and social arrangements re how ideas are handled
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?Reject bothI hold a Popperian view, which does not easily map onto this
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?Accept another alternativefallibilist realism, with science as aspiring to tell us about an externally existing world
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?Accept: libertarianism
God: theism or atheism?Lean toward: atheism
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?Accept another alternativePopper-style critical rationalism
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?Agnostic/undecided
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?Accept: non-Humean
Logic: classical or non-classical?Accept: classicalBut I'd take an instrumental view of it - i.e. as something useful for particular purposes
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Accept: internalism
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?Accept: moral realism
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?Accept: non-naturalismemergence, not supernatural, and tentative
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?Accept: non-physicalism
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?Accept: cognitivism
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?Accept: internalism
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?Agnostic/undecided
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?Accept another alternativeAccept a form of fallibilist inter-subjective intuitionism, about particular judgements
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?Lean toward: representationalism
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?Accept another alternative
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?Lean toward: libertarianismBut with voluntary communities for those that want them!
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?Agnostic/undecided
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?Accept: scientific realismBut only as aspiration
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?Lean toward: survival
Time: A-theory or B-theory?Agnostic/undecided
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?Accept: correspondenceBut in Aristotelian sense - i.e. no picture theory of correspondence
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?Accept: metaphysically possible