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? | Accept: yes | Suppose the world consists of only one mind. Ex hypothesi, there still would be knowledge; and all knowledge would be a priori. | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Other | There was a time when the material realm did not exist -- no molecules, no atoms... nothing of this sort; and, therefore, no minds (understood as the dwellers of the concrete realm). What was there then? It cannot be that nothing was, for, as Fridugisus of Tours laconically put it, "nothing cannot be." The only thing we are left with is the realm of the abstracta. It, therefore, not only is, it is eternally out there. It was before all things material and intentional and it will after they are long gone. It, therefore, is Reality itself. | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Lean toward: yes | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Accept another alternative | | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Other | Reality is not free not to be, but some of its its elements are. I am, for instance, free not to be. | |
God: theism or atheism? | Reject both | The atheist celebrates God's nonexistence. The theist celebrates God's existence. I bemoan that God doesn't exist; but I don't let my sorrow to cloud my judgement. | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Accept an intermediate view | | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | The question is too unclear to answer | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Accept both | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Accept: moral anti-realism | Morality is a construct, but it is also grounded in sociopsychology. | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | The question is too unclear to answer | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Accept both | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Reject all | 'An object is identical to itself' and 'an object = an object' are utterly nonsensical assertions. Identity is a pure dicto relation, viz. the relation that obtains exclusively between signs of things, not things themselves. | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: libertarianism | Even libertarianism is not good enough for the autonomous individuals. | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Reject both | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Reject both | Time is unreal, for if it were real, then in either its A, or B, or A/B embodiment it would be essentially a contradictory (in the metaphysical sense of 'contradiction') phenomenon. This is in a nutshell my dissertation thesis. | |
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Accept more than one | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |