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 | If yes, the class of things knowable a priori is small. | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Lean toward: nominalism | | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: objective | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Lean toward: yes | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: internalism | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Reject one, undecided between others | Idealism seems clearly to be false. Scientific realism seems possibly compatible with either of the other two. | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | The question is too unclear to answer | Human beings are subject to multiple, conflicting deterministic systems. Hence none of the options seems to be quite right. | |
God: theism or atheism? | Agnostic/undecided | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Lean toward: empiricism | | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Lean toward: contextualism | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Lean toward: non-Humean | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Accept: non-classical | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: externalism | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Lean toward: moral realism | Moral facts are facts about human beings and the circumstances of their interaction, not "queer" in Mackie's sense. | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Accept: naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Lean toward: physicalism | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Lean toward: non-cognitivism | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Accept: internalism | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Skip | | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Accept: virtue ethics | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Lean toward: representationalism | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Lean toward: psychological view | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Accept another alternative | Walzer's view in "Spheres of Justice" represents a viable third option that isn't considered nearly often enough. | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Lean toward: Fregean | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Lean toward: scientific realism | | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Lean toward: death | | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Insufficiently familiar with the issue | | |
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch? | The question is too unclear to answer | Not enough information is present in most trolley cases for a virtue ethicist to answer whether or not the switch should be pulled. | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Lean toward: deflationary | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Accept: metaphysically possible | | |