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…