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?Skip
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Accept: PlatonismThere 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 matterI find attractive what may be called "deflationary realism".
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?Accept: compatibilism
God: theism or atheism?Accept: atheismThere 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 boxI'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 realismOne of the least exciting debates in philosophy of science. Realism is ok when deflated.
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?Agnostic/undecidedFantastic question. I wish I knew how to answer.
Time: A-theory or B-theory?Accept: B-theoryClearly 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: inconceivableI am not a friend of the notion of metaphysical possibility, so the answers involving it are not an option for me.