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John Collins

East Carolina University
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University of California, Santa Barbara
Department of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara
PhD, 2000
Homepage
Greenville, North Carolina, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind
Epistemology
Philosophy of Language
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy of Law
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Mind
Metaphysics and Epistemology
Applied Ethics
Normative Ethics
Social and Political Philosophy
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy
17th/18th Century Philosophy
5 more

My Survey Responses

Survey Prompt Response
A priori knowledge Accept: yes
Abortion Accept: permissible
Abstract objects Lean towards: Platonism
Aesthetic experience Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Aesthetic value Lean towards: objective
Aim of philosophy Lean towards: truth/knowledge
Analysis of knowledge Lean towards: other analysis
Analytic-synthetic distinction Lean towards: yes
Arguments for theism Accept a combination of answers:
  • Lean against pragmatic
  • Lean against design
  • Lean against ontological
  • Lean against cosmological
  • Lean against moral
Belief or credence Lean towards: belief
Capital punishment Lean towards: impermissible
Causation Agnostic/undecided
Chinese room Accept: doesn't understand
Concepts Lean towards: nativism
Consciousness Lean towards: functionalism
Continuum hypothesis Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Cosmological fine-tuning Lean towards: brute fact
Eating animals and animal products Lean towards: vegetarianism (no and yes)
Environmental ethics Accept: non-anthropocentric
Epistemic justification Lean towards: externalism
Experience machine Accept: no
Extended mind Lean towards: no
External world Lean towards: non-skeptical realism
Footbridge Lean towards: don't push
Foundations of mathematics Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Free will Lean towards: no free will
Gender Lean towards: social
Gender categories Agnostic/undecided
God Accept: atheism
Grounds of intentionality Agnostic/undecided
Hard problem of consciousness Lean towards: no
Human genetic engineering Lean towards: permissible
Hume Agnostic/undecided
Immortality Lean towards: no
Interlevel metaphysics Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Justification Lean towards: reliabilism
Kant Agnostic/undecided
Knowledge Lean towards: rationalism
Knowledge claims Lean towards: invariantism
Law The question is too unclear to answer
Laws of nature Lean towards: non-Humean
Logic Agnostic/undecided
Material composition Lean towards: restrictivism
Meaning of life Lean towards: nonexistent
Mental content Accept: externalism
Meta-ethics Lean towards: moral realism
Metaontology Agnostic/undecided
Metaphilosophy Lean towards: non-naturalism
Method in history of philosophy Lean towards: analytic/rational reconstruction
Method in political philosophy Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Mind Lean towards: physicalism
Mind uploading Lean towards: death
Moral judgment Lean towards: cognitivism
Moral motivation Lean towards: externalism
Moral principles Lean towards: moral generalism
Morality Lean towards: naturalist realism
Newcomb's problem Accept: two boxes
Normative concepts Agnostic/undecided
Normative ethics Lean towards: consequentialism
Other minds Accept a combination of answers:
  • Accept adult humans
  • Accept cats
  • Lean towards fish
  • Lean towards flies
  • Lean against worms
  • Reject plants
  • Reject particles
  • Accept newborn babies
  • Reject current AI systems
  • Lean towards future AI systems
Ought implies can Lean towards: yes
Perceptual experience Lean towards: disjunctivism
Personal identity Lean towards: biological view
Philosophical knowledge Lean towards: a lot
Philosophical methods Accept a combination of answers:
  • Accept intuition-based philosophy
  • Lean towards linguistic philosophy
  • Lean against experimental philosophy
  • Neutral towards conceptual engineering
  • Accept conceptual analysis
  • Accept empirical philosophy
  • Accept formal philosophy
Philosophical progress Accept: a lot
Plato Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Political philosophy Agnostic/undecided
Politics Lean towards: capitalism
Possible worlds Accept: abstract
Practical reason Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Principle of sufficient reason Lean towards: false
Proper names Accept: Millian
Properties Agnostic/undecided
Propositional attitudes Lean towards: representational
Propositions Accept: structured entities
Quantum mechanics Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Race Lean towards: biological
Race categories Agnostic/undecided
Rational disagreement Lean towards: non-permissivism
Response to external-world skepticism Accept a combination of answers:
  • Neutral towards abductive
  • Lean against semantic externalist
  • Neutral towards dogmatist
  • Lean against contextualist
  • Lean against epistemic externalist
  • Reject pragmatic
Science Lean towards: scientific realism
Semantic content Lean towards: moderate contextualism (intermediate)
Sleeping beauty Agnostic/undecided
Spacetime Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Statue and lump Accept: two things
Teletransporter Lean towards: death
Temporal ontology Lean towards: growing block
Theory of reference Lean towards: causal
Time Lean towards: A-theory
Time travel Lean towards: metaphysically impossible
Trolley problem Accept: switch
True contradictions Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Truth Lean towards: correspondence
Units of selection Agnostic/undecided
Vagueness Lean towards: epistemic
Values in science Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Well-being Lean towards: objective list
Wittgenstein Accept a combination of answers:
  • Neutral towards early
  • Neutral towards late
Zombies Lean towards: conceivable but not metaphysically possible