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 bothLike so many questions in philosophy, this is a false issue designed to foster endless debate. The real distinction is between knowledge gained through individual experience vs. knowledge gained through experience of past generations, transmitted genetically.
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?Accept bothAll human experience involves both subject and object!
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?Accept: yesI assume you mean whether there is a meaningful distinction between analytic and synthetic statements? I would say it is an absolutely crucial distinction, often ignored in the scientific community.
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?Lean toward: externalismsee question 10. 'Epistemic justification' suggests knowledge of the external world, hence my leaning toward externalism for justification of such knowledge. However, I repeat that every mental act involves both subject and object, so that the subject must take responsibility for cognitive judgments.
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?Lean toward: non-skeptical realismAny contest between idealism and realism is ultimately undecidable; skepticism must be applied to both.
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?Lean toward: libertarianismThe issue of free will hinges on determinism and the openness of the future, as well as on causality. I don't believe that nature (physical reality) consists of deterministic systems, which are human artifacts, but I do believe in causality. On the level of the Mind-Body Problem, I would classify myself as compatibilist, since I believe the nervous system's causal processes underlie one's experience of free will (as well as one's experience of being a creature of genes!) Science in large measure seems to attempt a timeless description, of eternal laws in an n-dimensional space-time continuum. By definition this precludes an open future, but does it correspond to reality?
God: theism or atheism?Accept: atheismAssuming that the theism (God) in question is the standard supreme being of semitic mythology, I would count myself an atheist. However, the interesting thing about the human situation, which for example makes an ongoing debate between religion and science inevitable, is that as self-conscious beings we cannot know anything with absolute certainty. Whatever our faith (even as "atheists"), we are condemned to live with undecidable propositions.
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?Accept: empiricismI view rationalism (which I call deductionism) as a form of the general human tendency to want to escape the bounds and context of nature, by substituting humanly-contrived systems and environment. I fully sympathize with this desire in all its cultural manifestations; the human dilemma is that we can perceive the ideal while immersed in the reality of nature. Culture in general is the answer to this dilemma and the human world that is created as an ersatz environment. This includes an intellectual environment, consisting of various mental constructs, including deductive systems. But as far as knowledge goes, I consider that to mean knowledge of the real (natural, found) world rather than knowledge of (made) human systems, so I "accept empiricism" as the way to justify such knowledge.
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?Accept another alternativeAside from the possibility that Hume may not have embraced the view often attributed to him, I could have answered "lean toward Humean". However, I would put the distinction differently: laws of nature are algorithms formulated by human beings to make sense of patterns in the world. The patterns themselves, alternative formulations and interpretations of them, and their meanings, are distinct matters. The real choice is often (and subtly) between the algorithm and what it represents. There is an understandable tendency among scientists to prefer their deductive systems (theories) as the actual object of study, and to believe that the laws they identity have "governing" power. This tendency follows the ancient Greek prejudice for reducing all knowledge to axiomatic systems, and was fostered by the ethos of 17th century Christianity, which conflated divine, juridical, and natural law. Personally, I believe this prejudice has led modern science to view nature incorrectly as passive, inert, consisting of 'closed reversible systems' (effectively: deductive systems). The notion of governing laws misleads away from taking nature seriously enough as a self-organizing and self-defining entity on every level.
Logic: classical or non-classical?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Reject bothThis appears to be a moot variation of the perennial debate between idealism and realism/materialism/naturalism. Every mental content involves an input from both the subject (or organism) and the object (or external world).
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?Accept bothMan is the creature who WANTS to be separate from nature, who therefore has one foot in each of two worlds. The consequences of this conflict are far more serious and sweeping than can be addressed by some "philosophical" question of naturalism vs non-naturalism!
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?Accept bothCertainly I lean toward physicalism in the sense that I am not an idealist; I believe there is a physical substrate to "mind" (the organism and its relations to the physical world). But this is not a one-way street. Especially in the case of human beings, "mind" has majorly shaped the external world. The realm of cultural creations (including technology, urban environments) has something of the status given by Popper, of a "third world". In any case, it often serves as the preferred habitat for people, including the mental creations of philosophers.
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?Lean toward: non-cognitivismEthical assertions become ordinary assertions of fact when prefaced by: "I believe that.." or "So and so believes that..." They are then statements for which the subject claims responsibility. It seems to be an anthropological fact that Indo-European cultures tend not to claim such responsibility for being the agents behind ontological assertions.
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?Reject bothsee question 10
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?Lean toward: representationalismOn how to distinguish perception from hallucination (or dream, or virtual reality simulation, or memory), see my book: "Second Nature: the Man-made World of Idealism, Technology and Power." Sartre (paraphrasing) got the gist of it right: constructs that lack direct sensory input tend to lack the detail of sense perceptions.
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?Accept more than onePersonal identity is not just personal to oneself but a public asset (or liability).
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?Accept more than oneHow about a political system where everyone is equal, we all act for the common good, and we all have a maximum of freedom?
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?Accept an intermediate viewRealism seems clear enough, but anti-realism may cover too much territory. Certainly I believe there is an external world, but the reality of it is not guaranteed to be knowable. In the face of this, and given the general human avoidance of uncertainty, there is a marked tendency within science to prefer familiarity with humanly contrived systems of knowledge (deductive systems) over admissions of ignorance. Therefore I would say that even scientists who claim to be realists may in fact be "anti-realist", in the sense that they prefer axiomatic systems (theories) to the reality of nature. I believe that nature is due far more credit for its self-organizing abilities and depth of complexity than is generally given by the physics community, and that the general reductionist (mechanist/deductionist) program initiated in 17th century has misled science away from fruitful avenues of research and toward goals ("theories of everything") that will prove to be dead ends.
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?Lean toward: deathI assume you mean "would a person survive teletransportation?" Probably not, because in order to transfer the pattern of organization of an organism (or anything natural thing)—let alone the molecules themselves—it would be necessary to first analyze and specify that pattern: to find the "blueprint" of the thing. If we assume that nature is not itself an artifact, and does not come with a blueprint, but has indefinite complexity and features, then this task would be impossible to fulfill. What can be simulated is other artifacts—other simulations, for example. So, you could transfer a digital program from one place to another (as we now do), but not an organism.
Time: A-theory or B-theory?Lean toward: A-theory'Time' refers to what happens outside closed reversible systems; the latter do not exist in nature, but are conceptual artifacts.
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 oneI don't see any great contradiction among these views.
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?Accept: conceivable but not metaphysically possibleAssuming a 'zombie' is a creature that can do everything a conscious person can do, I believe that consciousness is functional in precisely the way that would make zombies a contradiction in terms.