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: no | We might be wired with good true beliefs pre-experience, but it seems to me even such beliefs need to get some justification from the whole body of experience to be knowledge. | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Lean toward: Platonism | My hunch is that abstract objects are real patterns of concreta. I guess that makes me Platonist? | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: objective | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Accept: no | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Accept: externalism | Again I think something two-factory is right but since I think /some/ important notion of justification depends on the extra-mental, I count myself as externalist. | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Lean toward: non-skeptical realism | I'm inclined toward explanationism. | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Accept: no free will | But I construe responsibility like a typical compatiblist, of course - consequentially. | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: atheism | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Lean toward: empiricism | But I'm a scientific realist, etc. | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Lean toward: contextualism | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Lean toward: Humean | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Lean toward: classical | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: externalism | I'm inclined to accept a two-factor theory; I guess that makes me externalist because I think /some/ notion of content requires the extra-mental? | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Lean toward: moral realism | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Accept: naturalism | I construe naturalism basically as methodological commitment to IBE. Thus I'm on board in principle with notions like "naturalistic dualism" (though I'm not one). | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Lean toward: physicalism | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Lean toward: cognitivism | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: externalism | Because I have overall background preference for welfare utilitarianism, which I fear is motivation externalist. But I think this is something of a problem for utilitarianism. | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Lean toward: one box | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Lean toward: consequentialism | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Lean toward: representationalism | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Accept: psychological view | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: egalitarianism | | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Lean toward: Fregean | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Lean toward: scientific realism | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Accept: survival | | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Lean toward: B-theory | A fairly strong leaning, though not at all my expertise. | |
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch? | Accept: switch | | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Lean toward: correspondence | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Lean toward: conceivable but not metaphysically possible | | |