Why list all my current positions on such issues like this?
This helps me keep track of what I believe, as well as inviting more intelligent persons (most of them) to open up a correspondence with me to tell me why I'm wrong.
value theory
aesthetics
Smart people disagree with me, but I remain to be convinced that art is philosophically interesting - or, at any rate, that it is more philosophically interesting than, say, carpentry. That doesn't preclude art being interesting, of course.
ethics
meta
You should (should strong sense, qua rational being) apply the Kantian categorical imperative; and that imperative demands that you should act in a preference utilitarian manner.
theoretically desirable qualities of Kantian metaethics
- few metaphysical posits
- makes normativity non-mysterious
- makes explicable our seeking justification for actions
why Kantianism implies preference utilitarianism
Let's say everyone agreed to maximize pleasure over pain, like hedonic utilitarians suggest. Then we might have bound ourselves to act in a way that we all prefer not to in cases where our preferences diverge (for instance, if wireheading is the best way to maximize pleasure over pain, but we don't wanna wirehead.) Then this would be strictly dominated as a choice by preference utilitarianism.
A hedonic utilitarian who thinks that (pleasure - pain) is objectively valuable could reasonably counter that we would be irrational to do so. However, that position is vulnerablity to charges of queerness and externalism.
applied
Don't lie, don't eat meat, build a better world than capitalism + nation states, obvious stuff.
Note to self: applying that is nontrivial!
metaphysics
why there is something rather than nothing
This often seems like the only interesting question.