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: yesEndorsing the claim does not amount to access to a transcendent reality, but to grasping the logical structures of and relationships between semantic categories
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Accept bothThe terminology of 'abstract objects' is very unfortunate, strongly suggesting outright Platonic 'non-concrete substances', which I take to be absurd. Numbers, e.g., are akin to attributes; numbers are the numbers OF things; the number of legs on a spider is larger than the number of legs on a rabbit; the number of numbers is infinite.
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?Lean toward: objectivesupervenience, surely
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?Accept: yesYes, Virginia, there are meanings.
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?Accept: externalism
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?Lean toward: non-skeptical realismI affirm realism outright. Unlike scepticism, realism is an ontic doctrine.
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?The question is too unclear to answer
God: theism or atheism?Accept: atheismThere are no good arguments for the existence of gods, one or many, and plenty of arguments against.
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?Reject bothBut moderate rationalism is much closer to the mark
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?Accept: invariantism
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?Accept: non-Humean
Logic: classical or non-classical?The question is too unclear to answer
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Lean toward: externalism
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?Accept: moral realism
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?The question is too unclear to answerThere are too many varieties of naturalism, and positivism is not dead yet.
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?The question is too unclear to answer
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?Accept: cognitivism
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?Lean toward: externalism
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?Agnostic/undecided
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?Accept more than one
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?The question is too unclear to answerBut if representationalism means that perceptual experience is 'referential' or has objective content, then it is correct.
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?Accept: biological view
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?Lean toward: egalitarianism
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: death
Time: A-theory or B-theory?Lean toward: B-theory
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?Lean toward: deflationaryBut Aristotelian correspondence is a virtual truism
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?Lean toward: metaphysically possible