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: no | | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Lean toward: nominalism | | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: objective | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Accept: no | As a contextualist in theory of meaning, I believe that the contribution of literal meaning to "What is Said" is much lesser than the analytic tradition thought. The distinction makes sense for someone working with a strong conception of meaning. | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Accept: externalism | I accept externalism because it gives a much better account of our practices of knowledge attribution. But if linguistic understanding is a kind of knowledge (of truth-conditions or satisfaction conditions), here externalism, especially reliabilism, is not enough. I can know the content of an utterance through a reliable translation without understanding the utterance. | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Lean toward: non-skeptical realism | I think common sense realism is ok but in the philosophy of science, I would accept a brand of anti-realism as a careful position. | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Lean toward: compatibilism | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Lean toward: atheism | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Lean toward: empiricism | | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Accept: contextualism | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Lean toward: non-Humean | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | The question is too unclear to answer | I accept both! It depends on the kind of inference you want to formalize. If an argument is intuitively valid, there could be a logic enabling us to justify that intuition. Why should we impoverish our tool box by limiting oneself to only one logic. In general,classical logic is not enough, but it depends on what you are aiming at. | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Accept: externalism | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Lean toward: moral anti-realism | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Lean toward: naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Lean toward: physicalism | I do not believe that it is possible to reduce intentionality, semanticity, normativity ou rationality. I think the very project of reducing these notions is ill-conceived. This does not mean that physicalism is on the wrong track. | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Lean toward: non-cognitivism | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Accept: externalism | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Skip | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Other | As a contextualist, I believe that the way we represent to ourselves what we ought to do depends on our understanding of the situaton, and that the options presented are all alternatively acceptable under suitable circumstances. | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Accept: disjunctivism | On that score, I am incline to accept direct realism. What's make a perception veridical is that it contains the very that causes the perception itself. | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Other | I'm incline to accept a "narrativist theory": our identity is partly but importantly constructed through what we (believe) say repeatedly about ourselves. | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: communitarianism | | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Lean toward: Millian | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Accept: scientific anti-realism | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | The question is too unclear to answer | | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Skip | | |
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch? | Lean toward: switch | | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Lean toward: correspondence | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Lean toward: conceivable but not metaphysically possible | | |