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: noNot in any full-blooded rationalist sense (which probably includes Kant). However, framework principles/working hypotheses do play a similar role in structure of "knowledge", mathematical, scientific, and ordinary. In a broad sense, they are "answerable to experience", but they are practically immune from revision in normal science, etc. The "holy grail" of "genuine knowledge" itself (in an absolute sense) is probably illusory.
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Lean toward: nominalismmodal-nominalism has a lot going for it w/r/to mathematics, but for higher cardinalities, it probably has to be relaxed to "neutralism". Burali-Forti really does threaten standard platonism: there are always more well-orderings than any given ordinals (plural) can keep track of, and mathematics can always "introduce more", and would, if it wanted to; and then "still more" would arise.
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?The question is too unclear to answer
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?Accept: yesBut agree with Quine, Putnam, et al that it can't do the all the work Carnap et al. wanted it to do.
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?Accept both...reformulated if necessary to be compatible with one another.
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?Skip
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?Accept: compatibilism
God: theism or atheism?Accept: atheism"Atheism" does not require "proof that there is no god" although proofs can be given for certain definitions of 'god'. Rather it requires simply that there be no good evidence or reason to believe in such a being along with some good reason to doubt the various theistic claims or at least good reason not to take them at all seriously.
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?Skip
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?Skip
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?Lean toward: Humean
Logic: classical or non-classical?Other"One true logic" is a myth. Carnap was essentially right: roughly, "different logics for different purposes". For objective truth-preservation (in an idealized structure), classical is good; for preserving constructivity of inputs, intuitionistic is good; for quaranteening contradictions, some paraconsistent is good, etc. Also: logical systems don't proclaim their own applicability.
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Skip
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?Skip
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?The question is too unclear to answerThe word has been used in too many different ways. I don't find at all persuasive Mark Steiner's challenge based on unexplained effectiveness of mathematics in physics.
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?Accept: physicalism..."accept" as the most reasonable/probable hypothesis: mentalism will go the way of vitalism. I found Chalmers' arguments full of problems and unconvincing.
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?Accept: non-cognitivism...of a sophisticated form: within a system of basic norms, we speak the language of objectivity and truth, but at a fundamental level there's a big difference with scientific factual claims (even allowing for a certain language-relativity of those). It's not the difference Hume famously claimed: prima facie 'ought' claims do follow from factual set-ups; rather scientific factual truths never require 'ought' claims (quasi- or relative-facts) as part of adequate explanations. I would argue for "explanatory autonomy of the factual". I have an unpublished, indeed, unwritten paper of that title! (Ha!)
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?Skip
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?The question is too unclear to answerIf the "predictor" is stipulated to be absolutely perfect, accept 1 box; if not, there seems to be no sufficiently well-posed question for there to be a unique, correct answer.
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?Skip
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?Skip
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?The question is too unclear to answerNot up on latest literature on this. But so much depends on the conception one may have of 'person', I don't think the question is clear enough to answer, or else it has a list of conditional answers.
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?OtherI guess these 'isms' each exaggerate their claims. It's a blalancing act.
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?Lean toward: Millian
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?Accept: scientific realism...suitably modest (some important scientific claims are probably or probably approximately true)and judiciously applied (not every applied mathematical noun denotes something in the material world).
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?Skip
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?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?Accept: correspondenceIf we had a genuine sixth sense, we would have access to novel truths which we cannot now even conceptualize let alone articulate. Such examples scotch most deflationary views.
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?Lean toward: conceivable but not metaphysically possible