My Philosophical Views (Answering the 2020 PhilPapers Survey)

In 2020, PhilPapers ran a survey. Here is a description of this survey:

...the 2020 PhilPapers Survey...surveyed the philosophical views of 1785 English-speaking philosophers from around the world on 100 philosophical questions.

The 2020 PhilPapers Survey was a follow-up to the 2009 PhilPapers Survey. The 2020 survey increased the number of the questions from 30 to 100 and expanded the target population.

And here are its results. In this post, I will be writing my own answers to the survey. I will only answer those questions I feel strongly enough about answering. Thus, some will be missing. Given my unorthodox metaphysical views, some of the positions/questions are technically nonsense to me, but I will answer each of those as if they were not. Also, I will include the percentage ratio of people that agree with me (including 'accept' and 'lean toward') in brackets after each answer. It goes without saying that I think some of the questions are badly posed, insufficiently precise, and don't allow for unorthodox views, etc. I am just going to pick what seems right for me. And finally, I am much more confident here than I would be in actually answering it, so I do not have a fully worked-out view of many of these questions. I will post any changes to my views next year! Here goes:

• A priori knowledge: no or yes? Yes (72.67%)
• Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism? Nominalism (37.83%)
• Aesthetic value: objective or subjective? Objective (40.18%)
• Aim of philosophy (which is most important?): wisdom, understanding, truth/knowledge, happiness, or goodness/justice? Truth/Knowledge (17.67%)
• Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no? No (25.48%)
• Experience machine (would you enter?): yes or no? No (76.86%)
• External world: scepticism, non-sceptical realism, or idealism? Non-Sceptical Realism (78.17%)
• Footbridge (pushing man off bridge will save five on track below, what ought one do?): don't push or push? Lean toward push (and only if I were certain) (21.55%)
• Free will: compatibilism, no free will, or libertarianism? Libertarianism (18.20%)
• Gender: unreal, biological, social, or psychological? Unreal (1.63%)
• God: atheism or theism? Atheism (66.72%)
• Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism? Lean toward rationalism (26.77%)
• Laws of nature: non-Humean or Humean? Humean (with significant caveats because I reject event types) (30.82%)
• Meaning of life: objective, nonexistent, or subjective? Objective (27.59%)
• Mental content: internalism or externalism? Externalism (53.83%)
• Meta-ethics: moral anti-realism or moral realism? Lean toward moral realism (natural) (61.55%)
• Metaphilosophy: non-naturalism or naturalism? The question is too unclear to answer (The meaning of 'natural' is context-dependent and thus largely useless here) (9.49%)
• Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? Accept an alternative view (4.21%)
• Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism? Lean Toward non-cognitivism (no truthmakers) (19.87%)
• Newcomb's problem: one box or two boxes? One box (why risk it?) (30.72%)
• Normative ethics: consequentialism, virtue ethics, or deontology? Lean toward other (anti-theory) (6.49%)
• Perceptual experience: sense-datum theory, representationalism, qualia theory, or disjunctivism? Other (non-disjunctive relational direct realism) (6.73%)
• Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view? Other (memory) (6.25%)
• Philosophical methods (which methods are the most useful/important)? Reject conceptual analysis, accept conceptual engineering, lean toward empirical philosophy, reject experimental philosophy, lean against formal philosophy, lean toward intuition-based philosophy (only if I am interpreting this correctly), lean against linguistic philosophy, accept an alternative view (first-principle metaphysics) (0.00%)
• Philosophical progress (is there any?): a lot, a little, or none? A lot (41.24%)
• Political philosophy: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism? Lean toward egalitarianism (38.26%)
• Proper names: Millian or Fregean? Lean toward Millian (37.51%)
• Race: unreal, social, or biological? Unreal (11.40%)
• Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism? Anti-realism (14.27%)
• Teletransporter (new matter): death or survival? Survival (34.79%)
• Time: B-theory or A-theory? Neither (3.47%)
• Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): don't switch or switch? Switch (62.50%)
• Truth: epistemic, correspondence, or deflationary? Other (fit-to-world) (5.54%)
• Vagueness: epistemic, semantic, or metaphysical? Metaphysical (15.16%)
• Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible? Conceivable but not metaphysically possible (zombies are metaphysically impossible because if there is such a world where they are possible, their world would be such that we could not rightly call them human. If there is a human, there is consciousness. See Thompson & Cosmelli 2011) (35.78%)
• Abortion (first trimester, no special circumstances): permissible or impermissible? Permissible (81.37%)
• Analysis of knowledge: other analysis, justified true belief, or no analysis? Lean toward no analysis (30.44%)
• Arguments for theism (which argument is strongest?): design, cosmological, ontological, moral, or pragmatic? Design (because cosmological and ontological, while being better arguments, do not actually establish a recognisable theism, while design could) (13.85%)
• Belief or credence (which is more fundamental?): neither, credence, or belief? Lean toward neither (19.38%)
• Capital punishment: permissible or impermissible? Permissible (with caveats) (17.74%)
• Causation: nonexistent, counterfactual/difference-making, primitive, or process/production? Nonexistent (3.81%)
• Consciousness: functionalism, eliminativism, dualism, panpsychism, or identity theory? Lean toward pan(cosmo)psychism (6.08%)
• Cosmological fine-tuning (what explains it?): no fine-tuning, design, multiverse, or brute fact? Lean toward brute fact (29.12%)
• Extended mind: no or yes? Yes (50.95%)
• Foundations of mathematics: set-theoretic, formalism, constructivism/intuitionism, logicism, or structuralism? Lean toward formalism (5.17%)
• Gender categories: revise, preserve, or eliminate? Eliminate (14.55%)
• Hard problem of consciousness (is there one?): yes or no? Yes (it seems there is, even if there is an answer that shows that there is not actually one) (62.32%)
• Immortality (would you choose it?): yes or no? Lean toward yes (44.92%)
• Interlevel metaphysics (which is the most useful?): grounding, supervenience, identity, or realization? None, if 'useful' means real (4.41%); grounding and supervenience if 'useful' means pragmatic
• Justification: coherentism, infinitism, nonreliabilist foundationalism, or reliabilism? Lean toward coherentism (19.16%)
• Kant (what is his view?): one world or two worlds? Lean toward two-world (34.35%)
• Material composition: restrictivism, nihilism, or universalism? Nihilism (7.67%)
• Metaontology: anti-realism, deflationary realism, or heavyweight realism? Heavyweight realism (37.64%)
• Method in history of philosophy (which do you prefer?): contextual/historicist or analytic/rational reconstruction? Analytic/rational reconstruction (though this is merely my own, non-prescriptive preference) (42.95%)
• Mind uploading (brain replaced by digital emulation): survival or death?  Survival (27.17%)
• Moral principles: moral particularism or moral generalism? Moral particularism (32.01%)
• Morality: non-naturalism, constructivism, expressivism, naturalist realism, or error theory? Lean toward naturalist realism (28.13%)
• Other minds (for which groups are some members conscious)? Other (the entire universe)
• Ought implies can: no or yes? Lean toward yes (62.67%)
• Philosophical knowledge (is there any?): none, a little, or a lot? A lot (55.68%)
• Plato (what is his view?): knowledge only of forms or knowledge also of concrete things? Only of forms (52.52%)
• Politics: capitalism or socialism? Lol
• Possible worlds: concrete, abstract, or nonexistent? Nonexistent (28.97%)
• Practical reason: Kantian, Humean, or Aristotelian? Lean toward Humean (28.27%)
• Principle of sufficient reason: false or true? True (Parmenides was right) (35.47%)
• Properties: transcendent universals, immanent universals, nonexistent, tropes, or classes? Nonexistent (7.86%)
• Propositional attitudes: dispositional, phenomenal, representational, or nonexistent? Nonexistent (3.27%)
• Propositions: structured entities, nonexistent, acts, sets, or simple entities? Nonexistent (15.04%)
• Quantum mechanics: hidden-variables, epistemic, many-worlds, or collapse? Lean toward hidden-variables (I join the faithful via pessimistic meta-induction) (18.71%)
• Race categories: revise, eliminate, or preserve? Eliminate (39.19%)
• Rational disagreement (can two people with the same evidence rationally disagree?): non-permissivism or permissivism? Permissivism (70.15%)
• Response to external-world scepticism (which is strongest?): semantic externalist, pragmatic, contextualist, dogmatist, abductive, or epistemic externalist? Abductive (17.19%)
• Semantic content (which expressions are context-dependent?): minimalism (no more than a few), radical contextualism (most or all), or moderate contextualism (intermediate)? Lean toward radical contextualism (25.03%)
• Spacetime: substantivalism or relationism? Lean toward relationism (45.05%)
• Statue and lump: one thing or two things? One thing (29.17%)
• Temporal ontology: presentism, growing block, or eternalism? Growing Block (16.76%)
• Theory of reference: causal, deflationary, or descriptive? Deflationary (14.03%)
• Time travel: metaphysically impossible or metaphysically possible? Lean toward metaphysically possible (but only 'to' the past) (42.30%)
• True contradictions: possible but non-actual, impossible, or actual? Lean toward possible but non-actual (4.65%)
• Units of selection: genes or organisms? Lean toward organism (32.70%)
• Values in science (is ideal scientific reasoning necessarily sensitive or insensitive to non-epistemic values?): necessarily value-laden, can be either, or necessarily value-free? Necessarily value-laden (43.91%)
• Wittgenstein (which do you prefer?): early or late? Late (53.48%)
  

Did some calculations, and I agree with other philosophers, on average, about just less than 30% of the time (at least for the questions above). If I did not include leans toward and accept/reject in the calculation, and some of the more boring questions (e.g. abortion), this would probably plummet to less than 15% and perhaps down to less than 8%. However, it should go without saying such questions could never properly track my actual views, and in some places I am being facetious, so take my answers with a grain of salt.