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 | Innateness and some limited for of modularity seem impossible to deny. | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Lean toward: nominalism | Lean more toward Max Velman's reflexive monist approach in understanding "real" world | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: subjective | One man's ___ is another man's ___. | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | The question is too unclear to answer | Too many conflicting definitions. | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Accept both | Not incompatible. Need clearer definititions, less parochialism and more neurophysiological information. | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Accept more than one | Kant's space and time are looking better and better these days. Not QM spacetime - but the good old "transcendental synthetic unity of apperception." | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Accept an intermediate view | All the different "isms" aside, there really is no issue here. Free will and determinism speak to, identify, are different COMPATIBLE manifestations of the same INTENTIONAL PROCESS. | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: atheism | Though I'm fascinated by QM, the speed of light and the mysticism of Peter Russell. Not sure if/when a new paradigm might gain acceptance. But I do believe we've reasoned ourselves into a corner (see David Chalmers, Max Velman). | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Accept both | Again, not incompatible. | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | Not an issue that inspires me. | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Lean toward: Humean | But with a a caveat, the non-humean sense of self that I feel "results" from human experience. See my upcoming manuscript (Summer, 2010) In particular, the "burden of self" section in Chapter 3. | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Accept both | I've been influenced by St. Augustine as well as Nietzsche. I'm presently trying to integrate "existential" notions of time (Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas) into the Free Will vs. Determinism discussion. | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Accept another alternative | Though I lean toward internalism, Velmans and Russell have me thinking about bigger picture. | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | The question is too unclear to answer | Ethics. Not my issue. | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Accept both | "There's more to heaven and earth, Horatio..."
Inclination is that naturalism is easier to grasp but non-naturalistic theories will appear in abundance in coming decades. | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Lean toward: physicalism | With the proviso that neural correlates and/or electro-chemical activity ARE PART OF THE MATERIAL WORLD and not merely adjuncts to mental processes. For 200 ms., they have causal clout. | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | Who cares? Police, priests, politicians, propagandists, public relations folks - for their own particular purposes. | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: internalism | Again, not my strong suit, though the "anals" really have beaten the FW/Det thing to death... at the near total exclusion of other schools of thought ie. existentialism. | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | There is no fact of the matter | I have ZERO interest in ethical matters. Morals are for priests, politicians, pollsters, policemen - in short, people who really don't think. | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Lean toward: representationalism | Accept much of Dennett's "dispositional" nature of primary perceptual experience. Still not certain about the architecture and functional nature of "attitudinal prism" that seems to reflect a notion of non-Humean self | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Accept more than one | My personal resolution of this issue will affect everything else I write. I'm leaning toward a position I refer to as a "psychic schemata". More to come. | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Accept more than one | Feel the need for social intervention for basic services. Believe in New York style freedom of speech, religion, politics, etc. Think we need a paradigm shift (rather than "regime changes") if we're going to survive as a species. Think "My god is better than your god" is the source of many of the world's political problems. | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Agnostic/undecided | I am not an algorithm. I detest symbolic logic. The Vienna Circle thinkers did serious damage to philosophical thought. I am not a fan of Wittgenstein. Bertand Russell bores me to tears. Do you feel my pain? | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Lean toward: scientific realism | See physicalism. | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Accept another alternative | Firmly believe that "mental-stuff" survives death of organism in which it "results." | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Accept an intermediate view | All behavior is intentional. Not Dennett's intentionality, but the mind's temporally projected intentionality. FW/Det aside, we are the things we say and do... PERIOD. | |
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 | Another mind game? | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Accept more than one | Not my strong suit. | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Reject all | I immediately skip andy/all references to zombies "in the literature." I'd like to think that philosophy can arrive at reasonable conclusions without zombies, Chinese boxes, blindsight, red & green balls, etc. Please! | |