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2Michael Luntley, Language, Logic, and Experience: The Case for Anti-Realism Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 9 (11): 448-451. 1989.
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133A Defense of the GivenPhilosophical Review 108 (1): 128. 1999.The “doctrine of the given” that Fales defends holds that there are certain experiences such that we can have justified beliefs about their “contents” that are not based on any other beliefs, and that the rest of our justified empirical beliefs rest on those “basic beliefs.” The features of experience basic beliefs are about are said to be “given.” Fales holds that some basic beliefs are infallible, having a kind of clarity that guarantees their truth to the believer. In addition, some basic bel…Read more
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90Turtle epistemologyPhilosophical Studies 169 (2): 339-354. 2014.In “Justification Without Awareness”, Michael Bergmann divides internalist epistemologies into those with a strong awareness requirement and those with a weak awareness requirement; he presents a dilemma, hoisting the “strongs” on one horn, and the “weaks” on the other. Here I reply on behalf of the strong-awareness view, presenting what I take to be a more satisfactory, and more fundamental, reply to Bergmann than I believe has been offered by his other critics, and in particular by Rogers and …Read more
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153Divine Commands and Moral ObligationPhilo 13 (2). 2010.A popular proof for the existence of God assumes that there are objective moral duties, arguing that this can only be explained by there being a supreme law-giver, namely God. The upshot is either a Divine command theory (DCT) -- or something similar -- or a natural-law theory. I discuss two prominent theories, Robert Adams’s DCT and Stephen Evans’s hybrid DCT/natural-law theory. I argue that they suffer from fatal difficulties. Natural-law theories are plausible, if God exists, but can’t be use…Read more
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64Antediluvian TheodicyFaith and Philosophy 6 (3): 320-329. 1989.This paper is a discussion of Eleonore Stump’s “The Problem of Evil.” Stump, I argue, has attempted a theodicy with several desirable features; among them, an effort to provide a positive account of the compatibility of natural evils with God’s goodness that makes use of specifically Christian doctrines. However, the doctrines Stump makes use of---and, in particular, her conception of hell and her interpretation of original sin---raise, I suggest, more problems than they solve.
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173Review of John Foster, The Divine Lawmaker: Lectures on Induction, Laws of Nature, and the Existence of God (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2004 (9). 2004.
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4Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 13 (4): 524-529. 1983.
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137Divine InterventionFaith and Philosophy 14 (2): 170-194. 1997.Some philosophers deny that science can investigate the supernatural - specifically, the nature and actions of God. If a divine being is atemporal, then, indeed, this seems plausible - but only, I shall argue, because such a being could not causally interact with anything. Here I discuss in detail two major attempts, those of Stump and Kretzmann, and of Leftow, to make sense of theophysical causation on the supposition that God is eternal. These views are carefully worked out, and their failures…Read more
Iowa City, Iowa, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Religion |