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: yes
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Accept: Platonism
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?Accept: objective
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?Accept: yesFregean reduction.
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?Accept: internalismBonjour's semi-conceptualism.
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?Accept: non-skeptical realismAbductivism.
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?Accept: libertarianismProbably some form of agent-causation. I find E.J. Lowe's non-causal volitionist account appealing too.
God: theism or atheism?Accept: atheismI think the logical problem of natural evil and the evidential problem of evil both work.
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?Accept: rationalism"Moderate rationalism," i.e. that a priori justifiable propositions are open to a posteriori falsification.
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?Accept: invariantism
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?Accept: non-Humean
Logic: classical or non-classical?Accept: classical
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Accept: internalismIntrinsic intentionality.
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?Accept: moral realismMoral platonism.
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?Accept: non-naturalismAwww yess
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?Accept: non-physicalismEither property dualism or a kind of non-Cartesian substance dualism.
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?Accept: cognitivism
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?Accept: internalism
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?Accept: two boxes
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?Accept more than oneDeontology and virtue ethics as discursive and instrumental engagements with the moral reality.
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?Lean toward: qualia theory
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?Accept: further-fact view
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?Accept: libertarianismI identify as a kind of 'neo-mutualist individualist anarchist'. Or as a vanilla left-wing market anarchist. I think that the coercive state is illegitimate, that the arguments for the necessity of public government are always self-refuting, and that voluntary market, gift, and barter associations can provide better solutions than what states deliver. Secondly, I object to the hard distinction between egalitarianism and libertarianism. Egalitarianism has as a necessary condition a requirement for extreme libertarianism. We cannot have equal opportunity and equal exchange so long as State/government/power is left to its devices--it has a consistent history of creating monopoly and, "through letters of blood and fire", placing the means of production into the hands of autocratic ownership class through mass land expropriations and enclosures -- and thus inequality of both social and economic castes. Libertarians who are conscientious of their socialist roots recognize that equal negative rights are just as important as the disolucion of state-backed unequal exchange.
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?Lean toward: Millian
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?Lean toward: scientific anti-realism
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?Lean toward: survival
Time: A-theory or B-theory?Accept: A-theory
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch?Lean toward: don't switch
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?Accept: correspondence
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?Lean toward: conceivable but not metaphysically possible