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601Compatibilism and the Free Will DefenseIn Hugh J. McCann (ed.), Free Will and Classical Theism: The Significance of Free Will in Perfect Being Theology, Oxford University Press. 2016.
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272Bringing About Perfect WorldsIn Kevin Timpe & Daniel Speak (eds.), Free Will and Theism: Connections, Contingencies, and Concerns, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 195-213. 2016.
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Best Worlds and MultiversesIn KIaas Kraay (ed.), God and the Multiverse: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Perspectives, Routledge. 2014.
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Skeptical Theism and Undercutting DefeatersIn Trent Dougherty & Justin P. McBrayer (eds.), New Essays on Skeptical Theism, Oxford University Press. pp. 115-131. 2014.
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30Chance, Epistemic Probability, and Saving Lives: Reply to BradleyJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 5 (1). 2010.No abstract.
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Rollbacks, Endorsements, and IndeterminismIn Mike Almeida & Mark H. Bernstein (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 2nd Edition. pp. 484-498. 2010.
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168Marginal Cases and the Moral Status of EmbryosIn J. M. Humber & R. F. Almeder (eds.), Stem Cell Research. Biomedical Ethics Reviews., Springer. 2004.
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Utility Pumps and the Value of Partial ComplianceIn Imperceptible Harms and Benefits, Springer. 2000.
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79The Unreal Problem of No Best WorldPhilo 9 (2): 103-112. 2006.Suppose it is a reasonable assumption that there is no possible world that is overall highest in value. Some theists have found in thatassumption a basis for actualizing a less-than-best world. Some atheists have found in that assumption a basis for actualizing no world at all. I present a dynamic choice model for the problem and describe the rationality assumptions necessary to generate a rational choice problem for an ideally rational agent. I show that at least one of the rationality assumpti…Read more
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19Arthur Ron Miller, 1949-2006Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 80 (2). 2006.
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300Being, Freedom, and Method: Themes from the Philosophy of Peter van Inwagen, edited by John A. Keller (review)Faith and Philosophy 35 (2): 264-271. 2018.
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1363Cosmological ArgumentsCambridge University Press. 2018.The book discusses the structure, content, and evaluation of cosmological arguments. The introductory chapter investigates features essential to cosmological arguments. Traditionally, cosmological arguments are distinguished by their appeal to change, causation, contingency or objective becoming in the world. But none of these is in fact essential to the formulation of cosmological arguments. Chapters 1-3 present a critical discussion of traditional Thomistic, Kalam, and Leibnizian cosmological …Read more
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781Theistic Modal Realism II: Theoretical BenefitsPhilosophy Compass 12 (7). 2017.In Sections 1–7, I provide a detailed description of some of the advantages of theistic modal realism. The aim is to show specifically how theistic modal realism solves many of the intractable problems of philosophical theology. A detailed description of all of the advantages would require a much longer treatment. The aim is to give a good sense of the theoretical benefits that theistic modal realism affords traditional theists. I offer some concluding remarks in Section 8.
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1127Theistic Modal Realism I: The Challenge of Theistic ActualismPhilosophy Compass 12 (7). 2017.The main aim in the forthcoming discussion is to contrast theistic modal realism and theistic actualist realism. Actualist realism is the dominant view among theists and presents the most serious challenge to theistic modal realism. I discuss various prominent forms of theistic actualist realism. I offer reasons for rejecting the view of metaphysical reality that actualist realism affords. I discuss theistic modal realism and show that the traditional conception of God is perfectly consist…Read more
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79The Metaphysics of Perfect BeingsRoutledge. 2008._The Metaphysics of Perfect Beings_ addresses the problems an Anselmian perfect being faces in contexts involving unlimited options. Recent advances in the theory of vagueness, the metaphysics of multiverses and hyperspace, the theory of dynamic or sequential choice, the logic of moral and rational dilemmas, and metaethical theory provide the resources to formulate the new challenges and the Anselmian responses with an unusual degree of precision. Almeida shows that the challenges arising in the…Read more
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30O’Connor’s Permissive MultiversePhilosophia Christi 12 (2): 297-307. 2010.I distinguish restrictive and permissive multiverse solutions to the problems of evil and no best world. Restrictive multiverses do not admit a single instance of gratuitous evil and they are not improvable. I show that restrictive multiverses unacceptably entail that all modal distinctions collapse. I consider Timothy O’Connor’s permissive multiverse. I show that a perfect creator minimizes aggregative suffering in permissive multiverses only if the actual universe is not included in any actual…Read more
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161Chance, epistemic probability and saving lives: Reply to BradleyJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 2010 (1): 1-1. 2009.No abstract.
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85The paradoxes of Feldman's neo-utilitarianismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 70 (4). 1992.This Article does not have an abstract
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55Ideal worlds and the transworld untrustworthyReligious Studies 40 (1): 113-123. 2004.The celebrated free-will defence was designed to show that the ideal-world thesis presents no challenge to theism. The ideal-world thesis states that, in any world in which God exists, He can actualize a world containing moral good and no moral evil. I consider an intriguing two-stage argument that Michael Bergmann advances for the free-will defence, and show that the argument provides atheologians with no reason to abandon the ideal-world thesis. I show next that the existence of worlds in whic…Read more
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48On Infinitely Improving WorldsPhilo 8 (1): 38-46. 2005.William Rowe argues that an essentially perfectly good being could not actualize a world unless there is no better world it could actualize instead. According to Rowe’s Argument from Improvability, if there is an infinite series of ever-improving and actualizable worlds then a perfect being could actualize exactly none of them. I argue that there is no reason to believe Rowe’s argument is sound. It therefore presents no important objection to theism.
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65Freedom, God, and worldsOxford University Press. 2012.Michael J. Almeida presents a bold new defence of the existence of God. He argues that entrenched principles in philosophical theology which have served as basic assumptions in apriori, atheological arguments are in fact philosophical dogmas. Almeida argues that not only are such principles false - they are necessarily false.
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297Rowe's Argument from ImprovabilityPhilosophical Papers 35 (1): 1-25. 2006.William Rowe has argued that if there is an infinite sequence of improving worlds then an essentially perfectly good being must actualize some world in the sequence and must not actualize any world in the sequence. Since that is impossible, there exist no perfectly good beings. I show that Rowe's argument assumes that the concept of a maximally great being is incoherent. Since we are given no reason to believe that the concept of a maximally great being is incoherent we have no reason to believe…Read more
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52A paradox for significant freedomInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 54 (3): 175-184. 2003.
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188Too much (and not enough) of a good thing: How agent neutral principles fail in prisoner's dilemmasPhilosophical Studies 94 (3): 309-328. 1999.
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894Reply to Trakakis and NagasawaArs Disputandi 5 5-11. 2005.Nick Trakakis and Yujin Nagasawa criticise the argument in Almeida and Oppy . According to Trakakis and Nagasawa, we are mistaken in our claim that the sceptical theist response to evidential arguments from evil is unacceptable because it would undermine ordinary moral reasoning. In their view, there is no good reason to think that sceptical theism leads to an objectionable form of moral scepticism. We disagree. In this paper, we explain why we think that the argument of Nagasawa and Trakakis fa…Read more
The Ohio State University
Alumnus
San Antonio, Texas, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion |
Metaphysics |
20th Century Analytic Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Value Theory |