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? | The question is too unclear to answer | A priori means independent from experience. What do we mean by experience? It's a word with several senses. If we mean experience as sensorial knowledge, I think we can say that knowledge begins with experience but transcendes the sensorial, sensitive knowing. If we mean by experience a concept much more complex, including all our beliefs, memories, desires, ambitions, activities, etc., then we can't speak of a priori in the sense of experience autonomy. | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Accept an intermediate view | It's not easy to decide. Platonism considered as a view about the world of ideas separated from our real world is certainly not my view. But there much more to say on Platonism. I'm certainly not affiliated to the platonic tradition, but I admire Plato's dialogues. My profile is more aristotelic, in general. Not nominalist, certainly not. I mean not ockhamist.
But the issue is rather complex. If you are not platonist, you don't have necessarily to be nominalist and vice versa. | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Accept another alternative | The subjective/objective alternative must be overcome. The concepts are not exhaustive neither disjuntive. And thinking with these apparente dualities is too misleading. So I prefer to eliminate the disjunction subjective/objective | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Accept an intermediate view | I Think that Kripke has shown that this distinction has many exceptions, so we must be carefull and take case by case. See Kripke, Naming and Necessity. Ilean toward Kripke. | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Accept an intermediate view | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Lean toward: non-skeptical realism | I'm not a skeptic, I'm not an idealist. But I think that a realistic view must be well founded. It is not an ingenuos position. | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Accept: compatibilism | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: theism | God exists, I'm sure. I believe God exists. Itsn't an irrational belief, but a strong faith based on God's authority and love. | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Accept another alternative | The traditional isolation and radical distance between experience and reason contributes always to an icompete and partial view about knowledge. | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Accept more than one | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Accept: non-Humean | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Accept both | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Accept: externalism | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Accept: moral realism | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Lean toward: non-naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept: non-physicalism | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Other | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Accept an intermediate view | It is not easy to choose between two extreme view. Generally the problem is much more complex and need a carefull and sound examination | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Accept: virtue ethics | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Reject all | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Accept: further-fact view | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Accept another alternative | | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Accept: Fregean | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Lean toward: scientific realism | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Accept: survival | I believe that human being has an eternal life. He is not an animal, he has a soul, a mind, a spirituality, and this spiritual dimension will survive | |
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? | Other | | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Accept another alternative | Correspondence, that is, correspondence between a theory or a proposition and the reality is not enough; you must consider the reflexive dimension, that is, the knower must «see» himself thie correspondence. | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Accept: conceivable but not metaphysically possible | | |