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35Speech Acts, Attitudes, and Scientific Practice: Can Searle Handle "Assuming for the Sake of Hypothesis?"Pragmatics and Cognition 20 (1): 88-106. 2012.There are certain illocutionary acts that, contrary to John Searle's speech act theory, cannot be correctly classified as assertives. Searle's sincerity and essential conditions on assertives require, plausibly, that we believe our assertions and that we are committed to their truth. Yet it is a commonly accepted scientific practice to propose and investigate an hypothesis without believing it or being at all committed to its truth. Searle's attempt to accommodate such conjectural acts by claimi…Read more
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934Authentic faith and acknowledged risk: dissolving the problem of faith and reasonReligious Studies 49 (1): 101-124. 2013.One challenge to the rationality of religious commitment has it that faith is unreasonable because it involves believing on insufficient evidence. However, this challenge and influential attempts to reply depend on assumptions about what it is to have faith that are open to question. I distinguish between three conceptions of faith each of which can claim some plausible grounding in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Questions about the rationality or justification of religious commitment and the e…Read more
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Methodological NaturalismIn Robert Fastiggi (ed.), New Catholic Encyclopedia (Supplement 2012-13: Ethics and Philosophy), Gale-cengage Learning. 2013.
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Brute FactsIn Robert Fastiggi (ed.), New Catholic Encyclopedia (Supplement 2012-13: Ethics and Philosophy), Gale-cengage. 2013.
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173From ugly duckling to Swan: C. S. Peirce, abduction, and the pursuit of scientific theoriesTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 44 (3). 2008.Jaakko Hintikka (1998) has argued that clarifying the notion of abduction is the fundamental problem of contemporary epistemology. One traditional interpretation of Peirce on abduction sees it as a recipe for generating new theoretical discoveries . A second standard view sees abduction as a mode of reasoning that justifies beliefs about the probable truth of theories. While each reading has some grounding in Peirce's writings, each leaves out features that are crucial to Peirce's distinctive un…Read more
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Was Delbrück a Reductionist?In Phillip R. Sloan & Brandon Fogel (eds.), Creating a Physical Biology: The Three Man Paper and Early Molecular Biology, University of Chicago Press. 2011.
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1Darwin’s Descent of Man and the Value of Studying Science from a Liberal Arts PerspectiveIn Dustin Gish, Christopher Constas & J. Scott Lee (eds.), The Quest for Excellence: Liberal Arts, Sciences, and Core Texts. Selected Proceedings from the Seventeenth Annual Conference of the Association for Core Texts and Courses, Rowman & Littlefield. 2016.
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120Voles, vasopressin, and infidelity: a molecular basis for monogamy, a platform for ethics, and more?Biology and Philosophy 27 (4): 521-543. 2012.Voles are attracting attention because genetic variation at a single locus appears to have a profound impact on a complex social behavior, namely monogamy. After briefly reviewing the state of the most relevant scientific literature, I examine the way that this research gets taken up by the popular media, by scientists, and by the notable philosopher of neuroscience Patricia Churchland and interpreted as having deeply revisionary implications for how we ordinarily understand ourselves as persons…Read more
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824Action-Centered Faith, Doubt, and RationalityJournal of Philosophical Research 41 (9999): 71-90. 2016.Popular discussions of faith often assume that having faith is a form of believing on insufficient evidence and that having faith is therefore in some way rationally defective. Here I offer a characterization of action-centered faith and show that action-centered faith can be both epistemically and practically rational even under a wide variety of subpar evidential circumstances.
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Models, ScientificIn Robert Fastiggi (ed.), New Catholic Encyclopedia (Supplement 2012-13: Ethics and Philosophy), Gale-cengage Learning. 2013.
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CounterintuitiveIn Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 3rd ed., Cambridge University Press. 2015.
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676On the value of faith and faithfulnessInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 81 (1-2): 7-29. 2017.There was a time when Greco-Roman culture recognized faith as an indispensable social good. More recently, however, the value of faith has been called into question, particularly in connection with religious commitment. What, if anything, is valuable about faith—in the context of ordinary human relations or as a distinctive stance people might take in relation to God? I approach this question by examining the role that faith talk played both in ancient Jewish and Christian communities and in the…Read more
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123How values in scientific discovery and pursuit Alter theory appraisalPhilosophy of Science 76 (5): 598-611. 2009.Philosophers of science readily acknowledge that nonepistemic values influence the discovery and pursuit of scientific theories, but many tend to regard these influences as epistemically uninteresting. The present paper challenges this position by identifying three avenues through which nonepistemic values associated with discovery and pursuit in contemporary pollution research influence theory appraisal: (1) by guiding the choice of questions and research projects, (2) by altering experimental …Read more
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1Empirical AdequacyIn Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 3rd ed., Cambridge University Press. 2015.
APA Eastern Division
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Areas of Specialization
General Philosophy of Science |
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Religion |
Faith |
Philosophy of Biology |
PhilPapers Editorships
Faith |