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: no | | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Accept: nominalism | | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Accept: subjective | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Lean toward: yes | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: externalism | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Accept: skepticism | | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Lean toward: no free will | I accept causal determinism, and define "freedom" as the absence of 'external' constraint. For me, 'free' deliberation, therefore, is a fully determined process. Thus I do not deliberate because I am 'free', but feel free because I am unaware of the determinism of my deliberation. Every decision I make is, under the prevailing circumstances, the only decision I can make, although I myself cannot predict it, or know all the circumstances. To say I am free is to say I am not externally constrained, it is not to contradict my own internal, causal determinism. I am free to act as I choose, but not free to choose as I choose. When I say I am 'free', all I can mean is that I am not externally constrained. | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: atheism | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Accept an intermediate view | Some knowledge is acquired empirically, while other knowledge is acquired rationally. Yet other knowledge is a kind of hybrid: synthesised from experience. The question also swings on just what is meant by "knowledge". | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Accept: contextualism | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Lean toward: Humean | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Lean toward: classical | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: internalism | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Accept: moral anti-realism | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Accept: naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept: physicalism | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Lean toward: cognitivism | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: internalism | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Accept: two boxes | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Accept: consequentialism | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Lean toward: sense-datum theory | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: libertarianism | | |
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: survival | | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Lean toward: A-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 | | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Accept: correspondence | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Lean toward: metaphysically possible | | |