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On epistemologyWadsworth, Cengage Learning. 2008.What is knowledge? Why do we want it? Is knowledge possible? How do we get it? What about other epistemic values like understanding and certainty? Why are so many epistemologists worried about luck? In ON EPISTEMOLOGY Linda Zagzebski situates epistemological questions within the broader framework of what we care about and why we care about it. Questions of value shape all of the above questions and explain some significant philosophical trends: the obsession with answering the skeptic, the fligh…Read more
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22Sterba's Logical Problem of Evil and the Metaphysics of MoralsInternational Journal of Applied Philosophy 37 (1): 131-139. 2023.
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32The Dilemma of Freedom and ForeknowledgeOup Usa. 1991.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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701Weighing evils: the C. S. Lewis approachInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 62 (2): 81-88. 2007.It is often argued that the great quantity of evil in our world makes God’s existence less likely than a lesser quantity would, and this, presumably, because the probability that some evils are gratuitous increases as the overall quantity of evil increases. Often, an additive approach to quantifying evil is employed in such arguments. In this paper, we examine C. S. Lewis’ objection to the additive approach, arguing that although he is correct to reject this approach, there is a sense in which h…Read more
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123Readings in philosophy of religion: ancient to contemporary (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2009.This anthology offers a comprehensive historical introduction to the central questions of philosophy of religion. Approximately two-thirds of the selections are from ancient, medieval, and modern sources, helping students to understand and engage the rich traditions of reflection on these timeless questions. The remaining contemporary readings introduce students to the more recent developments in the field. Each of the thematically arranged sections begins with an editor's introduction to clarif…Read more
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86Virtue EthicsThink 22 (63): 15-21. 2023.Is ethics all about rights and duties, or is it about living a happy, flourishing life? For millennia in the West, ethics was about the way to flourish as an individual and a community. The qualities that enable people to live that way are the virtues, and that style of ethics is called Virtue Ethics. In the early modern period, Virtue Ethics went out of fashion and ethics began to focus on right and duties, where rights and duties are demands made against others. In this article I argue that th…Read more
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1Omniscience, Time, and FreedomIn William Mann (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Religion, Blackwell. 2004.
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4Foreknowledge and Human FreedomIn Charles Taliaferro, Paul Draper & Philip L. Quinn (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.This chapter contains sections titled: Works cited Additional recommended readings.
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28Zagzebski on JustificationVirtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of KnowledgePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (1): 191. 2000.
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48The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God’s AssistancePhilosophical Review 108 (2): 291. 1999.The title of Hare’s book refers to the gap between the demand that morality places on us and our natural capacity to live by it. Such a gap is paradoxical if we accept the “‘ought’ implies ‘can”’ principle. The solution, Hare argues, is that the gap is filled by the Christian God. So we ought to be moral and can do so—with divine assistance. Hare’s statement and defense of the existence of the gap combines a rigorously Kantian notion of the moral demand with a rigorously Calvinist notion of huma…Read more
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25Exemplarist virtue theoryIn Heather Battaly (ed.), Virtue and Vice, Moral and Epistemic, Wiley-blackwell. 2010.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction My Theory of Moral Theory The Structure of Some Moral Theories Exemplarism A Comprehensive Exemplarist Virtue Theory References.
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16Intersubjective reasons and the transmission of religious knowledgeSynthese 200 (6). 2022.Greco argues that knowledge by transmission involves joint agency whose norms are governed by the quality of the social relations in the transmission, and these norms differ from the norms generating knowledge in the source. This approach to the transmission of knowledge allows Greco to respond to three common arguments against the rationality of religious belief on testimony: the argument against belief in miracles, the argument from luck, and the argument from peer disagreement. I agree with G…Read more
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Emotional self-trustIn Sabine Roeser & Cain Samuel Todd (eds.), Emotion and Value, Oxford University Press Uk. 2014.
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The search for the source of epistemic goodIn Jeremy Fantl, Matthew McGrath & Ernest Sosa (eds.), Contemporary epistemology: an anthology, Wiley. 2019.
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11The Two Greatest Ideas: How Our Grasp of the Universe and Our Minds Changed EverythingPrinceton University Press. 2021.Two simple yet tremendously powerful ideas that shaped virtually every aspect of civilization This book is a breathtaking examination of the two greatest ideas in human history. The first is the idea that the human mind can grasp the universe. The second is the idea that the human mind can grasp itself. Acclaimed philosopher Linda Zagzebski shows how the first unleashed a cultural awakening that swept across the world in the first millennium BCE, giving birth to philosophy, mathematics, science,…Read more
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70Epistemic Values: Collected Papers in EpistemologyOup Usa. 2020.This volume collects the most influential essays of philosopher Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, one of the most distinguished thinkers working in epistemology today, particularly where the theory of knowledge meets ethics and the philosophy of religion. The volume is organized into six key topics in epistemology: knowledge and understanding, intellectual virtue, epistemic value, virtue in religious epistemology, intellectual autonomy and authority, and skepticism and the Gettier problem.
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384. Individual Essence and the CreationIn Thomas V. Morris (ed.), Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism, Cornell University Press. pp. 119-144. 1988.
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228Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in BeliefOxford University Press. 2012.In this book Zagzebski gives an extended argument that the self-reflective person is committed to belief on authority. Epistemic authority is compatible with autonomy, but epistemic self-reliance is incoherent. She argues that epistemic and emotional self-trust are rational and inescapable, that consistent self-trust commits us to trust in others, and that among those we are committed to trusting are some whom we ought to treat as epistemic authorities, modeled on the well-known principles of au…Read more
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26The Two Greatest IdeasProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 91 21-26. 2017.
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131The Dilemma of Freedom and ForeknowledgeOxford University Press. 1991.A compelling contribution to the field, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge will appeal to students and scholars of theistic philosophy and the philosophy ...
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2The Moral Transcendental Argument against SkepticismIn Cherie Braden, Rodrigo Borges & Branden Fitelson (eds.), Themes From Klein, Springer Verlag. 2019.
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50Distinctive Measures of Epistemic Evaluation: Character as the Configuration of TraitsVirtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (1): 203. 2000.
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166Précis of Virtues of the Mind (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (1): 169. 2000.
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13ResponsesVirtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of KnowledgePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (1): 207. 2000.
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289Epistemic authorityEpistemology and Philosophy of Science 53 (3): 92-107. 2017.Contemporary defenders of autonomy and traditional defenders of authority generally assume that they have so little in common as to make it hopeless to attempt a dialogue on the defensibility of epistemic, moral, or religious authority. In this paper I argue that they are mistaken. Under the assumption that the ultimate authority over the self is the self, I defend authority in the realm of belief on the same grounds as Joseph Raz uses in his well-known defense of political authority in the trad…Read more
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63Exemplarist Moral TheoryOup Usa. 2017.In Exemplarist Moral Theory of Linda Zagzebski presents an original moral theory based on direct reference to exemplars of goodness, whom we identify through the emotion of admiration. Using examples of heroes, saints, and sages, she shows how narratives of exemplars and empirical work on the most admirable persons can be incorporated into the theory to serve both theoretical and practical purposes.
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43Emotion and Moral JudgmentPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (1): 104-124. 2003.This paper argues that an emotion is a state of affectively perceiving its intentional object as falling under a “thick affective concept” A, a concept that combines cognitive and affective aspects in a way that cannot be pulled apart. For example, in a state of pity an object is seen as pitiful, where to see something as pitiful is to be in a state that is both cognitive and affective. One way of expressing an emotion is to assert that the intentional object of the emotion falls under the thick…Read more
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Presidential Address delivered at the one hundred thirteenth Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Chicago, IL, on March 4, 2016.