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? | Accept: nominalism | | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | The question is too unclear to answer | For aesthetic status A, I'd give criteria for having A that is not sensitive to the stance of any subject. So it's not subjectivist in that sense. But I'd be an expressivist about aesthetic discourse, I suppose. | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Accept: yes | I think there are truths that fall out of the characters/intensions of the expressions we use. E.g., I am here now. So I'm Kaplanian about this. | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Accept: internalism | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Accept: non-skeptical realism | | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Lean toward: compatibilism | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: atheism | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Lean toward: empiricism | The distinction is obscure to me if it is not the a priori - a posteriori distinction. I do think there is a priori knowledge. | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Lean toward: non-classical | I like supervaluation views for handling indeterminate truth values in vague discourse, but that's minimally non-classical. I think something else must be done about the boundarylessness issue. | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Accept both | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Accept: moral anti-realism | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Accept: naturalism | I think naturalism is meant to include irreducibly phenomenal properties. | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Lean toward: non-physicalism | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Accept both | But more non-cognitivism than cognitivism | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Accept an intermediate view | Moral judgments typically but not invariantly motivate and this needs to be explained. | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Lean toward: two boxes | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Lean toward: deontology | I think reasons are the basic normative unit, and this seems a bit deontological to me. But it's probably not one of the things people have in mind by 'deontology.' | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Accept: egalitarianism | | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Lean toward: Fregean | I think the sense of proper names tell us what external relations between word and object fix the referent. | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Lean toward: scientific realism | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
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: deflationary | I like the T-schema. When expressions have descriptive semantics, the T-schema is satisfied by (indirect, Horgan-type) correspondence. | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Lean toward: metaphysically possible | | |