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? | Accept: yes | | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Accept another alternative | It would be funny if the idea of nominalism itself was an abstract object... is it? | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Accept an intermediate view | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Agnostic/undecided | I don't know, it could go either way for me. I understand the distinction but it feels to me like it just comes from how we assign meaning to words combined with the syntax of language. Does this make it an actual distinction? Perhaps so, but it is too vague for me to commit to a "yes". | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Accept: internalism | If not internalism, how to justify the external? | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Lean toward: idealism | Skepticism makes no sense, I can't really decide between idealism or "realism". But since I process everything mentally, I seem to only experience the world in an ideal form, and I like to entertain the idea that mental "substance" is exactly what the world is. But maybe not. | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Accept: libertarianism | No free will is the epitome of meaninglessness, and compatibilism does not make that much sense to me, although I am understanding it better now. It's like the world exists in two layers, the one that behaves predictably and the abstract one that contains free will, but the abstract one somehow directs the predictable one as if from a different time. There is absolutely no purpose in believing that there is no free will. It's ironic too, that you have the choice to decide which view to possess. | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: atheism | Why is this question here? :D | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Accept: rationalism | One must possess some internal logic / rationality in order to understand empiricism. Take away the higher processing from a brain and feed it sensory information. It may act, but the self will not have an understanding of the world. It doesn't matter if the capacity for reason comes from operations within the world (perhaps it does), that isn't what the question is about. It's about which type of information gathering/processing method is the first-line requirement, and clearly some form of reasoning is required to make sense of perception (leading to empiricism). This also isn't a rejection of empiricism as a useful tool, but only a rejection that it is the foundation for all knowledge. | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Accept: invariantism | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Accept: non-Humean | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Accept: classical | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Accept: internalism | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Accept: moral realism | Ughhhhh moral anti-realists. If you don't think there is morality perhaps you think it's okay if someone were to burn your house down and kidnap your family. | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Accept: non-naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept: non-physicalism | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Accept both | :D! | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Accept: internalism | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | The question is too unclear to answer | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Accept an intermediate view | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Agnostic/undecided | If I were to accept idealism, would that make this question go away? I hope so... | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Accept: further-fact view | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Reject all | Anarchism but punk rock is terrible. | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Accept: Millian | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Agnostic/undecided | Live on as a zombie! Or someone else in your body. | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Accept: 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: don't switch | | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Accept: correspondence | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Lean toward: conceivable but not metaphysically possible | How many thoughts would a p-zombie think if a p-zombie could think thoughts? | |