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?Lean toward: noWe do have innate dispositions that can lead to successful action if that's what one means.
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?The question is too unclear to answer
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?Accept another alternative
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?Accept: no
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?Accept botheach tracks a different but, in principle, coherent notion of what it means to have justification
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?Accept another alternativeI am naturalist and falliblist on such questions.
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?Accept: compatibilism
God: theism or atheism?Accept: atheismunless one plays around with the definition of god.
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?Lean toward: empiricism
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?Accept another alternativeEach sort of account tracks different intuitions we have about how knowledge works. There is not one canonical account since the intuitions that support such alternative theories are incoherent.
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?Accept another alternativewhatever our best physical theories suggest, and this is revisable
Logic: classical or non-classical?Accept both
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Accept another alternativewhatever our best natural account of cognition suggest, and this is always revisable.
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?Accept another alternativemost moral judgment is conventional.
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?Accept: naturalism
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?Accept: physicalism
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?The question is too unclear to answer
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?The question is too unclear to answer
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?There is no fact of the matterThis depends entirely on one's background assumptions.
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?Accept another alternative
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?Accept another alternativeI am a pluralist here too. Each account captures some philosophical intuitions and misses others. Why suppose there is only one faithful account of experience?
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?Accept another alternativeAll of the above and more---each account tracks a different sort of identity.
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?Lean toward: libertarianism
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?The question is too unclear to answerargh.
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?Accept: scientific realism
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?The question is too unclear to answer
Time: A-theory or B-theory?Accept another alternativewhatever our best physical theories suggest, and this is revisable
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch?There is no fact of the matter
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?Accept: epistemic
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?The question is too unclear to answer