•  124
    Correction to John D. Norton “How to build an infinite lottery machine”
    European Journal for Philosophy of Science 8 (1): 143-144. 2018.
    An infinite lottery machine is used as a foil for testing the reach of inductive inference, since inferences concerning it require novel extensions of probability. Its use is defensible if there is some sense in which the lottery is physically possible, even if exotic physics is needed. I argue that exotic physics is needed and describe several proposals that fail and at least one that succeeds well enough.
  •  83
    Sceptical Theism, the Butterfly Effect and Bracketing the Unknown
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 81 71-86. 2017.
    Sceptical theism claims that we have vast ignorance about the realm of value and the connections, causal and modal, between goods and bads. This ignorance makes it reasonable for a theist to say that God has reasons beyond our ken for allowing the horrendous evils we observe. But if so, then does this not lead to moral paralysis when we need to prevent evils ourselves? For, for aught that we know, there are reasons beyond our ken for us to allow the evils, and so we should not prevent them. This…Read more
  •  70
    Possible Worlds: What They Are Good for and What They Are
    Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. 2001.
    This thesis examines the alethic modal concepts of possibility and necessity. It is argued that one cannot do justice to all our modal talk without possible worlds, i.e., complete ways that a cosmos might have been. I argue that not all of the proposed applications of possible worlds succeed but enough remain to give one good theoretical reason to posit them. The two central problems now are: What feature of reality makes correct alethic modal claims true and What are possible worlds? ;David Lew…Read more
  •  278
    Incompatibilism proved
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43 (4): 430-437. 2013.
    (2013). Incompatibilism proved. Canadian Journal of Philosophy. ???aop.label???
  •  36
    Professor Lucas' second epistemic way
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 45 (3): 189-194. 1999.
  •  109
    Consider the reasonable axioms of subjunctive conditionals if p → q1 and p → q2 at some world, then p → at that world, and if p1 → q and p2 → q at some world, then → q at that world, where p → q is the subjunctive conditional. I show that a Lewis-style semantics for subjunctive conditionals satisfies these axioms if and only if one makes a certain technical assumption about the closeness relation, an assumption that is probably false. I will then show how Lewisian semantics can be modified so as…Read more
  •  13
    Toner on Judgment and Eternalism
    Faith and Philosophy 25 (3): 317-321. 2008.
    Patrick Toner has argued that eternalism, the doctrine that all times are ontologically on par, conflicts with the Catholic view of judgment as based on the state of the soul at death. For, he holds, it is arbitrary that judgment should be based on what happened at some particular time, unless, as presentism holds, that time is the only that really exists. I shall argue that his argument fails because the eternalist can say that judgment is simultaneous with the state of soul that is being judge…Read more
  •  31
    It is widely accepted that divine creation of human beings is compatible with evolutionary theory, except perhaps in regard of the human soul, and that neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory provides an explanation of speciation and of complex features of organisms that undercuts Paley-style teleological arguments, whether or not the evolutionary mechanisms are truly random or deterministic. I will argue that a plausible understanding of the doctrine of creation of human beings is either logically or…Read more
  •  7
    Maritain Society Group Meeting, Eastern APA, 2006.
  •  172
    Another Step in Divine Command Dialectics
    Faith and Philosophy 26 (4): 432-439. 2009.
    Consider the following three-step dialectics. (1) Even if God (consistently) commanded torture of the innocent, it would still be wrong. Therefore Divine Command Metaethics (DCM) is false. (2) No: for it is impossible for God to command torture of the innocent. (3) Even if it is impossible, there is a non-trivially true per impossibile counterfactual that even if God (consistently) com­manded torture of the innocent, it would still be wrong, and this counterfac­tual is incompatible with DCM. I s…Read more
  •  130
    The essential divine-perfection objection to the free-will defence
    Religious Studies 44 (4): 433-444. 2008.
    The free-will defence (FWD) holds that the value of significant free will is so great that God is justified in creating significantly free creatures even if there is a risk or certainty that these creatures will sin. A difficulty for the FWD, developed carefully by Quentin Smith, is that God is unable to do evil, and yet surely lacks no genuinely valuable kind of freedom. Smith argues that the kind of freedom that God has can be had by creatures, without a risk of creatures doing evil. I shall s…Read more
  •  179
    Omnirationality
    Res Philosophica 90 (1): 1-21. 2013.
    God is omnirational: whenever he does anything, he does it for all and only the unexcluded reasons that favor the action, and he always acts for reasons. Thisdoctrine has two unexpected consequences: it gives an account of why it is that unification is a genuine form of scientific explanation, and it answers the question of when the occurrence of E after a petitionary prayer for E is an answer to the prayer
  •  103
    A New Way to Reconcile Creation with Current Biological Science
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 85 213-222. 2011.
    I shall argue that, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, current biological science does not rule out the possibility of miraculous intervention in the evolutionary history of human beings. This shows that it is possible to reconcile evolutionary science with the claim that we are designed by God.
  •  23
    Surprisingly precise results are provided on how much more one should disvalue being wrong than one values being right.
  •  153
    McGrew, McGrew and Vestrup (MMV) have argued that the fine-tuning anthropic principle argument for the existence of God fails because no probabilities can be assigned to the likelihood that physical constants fall in some finite interval. In particular, the fine-tuning argument that, say, some constant must lie in the range (1.000,1.001) in order for intelligent life to be possible is no better than a seemingly absurd coarse-tuning argument based on the need for that constant to lie in the range…Read more
  •  82
    I argue that it is possible for a human animal to survive the loss of all bodily parts other than the brain
  •  146
    Sincerely Asserting What You Do Not Believe
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (3). 2012.
    I offer examples showing that, pace G. E. Moore, it is possible to assert ?Q and I don't believe that Q? sincerely, truly, and without any absurdity. The examples also refute the following principles: (a) justification to assert p entails justification to assert that one believes p (Gareth Evans); (b) the sincerity condition on assertion is that one believes what one says (John Searle); and (c) to assert (to someone) something that one believes to be false is to lie (Don Fallis)
  •  190
    David Lewis (1979) has argued that according to his possible worlds analysis of counterfactuals, “backtracking” counterfactuals of the form “If event A were to happen at tA, then event B would happen at tB” where tB precedes tA, are usually false if B does not actually happen at tB. On the other..
  •  34
    Ultimate Explanations
    Contemporary Pragmatism 2 (2): 35-48. 2005.
    Nicholas Rescher accepts the Principle of Sufficient Reason. In his Nature and Understanding, he gives two candidates for an ultimate explanation: a virtuously circular explanations of facts by laws and laws by facts, and an explanation of the world in terms of optimalism. I argue that the first of these depends on the second, and that the second could be improved by switching to a weaker optimalism or to a theistic explanation
  •  19
              Kant has claimed that lying is always wrong, even in response to a question from a murderer about the whereabouts of his intended victim. Christine Korsgaard has argued that although Kant’s second and third formulations in terms of respect for the humanity in persons and in terms of the Kingdom of Ends of the Categorical Imperative (CI) commit him to this claim, the first formulation in terms of universalizability does..
  •  385
    Probability, Regularity, and Cardinality
    Philosophy of Science 80 (2): 231-240. 2013.
    Regularity is the thesis that all contingent propositions should be assigned probabilities strictly between zero and one. I will prove on cardinality grounds that if the domain is large enough, a regular probability assignment is impossible, even if we expand the range of values that probabilities can take, including, for instance, hyperreal values, and significantly weaken the axioms of probability.
  •  20
    Yea, and amen. I am inclined to think everything John said is true, when interpreted appropriately. So what I am going to do is two things. First, I will critically comment on the third of the arguments for the immateriality of the soul. Second, I will give a different argument for the immateriality of the soul that at the same time should somewhat clarify what alternative to dualism and materialism that John and I find plausible.
  •  20
    I argue against psychological theories of identity that claim that in cases where one’s personality and memories are moved into the brain of another, we move with them. I am not entirely convinced by my arguments here, I must confess, but I think they deserve some thought.
  •  60
    Omniscience, Weak PSR, and Method
    Philo 6 (1): 33-48. 2003.
    Adhering to the traditional concept of omniscience lands Gale in the incoherence Grim’s Cantorian arguments reveal in talk of “all propositions.” By constructing variants and extensions of Grim’s arguments, I explain why various ways out of the incoherence are unacceptable, why theists would do better to adopt a certain revisionary concept of omniscience, and why the Cantorian troubles are so deep as to be troubles as well for Gale’s Weak PSR. I conclude with some brief reflections on method, su…Read more
  •  535
    Being Sure and Being Confident That You Won’t Lose Confidence
    Logos and Episteme 7 (1): 45-54. 2016.
    There is an important sense in which one can be sure without being certain, i.e., without assigning unit probability. I will offer an explication of this sense of sureness, connecting it with the level of credence that a rational agent would need to have to be confident that she won’t ever lose her confidence. A simple formal result then gives us an explicit formula connecting the threshold α for credence needed for confidence with the threshold needed for being sure: one needs 1−(1−α) to be sur…Read more
  •  153
    The ontological argument and the motivational centres of lives
    Religious Studies 46 (2): 233-249. 2010.
    Assuming S₅, the main controversial premise in modal ontological arguments is the possibility premise, such as that possibly a maximally great being exists. I shall offer a new way of arguing that the possibility premise is probably true
  •  71
    From restricted to full omniscience: ALEXANDER R. PRUSS
    Religious Studies 47 (2): 257-264. 2011.
    Some, notably Peter van Inwagen, in order to avoid problems with free will and omniscience, replace the condition that an omniscient being knows all true propositions with a version of the apparently weaker condition that an omniscient being knows all knowable true propositions. I shall show that the apparently weaker condition, when conjoined with uncontroversial claims and the logical closure of an omniscient being's knowledge, still yields the claim that an omniscient being knows all true pro…Read more
  • Other Times (review)
    Dialogue 39 (1): 199-201. 2000.