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Joshua Spencer

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
 More details
University of Rochester
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2008
Homepage
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics
Philosophy of Language
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics
Metaphilosophy
Simples and Gunk
The Argument from Vagueness
Mereology, Misc
Agent Causation
Compatibilism
Incompatibilism
Alternative Possibilities
4 more

My Survey Responses

Survey Prompt Response
A priori knowledge Accept: yes
Abortion Accept: permissible
Abstract objects Accept: Platonism
Aesthetic experience Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Aesthetic value Accept a combination of answers:
  • Accept objective
  • Lean towards subjective
Aim of philosophy Accept a combination of answers:
  • Accept truth/knowledge
  • Lean towards goodness/justice
  • Lean towards wisdom
  • Accept understanding
  • Neutral towards happiness
Analysis of knowledge Accept: other analysis
Analytic-synthetic distinction Accept: yes
Arguments for theism Accept a combination of answers:
  • Lean towards cosmological
  • Reject design
  • Lean towards ontological
  • Reject pragmatic
  • Reject moral
Belief or credence Agnostic/undecided
Capital punishment Lean towards: impermissible
Causation Agnostic/undecided
Chinese room Lean towards: understands
Concepts Agnostic/undecided
Consciousness Agnostic/undecided
Continuum hypothesis Lean towards: determinate
Cosmological fine-tuning Accept a combination of answers:
  • Reject design
  • Lean towards brute fact
  • Lean against multiverse
  • Lean towards no fine-tuning
Eating animals and animal products Lean towards: omnivorism (yes and yes)
Environmental ethics Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Epistemic justification Accept: internalism
Experience machine Accept: no
Extended mind Lean towards: no
External world Accept: non-skeptical realism
Footbridge Lean towards: don't push
Foundations of mathematics Accept an alternative view: Platonism
Free will Accept: compatibilism
Gender Accept a combination of answers:
  • Reject biological
  • Neutral towards psychological
  • Lean towards unreal
  • Lean towards social
Gender categories Accept a combination of answers:
  • Reject preserve
  • Lean towards eliminate
  • Lean towards revise
God Accept: atheism
Grounds of intentionality Agnostic/undecided
Hard problem of consciousness Agnostic/undecided
Human genetic engineering Lean towards: permissible
Hume Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Immortality Lean towards: yes
Interlevel metaphysics Lean towards: grounding
Justification Accept: nonreliabilist foundationalism
Kant Agnostic/undecided
Knowledge Lean towards: rationalism
Knowledge claims Accept: invariantism
Law Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Laws of nature Accept: non-Humean
Logic Accept: non-classical
Material composition Accept: restrictivism
Meaning of life Lean towards: objective
Mental content Accept: externalism
Meta-ethics Accept: moral realism
Metaontology Accept: heavyweight realism
Metaphilosophy Lean towards: naturalism
Method in history of philosophy Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Method in political philosophy Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Mind Lean towards: physicalism
Mind uploading Accept: death
Moral judgment Accept: cognitivism
Moral motivation Lean towards: externalism
Moral principles Lean towards: moral generalism
Morality Lean towards: naturalist realism
Newcomb's problem Accept: one box
Normative concepts Lean towards: value
Normative ethics Lean towards: consequentialism
Other minds Accept a combination of answers:
  • Accept adult humans
  • Accept cats
  • Accept fish
  • Neutral towards flies
  • Neutral towards worms
  • Lean against plants
  • Reject particles
  • Accept newborn babies
  • Lean against current AI systems
  • Neutral towards future AI systems
Ought implies can Lean towards: yes
Perceptual experience Agnostic/undecided
Personal identity Lean towards: further-fact view
Philosophical knowledge Lean towards: a lot
Philosophical methods Accept a combination of answers:
  • Lean towards empirical philosophy
  • Lean towards conceptual engineering
  • Accept intuition-based philosophy
  • Neutral towards experimental philosophy
  • Neutral towards linguistic philosophy
  • Neutral towards conceptual analysis
  • Neutral towards formal philosophy
Philosophical progress Lean towards: a lot
Plato Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Political philosophy Lean towards: communitarianism
Politics Accept: socialism
Possible worlds Lean towards: abstract
Practical reason Lean towards: Aristotelian
Principle of sufficient reason Accept: false
Proper names Accept: Millian
Properties Accept a combination of answers:
  • Lean towards immanent universals
  • Lean towards transcendent universals
  • Neutral towards tropes
  • Lean against classes
  • Reject nonexistent
Propositional attitudes Lean towards: representational
Propositions Accept: structured entities
Quantum mechanics Lean towards: collapse
Race Lean towards: social
Race categories Accept: eliminate
Rational disagreement Lean towards: non-permissivism
Response to external-world skepticism Accept a combination of answers:
  • Reject contextualist
  • Neutral towards abductive
  • Reject pragmatic
  • Lean towards dogmatist
  • Lean against epistemic externalist
  • Lean towards semantic externalist
Science Accept: scientific realism
Semantic content Lean towards: minimalism (no more than a few)
Sleeping beauty Agnostic/undecided
Spacetime Lean towards: substantivalism
Statue and lump Lean towards: two things
Teletransporter Lean towards: death
Temporal ontology Lean towards: presentism
Theory of reference Lean towards: causal
Time Accept: A-theory
Time travel Lean towards: metaphysically possible
Trolley problem Lean towards: don't switch
True contradictions Lean towards: impossible
Truth Accept: correspondence
Units of selection Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Vagueness Accept: metaphysical
Values in science Insufficiently familiar with the issue
Well-being Lean towards: objective list
Wittgenstein Lean towards: early
Zombies Accept a combination of answers:
  • Lean against metaphysically possible
  • Lean towards conceivable but not metaphysically possible
  • Lean against inconceivable