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? | Lean toward: yes | | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Accept: nominalism | | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Accept both | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Lean toward: yes | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: internalism | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Lean toward: 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: 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? | There is no fact of the matter | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Accept: internalism | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Lean toward: moral realism | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Lean toward: non-naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept both | I'm about 80% sure it's Russellian monism. | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Lean toward: cognitivism | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Accept: externalism | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Accept: one box | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Lean toward: consequentialism | "Lean toward" only in the sense that I have some background doubts about moral realism. If any normative ethical theory is true, it's almost certainly utilitarianism. | |
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? | Lean toward: further-fact view | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: libertarianism | | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | There is no fact of the matter | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Lean toward: scientific realism | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Accept: death | Don't do it. | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Agnostic/undecided | I think that accepting the B-theory comes at a huge cost in terms of ordinary intuitions about the nature of persistence and personal identity, and hence one's connection to and stake in the well-being of one's past and future selves. But there's also no very good reason to think that theose intuitions are veridical, and the evidence from physics strikes me as indecisive as well, although STR undeniably makes it awkward to be an A-theorist. | |
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch? | Accept: switch | With the standard utilitarian caveats; but if it's stipulated that switching will maximize utility... | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Lean toward: deflationary | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Accept: metaphysically possible | | |