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: yesAnd lots of it!
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Lean toward: Platonism
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?Accept bothBoth exists. VERY roughly: what makes us merry is subjective; what inspires awe is objective - yet not necessarily the same for each of us (not uniform). A real explanation would not fit in this margin..
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?Accept: yes
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?OtherI don't quite understand the terms. Some beliefs are given bij God and properly basic; others follow from other beliefs, and others again from beliefs plus experience.
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?Lean toward: non-skeptical realismThe world is there insofar God thinks it, and we have a priori knowledge of its existence.
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?Accept: libertarianism
God: theism or atheism?Accept: theism
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?Accept: rationalismWe have quite a bit of a priori knowledge, including knowledge that allows us to accept sense data as informative of the external world.
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?Accept: non-HumeanAgain, a law exists if it is God's intention. We can discover the law because we have a priori knowledge of the low information content of the world - so the shortest description is the most likely.
Logic: classical or non-classical?Accept an intermediate viewSomething akin to intuitionism: the finiteness of our world leads to infinite information content - if everything were computable no need for Gödel-like axioms would be necessary. God lives beyond this limit and has absolute truth, but we can't get at that (by rational means, at least, and never at all of it).
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Lean toward: internalismAll that is really needed is, again, God's intention. Is a transcendent being external? Nothing immanent and external is needed.
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?Accept: moral realism
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?Accept: non-naturalismTaking naturalism to contradict transcendentalism.
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?Accept: non-physicalism
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?Accept: cognitivism
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?Accept: internalismHope I understand this one. The world has a "moral arrow", part of creation. We have a priori knowledge of that fact, and an inclination to follow the arrow. Other inclinations may and will couter that wish, of course.
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?Accept: one box
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?Lean toward: deontologyOn the absolute level. We may not know moral laws in their exact form (just as we don't know scientific laws in their final form), so in practice virtue ethics may result when my ethical intuition transcends the laws as I know them.
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?Insufficiently familiar with the issueI know what I believe on this, but haven't read enough to know what some of the terms above mean.
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?Reject one, undecided between othersAgain, I don't know quite what the terms mean. Identity follows, not surprisingly, from God's intention - see the teleport question.
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?Lean toward: egalitarianismEgalitarianism = treating people as of equal worth. The individual is definitely worth more than the state, but the state may infringe on liberty to avoid prisoners' dilemmas.
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?Accept: scientific realismBased on our a priori knowledge of the low information content of our world, and assuming science means finding the shortest explantion of things. (And that realism implies knowing that further research will probably yield ever refined theories - possibly forever.)
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?Accept another alternativeIdentity follows from God's intention. If God means the teleported person to be the same, it is. Otherwise, not.
Time: A-theory or B-theory?Lean toward: B-theoryI suppose that means the B-series is primary. God being "outside time", we are dreamt "at once" (wrong term) at each moment, and at each moment we have a different A-series.
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 switchNow if probabilities get involved it becomes a different matter, and they always do, of course.
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?Lean toward: correspondenceBoth truth and reality follow from God's intention (like dream truth and reality from the intention of the dreamer). Insofar there is a single intention truth and reality correspond.
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?Accept: metaphysically possible