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? | Skip | | |
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? | Accept: Platonism | There is nothing wrong with reference to abstract objects and no need to avoid or reconstruct talk about them in other terms. Some might call this "deflationary platonism". | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Accept an intermediate view | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Accept: yes | | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Skip | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | There is no fact of the matter | I find attractive what may be called "deflationary realism". | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Accept: compatibilism | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: atheism | There is little to be gained (at least for theoretical purposes) and much to be lost by bringing into play "God", so we better abstain from it. | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Skip | | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Skip | | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Accept: Humean | | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Skip | | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Skip | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Skip | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Lean toward: non-naturalism | ... but of course we must take the sciences very seriously. | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Skip | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Lean toward: non-cognitivism | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Skip | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Accept: one box | I'm inclined to the perspective that -- in the fully-fledged Newcomb scenario with immaculate prediction record of the predictor -- the box choice is by definition retrocausal. | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Skip | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Skip | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Lean toward: biological view | | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: communitarianism | | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Skip | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Accept: scientific realism | One of the least exciting debates in philosophy of science. Realism is ok when deflated. | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Agnostic/undecided | Fantastic question. I wish I knew how to answer. | |
Time: A-theory or B-theory? | Accept: B-theory | Clearly the B-theory. The Williams/Price time-reversed doppelgänger argument is one of my favourite philosophical arguments across the board. | |
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch? | Skip | | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Accept: deflationary | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Lean toward: inconceivable | I am not a friend of the notion of metaphysical possibility, so the answers involving it are not an option for me. | |