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140Can agent-causation be rendered intelligible?: an essay on the etiology of free actionDissertation, Texas A&M University. 1999.The doctrine of agent-causation has been suggested by many interested in defending libertarian theories of free action to provide the conceptual apparatus necessary to make the notion of incompatibility freedom intelligible. In the present essay the conceptual viability of the doctrine of agent-causation will be assessed. It will be argued that agent-causation is, insofar as it is irreducible to event-causation, mysterious at best, totally unintelligible at worst. First, the arguments for agent-…Read more
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Yujin Nagasawa, God and Phenomenal Consciousness: A Novel Approach to Knowledge ArgumentsPhilosophy in Review 29 (3): 208. 2009.
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200Action-Individuation and Doxastic AgencyTheoria 77 (4): 312-332. 2011.In this article, I challenge the dominant view of the importance of the debate over action-individuation. On the dominant view, it is held that the conclusions we reach about action-individuation make little or no difference for other debates in the philosophy of action, much less in other areas of philosophy. As a means of showing that the dominant view is mistaken, I consider the implications of accepting a given theory of action-individuation for thinking about doxastic agency. In particular,…Read more
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1017Deciding to Believe ReduxIn Jonathan Matheson Rico Vitz (ed.), The Ethics of Belief: Individual and Social, Oxford University Press. pp. 33-50. 2014.The ways in which we exercise intentional agency are varied. I take the domain of intentional agency to include all that we intentionally do versus what merely happens to us. So the scope of our intentional agency is not limited to intentional action. One can also exercise some intentional agency in omitting to act and, importantly, in producing the intentional outcome of an intentional action. So, for instance, when an agent is dieting, there is an exercise of agency both with respect to the ag…Read more
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570Omniscience, the Incarnation, and Knowledge de seEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (4): 59--71. 2012.A knowledge argument is offered that presents unique difficulties for Christians who wish to assert that God is essentially omniscient. The difficulties arise from the doctrine of the incarnation. Assuming that God the Son did not necessarily have to become incarnate, then God cannot necessarily have knowledge de se of the content of a non-divine mind. If this is right, then God’s epistemic powers are not fixed across possible worlds and God is not essentially omniscient. Some options for Christ…Read more
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56Helen Steward , A Metaphysics for Freedom . Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 33 (6): 493-495. 2013.
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29Can the Agency Theory Be Salvaged?Philosophia Christi 3 (1): 217-224. 2001.Some of the most salient features of Randolph Clarke's causal agent-causal theory of free action are explicated and his theory critiqued. It is shown that invoking agent-causation is unnecessary and makes his theory cumbersome. For insofar as Clarke seeks to render the agency theory more intelligible by appealing to event-causation as contributing to the generation of basic actions, his theory gravitates closer to a causal indeterminist theory of free action.
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70An Essay on Doxastic AgencyDissertation, University of Rochester. 2005.The problem of doxastic agency concerns what sort of agency humans can exercise with regard to forming doxastic attitudes such as belief. In this essay I defend a version of what James Montmarquet calls "The Asymmetry Thesis": Coming to believe and action are asymmetrical with respect to direct voluntary control. I argue that normal adult human agents cannot exercise direct voluntary control over the acquisition of any of their doxastic attitudes in the same way that they exercise such control o…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Religion |
PhilPapers Editorships
Action Theory |
Causal Theory of Action |
Pantheism |
Panentheism |