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? | Reject both | I think the question of a priori knowledge is largely irrelevant. Even if a priori knowledge existed, we would not be able to answer it, as an a priori standpoint is a pure thought construction--it is impossible for us to actually examine a priori knowledge because we are never in an "a priori state", so to speak. | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Accept: nominalism | | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Accept: subjective | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Accept: yes | I don't think the distinction is really something one can "accept" or not--I see it more as a useful tool for structuring concepts. | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: externalism | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Accept: non-skeptical realism | | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Lean toward: no free will | I don't really see any room within our understanding of the physical world for free will to act--despite this, however, I'm not sure how the apparent result that free will must be an illusion should affect our daily lives, since I don't think we'll ever be able to escape that illusion... | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: atheism | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Lean toward: empiricism | It depends on what knowledge is being considered. If we're talking about a sort of meta-knowledge (i.e. as in the Critique of Pure Reason) then rationalism is preferable, but in terms of the nature of the outside world, empirical determinations are all we have. Though I'm also inclined towards eschewing the question altogether and accepting some synthesis of the two. | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | There is no fact of the matter | Again, logic seems to me to be a tool, not a fact of the matter one can "accept" or not... | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Accept: moral anti-realism | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Lean toward: naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept: physicalism | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Accept an intermediate view | As an anti-realist I do not think that moral qualities are something that can be found in the world, but I would accept the proposition that our moral judgments are sourced within certain mental structures which have been evolutionarily developed (and thus with regards to/in comparison with these evolutionary structures/predispositions moral statements could be regarded as having a truth value) | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: internalism | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Lean toward: one box | It depends on the characterization of the problem, really, but if you accept that Omega or the Predictor or whoever's predictions are almost always right, then one-boxing seems like the obvious choice... | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Lean toward: consequentialism | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Lean toward: representationalism | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Lean toward: psychological view | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: libertarianism | | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Lean toward: Millian | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Accept: scientific realism | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Accept: 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 | | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Lean toward: correspondence | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Accept: inconceivable | I mean "inconceivable" in the sense that I think "zombie-ism", as a concept, is utterly contradictory and really doesn't make any sense. | |