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: Platonism | | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: subjective | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Accept: no | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Lean toward: non-skeptical realism | | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Accept: compatibilism | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: atheism | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Accept both | | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Accept: non-Humean | * laws of nature exist platonically, and we can access them in the same manner that we access platonic mathematical objects. | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Reject both | | |
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? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Lean toward: virtue ethics | * although I'm not sure how I can justify this (I'm more or less a moral relativist) | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Accept an intermediate view | * some kind of qualia-representationalist view (I'm working on it!) | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Lean toward: biological view | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: libertarianism | * of the left-wing variety (but not full-blown anarchism!) | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Accept: Fregean | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Accept: scientific anti-realism | * structural realism. I guess that isn't full-blown realism, but I think it should be counted as such. | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Accept: death | | |
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? | There is no fact of the matter | | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Lean toward: correspondence | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Accept an intermediate view | Depends on whether we are talking about ideal or negative conceivability. When the facts are in I don't think they'll be conceivable (reject ideal conceivability). But I think they currently are conceivable because we don't know enough yet (there is a mind-body problem). | |