•  62
    Can God Choose a World at Random?
    In Yujin Nagasawa & Erik J. Wielenberg (eds.), New waves in philosophy of religion, Palgrave-macmillan. 2008.
    On what basis does God choose a possible world to make actual? Theists typically claim that God freely selects exactly one world on the basis of its axiological characteristics. But suppose that there are infinitely many unsurpassable worlds from which to choose; or else that there are no unsurpassable worlds, but instead an infinite hierarchy of increasingly better worlds. On each of these scenarios, philosophers have alleged that God is unable rationally to choose a world for actualization. In…Read more
  •  23
    The Fall and Hypertime (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 68 (270): 202-204. 2018.
  •  19
    Externalism and Self-Knowledge (review)
    Dialogue 41 (1): 177-179. 2002.
    This collection contains twenty-one selections on various issues central to the problem of externalism and privileged self-knowledge. The problem these papers address is best characterized as follows. Externalism is the doctrine that the individuation of mental content depends in part on physical or social factors. While this position is extremely plausible, it unfortunately appears to undermine the equally plausible view that individuals have some kind of privileged access to their own mental s…Read more
  •  60
    God and Gratuitous Evil (Part II)
    Philosophy Compass 11 (12): 913-922. 2016.
    In contemporary analytic philosophy, the problem of evil refers to a family of arguments that attempt to show, by appeal to evil, that God does not exist. Some very important arguments in this family focus on gratuitous evil. Most participants in the relevant discussions, including theists and atheists, agree that God is able to prevent all gratuitous evil, and that God would do so. On this view, of course, the occurrence of even a single instance of gratuitous evil falsifies theism. The most co…Read more
  •  216
    God and Gratuitous Evil (Part I)
    Philosophy Compass 11 (12): 905-912. 2016.
    In contemporary analytic philosophy, the problem of evil refers to a family of arguments that attempt to show, by appeal to evil, that God does not exist. Some very important arguments in this family focus on gratuitous evil. Most participants in the relevant discussions, including theists and atheists, agree that God is able to prevent all gratuitous evil and that God would do so. On this view, of course, the occurrence of even a single instance of gratuitous evil falsifies theism. The most com…Read more
  •  27
    Reason for the Hope Within (review)
    Faith and Philosophy 19 (1): 131-134. 2002.
  •  101
    The Problem of No Best World
    In Charles Taliaferro & Paul Draper (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, 2nd ed., Blackwell. 2010.
    This paper surveys recent literature on the problem of no best world - an a priori argument for atheism.
  •  120
    Divine Unsurpassability
    Philosophia 35 (3-4): 293-300. 2007.
    One historically significant model of God holds that God is a perfect being. Analytic philosophers of religion have typically understood this to mean that God is essentially unsurpassable in power, knowledge, goodness, and wisdom. Recently, however, several philosophers have argued that this is inconsistent with another common theistic position: the view that for any world that God can create, there is a better world that God could have created instead. The argument runs (roughly) as follows: if…Read more
  •  159
    Externalism, Memory, and Self-Knowledge
    Erkenntnis 56 (3): 297-317. 2002.
    Externalism holds that the individuation of mental content depends on factors external to the subject. This doctrine appears to undermine both the claim that there is a priori self-knowledge, and the view that individuals have privileged access to their thoughts. Tyler Burge's influential "inclusion theory of self-knowledge" purports to reconcile externalism with authoritative self-knowledge. I first consider Paul Boghossian's claim that the inclusion theory is internally inconsistent. I reject …Read more