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76Who Needs Valid Moral Arguments?Argumentation 17 (1): 35-42. 2003.Why have so many philosophers agonised over the possibility of valid arguments from factual premises to moral conclusions? I suggest that they have done so, because of worries over a sceptical argument that has as one of its premises, `All moral knowledge must be non-inferential, or, if inferential, based on valid arguments or strong inductive arguments from factual premises'. I argue that this premise is false
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324Bertrand Russell's Defence of the Cosmological ArgumentAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 35 (1): 87-100. 1998.According to the cosmological argument, there must be a self-existent being, because, if every being were a dependent being, we would lack an explanation of the fact that there are any dependent beings at all, rather than nothing. This argument faces an important, but little-noticed objection: If self-existent beings may exist, why may not also self-explanatory facts also exist? And if self-explanatory facts may exist, why may not the fact that there are any dependent beings be a self-explana…Read more
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267The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Moral ArgumentReligious Studies 32 (1): 15-26. 1996.The Clarke/Rowe version of the Cosmological Argument is sound only if the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) is true, but many philosophers, including Rowe, think that there is not adequate evidence for the principle of sufficient reason. I argue that there may be indirect evidence for PSR on the grounds that if we do not accept it, we lose our best justification for an important principle of metaethics, namely, the Principle of Universalizability. To show this, I argue that all the other just…Read more
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26Sinnott–Armstrong's Moral ScepticismRatio 16 (1): 63-82. 2003.Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s recent defence of moral scepticism raises the debate to a new level, but I argue that it is unsatisfactory because of problems with its assumption of global scepticism, with its use of the Sceptical Hypothesis Argument, and with its use of the idea of contrast classes and the correlative distinction between ‘everyday’ justification and ‘philosophical’ justification. I draw on Chisholm’s treatment of the Problem of the Criterion to show that my claim that I know that, e…Read more
Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Religion |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |