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? | Lean toward: Platonism | But I lean toward 'plenitudinist' Platonism -- all consistent abstract structures exist. So there is still no answer to the Continuum problem, since 'set' and 'number' don't uniquely refer to one structure. | |
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? | Lean toward: subjective | | |
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? | Accept: yes | But no philosophically interesting synonymy: e.g. 'X knows that P' just means... | |
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism? | Lean toward: externalism | | |
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism? | Accept: non-skeptical realism | | |
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will? | Accept: compatibilism | | |
God: theism or atheism? | Accept: atheism | | |
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? | Accept: empiricism | | |
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism? | Accept: contextualism | I'm skeptical that 'knowledge' picks out a unified and useful concept. | |
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean? | Lean toward: non-Humean | There are only genuine laws in fundamental physics -- no laws of biology, psychology, meteorology, or even chemistry or solid-state physics. | |
Logic: classical or non-classical? | Accept both | Pluralist. | |
Mental content: internalism or externalism? | Accept: externalism | | |
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism? | Lean toward: moral realism | | |
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism? | Accept: naturalism | | |
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? | Accept: physicalism | | |
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? | Lean toward: cognitivism | | |
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism? | Accept: externalism | | |
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? | Accept: two boxes | But if I could take a pill to become a one-boxer *before the predictor interviews me*, I would | |
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? | Lean toward: consequentialism | | |
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory? | Lean toward: representationalism | | |
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? | Reject all | Parfitian. It's a matter of degree and there needn't be a fact of the matter. | |
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? | Lean toward: communitarianism | | |
Proper names: Fregean or Millian? | Accept: Millian | | |
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? | Accept an intermediate view | The question should be addressed locally. I'm a realist about atoms and viruses; an anti-realist about Coriolis forces; agnostic about superstrings | |
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death? | Lean toward: death | | |
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? | Lean toward: switch | It might depend on whether any of the actors voluntarily undertook the risk. Also, there is something to be said for rolling a die to determine who decides (i.e. switch five times out of six). | |
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic? | Lean toward: deflationary | | |
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? | Lean toward: inconceivable | David Hull once said: 'You think you can conceive of a centaur? How many stomachs does it have?' That's how I feel about zombies. | |