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676Divine omniscience and experience: A Reply to AlterArs Disputandi 3. 2003.According to one antitheist argument, the necessarily omniscient, necessarily omnipotent, and necessarily omnibenevolent Anselmian God does not exist, because if God is necessarily omnipotent it is impossible for Him to comprehend fully certain concepts, such as fear, frustration and despair, that an omniscient being needs to possess. Torin Alter examines this argument and provides three elaborate objections to it. I argue that theists would not accept any of them because they con ict with tradi…Read more
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67A further reply to Beyer on omniscienceSophia 46 (1): 65-67. 2007.I provide a further response to Jason A. Beyer’s objections to the alleged inconsistency between God’s omniscience and His other attributes.
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349The knowledge argument against dualismTheoria 68 (3): 205-223. 2002.Paul Churchland argues that Frank Jackson
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311The grounds of worshipReligious Studies 42 (3): 299-313. 2006.Although worship has a pivotal place in religious thought and practice, philosophers of religion have had remarkably little to say about it. In this paper we examine some of the many questions surrounding the notion of worship, focusing on the claim that human beings have obligations to worship God. We explore a number of attempts to ground our supposed duty to worship God, and argue that each is problematic. We conclude by examining the implications of this result, and suggest that it might be …Read more
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Sars And Health Care Workers' DutyEubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics 13 (6): 208-208. 2003.
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96Models of Anselmian TheismFaith and Philosophy 30 (1): 3-25. 2013.The so-called Anselmian thesis says that God is that than which no greater can be thought. This thesis has been widely accepted among traditional theists and it has for several hundred years been a central notion whenever philosophers debate the existence and nature of God. Proponents of the thesis are often silent, however, about exactly what it means to say that God is that than which no greater can be thought. The aim of this paper is to offer an answer to this question by providing rigorous,…Read more
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IntroductionIn Yujin Nagasawa & Erik J. Wielenberg (eds.), New waves in philosophy of religion, Palgrave-macmillan. 2008.
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64Chappell on the consistency of criticisms of christianityRatio 18 (1). 2005.In ‘Anthropocentrism and the Problem of Evil’ Timothy Chappell argues that one cannot advance the following two criticisms of Christianity at the same time: (1) Christianity is an implausibly anthropocentric religion, and (2) Christianity has no convincing answer to the problem of natural evil. I demonstrate that Chappell’s argument is unsuccessful by providing three possible, and consistent, interpretations of (1) and (2).
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521The ontological argument and the devilPhilosophical Quarterly 60 (238): 72-91. 2010.The 'parody objection' to the ontological argument for the existence of God advances parallel arguments apparently proving the existence of various absurd entities. I discuss recent versions of the parody objection concerning the existence of 'AntiGod' and the devil, as introduced by Peter Millican and Timothy Chambers. I argue that the parody objection always fails, because any parody is either (i) not structurally parallel to the ontological argument, or (ii) not dialectically parallel to the …Read more
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40The performance records of cardiac surgeons have been disclosed publicly in several states in the USA, for example New York and Pennsylvania, since the early 1990s. In response to the growing interest in the quality of healthcare, such records have also begun to be disclosed in the UK, starting in 2004. Various studies seem to show that disclosure has, indeed, contributed to the improvement of the quality of healthcare.1 However, at the same time, disclosure does have its critics.2 In this paper…Read more
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48John Hick is a mind-body dualist. He claims that reality consists of two ontologically distinct types of entities, the mental and the physical, which causally interact with each other. Yet he subscribes to monism in response to the diversity of religion. He maintains that every world religion provides a unique response to the same single transcategorial ultimate reality. He also contends that he has realised through his religious experience that, as monism says, everything is part of a single in…Read more
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124Externalism and the memory argumentDialectica 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..
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196A new defence of Anselmian theismPhilosophical 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
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394The Knowledge Argument and EpiphenomenalismErkenntnis 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
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58Scientific 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.
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227Millican on the Ontological ArgumentMind 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
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21Infinite Decomposability and the Mind-Body ProblemAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 49 (4): 357-367. 2012.
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7Surgeon Report Cards and the Concept of Defensive MedicineIn Yujin Nagasawa & Steve Clarke Justin Oakley (eds.), Informed Consent and Clinical Accountability: The Ethics of Auditing and Reporting Surgeon Performance, Cambridge University Press. 2007.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.
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1'Very-slow-switching' and memory (a critical note on Ludlow's paper)Acta Analytica 15 (25): 173-175. 2000.
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70Skeptical theism and moral skepticism: a reply to Almeida and OppyArs 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
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62Proxy consent and counterfactualsBioethics 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
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149The 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
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87God and Phenomenal Consciousness: A Novel Approach to Knowledge ArgumentsCambridge University Press. 2008.In God and Phenomenal Consciousness, Yujin Nagasawa bridges debates in two distinct areas of philosophy: the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of religion. First, he introduces some of the most powerful arguments against the existence of God and provides objections to them. He then presents a parallel structure between these arguments and influential arguments offered by Thomas Nagel and Frank Jackson against the physicalist approach to phenomenal consciousness. By appealing to this structur…Read more
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556A place for protoconsciousness?PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 12. 2006.I argue that Gregg Rosenberg’s panexperientialism is either extremely implausible or irrelevant to the mystery of consciousness by introducing metaphysical and conceptual objections to his appeal to the notion of ‘protoconsciousness’
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34The knowledge argumentIn Bayne Tim, Cleeremans Axel & Wilken Patrick (eds.), The Oxford Companion to Consciousness, Oxford University Press. pp. 395--397. 2009.
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University of OklahomaDepartment of PhilosophyProfessor of Philosophy and Kingfisher College Chair of Philosophy of Religion and Ethics
Norman, Oklahoma, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion |
Philosophy of Mind |
Applied Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
The Meaning of Life |