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:

QuestionAnswerComments
A priori knowledge: yes or no?Accept: yesI believe Logic, Mathematics and Normative Ethics are a priori disciplines all of which deliver knowledge.
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Accept another alternativeMysterian, numbers exist but abstract is mostly a name for things whose inner nature we do not understand (they are NOT in space, NOT in time, they do NOT enter into causal relations - what positive knowledge we have about them after all).
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?OtherIntersubjective
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?Accept: non-skeptical realismContextualist response to the skeptic.
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?Lean toward: libertarianismI take it for granted that there is free will and I believe that the compatibilist sense in which there is free will is too thin.
God: theism or atheism?Accept: atheismThere is not any good reason to believe in God, there are good reasons not to believe it (the problem of evil, paradoxes about omnipotence, omniscience, free will, relation to time, relation to space and the list goes on...)
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?Accept: rationalism
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?Lean toward: contextualism
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?Accept: non-Humean
Logic: classical or non-classical?Lean toward: classical
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Accept: externalism
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?Accept: moral realism
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?The question is too unclear to answerNaturalism is an umbrella term. Methodologically, (which is I believe the intended sense)I do not reject science, in fact I think it is obvious that it provides useful data for philosophical theorizing but I also do not accept that science and philosophy are continuous in the strong quinean sense.
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?The question is too unclear to answerIf physicalism entails that all facts known by physics at the end of the enquiry fix all other facts it is false. If it means that consciousness arises from nonconscious stuff it it is probably true (being nothing over and above it - dualism is false).
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?Accept: cognitivism
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?Lean toward: externalism
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?Accept: one box
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?Accept: virtue ethicsAlthough there is a lot to be said for the other two approaches, I think Virtue Ethics is the right approach to morality and can't or shouldn't be revised in order to be reconciled with the other two.
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?Accept another alternativeIntentionalist theory of perception
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?Lean toward: further-fact view
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?Lean toward: communitarianism
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?Lean toward: FregeanThe semantic content of a proper name is not exhausted by its referent. Frege's Puzzle and Negative Existential taught us better.
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?Lean toward: scientific realismStructural Realism
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?Accept: death
Time: A-theory or B-theory?Accept: B-theory
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch?Accept: switch
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?Accept another alternativeInflationary, truth is a robust property such as goodness.
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?Lean toward: conceivable but not metaphysically possibleEither zombies are metaphysically possible or mysterianism is true and there are facts about consciousness of which we are cognitively closed. If the later then that would explain why zombies seem conceivable. The conceivibility of zombies would then just reveal a fact about our cognitive limitations and not about the ontological or metaphysical nature of consciousness.