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 | | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | There is no fact of the matter | Lean toward ontological relativity depending on conceptual scheme. | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Agnostic/undecided | I actually lean toward a yes, but I am still chewing on Quine's two dogmas. | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: externalism | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Other | Went from skeptical realist to considering Putnam's quasi-kantian internal realism. That's where I am now. | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Lean toward: compatibilism | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Agnostic/undecided | Used to be a theist. Rethinking the matter now. | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Accept an intermediate view | | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: externalism | thanks to Putnam. | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Accept an intermediate view | Lean toward believing some moral views are objective, but that has nothing to do with moral facts somewhere in Platonic heaven. | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Lean toward: non-naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Lean toward: non-physicalism | Certainly no dualist, but find mere physicalism problematic. | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Accept an intermediate view | More than "Accept" I would say lean to recognizing the cogntive and the affective simultaneously. | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Accept more than one | My intuitions send me somewhere between virtue and deontological approaches. | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: egalitarianism | Communitarianism seems to have its charms too, but I have no patience for libertariannism. | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Agnostic/undecided | Used to like a Kripkean causal approach, but I am no longer sure. | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Lean toward: scientific anti-realism | Leaning toward a scientific anti-realism in so far as the underdetermination of data holds. But there would still be more or less rational schemes one can adopt depending on one's interests. | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | I haven't given enough thought to this one. | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Agnostic/undecided | I have strong presentist tendencies but I haven't decided. | |
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? | Other | Leaning toward Putnam's truth as rational acceptability under idealized epistemic conditions. | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Agnostic/undecided | | |