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523Virtues 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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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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8God, Eternity, and the Nature of Time, by Alan G. Padgett (review)Philosophy in Review 13 (4): 179-181. 1993.
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402From 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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68Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment (review)Faith and Philosophy 6 (1): 103-110. 1989.
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1383Epistemic 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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194Epistemic 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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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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3Virtue EpistemologyIn Edward Craig (ed.), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 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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3622The 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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205Admiration 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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24Recovering UnderstandingIn M. Steup (ed.), Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue, Oxford University Press. 2001.
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715An agent-based approach to the problem of evilInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 39 (3). 1996.
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32Reported 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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44Ethical and Epistemic Egoism and the Ideal of AutonomyEpisteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology 4 (3): 252-263. 2007.
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10Virtue Theory and ExemplarsPhilosophical News 4. 2012.This essay outlines an approach to virtue theory that makes the foundation of the theory direct reference to virtuous exemplars, modeled on the famous theory of direct reference, devised in the seventies by Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke. The basic idea is that exemplars are persons like that, just as water is liquid like that, and humans are members of the same species as that, and so on. In this theory exemplars are picked out directly through the emotion of admiration rather than through the s…Read more
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407On EpistemologyWadsworth. 2009.These books will prove valuable to philosophy teachers and their students as well as to other readers who share a general interest in philosophy.
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2826Divine Foreknowledge and Human Free WillReligious Studies 21 (3): 279-298. 1985.If God knows everything he must know the future, and if he knows the future he must know the future acts of his creatures. But then his creatures must act as he knows they will act. How then can they be free? This dilemma has a long history in Christian philosophy and is now as hotly disputed as ever. The medieval scholastics were virtually unanimous in claiming both that God is omniscient and that humans have free will, though they disagreed in their accounts of how the two are compatible. With…Read more