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? | Accept: yes | | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Accept: Platonism | For (nearly) any meaningful open sentence, there's something it expresses. | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Accept: objective | Normativity 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 answer | I 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 alternative | Semi-compatibilism: though free will is incompatible with determinism, moral responsibility is compatible with determinism. | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: theism | No 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-Humean | Laws govern. I think. | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Accept: classical | I 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: physicalism | We 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 answer | Consequentialism 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/undecided | Though 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: libertarianism | I 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: death | Absent 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 possible | I also hold that the possibility of zombies need not tell against physicalism about human persons (a view I endorse). | |