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? | Lean toward: nominalism | | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: objective | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Lean toward: no | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: externalism | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Lean toward: non-skeptical realism | | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Lean toward: compatibilism | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Lean toward: atheism | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Lean toward: empiricism | I find this question a bit troubling; it seems to me that if one examines this problem historically, there are so many varieties of empiricism and rationalism on offer (and combinations of the two), that choosing one or the other is a bit difficult. Of course, knowledge about the world is based on empirical evidence, so I suppose I'm an empiricist. Yet, I've argued (in print), that mathematical knowledge is unique and different from empirical, and advances in mathematical knowledge could be argued to be "rationalist" enterprises. | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Lean toward: contextualism | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Lean toward: Humean | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Lean toward: classical | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Skip | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Lean toward: moral realism | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Accept: naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept: physicalism | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Lean toward: cognitivism | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Skip | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Skip | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Lean toward: consequentialism | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Lean toward: qualia theory | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Accept more than one | some combination of biological and psychological continuity | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: egalitarianism | | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Skip | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Lean toward: scientific realism | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Skip | | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Skip | | |
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? | Lean toward: deflationary | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Lean toward: conceivable but not metaphysically possible | | |