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43Special issue: approaches to faith: Guest editorial prefaceInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 81 (1-2): 1-6. 2017.According to many accounts of faith—where faith is thought of as something psychological, e.g., an attitude, state, or trait—one cannot have faith without belief of the relevant propositions. According to other accounts of faith, one can have faith without belief of the relevant propositions. Call the first sort of account doxasticism since it insists that faith requires belief; call the second nondoxasticism since it allows faith without belief. The New Testament may seem to favor doxasticism o…Read more
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28Backtracking and the Ethics of Framing: Lessons from Voles and VasopressinScience 338 (6112): 341-344. 2012.When communicating scientific information, experts often face difficult choices about how to promote public understanding while also maintaining an appropriate level of objectivity. We argue that one way for scientists and others involved in communicating scientific information to alleviate these tensions is to pay closer attention to the major frames employed in the contexts in which they work. By doing so, they can ideally employ useful frames while also enabling the recipients of information …Read more
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Ockham’s RazorIn Robert Fastiggi (ed.), New Catholic Encyclopedia (Supplement 2012-13: Ethics and Philosophy), Gale-cengage Learning. 2013.
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Constructive EmpiricismIn Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 3rd ed., Cambridge University Press. 2015.
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88Re presenting vague opinionPrincipia: An International Journal of Epistemology 16 (2): 341-344. 2012.http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2012v16n2p341 Current supervaluation models of opinion, notably van Fraassen’s (1984; 1989; 1990; 1998; 2005; 2006) use of intervals to characterize vague opinion, capture nuances of ordinary reflection which are overlooked by classic measure theoretic models of subjective probability. However, after briefly explaining van Fraassen’s approach, we present two limitations in his current framework which provide clear empirical reasons for seeking a refinement. An…Read more
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359Nonepistemic Values and the Multiple Goals of SciencePhilosophy of Science 81 (1): 1-21. 2014.Recent efforts to argue that nonepistemic values have a legitimate role to play in assessing scientific models, theories, and hypotheses typically either reject the distinction between epistemic and nonepistemic values or incorporate nonepistemic values only as a secondary consideration for resolving epistemic uncertainty. Given that scientific representations can legitimately be evaluated not only based on their fit with the world but also with respect to their fit with the needs of their users…Read more
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HopeIn Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 3rd ed., Cambridge University Press. 2015.
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772Introduction: Cognitive attitudes and values in scienceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 53 57-61. 2015.
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1Religious ViolenceIn Graham Robert Oppy (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, Routledge. 2015.
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Character Traits and the Neuroscience of Social BehaviorIn Christian B. Miller, R. Michael Furr, Angela Knobel & William Fleeson (eds.), Character: New Perspectives in Psychology, Philosophy, and Theology, Oxford University Press. 2015.
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37Speech 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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969Authentic 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 Learning. 2013.
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175From 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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