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? | Lean toward: yes | I accept a structured form of C.I. Lewis's pragmatic apriori, though I do not take such forms of knowledge to be bearers of truths. | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Accept another alternative | Abstract objects are ontologically neutral, like patterns. Much of our cognitive vocabulary is neutral in this way. It is not a big deal. | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Accept: subjective | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | The question is too unclear to answer | Too unclear. Sentences or utterances? Truth-bearing or not? | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Accept: non-skeptical realism | There is obviously a real world that is independent of my mind. And if it is dependent on some other mind, then that mind is so alien from mine that I could not consent to it being called a mind. | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Accept: compatibilism | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept an intermediate view | Lean towards athiesm in my beliefs, but don't think belief needs to be the most important part of religious experience. I advocate quietism in public life. | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Reject both | I'm too much of a skeptic about the fine-grained details of what is known to qualify as either of these. | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | The question is too unclear to answer | It depends on the kind of proposition in question, and the context in question. Paradigmatically subjective truth-bearing propositions are amenable to relativism, while paradigmatically objective truth-bearing propositions lend themselves to invariantism. Contextualism seems like a good default interpretive strategy, but it's only a first pass; eventually, as we get more information about each other, contexts get carved at sharper joints. | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | There is no fact of the matter | It depends on context of discourse. In factually defective discourse where intuitive inclinations towards judgment are assertable, and where communication goes through successfully, non-classical logics (e.g., intuitionism and paraconsistency) are fruitful. | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Accept both | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Accept: moral anti-realism | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Accept: naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept: physicalism | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Accept: cognitivism | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Accept both | Mainly internalism, except when it comes to necessities. On that, I deny the force of the is/ought distinction. | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Accept both | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Accept more than one | Contractualism, consequentialism, and virtue ethics are all valuable aspects of moral reasoning. Any aspect of moral deliberation that does not overlap with these categories is little more than a formal expression of what it would look like to have the right answers, without actually giving us a credible story on how to get them. | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Lean toward: disjunctivism | I am willing to accept disjunctivism about perceptions, not sensations. That having been said, it is an open question as to whether or not perception is more central to experience than sensation. | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Accept another alternative | I accept a version of the bundle theory that makes reference to grounded narratives. | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Accept another alternative | This feels like a kooky Cold War-era battle of labels. I'm a social democrat with modern liberal sensibilities. Virtually none of my beliefs fit well into those categories. | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | There is no fact of the matter | There are other alternatives to these two; you can adopt a mediated reference theory without appealing to kooky Fregean senses. | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Accept: scientific anti-realism | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Lean toward: survival | All other things equal. | |
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 more than one | Reject deflationism, accept correspondence and epistemic views. | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Accept: metaphysically possible | | |