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526Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of KnowledgeCambridge University Press. 1996.Almost all theories of knowledge and justified belief employ moral concepts and forms of argument borrowed from moral theories, but none of them pay attention to the current renaissance in virtue ethics. This remarkable book is the first attempt to establish a theory of knowledge based on the model of virtue theory in ethics. The book develops the concept of an intellectual virtue, and then shows how the concept can be used to give an account of the major concepts in epistemology, including the …Read more
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The Dilemma of Freedom and ForeknowledgeInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 34 (2): 118-120. 1993.This original analysis examines the three leading traditional solutions to the dilemma of divine foreknowledge and human free will--those arising from Boethius, from Ockham, and from Molina. Though all three solutions are rejected in their best-known forms, three new solutions are proposed, and Zagzebski concludes that divine foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom. The discussion includes the relation between the foreknowledge dilemma and problems about the nature of time and the causal …Read more
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29[Book review] virtues of the mind, an inquiry into the nature of virtue and the ethical foundations of knowledge (review)In Stephen Everson (ed.), Ethics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 808-810. 1996.
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257Virtue epistemology: essays on epistemic virtue and responsibility (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2001.Virtue Epistemology is a new movement receiving the bulk of recent attention from top epistemologists and ethicists; this volume reflects the best work in that vein. Included are unpublished articles by such eminent philosophers as Robert Audi, Simon Blackburn, Alvin Goldman, Christopher Hookway, Keith Lehrer, and Ernest Sosa
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703First Person and Third Person Reasons and Religious EpistemologyEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 3 (2). 2011.In this paper I argue that there are two kinds of epistemic reasons. One kind is irreducibly first personal -- what I call deliberative reasons. The other kind is third personal -- what I call theoretical reasons. I argue that attending to this distinction illuminates a host of problems in epistemology in general and in religious epistemology in particular. These problems include (a) the way religious experience operates as a reason for religious belief, (b) how we ought to understand religious …Read more
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9What if the impossible had been actualIn M. Beaty (ed.), Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame Press. pp. 165--183. 1990.
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1Epistemic self-trust and the consensus gentium argumentIn Kelly James Clark & Raymond J. VanArragon (eds.), Evidence and Religious Belief, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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42Rational Faith: Catholic Responses to Reformed Epistemology (edited book)Notre Dame Press. 1993.Rational Faith contains nine new essays by Catholic philosophers who critically evaluate the recent work of the Reformed epistemologists, including Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff and George Mavrodes. Although the contributors employ a distinctly Catholic perspective, their papers are by no means wholly polemical; instead, each reflects an appreciation of the importance of Reformed epistemology and its impact on contemporary religious philosophy.
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115The Virtues of God and the Foundations of EthicsFaith and Philosophy 15 (4): 538-553. 1998.In this paper I give a theological foundation to a radical type of virtue ethics I call motivation-based. In motivation-based virtue theory all moral concepts are derivative from the concept of a good motive, the most basic component of a virtue, where what I mean by a motive is an emotion that initiates and directs action towards an end. Here I give a foundation to motivation-based virtue theory by making the motivations of one person in particular the ultimate foundation of all moral value, an…Read more
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5Omniscience, time, and freedomIn William Mann (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Religion, Blackwell. pp. 3-26. 2004.
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28A New Foreknowledge DilemmaProceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 63 (n/a): 139. 1989.
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266Morality and religionIn William J. Wainwright (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion, Oxford University Press. 2005.Almost all religions contain a code of morality, and in spite of the factthat there are moral codes and philosophies that do not rely upon anyreligion, it has been traditionally argued that there are at least threeimportant ways in which morality needs religion: the goal of the morallife is unreachable without religious practice, religion is necessary toprovide moral motivation, and religion provides morality with itsfoundation and justification. These three ways in which morality may needreligi…Read more
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2The admirable life and the desirable lifeIn Timothy Chappell (ed.), Values and Virtues: Aristotelianism in Contemporary Ethics, Oxford University Press. 2006.
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667The Uniqueness of PersonsJournal of Religious Ethics 29 (3). 2001.Persons are thought to have a special kind of value, often called "dignity," which, according to Kant, makes them both infinitely valuable and irreplaceably valuable. The author aims to identify what makes a person a person in a way that can explain both aspects of dignity. She considers five definitions of "person": (1) an individual substance of a rational nature (Boethius), (2) a self-conscious being (Locke), (3) a being with the capacity to act for ends (Kant), (4) a being with the capacity …Read more
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1Ideal agents and ideal observers in epistemologyIn Stephen Hetherington (ed.), Epistemology Futures, Clarendon Press. 2006.
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3Foreknowledge and FreedomIn Philip Quinn & Charles Taliaferro (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Oxford: Blackwell. 1997.
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20Reported Miracles (review)Philosophical Review 105 (4): 538-540. 1996.Joseph Houston’s book is a fine contribution to the philosophical investigation of the value of miracle reports for religious apologetics. It covers a wide range of arguments of interest to philosophers about the concept of miracles and the justifiability of belief in their occurrence, but it is also rich in theological and biblical sources. Houston’s reasoning throughout is careful and subtle, but neither technical nor excessively pedantic. So while the book is primarily intended for scholars, …Read more
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71Virtues of the Mind, SelectionsIn Ernest Sosa (ed.), Epistemology: An Anthology, Blackwell. pp. 442. 2008.
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253Ethical and epistemic egoism and the ideal of autonomyEpisteme 4 (3): 252-263. 2007.In this paper I distinguish three degrees of epistemic egoism, each of which has an ethical analogue, and I argue that all three are incoherent. Since epistemic autonomy is frequently identified with one of these forms of epistemic egoism, it follows that epistemic autonomy as commonly understood is incoherent. I end with a brief discussion of the idea of moral autonomy and suggest that its component of epistemic autonomy in the realm of the moral is problematic
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1Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief and the Aquinas/Calvin Model.”Philosophical Books 43 117-123. 2002.
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204The Philosophy of Religion: An Historical IntroductionWiley-Blackwell. 2007.An accessible and engaging introduction to the philosophy of religion. Written with verve and clarity by a leading philosopher and contributor to the field Places key issues and debates in the philosophy of religion in their historical contexts, highlighting the conditions that led to the development of the field Addresses the core topics, among them the the existence of God, the problem of evil, death and the afterlife, and the problem of religious diversity Rich with argument, yet never obtrus…Read more
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250Does Ethics Need God?Faith and Philosophy 4 (3): 294-303. 1987.This essay presents a moral argument for the rationality of theistic belief. If all I have to go on morally are my own moral intuitions and reasoning and those of others, I am rationally led to skepticism, both about the possibility of moral knowledge and about my moral effectiveness. This skepticism is extensive, amounting to moral despair. But such despair cannot be rational. It follows that the assumption of the argument must be false and I must be able to rely on more than my own human power…Read more
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9God, Eternity, and the Nature of Time, by Alan G. Padgett (review)Philosophy in Review 13 (4): 179-181. 1993.
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Self-trust and the diversity of religionsIn Philip L. Quinn & Paul J. Weithman (eds.), Liberal Faith: Essays in Honor of Philip Quinn, University of Notre Dame Press. 2008.