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?Accept: no
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Lean toward: nominalism
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?Accept both
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?Accept: no
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?Accept both
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?The question is too unclear to answer
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?Accept: compatibilism
God: theism or atheism?Accept: atheism
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?Accept: rationalism
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?Accept: invariantism
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?Accept: non-Humean
Logic: classical or non-classical?Accept: classical
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Accept: externalism
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?Lean toward: moral realism
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?Accept: naturalism
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?Accept: physicalism
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?Accept: cognitivism
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?The question is too unclear to answer"moral motivation" could be equivalent to "constitutively moral motivation" or simply any old motivation to be moral. Mom will love me if I am good" OK its a bad reason to be motivate to be good -- does a motivation need to give one a good reason? if so then internalism is true, if not then "I will obey the categorical imperative for cash" counts
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?Accept: two boxes
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?Accept: deontology
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?Accept: representationalism
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?Lean toward: biological view
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?The question is too unclear to answerThese are all multi-stable and loaded terms in the community I live in. I am a moderate proceduralist-- that makes me a liberal of one stripe (one which is compatible with egalitarianism, I think)
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?Accept another alternativeBoth views are cosmically simplistic!
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?Accept: scientific realism
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?Lean toward: death
Time: A-theory or B-theory?Accept both
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch?Accept another alternativehave a nervous breakdown, obviously acting to kill is wrong, but allowing more death is pretty troubling as well
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?Accept more than onecorrespondence is a platitude which I accept, and is compatible with fairly substantial deflationism
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?Accept: conceivable but not metaphysically possibleI think the options are somewhat unclear. I think that the argument which leads to the possibility of zombies is confused. So whether Zombies are inconceivable is the problem -- is a round square inconceivable or merely metaphysically impossible -- we tend towards inconceivable because the example is simply -- it is logically impossible -- but we don't have a clear (and I am tempted to say, distinct) conception of a zombie.