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75Sin and Human Cognition of GodScottish Journal of Theology 64 (4): 390-409. 2011.In this paper I argue that the effects of sin for our cognition of God primarily consist in a lack of knowledge by acquaintance of God and the relevant ensuing propositional knowledge. In the course of my argument, I make several conceptual distinctions and offer analyses of 1Cor 13:9-12 and Rom 1:18-23. As it turns out, we have ample reason to think that sin has had and still has profound consequences for our cognition of God, but there is no reason to think that sin has taken away all knowledg…Read more
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686Hume’s Law Violated?Journal of Value Inquiry 48 (3): 449-455. 2014.Introduction: Prinz’s SentimentalismMany ethicists claim that one cannot derive an ought from an is. In others words, they think that one cannot derive a statement that has prescriptive force from purely descriptive statements. This thesis plays a crucial role in many theoretical and practical ethical arguments. Since, according to many, David Hume advocated a view along these lines, this thesis has been called ‘Hume’s Law’. In this paper, I adopt this widespread terminology, whether or not Hume…Read more
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124Does doxastic responsibility entail the ability to believe otherwise?Synthese 190 (17): 3651-3669. 2013.Whether responsibility for actions and omissions requires the ability to do otherwise is an important issue in contemporary philosophy. However, a closely related but distinct issue, namely whether doxastic responsibility requires the ability to believe otherwise, has been largely neglected. This paper fills this remarkable lacuna by providing a defence of the thesis that doxastic responsibility entails the ability to believe otherwise. On the one hand, it is argued that the fact that unavoidabi…Read more
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58Degree-sentences, i.e. sentences that seem to refer to things that allow of degrees, are widely used both inside and outside of philosophy, even though the metaphysics of degrees is much of an untrodden field. This paper aims to fill this lacuna by addressing the following four questions: [A] Is there some one thing, such that it is degree sensitive? [B] Are there things x, y, and z that stand in a certain relation to each other, viz. the relation that x has more y than z? [C] In those cases in …Read more
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48The Effects of Sin upon Human Moral CognitionJournal of Reformed Theology 4 (1): 42-69. 2010.This article provides an elaborate defense of the thesis that we have no reason to think that sin has any direct effects upon our moral cognition. After a few methodological comments and conceptual distinctions, the author treats certain biblical passages on humans' evil hearts, the function of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis 2 and 3, Paul's comments on the moral situation of the Gentiles in Romans 2, and Paul's ideas on the Gentiles' futility of mind as found in Ephesians …Read more
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186Responsible belief and epistemic justificationSynthese 194 (8): 2895-2915. 2017.For decades, philosophers have displayed an interest in what it is to have an epistemically justified belief. Recently, we also find among philosophers a renewed interest in the so-called ethics of belief: what is it to believe responsibly and when is one’s belief blameworthy? This paper explores how epistemically justified belief and responsible belief are related to each other. On the so-called ‘deontological conception of epistemic justification’, they are identical: to believe epistemically …Read more
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212Believing at Will is PossibleAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (3): 1-18. 2015.There are convincing counter-examples to the widely accepted thesis that we cannot believe at will. For it seems possible that the truth of a proposition depend on whether or not one believes it. I call such scenarios cases of Truth Depends on Belief and I argue that they meet the main criteria for believing at will that we find in the literature. I reply to five objections that one might level against the thesis that TDB cases show that believing at will is possible, namely that mind-reading is…Read more
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614A Modal Solution to the Problem of Moral LuckAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 52 (1): 73-88. 2015.In this article I provide and defend a solution to the problem of moral luck. The problem of moral luck is that there is a set of three theses about luck and moral blameworthiness each of which is at least prima facie plausible, but that, it seems, cannot all be true. The theses are that (1) one cannot be blamed for what happens beyond one’s control, (2) that which is due to luck is beyond one’s control, and (3) we rightly blame each other for events that are due to luck. I suggest that the resp…Read more
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9S.J. Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics, Grand Rapids/Cambridge 2006: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 310 pagina’s. ISBN 0-8028-6313-2 (review)Philosophia Reformata 73 (1): 115-118. 2008.
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41Is science like a crossword puzzle? Foundherentist conceptions of scientific warrantCanadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (1): 82-101. 2016.This paper argues that the crossword puzzle analogy is great for scientific rationality, but not scientific warrant. It provides a critical analysis of foundherentist conceptions of scientific warrant, especially that of Susan Haack, and closely related positions, such as non-doxastic coherentism. Foundherentism takes the middle ground between foundationalism and coherentism. The main idea is that warrant, including that of scientific theories, is like warrant of crossword entries: the degree to…Read more
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25Divine foreknowledge and eternal damnation: The theory of middle knowledge as solution to the soteriological problem of evilNeue Zeitschrift für Systematicsche Theologie Und Religionsphilosophie 48 (2): 160-75. 2006.Traditionally, Christians have hold the two following beliefs: the belief that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good on the one hand and the belief that God has actualized a possible world in which some people freely reject Christ and are damned eternally, while others freely accept Him and are saved on the other. The combination of these two beliefs seems to result in a contradiction. This serious and well-known problem is called the soteriological problem of evil. In this article t…Read more
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162What Kind of Ignorance Excuses? Two Neglected IssuesPhilosophical Quarterly 64 (256): 478-496. 2014.The philosophical literature displays a lively debate on the conditions under which ignorance excuses. In this paper, I formulate and defend an answer to two questions that have not yet been discussed in the literature on exculpatory ignorance. First, which kinds of propositional attitudes that count as ignorance provide an excuse? I argue that we need to consider four options here: having a false belief, suspending judgement on a true proposition, being deeply ignorant of a truth, and having a …Read more
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654Some Metaphysical Implications of a Credible Ethics of BeliefIn New Essays on Belief: Constitution, Content and Structure, Palgrave. pp. 230-250. 2013.Any plausible ethics of belief must respect that normal agents are doxastically blameworthy for their beliefs in a range of non-exotic cases. In this paper, we argue, first, that together with independently motivated principles this constraint leads us to reject occurrentism as a general theory of belief. Second, we must acknowledge not only dormant beliefs, but tacit beliefs as well. Third, a plausible ethics of belief leads us to acknowledge that a difference in propositional content cannot in…Read more
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110The New View on Ignorance UndefeatedPhilosophia 40 (4): 741-750. 2012.In this paper, I provide a defence of the New View, on which ignorance is lack of true belief rather than lack of knowledge. Pierre Le Morvan has argued that the New View is untenable, partly because it fails to take into account the distinction between propositional and factive ignorance. I argue that propositional ignorance is just a subspecies of factive ignorance and that all the work that needs to be done can be done by using the concept of factive ignorance. I also defend two arguments of …Read more
Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Religion |
Normative Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Religion |
Meta-Ethics |