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? | Accept: yes | But there is a misunderstanding about its significance. | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Accept: nominalism | | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | The question is too unclear to answer | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Accept: no | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Accept both | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Accept: non-skeptical realism | | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Lean toward: compatibilism | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: atheism | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Accept both | | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Accept: contextualism | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Accept an intermediate view | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Lean toward: classical | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Skip | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Lean toward: moral realism | Both perspectives are used in their respective philosophical schools. | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Accept: naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept: physicalism | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Lean toward: non-cognitivism | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Accept both | Moral action the result of experiential evidence considered in the context of personal judgement; even others judgement, which of course can be considered an external influence. | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Skip | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Lean toward: virtue ethics | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Accept: representationalism | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Skip | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: libertarianism | Much of course depends on how the issue is defined. But I tend to regard govt as antithetical to justice, but not because it exists, but because of its moral relationship to others as a set of institutional values. | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Skip | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Accept: scientific realism | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Reject both | | |
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? | Reject both | It is unrealistic rationalism to engage in such thinking without recognition of a context. The question implies that there are only two choices, but realism tells us there are a great many others. Hypotheticals are fraught with problems...which is why they ought not be used. | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Accept more than one | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Lean toward: metaphysically possible | | |