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?Agnostic/undecided
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Lean toward: nominalism
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?Accept bothsubjective element: perception; objective element: perception is constitutively normative. Recognising aesthetic value is 'seeing as', 'hearing as', etc.
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?Lean toward: no
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
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: empiricism
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?Agnostic/undecided
Logic: classical or non-classical?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Agnostic/undecided
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?Lean toward: moral realism
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?Lean toward: naturalism
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?Lean toward: physicalism
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?Accept an intermediate viewI suspect that moral judgement involves both cognitive and non-cognitive elements.
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?Accept: externalism
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?Agnostic/undecided
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?Accept: consequentialism
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?Reject allParfitian: personal *identity* isn't the important question, and is in any case often undecidable.
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?Accept: egalitarianismlibertarian/communitarian/egalitarian is a pretty odd triad.
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?Lean toward: scientific realism
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?Accept: survivalI'm reading 'survival' as Parfit uses the term: it might mean rather less than identity.
Time: A-theory or B-theory?Agnostic/undecided
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch?Accept: switch
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?Lean toward: correspondence
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?Lean toward: inconceivable