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: nominalism | | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: subjective | Inter-subjective would be better. | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Lean toward: yes | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: externalism | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Accept: non-skeptical realism | But Kantian, empirical realism. | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Lean toward: compatibilism | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: atheism | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Accept an intermediate view | Kantian empiricism (which, depending on your definitions, is probably a form of rationalism). | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Lean toward: non-Humean | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Accept both | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: externalism | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Accept an intermediate view | I accept that moral claims can be better or worse, or even true and false (that is, I accept objectivity in morality), but not that values themselves have a status independent of minds. So, depends what is meant by "moral realism". | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | The question is too unclear to answer | "Naturalism" is ill-defined. How does moral knowledge fit into this picture? I am basically Kantian about moral knowledge, but I'm also a physicalist. I don't think that moral theory can be derived from facts about the world. Instead, it is to be derived from facts about the underlying structure of practical reason and the commitments we find within the practice of practical reasoning. There are objective truths about these things, but they aren't scientific truths, in my view. However, I also don't think there's anything supernatural going on here. So, I don't know what my answer is. | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept: physicalism | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Accept: cognitivism | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: internalism | I believe that moral judgments are intrinsically motivating, but also that they are defeasible. I think that makes me a supporter of internalism, but not on all definitions of internalism. | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Accept: one box | I think you need to *be the kind of person* who picks one box. | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Accept: deontology | | |
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? | Accept another alternative | Rawlsian liberalism. This is a kind of egalitarian view, but importantly different from views that take equality in distribution as an end of justice (like GA Cohen's egalitarianism). | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Lean toward: Millian | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Lean toward: 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? | Reject both | I think trolley problems are generally unhelpful. | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Lean toward: correspondence | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Lean toward: inconceivable | | |