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 | Evolutionary survival has genetically wired the human mind in certain ways that can be considered a priori to any particular individual. | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Lean toward: Platonism | I am reading Johanna Seibt's book "Properties as Process," which argues the case for the nominalism of Wilfred Sellars; however, I have tended to lean in the past toward Platonism and have read part of D. M. Armstrong's "A Theory of Universals: Universals and Scientific Realism." | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: subjective | Aesthetic feelings are, IMO, wholely dependent on and occurs only within sentient entities, or, in any case, Whitehead's actual entities. I don't see them as residing "actually" in some external or objective "space". I feel close to Whitehead's view. | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Accept: yes | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Accept an intermediate view | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Accept: non-skeptical realism | I'm influenced here by Mario Bunge. | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Lean toward: compatibilism | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept another alternative | I have long been attracted to Whitehead's and Hartshorne's panentheism. | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Accept: rationalism | I accept a rational systemism such as offered by Mario Bunge and Errol Harris. | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Lean toward: contextualism | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Accept: non-Humean | There is a difference between mere statistical correlation and causality, even if there are grqay areas. | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Accept both | I think logics are best seen in terms of situations and the kinds of entities one is dealing with. Fuzzy logic differs from classical logic yet is widely applied. | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | The question is too unclear to answer | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Lean toward: moral realism | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept an intermediate view | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Accept an intermediate view | Moral judgments often have a cognitive component that is tied to facts and a cognitive comparison of facts. | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Accept an intermediate view | Since each individual is a component of a larger moral system, moral influence and guidance both does and should come from sources both internal and external to the individual. | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Lean toward: one box | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Lean toward: virtue ethics | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Lean toward: qualia theory | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Lean toward: biological view | I think neuroscience is foundational for thinking about how the brain works and produces a sense of personal identity. | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Accept more than one | I favor an Earth Community with a large degree of intellectual freedom but a large degree of social and economic equality. | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Lean toward: Millian | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Accept: scientific realism | Mario Bunge is my guru here. | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Accept: survival | Since "matter" consists of fundamental particles and fields that are essential identical, according to physicists, I would be tempted to accept Leibniz's principle of the identity of indiscernables. | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
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: correspondence | There are various situations in formal logic and mathematics and theoretical ethics in which truth is based on coherence. But when dealing with the external world of facts, truth is based not only on coherence but correspondence. | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Lean toward: metaphysically possible | | |