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 | | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Accept an intermediate view | | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: subjective | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Lean toward: yes | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Accept: internalism | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Accept an intermediate view | | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Lean toward: compatibilism | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Accept an intermediate view | | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Lean toward: contextualism | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Lean toward: Humean | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Lean toward: non-classical | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Lean toward: moral anti-realism | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Lean toward: naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept another alternative | Since our notions of "the physical" are in such a state of flux, and the concept of emergent entities further blurs distinctions, perhaps this entire area of difference is evolving into something else. The traditional discussions, interesting as they are, perhaps are becoming moot. | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Accept: non-cognitivism | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Accept: internalism | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Accept both | Either strategy can be shown to be optimal, depending on one's decision theory, or it's a paradox. | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Lean toward: virtue ethics | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Accept more than one | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Lean toward: psychological view | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: communitarianism | | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Lean toward: Fregean | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Accept: survival | | |
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? | Lean toward: switch | The trolley problem, while a useful thought experiment, fails to account for the often unvoiced thought people have about the possible differential value of individuals (suppose David Chalmers is the one, and the five are subnormal criminal inmates) when it is used in surveys and the like. | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Lean toward: deflationary | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Lean toward: metaphysically possible | What a concept! If only Wittgenstein and Russell could have seen Night of the Living Dead. | |