Philosophical Positions Catalog
A taxonomy of named positions across the major branches of philosophy. Each entry gives the canonical statement, key proponents with year, the standard objection, and modern defenders. Use this when a paper or argument turns on whether a thinker is, e.g., a foundationalist vs a coherentist, or a presentist vs an eternalist.
I. Epistemology
| Position | Key proponents | Statement | Standard objection | Modern defenders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foundationalism | Descartes 1641; Russell 1912; Chisholm 1966 | Knowledge rests on basic beliefs that are self-justifying (sense-data, cogito, the given) | Sellars’s “Myth of the Given” (1956); regress of justification reappears at the base | BonJour (later); Alston; Pryor (dogmatist version) |
| Coherentism | Bradley 1914; Neurath 1932; Sellars 1956; BonJour 1985 | A belief is justified iff it coheres with a system of mutually supporting beliefs | Isolation objection (a coherent fairy-tale); input problem | Lehrer; Kvanvig |
| Contextualism | DeRose 1992; Cohen 1986; Lewis 1996 | ”Knows” expresses different relations in different conversational contexts; skeptical contexts raise the bar | Linguistic data ambiguous; doesn’t refute skepticism | DeRose; Stanley (partly rejects) |
| Infinitism | Klein 1999 | Justification is an infinite, non-repeating chain of reasons | Finite minds can’t have infinitely many reasons | Aikin; Turri |
| Reliabilism | Goldman 1976, 1986 | A belief is justified iff produced by a reliable cognitive process | Generality problem; new evil demon | Greco; Comesaña; Sosa (virtue version) |
| Virtue epistemology | Sosa 1980; Zagzebski 1996 | Knowledge is true belief produced by intellectual virtues (open-mindedness, careful reasoning) | What counts as a virtue is itself contested | Sosa; Greco; Pritchard |
| Social epistemology | Goldman 1999; Longino 2002 | Knowledge is produced and warranted by communities, not isolated knowers | Risks relativism if community standards conflict | Goldman; Anderson; Fricker |
| Naturalized epistemology | Quine 1969 (“Epistemology Naturalized”) | Replace normative epistemology with descriptive psychology of belief formation | Loses the normative dimension; “psychologism” | Kornblith; Bishop & Trout |
| Evidentialism | Conee & Feldman 1985 | Belief is justified iff it fits the evidence one has | Doesn’t say how one gets evidence; permissivism | Conee; Feldman; Dougherty |
| Knowledge-first | Williamson 2000 | Knowledge is unanalyzable and prior to belief/justification in the order of explanation | Reverses the traditional analytic project; many find it ad hoc | Williamson; Hyman |
| Pragmatic encroachment | Stanley 2005; Fantl & McGrath 2009 | Stakes affect whether one knows: same evidence + higher stakes can yield no knowledge | Strange that practical interests affect truth-conditional content | Stanley; Hawthorne |
| Skepticism (Cartesian) | Descartes 1641; Stroud 1984 | Justified belief in the external world is impossible (dream/demon/BIV) | Self-undermining if pushed too far | Pryor (rejects); Wright (transmission failure) |
II. Metaphysics
Realism vs anti-realism
| Position | Proponents | Statement | Objection | Defenders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Metaphysical realism | Putnam (early); Devitt 1984 | The world has a determinate structure independent of mind/language | Brain-in-vat reformulations; model-theoretic argument (Putnam 1980) | Devitt; Searle (external realism) |
| Internal realism | Putnam 1981 | Truth is idealized rational acceptability within a conceptual scheme | Slides toward relativism | (Putnam later abandoned) |
| Anti-realism (semantic) | Dummett 1978 | Statements lack determinate truth-value when verification is impossible in principle | Counter-intuitive about past and unobserved | Dummett; Tennant |
Universals and particulars
| Position | Proponents | Statement | Objection | Defenders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platonism (about universals) | Plato; Russell 1912 | Universals exist as abstract, mind-independent entities | Epistemic access problem (Benacerraf 1973) | van Inwagen; Bealer |
| Aristotelian realism | Aristotle; Armstrong 1978 | Universals exist only in their instances (in rebus) | Hard to make sense of uninstantiated properties | Armstrong; Bigelow |
| Nominalism (predicate) | Quine 1948 | Only particulars exist; “redness” is just the predicate “is red” | Can’t explain similarity | (Few outright nominalists today) |
| Trope theory | D. C. Williams 1953; Campbell 1990 | Properties are particular, abstract instances (this redness, that redness) | Hard to ground resemblance | Maurin; Ehring |
| Class nominalism | Lewis 1986 | Properties are sets of (possible) particulars | Coextensive properties collapse | Lewis |
Time
| Position | Proponents | Statement | Objection | Defenders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Presentism | Prior 1968; Bigelow 1996 | Only the present is real | Truthmakers for past-tensed truths; conflict with relativity | Markosian; Crisp |
| Eternalism (block universe) | Quine; Mellor 1998 | Past, present, and future are equally real | Loses passage and “now” | Mellor; Sider |
| Growing block | Broad 1923; Tooley 1997 | Past and present real; future open | Why are we always at the leading edge? | Tooley; Forrest |
| Moving spotlight | McTaggart’s “A-series”; Cameron 2015 | Eternalist ontology + a privileged moving “now” | Combines disadvantages of both | Skow; Cameron |
Persistence
| Position | Proponents | Statement | Objection | Defenders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Endurantism (three-dimensionalism) | Wiggins 1980; Lowe 1998 | Objects persist by being wholly present at each moment | Hard to combine with relativity; problem of change | Lowe; Wiggins; Fine |
| Perdurantism (four-dimensionalism) | Lewis 1986; Sider 2001 | Objects persist by having temporal parts (worm theory) | Counter-intuitive about ordinary objects | Sider; Hawley |
| Stage theory | Hawley 2001; Sider 2001 | The object now is the momentary stage; “I will be tired” is satisfied by a counterpart | Identity over time loses sense | Hawley; Sider |
Monism, pluralism, materialism, idealism
| Position | Proponents | Statement | Objection | Defenders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Substance monism | Spinoza 1677; Schaffer 2010 | Only one substance exists (Nature, or the cosmos as a whole) | Hard to ground variety of properties | Schaffer (priority monism) |
| Pluralism | Aristotle; James 1909 | Many irreducible substances or kinds exist | Demands unifying principle | (Default common-sense view) |
| Materialism / physicalism | Hobbes 1651; Smart 1959 | Everything is physical or supervenes on the physical | Hard problem of consciousness; mental causation | Papineau; Stoljar; Kim |
| Idealism (subjective) | Berkeley 1710 | Only minds and ideas exist (esse est percipi) | Counter-intuitive; God required to keep unperceived objects | Foster; Pelczar |
| Idealism (absolute) | Hegel 1807; Bradley 1893 | Reality is the self-development of Geist or the Absolute | Obscure; difficult to test | (Mostly historical) |
| Panpsychism | James (gestures); Whitehead 1929; Strawson 2006 | Some form of mental property is fundamental and ubiquitous | Combination problem (how do micro-experiences combine?) | Chalmers; Goff; Strawson |
| Neutral monism | Mach 1886; Russell 1921 | The basic stuff is neither mental nor physical; both are derivative | Underdetermined how neutral elements yield either | Stubenberg; Wishon |
| Dualism (substance) | Descartes 1641 | Two distinct substances: thinking and extended | Interaction problem | Foster; Swinburne |
| Dualism (property) | Chalmers 1996; Jackson 1982 | One substance, two kinds of property | Epiphenomenalist worry; mental causation | Chalmers; Jackson (later recanted) |
III. Philosophy of Mind
| Position | Proponents | Statement | Objection | Defenders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Behaviorism (logical) | Ryle 1949; Hempel 1935 | Mental terms are reducible to dispositions to behavior | Putnam’s super-Spartans; phenomenal consciousness | (Historical) |
| Identity theory (type) | Place 1956; Smart 1959 | Mental types are identical to brain-state types | Multiple realizability (Putnam 1967) | Hill; Polger |
| Identity theory (token) | Davidson 1970 | Each token mental event is identical to some token physical event | Anomalous monism makes mental causation mysterious | Davidson |
| Functionalism | Putnam 1960; Lewis 1972; Armstrong 1968 | Mental states are functional roles (input, output, internal transitions) | Inverted/absent qualia; Chinese Room (Searle 1980) | Block (with caveats); Levin |
| Eliminative materialism | Feyerabend 1963; Churchland 1981; Churchland 1986 | Folk-psychological terms (“belief,” “desire”) will be eliminated by neuroscience | Self-refuting if “believes” itself is eliminated | Paul & Patricia Churchland |
| Supervenience physicalism | Davidson 1970; Kim 1984 | Mental properties supervene on physical without reduction | Epiphenomenalist worry (Kim’s exclusion argument) | Kim; Papineau |
| Anomalous monism | Davidson 1970 | Mental events are physical, but mental-as-mental obeys no strict laws | Threatens mental causation | Davidson |
| Biological naturalism | Searle 1992 | Consciousness is a biological feature of brains, neither dualist nor functionalist | Hard to distinguish from property dualism | Searle |
| Higher-order theory | Rosenthal 1986; Lycan 1996 | A state is conscious iff represented by a higher-order state | Misrepresentation; rocks could have HOTs | Rosenthal; Carruthers |
| Global workspace | Baars 1988; Dehaene 2014 | Consciousness = broadcast in a global workspace | Doesn’t address phenomenal character | Dehaene; Baars |
| Integrated information theory | Tononi 2004, 2008 | Consciousness = integrated information (Φ) | Panpsychist implications; measurement difficult | Tononi; Koch |
| Predictive processing | Clark 2013; Hohwy 2013 | The brain is a hierarchical prediction machine; perception is controlled hallucination | Doesn’t yet explain phenomenal consciousness | Clark; Friston |
IV. Ethics
Normative theories
| Position | Proponents | Statement | Objection | Defenders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Act consequentialism | Bentham 1789; Mill 1861; Sidgwick 1874 | An act is right iff it maximizes the good | Demands too much; integrity (Williams 1973) | Singer; Norcross |
| Rule consequentialism | Brandt 1979; Hooker 2000 | An act is right iff required by rules whose acceptance maximizes the good | Collapse worry (rules unravel to acts) | Hooker; Mulgan |
| Preference utilitarianism | Hare 1981; Singer 1979 | Maximize satisfied preferences | Adapted preferences; addition problem | Singer |
| Kantian deontology | Kant 1785, 1788 | Act only on maxims you could will as universal law; never treat persons merely as means | Murderer at the door; rigorism | Korsgaard; Wood; O’Neill |
| Rossian intuitionism | Ross 1930 | Several prima facie duties (fidelity, gratitude, justice, beneficence, non-maleficence, self-improvement, reparation) | No procedure when duties conflict | Audi; Stratton-Lake |
| Contractualism | Scanlon 1998 | An act is wrong iff disallowed by principles no one could reasonably reject | Reasonableness threshold unclear | Scanlon; Parfit; Ridge |
| Contractarianism | Hobbes 1651; Gauthier 1986 | Morality is mutually advantageous rules rational agents would agree to | Excludes those with no bargaining power | Gauthier; Narveson |
| Aristotelian virtue ethics | Aristotle; Anscombe 1958; MacIntyre 1981; Hursthouse 1999 | Right action flows from virtuous character aimed at eudaimonia | Action-guidance worry; what is eudaimonia? | Hursthouse; Foot; Annas |
| Neo-Aristotelianism | Foot 2001 (Natural Goodness); MacIntyre | Virtues are natural goodnesses for the kind of being we are | Naturalistic fallacy worries | Foot; Thompson; MacIntyre |
| Confucian virtue ethics | Confucius; Mengzi; Xunzi; Tu Weiming | Cultivation of ren (humaneness), li (ritual), yi (rightness) in role-bound relationships | Risk of conservatism | Tu Weiming; Bryan Van Norden; Yu Jiyuan |
| Particularism | Dancy 1993, 2004 | Moral reasons hold only in context; no codifiable principles | Risks unprincipled intuition | Dancy; Little |
| Error theory | Mackie 1977 | First-order moral claims presuppose objective values; there are none, so all are false | Counter-intuitive; companions-in-guilt | Joyce; Olson |
| Expressivism / non-cognitivism | Ayer 1936; Stevenson 1944; Blackburn 1984; Gibbard 1990 | Moral utterances express attitudes, not truth-evaluable beliefs | Frege-Geach problem | Blackburn; Gibbard; Schroeder |
| Constructivism | Korsgaard 1996; Street 2008 | Moral truths are constructed from rational/practical standpoints | Why bind those who reject the standpoint? | Korsgaard; Street; Bagnoli |
| Moral realism (robust) | Moore 1903; Enoch 2011; Parfit 2011 | Mind-independent moral facts; non-natural | Epistemic-access problem | Enoch; Parfit; Wedgwood |
| Cornell realism | Boyd 1988; Brink 1989; Sturgeon 1985 | Moral properties are natural; ethics is a science | Open-question argument (Moore 1903) | Sturgeon; Boyd; Brink |
| Sensibility theory | McDowell 1985; Wiggins 1987 | Moral properties are response-dependent like secondary qualities | Threat of circularity | McDowell; Wiggins |
V. Free Will
| Position | Proponents | Statement | Objection | Defenders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Classical compatibilism | Hobbes 1651; Hume 1748; Ayer 1954 | Freedom is the absence of external constraint, compatible with determinism | Frankfurt cases of constrained but free action | Ayer; Schlick |
| Semi-compatibilism | Fischer 1994; Fischer & Ravizza 1998 | Moral responsibility, not freedom proper, is compatible with determinism | Doesn’t say what alternate possibilities require | Fischer; Ravizza |
| Revisionist compatibilism | Vargas 2013 | We revise the folk concept of free will to fit the empirical facts | What licenses the revision? | Vargas |
| Source compatibilism | Frankfurt 1969, 1971 | Freedom requires being the source of one’s action via reflective endorsement | Manipulation cases | Frankfurt; Bratman; Watson |
| Hard determinism | d’Holbach 1770; Pereboom 2001 | Determinism is true, and we have no free will or responsibility | Counter-intuitive about punishment | Pereboom (hard incompatibilism); G. Strawson |
| Agent-causal libertarianism | Reid 1788; Chisholm 1964; O’Connor 2000 | Free agents are uncaused causes of action | Mysterious; no place in physics | O’Connor; Clarke (partly) |
| Event-causal libertarianism | Kane 1996 | Some actions are caused by undetermined prior events | Luck objection (Mele 1995) | Kane; Balaguer |
| Non-causal libertarianism | Ginet 1990; McCann 1998 | Free actions are not caused at all; basic mental events | Hard to distinguish from chance | Ginet; McCann |
| Hard incompatibilism | Pereboom 2001 | We lack free will whether or not determinism is true | Eliminates basic-desert blame | Pereboom |
VI. Philosophy of Science
| Position | Proponents | Statement | Objection | Defenders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scientific realism | Boyd 1983; Psillos 1999 | Our best theories are approximately true and their unobservables exist | Pessimistic meta-induction (Laudan 1981) | Psillos; Chakravartty |
| Instrumentalism | Duhem 1906; Schlick 1932 | Theories are tools for prediction, not literally true | Loses explanatory unity | (Historical) |
| Constructive empiricism | van Fraassen 1980 | Aim of science is empirical adequacy, not truth about unobservables | Observable/unobservable line ill-defined | van Fraassen |
| Structural realism (epistemic) | Worrall 1989 | What survives theory change is mathematical structure, not entities | Hard to specify “structure” | Worrall; Ladyman (partly) |
| Structural realism (ontic) | Ladyman 1998; French 2014 | Structure is all there is; relata are derivative | Eliminates objects; coherence worry | Ladyman; French; Ross |
| Pessimistic meta-induction | Laudan 1981 | Most past successful theories turned out false; ours probably will too | Selective response (Psillos): the false bits weren’t doing the work | Laudan |
VII. Philosophy of Religion
| Position | Proponents | Statement | Objection | Defenders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Classical theism | Aquinas 1265; Anselm 1078 | God: omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, simple, immutable, eternal, necessary | Stone paradox; problem of evil; divine hiddenness | Swinburne; Plantinga; Stump |
| Open theism | Pinnock 1994; Hasker 1989 | God lacks foreknowledge of free future actions | Standard divine attributes lost; biblical strain | Hasker; Sanders; Boyd |
| Process theism | Whitehead 1929; Hartshorne 1948 | God is dipolar, changing, and persuaded by the world | Loses transcendence | Hartshorne; Griffin; Cobb |
| Pantheism | Spinoza 1677 | God = the totality of nature | God loses personhood | Levine; Mander |
| Panentheism | Krause 1828; Hartshorne 1948 | The world is in God but God is more than the world | Hard to specify “more than” | Clayton; Peacocke |
| Deism | Herbert of Cherbury 1624; Voltaire 1733 | God created the cosmos but does not intervene | Why no intervention? | (Mostly historical) |
| Atheism (positive) | d’Holbach 1770; Mackie 1982; Oppy 2006 | No God exists | Burden of universal negative | Oppy; Mackie |
| Agnosticism | Huxley 1869 | Evidence does not warrant either theism or atheism | May be epistemic cowardice (W. K. Clifford) | Le Poidevin; Draper |
| Fideism | Tertullian; Kierkegaard 1846; Plantinga (partly) | Faith does not require, and may exceed, rational evidence | Self-defeating if claimed rationally | Plantinga (Reformed); Penelhum |
| Evidentialism (Cliffordian) | W. K. Clifford 1877 | ”It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence” | Self-applicability worry | Clifford |
| Reformed epistemology | Plantinga 1983, 2000; Wolterstorff | Belief in God can be “properly basic” — not based on inferential evidence | ”Great Pumpkin” objection | Plantinga; Alston; Wolterstorff |
Adjacent
- Philosopher catalog for the named figures who hold these positions.
- Argument types catalog for the canonical arguments used to defend or attack them.
- Schools and movements catalog for the historical traditions in which these positions arose.
- Epistemology survey · Metaphysics and Ontology survey · Ethics survey · Mind survey · Science survey
- Philosophy Tier 3 index · Philosophy Tier 1 root