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100The problem of worshipThink 9 (25): 101-113. 2010.Theism is a cluster of views. The first of which is that God exists. Others are that God has all the relevant omni-attributes, that He created the world, and that He communicates with and performs miracles on behalf of humans. There is one additional view that is often overlooked. It is that humans are obligated to worship God. Importantly, this issue of worship is of central importance to traditional theism. And it extends into pagan thought that predates Christianity. Take, for example Epicuru…Read more
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291Don't fear the regress: Cognitive values and epistemic infinitism: Aikin don't fear the regressThink 8 (23): 55-61. 2009.We are rational creatures, in that we are beings on whom demands of rationality are appropriate. But by our rationality it doesn't follow that we always live up to those demands. In those cases, we fail to be rational, but it is in a way that is different from how rocks, tadpoles, and gum fail to be rational. For them, we use the term ‘arational.’ They don't have the demands, but we do. The demands of rationality bear on us because we have minds that can move us to act, inspire us to create, and…Read more
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62Straw Men, Iron Men, and Argumentative VirtueTopoi 35 (2): 431-440. 2016.The straw man fallacy consists in inappropriately constructing or selecting weak versions of the opposition’s arguments. We will survey the three forms of straw men recognized in the literature, the straw, weak, and hollow man. We will then make the case that there are examples of inappropriately reconstructing stronger versions of the opposition’s arguments. Such cases we will call iron man fallacies. The difference between appropriate and inappropriate iron manning clarifies the limits of the …Read more
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24Modest (but not Self-Effacing) Transcendental ArgumentsSouthwest Philosophy Review 31 (1): 69-79. 2015.
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159Skeptical Theism, Moral Skepticism, and Divine CommandsInternational Journal for the Study of Skepticism 3 (2): 77-96. 2013.Over the last twenty-five years skeptical theism has become one of the leading contemporary responses to the atheological argument from evil. However, more recently, some critics of skeptical theism have argued that the skeptical theists are in fact unwittingly committed to a malignant form of moral skepticism. Several skeptical theists have responded to this critique by appealing to divine commands as a bulwark against the alleged threat of moral skepticism. In this paper we argue that the skep…Read more
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89A defense of war and sport metaphors in argumentPhilosophy and Rhetoric 44 (3): 250-272. 2011.There is a widely held concern that using war and sport metaphors to describe argument contributes to the breakdown of argumentative processes. The thumbnail version of this worry about such metaphors is that they promote adversarial conceptions of argument that lead interlocutors with those conceptions to behave adversarially in argumentative contexts. These actions are often aggressive, which undermines argument exchange by either excluding many from such exchanges or turning exchanges more in…Read more
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434John Dewey's Quest for unity: The journey of a promethean mystic (review) (review)Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 46 (4): 656-659. 2010.There is what should be called the Curious George Model of Analysis, wherein the internal conflicts of some protagonist or program are the most revealing and significant features of the story. Take George. He is a good little monkey, but he's curious. These are virtues of sorts, but George's curiosity drives him first to investigate a yellow hat, then to try to fly like the seagulls, to investigate the telephone, and finally to try holding a large bunch of balloons. In each case, these actions d…Read more
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165Wittgenstein, Dewey, and the possibility of religionJournal of Speculative Philosophy 20 (1): 1-19. 2006.John Dewey points out in A Common Faith (1934) that what stands in the way of religious belief for many is the apparent commitment of Western religious traditions to supernatural phenomena and questionable historical claims. We are to accept claims that in any other context we would find laughable. Are we to believe that water can be turned into wine without the benefit of the fermentation process? Are we to swallow the claim that there is such a phenomenon as the spontaneous conception of a chi…Read more
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200Epistemology and the Regress ProblemRoutledge. 2010.In the last decade, the familiar problem of the regress of reasons has returned to prominent consideration in epistemology. And with the return of the problem, evaluation of the options available for its solution is begun anew. Reason’s regress problem, roughly put, is that if one has good reasons to believe something, one must have good reason to hold those reasons are good. And for those reasons, one must have further reasons to hold they are good, and so a regress of reasons looms. In this ne…Read more
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The Ethics of Inquiry and Engagement: The Case of Science in PublicPublic Affairs Quarterly 24 (2): 155-168. 2010.There has been a promising discussion brewing recently about whether there is an ethics of inquiry—that is, a unique set of ethical rules that constrains inquirers specifically in their role as inquirers. Most prominently, Philip Kitcher has proposed that there is indeed an ethics of inquiry. He argues that, given the intellectual climate of many modern societies, certain research programs are likely to encourage further social injustice against members of already disadvantaged groups; in such c…Read more
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67Democratic Deliberation, Public Reason, and Environmental PoliticsEnvironmental Philosophy 3 (2): 52-58. 2006.The activity of democratic deliberation is governed by the norm of public reason – namely, that reasons justifying public policy must both be pursuant of shared goods and be shareable by all reasonable discussants. Environmental policies based on controversial theories of value, as a consequence, are in danger of breaking the rule that would legitimate their enforcement.
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180The Rhetorical Theory of Argument is Self-DefeatingCogency: Journal of Reasoning and Argumentation 3 (1). 2011.The rhetorical theory of argument, if held as a conclusion of an argument, is self-defeating. The rhetorical theory can be refined, but these refinements either make the theory subject to a second self- defeat problem or tacitly an epistemic theory of argument
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1351Prospects for Peircean Epistemic InfinitismContemporary Pragmatism 6 (2): 71-87. 2009.Epistemic infinitism is the view that infinite series of inferential relations are productive of epistemic justification. Peirce is explicitly infinitist in his early work, namely his 1868 series of articles. Further, Peirce's semiotic categories of firsts, seconds, and thirds favors a mixed theory of justification. The conclusion is that Peirce was an infinitist, and particularly, what I will term an impure infinitist. However, the prospects for Peirce's infinitism depend entirely on the prospe…Read more
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164Meta-epistemology and the varieties of epistemic infinitismSynthese 163 (2): 175-185. 2008.I will assume here the defenses of epistemic infinitism are adequate and inquire as to the variety standpoints within the view. I will argue that infinitism has three varieties depending on the strength of demandingness of the infinitist requirement and the purity of its conception of epistemic justification, each of which I will term strong pure, strong impure, and weak impure infinitisms. Further, I will argue that impure infinitisms have the dialectical advantage.
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28Xenophanes the High Rationalist: The Case of F1:17-8Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (1): 1-14. 2014.Scholarship on Xenophanes’s F1 has had two foci, one on the rules of the symposium and the other on the religious program posed at its close. Thus far, the two areas of focus have been treated as either separate issues or as the religious program proposed in the service of the sympotic objectives. Instead, I will argue that the sympotic norms Xenophanes espouses are in the service of the broader program of rational theology
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59Holding One’s OwnArgumentation 22 (4): 571-584. 2008.There is a tension with regard to regulative norms of inquiry. One’s commitments must survive critical scrutiny, and if they do not survive, they should be revised. Alternately, for views to be adequately articulated and defended, their proponents must maintain a strong commitment to the views in question. A solution is proposed with the notion of holding one’s own as the virtue of being reason-responsive with the prospects of improving the view in question
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564The Problem of the Criterion and Hegel's Model for Epistemic InfinitismHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 27 (4). 2010.
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152Developing Group-Deliberative VirtuesJournal of Applied Philosophy 27 (4): 409-424. 2010.In this paper, the authors argue for two main claims: first, that the epistemic results of group deliberation can be superior to those of individual inquiry; and, second, that successful deliberative groups depend on individuals exhibiting deliberative virtues. The development of these group-deliberative virtues, the authors argue, is important not only for epistemic purposes but political purposes, as democracies require the virtuous deliberation of their citizens. Deliberative virtues contribu…Read more
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145Straw Men, Weak Men, and Hollow MenArgumentation 25 (1): 87-105. 2011.Three forms of the straw man fallacy are posed: the straw, weak, and hollow man. Additionally, there can be non-fallacious cases of any of these species of straw man arguments
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107Perelmanian universal audience and the epistemic aspirations of argumentPhilosophy and Rhetoric 41 (3). 2008.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Perelmanian Universal Audience and the Epistemic Aspirations of ArgumentScott F. AikinIThe notion of universality in argumentation is as fecund as is it is controversial. Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s notion of universal audience (UA), given their requirement that all arguments be evaluated in terms of their audiences, clearly promises a rich account of argumentative norms. It equally yields a variety of questions. For …Read more
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642Nicholas of Cusa’s De pace fidei and the meta-exclusivism of religious pluralismInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 74 (2): 219-235. 2013.In response to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Nicholas of Cusa wrote De pace fidei defending a commitment to religious tolerance on the basis of the notion that all diverse rites are but manifestations of one true religion. Drawing on a discussion of why Nicholas of Cusa is unable to square the two objectives of arguing for pluralistic tolerance and explaining the contents of the one true faith, we outline why theological pluralism is compromised by its own meta-exclusivism
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54Prospects for skeptical foundationalismMetaphilosophy 38 (5): 578-590. 2007.Properly understood, foundationalism as a meta‐epistemic theory is consistent with skepticism. This article outlines five possible points of overlap between the two views, and shows that arguments against foundationalism posited on its inability to refute skepticism are improperly framed.
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77Argument in mixed company: Mom's Maxim vs. mill's principle: Aikin and Talisse argument in mixed companyThink 10 (27): 31-43. 2011.It is impolite to discuss matters of religion or politics in mixed company. So goes the popular adage which all of us were supposed to have learned as children from our mothers. Let's call it Mom's Maxim. We tend to accept Mom's Maxim. But is it philosophically sound? In this short essay, we raise some objections to Mom's Maxim and make a case for an alternative which we call Mill's Principle.
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Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
American Pragmatism |
Informal Logic |