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: Platonism | | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: subjective | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Accept: yes | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | There is no fact of the matter | there are useful notions that are externalist, and useful notions that are internalist. the internalist ones are more relevant to rationality; the externalist ones to knowledge (maybe this counts as 'both', but it depends on how a broader question is framed) | |
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: atheism | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Accept: empiricism | | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | There is no fact of the matter | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Accept: non-Humean | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Lean toward: classical | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Accept both | there is both broad and narrow content. Narrow content, however, is mostly what matters | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Accept: moral realism | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | The question is too unclear to answer | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Lean toward: physicalism | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Accept: cognitivism | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Accept: externalism | there are ways of formulating the question/issue so that it is definitely verbal | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Accept: two boxes | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Lean toward: consequentialism | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Lean toward: representationalism | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | There is no fact of the matter | There are facts of the matter about survival ('what matters'), but not identity. The proper account of survival is some psychological view. | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: egalitarianism | | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Accept an intermediate view | meaning constraints, but reference determination is partly causally determined, and names are rigid | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Accept: scientific realism | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Accept: survival | Survival, but it is not numerical identity (I use 'survives' for 'has what matters') | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | There is no fact of the matter | | |
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Accept: correspondence | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Accept: metaphysically possible | | |