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: yes
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Accept an intermediate view
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?Accept: objective
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?Lean toward: no
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?Accept an intermediate viewBeliefs are justified by things outside the head, but only in virtue of meaningful cognitive contact with them.
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?Accept: theism
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?The question is too unclear to answerIt's hard to think of a dichotomy less helpful than this one. "Nature or nurture", perhaps.
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?Lean toward: contextualism
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?Accept: non-Humean
Logic: classical or non-classical?Agnostic/undecided
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Accept: externalismOnly if this means that mental content is determined by things outside the head, and not outside the mind.
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?Accept: moral realism
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?Accept: non-naturalismHowever, I reject the identification of the "natural" with the objects postulated by the physical sciences (whichever exactly these are supposed to be).
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?Accept another alternativeI believe human beings are biological organisms whose mental lives can be studied profitably by scientific means. However, I also believe that much of the understanding of human thought and action in the terms of "folk psychology" is at least approximately true, that something like folk psychology is essential to understanding what human beings are, and that any such way of thinking will be too radically different from that of the physical sciences for it to permit a physicalist analysis.
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?Accept: cognitivism
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?Reject bothAs with epistemology and mental content, I'm inclined to a non-standard view here.
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?Accept: virtue ethics
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?Accept: disjunctivism
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?Accept more than oneI doubt whether the biological and psychological are separable enough to draw the necessary line between them.
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?Reject all
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?Accept: FregeanThough the sense of a proper name can only very rarely be captured in a definite description.
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?Lean toward: scientific realism
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?There is no fact of the matter
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?Accept: don't switch
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?Lean toward: correspondence
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?Lean toward: inconceivable