My philosophical views

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.

See also:

QuestionAnswerComments
A priori knowledge: yes or no?The question is too unclear to answerThe categorical presumptions of the question are contradictory, and so there's no answer. The survey seems awfully conventional and pedestrian.
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Accept: nominalism
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?Accept both
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?OtherI'm a process theorist.
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?Reject both
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?Accept: non-skeptical realismBut scientific realism, not philosphical realism.
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?OtherI my (processual) view, there's no tension between free will and determinism, but they are interdependent (not compatible). Question again seems very parochial.
God: theism or atheism?Accept: atheism
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?Reject bothI reject both forms of epistemic foundationalism, a category in which I include Kant.
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?OtherFrom my perspective, these alternatives don't mean much. For one thing, I wouldn't hypostatize knowledge.
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?Reject bothThe presumption here runs against contemporary science, which looks to singular causation and causal mechanisms. See laws as a reification of a mental constuct.
Logic: classical or non-classical?Reject bothLogic a basis of truth only in a hypothetical limiting case and so is unrealistic or insufficient.
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Accept both
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?Agnostic/undecided
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?Accept: naturalism
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?Accept another alternativeI believe I can explain supervenience, and it transcends questions like this.
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?Agnostic/undecided
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?Accept an intermediate view
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?Agnostic/undecided
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?Accept: sense-datum theory
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?Insufficiently familiar with the issueI don't undertand the question.
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?OtherWhile I'm egalitarian, I'm better described as orthodox communist.
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?Reject bothGood god, what a choice! Surely the question is very parochial?
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?Accept: scientific realismOf course, it depends on how we define "unobserables".
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?Insufficiently familiar with the issueNo idea what this question means, but sounds like a religious issue.
Time: A-theory or B-theory?Reject bothI reject both McTaggert views and am something between an actualist and presentist.
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 issueNot my understanding of what philosophy is.
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?Reject allIn a sense, I reject the category.
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?There is no fact of the matterYou've got to be kidding! What kind of question is this? It would appeal to college sophomores?