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? | Lean toward: yes | | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Lean toward: nominalism | | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: objective | I'm not entirely sure what the subjective/objective distinction is doing here. If the question is whether there would be aesthetic value if there were no persons, then aesthetic value is plainly subjective. However, given persons and their peculiar constitution I'm inclined to think that some aesthetic value is real and independent of what we say and think about it. | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Lean toward: no | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Reject both | I think there is no piece of philosophical jargon I loathe more intensely than externalism/internalism distinctions. | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Reject one, undecided between others | I reject skepticism. | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Accept more than one | I endorse a form of two-world compatibilism such that compatibilism and incompatibilism are compatible. | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: atheism | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Reject both | | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Lean toward: contextualism | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Lean toward: non-Humean | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Reject both | I find internalism/externalism distinctions entirely unhelpful. Partially because there are so many of them--three just in this survey. | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Lean toward: moral realism | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Lean toward: naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Lean toward: physicalism | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Accept an intermediate view | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Reject both | I find internalism/externalism distinctions universally unhelpful. | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Accept more than one | I'm currently endorsing an axiological deontology in which value is pluralistic. However, such a view does not treat all relevant characterological issues; one could be on the sunny side of the deontology and yet be of substandard character. Thus I am also attracted to some form of virtue ethics as a supplement. | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Accept an intermediate view | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: communitarianism | | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Lean toward: scientific realism | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Lean toward: death | | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
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: epistemic | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Lean toward: conceivable but not metaphysically possible | | |