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 | | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Lean toward: nominalism | | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: objective | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Accept: yes | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: internalism | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Accept: non-skeptical realism | | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Accept: compatibilism | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: theism | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Accept an intermediate view | Some knowledge is a priori (e.g. principle of non-contradiction), but a great deal of knowledge is based on empirical observations. | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Accept another alternative | The different kinds of knowledge claims (e.g scientific, moral, mathematical) have different standards of assessment. | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Lean toward: non-Humean | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Lean toward: classical | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Accept: externalism | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Accept: moral realism | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Accept: non-naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept an intermediate view | a distinction between first (physical) and second (social) nature | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Accept: cognitivism | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Accept: internalism | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Accept: two boxes | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Lean toward: virtue ethics | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Lean toward: sense-datum theory | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Accept: further-fact view | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Accept: communitarianism | | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Lean toward: Millian | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Lean toward: scientific realism | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Accept an intermediate view | Breaking hylomorphism is death, but that does not necessary prevent the formation of new hylomorphism after death (resurrection). | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Lean toward: B-theory | | |
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch? | Accept another alternative | depends upon actual situation, one cannot tell all possibly morally relevant features of the situation in advance | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Lean toward: correspondence | coherence plus correspondence | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Lean toward: metaphysically possible | | |