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 | Yes, but with the proviso that I just believe whatever Tyler Burge tells me to believe. So although it's not an entirely unreflective stance ... | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Accept another alternative | The question is not whether but how. For more detail, read all of my articles. And tell your friends I'm really smart. | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: objective | And moreover, if you believe that the Doors are like really good, you are wrong. | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Accept: yes | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Accept: externalism | See apriority, above. | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Accept: non-skeptical realism | This one was easy. Except there's no good answer to the sceptic, and I don't understand idealism. But other than that, realism's gotta be right, yeah? | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Accept: compatibilism | To accept is not to have a freakin' clue how to defend, apparently. | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: atheism | I was raised Anglican which, of course, is a form of atheism. So my position is a deep-rooted bias from my upbringing, and I don't know of a good argument for or against the position. | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Lean toward: rationalism | | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Accept: non-classical | Having spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about old-skool logic, I'm willing to accept: non-classical is where the money is. | |
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: non-naturalism | My position is Gadamerian. At least, I think it is: I've never read Gadamer. But I'm willing to accept any position the label of which rolls off the tongue so sweetly. | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept: non-physicalism | If the non-physicalist denies the identity of mental states and physical states while perhaps holding that the dependence is stronger than supervenience, then I would be proud to tell strangers on the sidewalk that I am an non-physicalist. | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Accept: externalism | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Lean toward: virtue ethics | It's not obvious to me that these are incompatible answers to some one question. I lean towards virtue ethics more out of familiarity than conviction. And because deontologists are no fun at parties. | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Accept: biological view | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | Finally a question where I gave an honest answer. | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Lean toward: Millian | It depends on where we draw the semantics/pragmatics line; and the choice may be somewhat arbitrary. Is that a lean or a none of the above? Much of this quiz is tracking one's meta-multiple-choice-test views, as much as one's views. I lean towards leaning. | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Lean toward: scientific realism | Haven't really thought about it, but this must be my position: see comment above. | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Accept: death | But, as a way of avoiding the 405 ... | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Accept: A-theory | The benefits of eternalism are many and the cost is but one: it's wrong. Reflexive equilibrium works great as a philosophical method until it doesn't. | |
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch? | Accept: switch | I would switch. Unless I was too busy shoving or exploding the obese. I doubt, however, that this intuition entails I ought to switch. | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Lean toward: deflationary | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Reject one, undecided between others | There's a notion of conceivability that rules out conceivable but not metaphysically possible; that notion is the relevant one for the argument; but the argument begs the question in claiming that zombies are conceivable. Sorry, that one wasn't very funny. | |