-
50A Dispositional Internalist Evidentialist Virtue EpistemologyLogos and Episteme 5 (4): 399-424. 2014.This paper articulates and defends a novel version of internalist evidentialism which employs dispositions to account for the relation of evidentialsupport. In section one, I explain internalist evidentialist views generally, highlighting the way in which the relation of evidential support stands at the heart of these views. I then discuss two leading ways in which evidential support has been understood by evidentialists, and argue that an account of support which employs what I call epistemic d…Read more
-
69The Special Value of Epistemic Self‐RelianceRatio 27 (1): 53-67. 2013.Philosophers have long held that epistemic self-reliance has a special value. But, this view has recently been challenged by prominent epistemologist Linda Zagzebski. Zagzebski argues that potential sources of support for the claim that epistemic self-reliance has a special value fail. Here I provide a novel defense of the special value of epistemic self-reliance. Self-reliance has a special value because it is required for attaining certain valuable cognitive achievements. Further, practicing s…Read more
-
73Ordinary morality does not imply atheismInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 83 (1): 85-96. 2018.Many theist as well as many atheist philosophers have maintained that if God exists, then every instance of undeserved, unwanted suffering ultimately benefits the sufferer. Recently, several authors have argued that this implication of theism conflicts with ordinary morality. I show that these arguments all rest on a common mistake. Defenders of these arguments overlook the role of merely potential instances of suffering in determining our moral obligations toward suffering.
-
1What's Wrong with Satanic Temptation?In Benjamin W. McCraw & Robert Arp (eds.), Philosophical Approaches to the Devil, Routledge. pp. 159-68. 2015.
-
69Why Persons Cannot Be PropertiesPhilosophy and Theology 24 (1): 67-83. 2012.This paper strengthens an argument from Alvin Plantinga against versions of the doctrine of divine simplicity which identify God with each of his properties. Plantinga shows that if properties are causally inefficacious abstracta, then God cannot be one of them—since God is surely causally efficacious. Here I argue thatGod cannot be even a causally efficacious property. The argument is an important complement to Plantinga’s work, since in the years following the publication of his essay many met…Read more
-
65Restricted Omniscience and Ways of KnowingSophia 53 (4): 427-434. 2014.Recently, several philosophers have moved from a classical account of divine omniscience according to which God knows all truths to a restricted account of divine omniscience according to which God knows all knowable truths. But an important objection offered by Alexander Pruss threatens to show that if God knows all knowable truths, God must also know all truths. In this paper, I show that there is a way out of Pruss’s objection for the advocate of restricted omniscience if she will define her …Read more
-
41Intentions, Intentionally Permitting, and the Problem of EvilProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 85 223-236. 2011.Some of the most persuasive contemporary statements of the problem of evil rely on premises concerning God’s intentionally permitting certain things to occur and premises concerning the moral wrongness of intentionally permitting such things. In this paper, I want to pose a dilemma for the defender of such arguments from evil. Either intentionally permitting p implies intending p or it does not. If it does, then the theist may plausibly resist these arguments from evil by insisting that the key …Read more
-
28Do God's Beliefs about the Future Depend on the Future?Journal of Analytic Theology 3 124-9. 2015.Trenton Merricks, among others, has recently championed in a series of papers what he takes to be a novel and simple solution to an age-old problem concerning the compatibility of divine omniscience and human freedom. The solution crucially involves the thesis that God’s beliefs about the future actions of human persons asymmetrically depend on the future actions of those persons. I show that Merricks’s defense of this thesis is inadequate and that the prospects for improving his defense of it w…Read more
-
65The Special Value of Others-CenterednessRes Philosophica 93 (1): 63-78. 2016.Suppose you confront a situation in which you can either promote a good for yourself or a good for someone else, but not both. The present paper argues that it is valuable for your conduct in such circumstances to be regulated by a character trait the possession of which constitutes one way of having one’s life be centered upon others as opposed to centered upon oneself. The trait in question, which we shall call “others-centeredness,” is a disposition to promote goods of others rather than one’…Read more
-
65Ockhamism vs Molinism, round 2: a reply to WarfieldReligious Studies 47 (4). 2011.Ted Warfield has argued that if Ockhamism and Molinism offer different responses to the problems of foreknowledge and prophecy, it is the Molinist who is in trouble. I show here that this is not so -indeed, things may be quite the reverse
-
120Explanationism and Justified Beliefs about the FutureErkenntnis 78 (1). 2013.Explanationism holds that a person's evidence supports a proposition just in case that proposition is part of the best available explanation for the person's evidence. I argue that explanationism faces a serious difficulty when it comes to justified beliefs about the future. Often, one's evidence supports some proposition about the future but that proposition is not part of the best available explanation for one's evidence. Attempts to defend explanationism against this charge are unattractive. …Read more
-
68Reconstituting Ersatzer PresentismRes Philosophica 91 (3): 491-502. 2014.Presentists claim that only presently existing objects exist. One version of presentism is ersatzer presentism, according to which times are a kind of abstract object. Such a view is appealing because it affords the presentist an answer to the grounding objection—a potentially lethal objection to presentism. Despite this advantage, available versions of ersatzer presentism suffer from a heretofore unappreciated shortcoming: they cannot account for the truth of certain counterfactual claims about…Read more
-
83Evidentialist views in epistemology, like that of Earl Conee and Richard Feldman, define epistemic justification at least partially in terms of evidential support. According to these views, a person is justified in believing a proposition p just when her evidence supports p. The subject of this dissertation is the evidential support relation at the heart of these views—viz., the relation which obtains between a person’s evidence e and a proposition p just when e supports p in the sense required …Read more
-
25Intentions, Intentionally Permitting, and the Problem of EvilProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 85 223-236. 2011.Some of the most persuasive contemporary statements of the problem of evil rely on premises concerning God’s intentionally permitting certain things to occur and premises concerning the moral wrongness of intentionally permitting such things. In this paper, I want to pose a dilemma for the defender of such arguments from evil. Either intentionally permitting p implies intending p or it does not. If it does, then the theist may plausibly resist these arguments from evil by insisting that the key …Read more
-
89The All-Powerful, Perfectly Good, and Free GodOxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 8 16-46. 2017.
-
73The Values and Varieties of HumilityPhilosophia 42 (4): 889-910. 2014.This paper pursues a value-based evaluation of a variety of character traits which philosophers have identified with humility, and it proposes a novel account of a character trait not implausibly identified with humility which has a unique kind of value. I begin by explaining why a value-based evaluation of various traits identified with virtues is preferable to the more common contemporary counterexample-based evaluation of these traits. I then undertake a value-based evaluation of various trai…Read more
-
32Ockhamism vs molinism, round 2: A reply to Warfield: T. Ryan ByerlyReligious Studies 47 (4): 503-511. 2011.Ted Warfield has argued that if Ockhamism and Molinism offer different responses to the problems of foreknowledge and prophecy, it is the Molinist who is in trouble. I show here that this is not so – indeed, things may be quite the reverse
-
55Foreknowledge, accidental necessity, and uncausabilityInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 75 (2): 137-154. 2014.Foreknowledge arguments attempt to show that infallible and exhaustive foreknowledge is incompatible with creaturely freedom. One particularly powerful foreknowledge argument employs the concept of accidental necessity. But an opponent of this argument might challenge it precisely because it employs the concept of accidental necessity. Indeed, Merricks (Philos Rev 118:29–57, 2009, Philos Rev 120:567–586, 2011a) and Zagzebski (Faith Philos 19(4):503–519, 2002, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,…Read more
-
72The ontomystical argument revisitedInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 67 (2). 2010.I argue that Alexander Pruss's ontomystical arguments should not be endorsed without further argumentative support of their premises. My specific targets are his claims that (i) Śamkara's principle is true and (ii) the high mystics had phenomenal experiences of radical dependence and as of a maximally great being. Against (i), I urge a host of counterexamples. The only ways I can see for Pruss to respond to these counterexamples end up falsifying (ii). The key problem which leads to this conclus…Read more
-
163It Seems Like There Aren’t Any SeemingsPhilosophia 40 (4): 771-782. 2012.Abstract I argue that the two primary motivations in the literature for positing seemings as sui generis mental states are insufficient to motivate this view. Because of this, epistemological views which attempt to put seemings to work don’t go far enough. It would be better to do the same work by appealing to what makes seeming talk true rather than simply appealing to seeming talk. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-12 DOI 10.1007/s11406-012-9363-8 Authors T. Ryan Byerly, Department of Phi…Read more
Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland