My philosophical views

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.

See also:

QuestionAnswerComments
A priori knowledge: yes or no?Lean toward: yesThis question seems to me the same as the question concerning empiricism and rationalism, so my comments there apply also here.
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Accept: PlatonismI definitely oppose nominalism. However, I support a kind of realism concerning universals that is an intermediate view between views that are comonly called (perhaps not historically correctly) Platonism and Aristotelianism. I believe that universals exist independently of particulars but that instantiated universals are constitutients of particulars. So I might say that I accept another alternative; however, if Platonism is understood so weakly as to stand for any kind of realism concerning universals or other abstract objects, as I suspect it was understood when this question was posed, then I am definitely a Platonist.
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?Lean toward: subjective
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?Accept: yesI think that there is an analytic-synthetic distinction, but the line between analytic and synthetic statements is vague in the case of natural languages, and only clear in the case of artificial languages that are constructed to be free of semantic identerminacy.
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?Agnostic/undecided
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?Lean toward: non-skeptical realismI accept a realism that is weak in content and strongly falliblistic, and which might therefore be called weakly skeptical. I believe that the external world exists and is independent of human beliefs and other human attitudes, but cannot rule out (even fallibly) the possibility that its ultimate nature might turn out to be spiritual, so I do not rule out an ontological idealism, only an epistemological one.
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?Lean toward: compatibilism
God: theism or atheism?Agnostic/undecidedI am an agnostic, but think that the most likely answer to the question of God's existence is some kind of non-classical theism or deism or panentheism, e. g. process panendeism.
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?Accept: rationalismI accept rationalism in the weak sense that we have (fallible and revisable) a priori justified true beliefs, not in the strong sense that all or most of our knowledge would be independent of experience or even in the sense that our a priori justified beliefs would be wholly unrevisable by experience.
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?Lean toward: invariantism
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?Lean toward: non-Humean
Logic: classical or non-classical?Lean toward: classicalI am opposed to intuitionistic logic, but suspect that in order to solve the various paradoxes satisfactorily we might have to accept that some truth-bearers lack a truth-value.
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Lean toward: internalism
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?Lean toward: non-physicalism
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?Accept: cognitivism
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?Lean toward: externalism
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?Accept: consequentialism
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?Agnostic/undecidedI am unable to decide between some kind of weak representationalism and a qualia theory.
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?Lean toward: psychological viewI think that psychological continuity is at least necessary for personal identity; however, I cannot exclude the possiblity that some other kind of continuity might also be necessary.
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?Accept an intermediate viewI support a left-libertarian view that combines libertarian and egalitarian features (where the egalitarianism is understood as being in favour of equality of opportunity, not an impossible absolute equality).
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?Agnostic/undecidedI lean toward both Fregeanism and some kind of intermedicate view, so I am rather undecided.
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?Accept: scientific realismI accept a critical scientific realism; a realism that is fallibilistic and according to which scientific progress consists in increasing truthlikeness rather than the attainment of completely true theories.
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?The question is too unclear to answerI suspect the answer depends on the way teletransportation is described in detail; the replacement of matter may not lead to death if the process is sufficiently continuous in a suitable way.
Time: A-theory or B-theory?Lean toward: 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?Accept: correspondenceI actually think that deflationary and correspondence theories are not incompatible and that both correspondence theory and deflationism as commonly formulated are highly ambiguous theories. Therefore I am both a weak correspondence theories and a mild deflationist. I might then also say that I accept an intermediate view or reject one view (namely epistemicism) However, since I think that some formulations of correspondence theory are probably quite accurate while I doubt that any existing formulation of deflationism is, it is perhaps best to say that I am a correspondence theorist.
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?Lean toward: metaphysically possible