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? | Lean toward: yes | I clicked only lean toward because it seems to me clear that there are a priori elements in most knowledge but not much knowledge is entirely a priori. Classify my answer as you choose. | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Accept another alternative | Wow, here the choice field is seriously deficient. | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: subjective | On the basis of absolutely nothing, however. | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Accept: yes | Can't do phil of science without it. | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: internalism | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Accept: non-skeptical realism | See the previous comment. | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Lean toward: libertarianism | But the good lord alone knows. If I could come up with one good new idea about free will, I'd die happy. | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: atheism | There is not the slightest reason to believe in a 'supreme being' of any sort, let alone one who cares about me. | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Accept both | This is the one silly question so far. Both mind and world are involved and, as Kant already argued, neither can do it alone. | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Lean toward: invariantism | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Accept: non-Humean | Mechanisms | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Accept: non-classical | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: externalism | But not about consciousness. | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Lean toward: moral realism | What an ugly, complicated topic! | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Accept: non-naturalism | Naturalism has dick to say about epistemic or moral norms. | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept: physicalism | Duh! | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Accept: non-cognitivism | But this does not mean relativism | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Accept more than one | All in different contexts. | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Accept: representationalism | There is a serious alternative? (Not a serious comment. It is getting late and I am getting bored.) | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Accept: psychological view | In a nutshell, memory is so important in such a high proportion of cases. | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Accept: egalitarianism | The others are justifications for treating some people savagely. | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Lean toward: Millian | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Accept: scientific realism | I am far from convinced that any serious form of antirealism can even be coherently described. | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Lean toward: survival | The crucial alternative is missing: As good as survival. | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Accept both | | |
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? | Accept: inconceivable | There is not one good reason to believe that (philosophers') zombies are possible in any way stronger than round squares are possible | |