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?Accept: yes
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?Lean toward: nominalismI'm a realist about properties, but I view them as particularized tropes as opposed to universals or classes.
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?Agnostic/undecided
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?Accept: yes
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?Lean toward: idealismNowadays I learn toward idealism as defended by the late John Foster and also Howard Robinson. In my view, the manifest-image conception of matter as extended stuff is mistaken due to the fact that in the absence of an experiential understanding of extended objects, even our abstract, mathematical understanding of matter is woefully inadequate to understand what we mean by matter.
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?Agnostic/undecided
God: theism or atheism?Accept: theismI'm a Trinitarian theist, and my preferred Trinitarian model is a form of compositional view where the divine persons compose a further divine object which we call 'the Triune God'.
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?Accept: rationalism
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?Accept: non-HumeanI am sympathetic towards John Heil's identity theory of dispositional/categorical properties. This entails a necessitarian view of laws of nature that is characteristically non-Humean.
Logic: classical or non-classical?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Mental content: internalism or externalism?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?Accept: moral realismI lean towards a natural law metaphysic, though I may be mistaken about the particular form moral realism may happen to resemble.
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?Lean toward: non-naturalism
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?Accept: non-physicalismMental states seem to be incorrigibly irreducible, primitive, and unanalyzable due to their being properties that are privately-accessible. I also think that the phenomenon of the synchronic unity of consciousness and the diachronic continuity of consciousness preclude the physical structure we call the brain from being the substrate of mental properties. Call me a substance dualist.
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?Lean toward: cognitivism
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?Agnostic/undecidedI am attracted to the view that moral properties are themselves reasons for action, but I'm not committed to either view.
Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?OtherA combination of virtue ethics and deontology motivated by natural law ethics.
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?Accept: further-fact viewPersons are simple substances, non-identical to the physical bodies they animate.
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?Lean toward: scientific realismScientific theories approximate truth.
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?Lean toward: death
Time: A-theory or B-theory?Agnostic/undecided
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don't switch?Lean toward: switchUtilize the doctrine of Double Effect.
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?Accept more than oneSomething like a deflationary view or a correspondence view.
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?Accept more than oneDepends on the kind of zombie we're talking about.