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?Accept: yes
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Accept: PlatonismFor (nearly) any meaningful open sentence, there's something it expresses.
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?Accept: objectiveNormativity isn't up to us in any meaningful sense; this is a special case of that more general truth
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?Accept: no
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?The question is too unclear to answerI accept externalism about nearly any interesting kind of positive epistemic status. I accept Alstonian views about epistemic justification and "epistemic justification".
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?Accept: non-skeptical realism
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?Accept another alternativeSemi-compatibilism: though free will is incompatible with determinism, moral responsibility is compatible with determinism.
God: theism or atheism?Accept: theismNo argument for theism is decisive; very few philosophical arguments have that feature. But theism is more likely than its denial.
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?Accept: rationalism
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?Accept: invariantism
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?Lean toward: non-HumeanLaws govern. I think.
Logic: classical or non-classical?Accept: classicalI accept this thesis: every proposition is either true or false, and no proposition is both true and false. I think that means I accept "classical logic".
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Accept: externalism
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?Accept: moral realism
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?Accept: non-naturalism
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?Accept: physicalismWe humans are wholly material (physical) beings.
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?Accept: cognitivism
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?Accept: externalism
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?The question is too unclear to answerConsequentialism is false. But what follows from that is less than clear to me.
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?The question is too unclear to answer
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?Agnostic/undecidedThough I accept animalism (we humans are animals), I am agnostic about the conditions under which one of us persists.
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?Accept: libertarianismI am at heart an anarchist -- but I happily live in and regularly praise a non-liberal technocratic democracy (Singapore)
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?Accept: Fregean
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?The question is too unclear to answer"Science" is said in many ways. Accordingly, I accept realism about some sciences and withhold judgement about others.
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?Accept: deathAbsent a miracle, at least!
Time: A-theory or B-theory?Accept: B-theory
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch?Accept: don't switch
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?The question is too unclear to answer"Epistemic" theories of truth are false. What follows isn't so clear.
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?Accept: metaphysically possibleI also hold that the possibility of zombies need not tell against physicalism about human persons (a view I endorse).