Yesterday when I got up I found a request from PhilPapers in my mailbox. I wasn’t really awake; still had to rub my eyes to see well. Had nothing to eat or drink… But enough excuses… And what did the guys from PhilPaper want? A test. They wanted to make a DB and a statistic with the answers. Here are some questions.
- Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?
- Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?
- Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?
- Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?
- God: theism or atheism?
- External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?
- Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?
- Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?
- Mental content: internalism or externalism?
- Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?
- Newcomb’s problem: one box or two boxes?
- Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?
- Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?
- Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?
- Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?
- Proper names: Fregean or Millian?
- Time: A-theory or B-theory?
- Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don’t switch?
Well, it felt like a cold shower in the morning. I think now I have to do this kind of stuff each time I wake up. Gives you food for thought. Makes you think a bit the rest of the day. And, what’s more, made me think about starting a system, a structured way where I should bring together my thoughts on various matters and see how well they go together. This poll is a very good start. Having all this stuff put together… Yummy…
