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595Contradictory Belief and Epistemic Closure PrinciplesMind and Language 14 (2). 1999.Kripke’s puzzle has puts pressure on the intuitive idea that one can believe that Superman can fly without believing that Clark Kent can fly. If this idea is wrong then many theories of belief and belief ascription are built from faulty data. I argue that part of the proper analysis of Kripke’s puzzle refutes the closure principles that show up in many important arguments in epistemology, e.g., if S is rational and knows that P and that P entails Q, then if she considers these two beliefs and Q,…Read more
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2111The Irrationality of Religious BeliefThink 15 (42): 15-33. 2016.Many highly educated people think religious belief is irrational and unscientific. If you ask a philosopher, however, you'll likely get two answers: most religious belief is rational in some respects and irrational in other respects. In my previous essay I explained why they think so many religious beliefs are rational. In this essay I explain why they think those same beliefs are irrational
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796The Atheistic Argument from OutrageousnessThink 17 (48): 107-116. 2018.When pressed, many atheists offer three reasons why they reject theism: there is strong evidence against theism, there is no strong evidence for theism, and theism is so outrageous that it needs a great deal of support in order for us to believe it in a reasonable manner. I examine the third reason, arguing that it fails.
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1384Religious DisagreementIn Graham Robert Oppy (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, Routledge. 2015.In this essay I try to motivate and formulate the main epistemological questions to ask about the phenomenon of religious disagreement. I will not spend much time going over proposed answers to those questions. I address the relevance of the recent literature on the epistemology of disagreement. I start with some fiction and then, hopefully, proceed with something that has at least a passing acquaintance with truth.
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524Ontology, Composition, Quantification and ActionAnalysis 76 (2): 137-142. 2016.The literature on material composition has largely ignored the composition of actions and events. I argue that this is a mistake. I present a set of individually plausible yet jointly inconsistent claims regarding the connection between quantification and existence, the composition of physical entities and the logical forms of action sentences.
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphilosophy |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Religion |
Areas of Interest
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Epistemology |
Metaphilosophy |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Religion |
Philosophy of Language |
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Epistemology of Disagreement |