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?Accept: yes
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Accept: nominalism
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?Accept: subjective
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?Accept: yes
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?Lean toward: externalism
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?Accept: non-skeptical realism
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?Lean toward: libertarianism
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?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Logic: classical or non-classical?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Lean toward: externalism
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?Accept: moral anti-realismIt is hard to express what is meant by this claim exactly. I believe there might well be knowable moral facts, since they are probably facts about the relation in which acts or objects stand to contextually salient ends. These facts are even perfectly objective (in some relevant sense of the term). I am an antirealist only in the sense that I think the salience of moral ends is ultimately determined by subjective mental states, like desires.
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?Accept: naturalism
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?Lean toward: physicalism
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?Accept: cognitivism
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?Accept an intermediate viewI think there is a sense in which sincere assertoric moral judgment is necessarily linked with motivation, but I do not believe it is a conceptual truth. I think the link is as follows: sincere moral judgments are indexed to ends to which the speaker is him/herself committed. But the proposition expressed by such judgments is simply about the relation in which some act or object stands to these ends.
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?Lean toward: deontology
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?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?Lean toward: egalitarianism
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?Accept: Millian
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?Accept: scientific realism
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?Lean toward: death
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?Lean toward: switch
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?Accept: correspondence
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?Lean toward: conceivable but not metaphysically possibleI'm not quite sure what 'metaphysically possible' means. I suspect the universe might well be such that anything with the relevant biological make-up has mental properties. Does that make zombies physically impossible?