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?Lean toward: yes
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Lean toward: Platonism
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?Lean toward: objective
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?Lean toward: no free willTo be clear: I lean toward a hard incompatibilism about free will, but I a full-blown compatibilist about moral responsibility. Semi-compatibilists often distinguish the two.
God: theism or atheism?Accept: atheism
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?Lean toward: empiricism
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?Lean toward: contextualism
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?Agnostic/undecided
Logic: classical or non-classical?Lean toward: classical
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Lean toward: externalism
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?Accept: moral realism
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?Lean toward: naturalism
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?Accept: physicalism
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?Accept: cognitivism
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?Accept: externalism
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?Agnostic/undecided
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?Accept: deontologyI maintain that virtue ethics collapses into deontology, but no matter.
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: psychological view
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?Accept: egalitarianismI confess I'm not sure that egalitarianis and libertarianism are incompatible--I find some strain of so-called "left-libertarianism" attractive that seems to involve both.
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?Lean toward: Fregean
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?Accept: scientific realism
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?Accept: survival
Time: A-theory or B-theory?Agnostic/undecided
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?Agnostic/undecidedUndecided, but I do tend to think that deflationary accounts of truth are inadequate--i.e., that some other alternative must be correct.
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?Lean toward: inconceivable