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? | Lean toward: Platonism | I don't put much weight on spookiness objections, which seems to be a key complaint against non-nominalism ("Platonism" just seems derogatory!). | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: subjective | | |
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 | | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Accept: compatibilism | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | The question is too unclear to answer | If rationalism is just the denial of empiricism (where this is the view that all knowledge is in some sense grounded in sensory experience or impressions), then I suppose I'm probably a rationalist. | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Lean toward: invariantism | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Lean toward: non-Humean | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Accept: classical | | |
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: naturalism | It's unclear what "naturalism" means here. But I certainly wouldn't describing my view on anything as non-naturalistic. | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Lean toward: physicalism | Of the non-reductionist variety. | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Accept: cognitivism | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: externalism | I'm assuming "internalism" here means the relatively strong, traditional version that making a moral judgment necessarily entails possession of the corresponding (though defeasible) motivation. But if "internalism" means something weaker, then I'd lean toward it (like what Michael Smith calls "the practicality requirement," according to which making the moral judgment entails the existence of the motivation unless the agent is practically irrational). | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Lean toward: deontology | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Lean toward: representationalism | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Lean toward: psychological view | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Lean toward: Millian | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Accept: 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? | Agnostic/undecided | I know I'm supposed to say "switch!" but I'm not so sure... | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Lean toward: correspondence | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Lean toward: conceivable but not metaphysically possible | | |