Profile for Peter Simpson

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:

Question	Answer	Comments
A priori knowledge: yes or no?	The question is too unclear to answer	More false dichotomies. How about per se nota truths?
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?	Accept another alternative	Abstractionism of the Scotist sort is preferable.
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?	The question is too unclear to answer	Beauty is objective, but what particular people aesthetically value need not be.
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?	Accept: no	Its another false dichotomy.
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?	The question is too unclear to answer	Again there is a false dichotomy.
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?	Accept: non-skeptical realism	Skepticism always begs the question by assuming that reality must be a matter of inference when in fact it could only ever be a matter of immediacy
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?	Accept an intermediate view	Here there is a false trichotomy. Another answer -- all the possible actions one may do have sufficient causes but no such cause is necessitating -- is not even listed.
God: theism or atheism?	Accept: theism	The argument from contingency is demonstrative.
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?	The question is too unclear to answer	The problem trades on a false dichotomy.
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?	The question is too unclear to answer	The problem trades on ambiguity over the word know.
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?	The question is too unclear to answer	Laws are, as such, mere observed correlations and so Hume is right. But regular correlations are impossible without a real cause behind them, so Hume is wrong. But the cause is not the correlation.
Logic: classical or non-classical?	Reject both	Aristotelian logic and medieval logic are preferable
Mental content: internalism or externalism?	The question is too unclear to answer	Another false dichotomy.
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?	The question is too unclear to answer	False dichotomy. There is an is/ought distinction but there is no fact/value distinction.
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?	Accept another alternative	False dichotomy again. If nature is divided into natura naturata and natura naturans, is the latter within the natural or not? The dichotomy leaves one no room to answer either yes or no.
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?	The question is too unclear to answer	Another false dichotomy. Try hylomorphism instead.
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?	The question is too unclear to answer	Same as previous.
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?	The question is too unclear to answer	Another false dichotomy
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?	Agnostic/undecided
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?	Accept another alternative	Natural law theory fits none of these names and even virtue theory is a misnomer since it does not fit the classic account of virtue from Plato and Aristotle on.
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?	Accept another alternative	Direct realism (e.g. colors are not qualia but properties of things).
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?	Accept another alternative	Identity is determined by haeceity.
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?	Accept another alternative	Libertarian about the state, communitarian about society.
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?	Accept another alternative	Fregean psychologically, Millian ontologically.
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?	Accept another alternative	Modern science is an abstraction from the real (it rejects 'secondary' qualities as they are called but these are as real as anything) and so not real as such though founded on what is real.
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?	Accept: death	Resurrection is possible but death will have intervened.
Time: A-theory or B-theory?	Accept another alternative	McTaggart rejected both and accepted only the C series. His mistake anyway was to start with time and not with motion, when the puzzles that made him reject the A series and therewith also the B series would disappear
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch?	Accept another alternative	There is no moral problem here at all. Neither action is intrinsically right or wrong.
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?	Accept: correspondence
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?	Accept: inconceivable	One can imagine zombies but the concept is contradictory.

Applied ethics	Epistemology	History of Western Philosophy	Meta-ethics	Metaphysics	Normative ethics
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