• University of Oklahoma
    Department of Philosophy
    Professor of Philosophy and Kingfisher College Chair of Philosophy of Religion and Ethics
Australian National University
School of Philosophy
PhD, 2004
Norman, Oklahoma, United States of America
  •  12
    Externalism and the memory argument
    Dialectica 56 (4): 335-46. 2002.
    Pa ul Boghos s i a n’ s ‘ Me mor y Ar gume nt ’ a l l ege dl y s hows , us i ng t he f ami l i a r s l ow-switching scenario, that externalism and authoritative self-knowledge are incompatible. The aim of this paper is to undermine the argument by examining..
  •  17
    A new defence of Anselmian theism
    Philosophical Quarterly 58 (233): 577-596. 2008.
    Anselmian theists, for whom God is the being than which no greater can be thought, usually infer that he is an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent being. Critics have attacked these claims by numerous distinct arguments, such as the paradox of the stone, the argument from God's inability to sin, and the argument from evil. Anselmian theists have responded to these arguments by constructing an independent response to each. This way of defending Anselmian theism is uneconomical. I seek to es…Read more
  •  29
    The Knowledge Argument and Epiphenomenalism
    Erkenntnis 72 (1). 2010.
    Frank Jackson endorses epiphenomenalism because he thinks that his knowledge argument undermines physicalism. One of the most interesting criticisms of Jackson's position is what I call the 'inconsistency objection'. The inconsistency objection says that Jackson's position is untenable because epiphenomenalism undermines the knowledge argument. The inconsistency objection has been defended by various philosophers independently, including Michael Watkins, Fredrik Stjernberg, and Neil Campbell. Su…Read more
  •  8
    Anything You Can Do, God Can Do Better
    American Philosophical Quarterly 42 (3). 2005.
    None
  •  1
    Scientific Approaches to the Philosophy of Religion (edited book)
    Palgrave-Macmillan. 2012.
    The book's contributors tackle perennial problems in philosophy of religion by referring to relevant findings and theories in cognitive science, anthropology, developmental psychology, decision theory, biology, physics and cosmology.
  •  26
    Millican on the Ontological Argument
    Mind 116 (464): 1027-1040. 2007.
    Peter Millican (2004) provides a novel and elaborate objection to Anselm's ontological argument. Millican thinks that his objection is more powerful than any other because it does not dispute contentious 'deep philosophical theories' that underlie the argument. Instead, it tries to reveal the 'fatal flaw' of the argument by considering its 'shallow logical details'. Millican's objection is based on his interpretation of the argument, according to which Anselm relies on what I call the 'principle…Read more
  •  7
    The aim of this paper is to evaluate the claim that the disclosure of surgeons' performance data could lead to the practice of defensive medicine. I argue that disclosure could actually encourage surgeons to practice a new form of defensive medicine, one that has not hitherto been noted. I explore a possible way of avoiding this problem.
  •  1
    The problem of heaven
    with Co-Written and Nick Trakakis
    In Graham Oppy (ed.), Arguing About Gods, Cambridge University Press. 2006.
  •  70
    Skeptical theism and moral skepticism: a reply to Almeida and Oppy
    Ars Disputandi: The Online Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (4): 1-1. 2012.
    Skeptical theists purport to undermine evidential arguments from evil by appealing to the fact that our knowledge of goods, evils, and their interconnections is significantly limited. Michael J. Almeida and Graham Oppy have recently argued that skeptical theism is unacceptable because it results in a form of moral skepticism which rejects inferences that play an important role in our ordinary moral reasoning. In this reply to Almeida and Oppy’s argument we offer some reasons for thinking that sk…Read more
  •  15
    Proxy consent and counterfactuals
    Bioethics 22 (1). 2007.
    When patients are in vegetative states and their lives are maintained by medical devices, their surrogates might offer proxy consents on their behalf in order to terminate the use of the devices. The so-called ’substituted judgment thesis’ has been adopted by the courts regularly in order to determine the validity of such proxy consents. The thesis purports to evaluate proxy consents by appealing to putative counterfactual truths about what the patients would choose, were they to be competent. T…Read more
  •  149
    The knowledge argument is an argument against physicalism that was first formulated by Frank Jackson in 1982. While Jackson no longer endorses it, it is still regarded as one of the most important arguments in the philosophy of mind. Physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that, roughly speaking, everything in this world—including tables, galaxies, cheese cakes, cars, atoms, and even our sensations— are ultimately physical. The knowledge argument attempts to undermine this thesis by appealing to …Read more