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: no | | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Accept another alternative | With respect to at least some abstract objects, e.g., mathematical ones, I'm a structuralist. | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Accept: subjective | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Accept: yes | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Lean toward: skepticism | | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Lean toward: no free will | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Agnostic/undecided | Actually, I'm not undecided: I'm an agnostic; we don't, possibly cannot, know. | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Accept both | | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Accept: non-classical | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Accept: internalism | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Accept: naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | The question is too unclear to answer | Depends on what's meant by "physicalism" of course. If you mean it in the sense of Chomsky's April 2009 JPhil paper, then I am a physicalist. | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
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? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Accept: qualia theory | I'm not sure of the difference between qualia and sense-data | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Lean toward: psychological view | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | Don't know what "communitarianism" is, but I'm definitely NOT a libertarian. | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Accept: Fregean | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Accept: scientific realism | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Accept an intermediate view | Death of the body; survival of the mind | |
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? | Accept: switch | | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Accept: correspondence | Truth is correspondence, but we don't have access to truth, only to approximations thereof. I believe that you know that P iff you believe that P, you are justified in your belief, and *I believe that P* | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Accept: conceivable but not metaphysically possible | | |