Profile for Johann Van Der Merwe

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:

Question	Answer	Comments
A priori knowledge: yes or no?	Accept: no
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?	Lean toward: nominalism
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?	Accept another alternative	There is no such thing as 100% objectivity, nor subjectivity. "Fitness for purpose" is preferred.
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?	Accept an intermediate view	Unless this issue looks to a very specific context, the question cannot be answered
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?	Accept an intermediate view
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?	Lean toward: skepticism
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?	Accept another alternative	If you insist = Pythagoras = the fitness of purpose
God: theism or atheism?	There is no fact of the matter
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?	Accept another alternative	These are scientific clear cut questions and answers = agian, real knowledge is neither rational or compeltely empiric = ask Jacques Maritain
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?	Accept another alternative	Unfair question: I am a cyberneticist / radical social constructivist = knowledge claims will arise from contextual situations that are also relative to the participants' beliefs, making both contextualism and relativism adaptable to the living circumstances ...
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?	Reject both
Logic: classical or non-classical?	Reject both
Mental content: internalism or externalism?	Accept another alternative	Mental 'content' does not come from outside nor from inside - it is constructed in the in-between
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?	There is no fact of the matter
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?	Reject both	There has to be a reconciliation bewteen what we consider naturasl and artificial
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?	Accept another alternative	Mind resides in neither body nor brain, but in the space of interaction between
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?	Accept another alternative	No moral judgment, only ethics derived from living social and civic circumstances
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?	Reject both
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?	Reject both	Life is not a gamble ... and not a game either
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?	Reject all	Morals only exist as rules written down by those who benefit from the act. Ethics are derived from the circumstances of sustainable design theory's first principle: first, do no harm.
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?	Accept another alternative	Don't you think these questions are too cut-and-dried? Perceptual experience is mediated by other people, by the environemnt, by objects, and it arrives inside our heads as signals from the great void out there - we have to translate these signals and become confused when persuaded that there is no gap between receiving and translating.
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?	Lean toward: further-fact view
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?	Accept another alternative	Not one of these three examples are real. They might be dispositions, but cannot be classed asa human categories to choose from
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?	Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?	Reject both
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?	The question is too unclear to answer	Philosophy of science fiction?
Time: A-theory or B-theory?	The question is too unclear to answer
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch?	Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?	Accept: correspondence
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?	Reject all	This is a serious question?

Applied ethics	Epistemology	History of Western Philosophy	Meta-ethics	Metaphysics	Normative ethics
Philosophy of biology	Philosophy of language	Philosophy of mind	Philosophy of religion	Science Logic and Mathematics	More ...