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1Ideal agents and ideal observers in epistemologyIn Stephen Hetherington (ed.), Epistemology Futures, Clarendon Press. 2006.
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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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3Foreknowledge and FreedomIn Philip Quinn & Charles Taliaferro (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Oxford: Blackwell. 1997.
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1Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief and the Aquinas/Calvin Model.”Philosophical Books 43 117-123. 2002.
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71Virtues of the Mind, SelectionsIn Ernest Sosa (ed.), Epistemology: An Anthology, Blackwell. pp. 442. 2008.
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255Ethical 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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206The 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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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.
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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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69Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment (review)Faith and Philosophy 6 (1): 103-110. 1989.
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1403Epistemic Value and the Primacy of What We Care AboutPhilosophical Papers 33 (3): 353-377. 2004.Abstract In this paper I argue that to understand the ethics of belief we need to put it in a context of what we care about. Epistemic values always arise from something we care about and they arise only from something we care about. It is caring that gives rise to the demand to be epistemically conscientious. The reason morality puts epistemic demands on us is that we care about morality. But there may be a (small) class of beliefs which it is not wrong to hold unconscientiously. I also argue t…Read more
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405From Reliabilism to Virtue EpistemologyThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 5 173-179. 2000.In Virtues of the Mind I object to process reliabilism on the grounds that it does not explain the good of knowledge in addition to the good of true belief. In this paper I wish to develop this objection in more detail, and will then argue that this problem pushes us first in the direction of two offspring of process reliabilism—faculty reliabilism and proper functionalism, and, finally, to a true virtue epistemology.
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8Comprised of readings from ancient to modern times, this volume offers a comprehensive introduction to the central questions of the philosophy of religion. Provides a history of the philosophy of religion, from antiquity up to the twentieth century Each section is preceded by extensive commentary written by the editors, followed by readings that are arranged chronologically Designed to be accessible to both undergraduate and graduate students.
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197Epistemic TrustPhilosophy in the Contemporary World 10 (2): 113-117. 2003.The value of epistemic trust has been neglected, as Townsley rightly observes, but I think a virtue epistemology of the kind I endorse is well suited to provide a framework for understanding it. The Cassandra of Greek legend illustrates the complex relationships among epistemic and non-epistemic goods, as well as the fragility of knowledge. I think her case leads us to a more radical conclusion than the one Townsley proposes.
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3Virtue EpistemologyIn Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Genealogy to Iqbal, Routledge. 1998.
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63Must knowers be agentsIn Abrol Fairweather & Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski (eds.), Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, Oxford University Press. pp. 142--57. 2001.
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3652The Search for the Source of Epistemic GoodMetaphilosophy 34 (1-2): 12-28. 2003.Knowledge has almost always been treated as good, better than mere true belief, but it is remarkably difficult to explain what it is about knowledge that makes it better. I call this “the value problem.” I have previously argued that most forms of reliabilism cannot handle the value problem. In this article I argue that the value problem is more general than a problem for reliabilism, infecting a host of different theories, including some that are internalist. An additional problem is that not a…Read more
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25Recovering UnderstandingIn M. Steup (ed.), Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue, Oxford University Press. 2001.
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729An agent-based approach to the problem of evilInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 39 (3). 1996.
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208Admiration and the AdmirableAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 89 (1): 205-221. 2015.The category of the admirable has received little attention in the history of philosophy, even among virtue ethicists. I don't think we can understand the admirable without investigating the emotion of admiration. I have argued that admiration is an emotion in which the object is ‘seen as admirable’, and which motivates us to emulate the admired person in the relevant respect. Our judgements of admirability can be distorted by the malfunction of our disposition to admiration. We all know many wa…Read more
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34Reported Miracles: A Critique of HumePhilosophical Review 105 (4): 538. 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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