-
1741The Tristram Shandy ParadoxPhilosophia Christi 4 (2): 335-349. 2002.This paper is a response to David Oderberg's discussion of the Tristram Shandy paradox. I defend the claim that the Tristram Shandy paradox does not support the claim that it is impossible that the past is infinite.
-
783Evidential Arguments from Evil and Skeptical TheismPhilo 8 (2). 2004.In this paper we respond to criticisms by Michael Bergmann and Michael Rea in their “In Defense of Sceptical Theism : A Reply to Almeida and Oppy,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83.
-
18History of Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand (edited book)Springer. 2014.This two volume works provides a comprehensive history of philosophy in Australia and New Zealand. Volume one provides a chronological history, with one chapter devoted to the early years in which idealism dominated Australasian philosophy, and then chapters that cover each of the decades from the second world war. Volume two provides a thematic history, with treatment of most of the major areas to which Australasian philosophers have made significant contributions.
-
259Wagering on an Ironic God: Pascal on Faith and Philosophy by Thomas S. Hibbs (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 56 (2): 372-373. 2018.This is a short review of Thomas S. Hibbs' book: *Wagering on an Ironic God: Pascal on Faith and Philosophy*.
-
92Atheism and AgnosticismCambridge University Press. 2018.This is a Cambridge *Element*, on the topic of atheism and agnosticism. It contains four main parts. First, there is an introduction in which atheism and agnosticism are explained. Second, a theoretical background to assessment. Third, a case for preferring atheism to theism. Fourth, a case for preferring agnosticism to theism.
-
13Early Modern Philosophy of Religion: The History of Western Philosophy of Religion Volume 3 (edited book)Acumen Publishing. 2013.The History of Western Philosophy of Religion brings together an international team of over 100 leading scholars to provide authoritative exposition of how history's most important philosophical thinkers - from antiquity to the present day - have sought to analyse the concepts and tenets central to Western religious belief, especially Christianity. Divided chronologically into five volumes, The History of Western Philosophy of Religion is designed to be accessible to a wide range of readers, fro…Read more
-
474On Functional Definitions Of Art: A Response to RoweBritish Journal of Aesthetics 33 (1): 67-71. 1993.This paper is a critical assessment of M. W. Rowe's functional definition of art.
-
160The Semantics of Media (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (4): 582-583. 2001.Book Information The Semantics of Media. By Jeff Ross. Dordrecht, Kluwer. 1997. Pp. vii + 137. £56.75.
-
26A companion to philosophy in Australia & New Zealand (edited book)Monash University Publishing. 2011.This work is a companion to philosophy in Australia and New Zealand. It contains over two hundred entries on: Australasian philosophy departments; notable Australasian philosophers; significant events in the history of Australasian philosophy; and areas to which Australasian philosophers have made notable contributions.
-
134The Best Argument Against GodPalgrave-Macmillan. 2013.Preface -- Introduction -- Preliminary matters -- Some big ideas -- Minimal theism and naturalism -- Standard theism and naturalism -- Conclusion.
-
42The Antipodean philosopher (edited book)Lexington Books. 2011.v. 1. Public lectures on philosophy in Australia and New Zealand -- 2. Interviews with Australian and New Zealand philosophers
-
1779The Devilish Complexities of Divine SimplicityPhilo 6 (1): 10-22. 2003.In On the Nature and Existence of God, Richard Gale follows majority opinion in giving very short shrift to the doctrine of divine simplicity: in his view, there is no coherent expressible doctrine of divine simplicity. Rising to the implicit challenge, I argue that---contrary to what is widely believed---there is a coherently expressible doctrine of divine simplicity, though it is rather different from the views that are typically expressed by defenders of this doctrine. At the very least, I th…Read more
-
732More Than a Flesh WoundArs Disputandi 2 214-224. 2002.In ‘The Kalam Cosmological Argument Neither Bloodied nor Bowed’ , David Oderberg provides four main criticisms of the line of argument which I developed in ‘Time, Successive Addition, and Kalam Cosmological Arguments’ . I argue here that none of these lines of criticism succeeds. Further I re-emphasise the point that those who maintain that the temporal series of past events is formed by ‘successive addition’ are indeed thereby committed to a highly contentious strict finitist metaphysics.
-
328The Two Envelope 'Paradox'Analysis 54 (1). 1994.This paper discusses the finite version of the two envelope paradox. (That is, we treat the paradox against the background assumption that there is only a finite amount of money in the world.)
-
3788Rowe's evidential arguments from evilIn Justin P. Mcbrayer (ed.), A Companion to the Problem of Evil, Wiley. pp. 49-66. 2013.This chapter discusses the two most prominent recent evidential arguments from evil, due, respectively, to William Rowe and Paul Draper. I argue that neither of these evidential arguments from evil is successful, i.e. such that it ought to persuade anyone who believes in God to give up that belief. In my view, theists can rationally maintain that each of these evidential arguments from evil contains at least one false premise.
-
781Epistemological Foundations for Koons' Cosmological Argument?European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 2 (1). 2010.Some people -- including the present author -- have proposed and defended alternative restricted causal principles that block Robert Koons’s ’new’ cosmological argument without undermining the intuition that causation is very close to ubiquitous. In "Epistemological Foundations for the Cosmological Argument", Koons argues that any restricted causal principles that are insufficient for the purposes of his cosmological argument cause epistemological collapse into general scepticism. In this paper …Read more
-
270Why semantic innocence?Australasian Journal of Philosophy 70 (4). 1992.This paper rejects the imposition of "semantic innocence" as a constraint on semantic theories. In particular, it argues that recent attempts to justify the imposition of "semantic innocence" as a constraint on semantic theories fail.
-
164This paper discusses some views defended by Brian Leftow in his book *Time and Eternity*. There is a revised version of this paper that is incorporated into my later book *Describing Gods: An Investigation of Divine Attributes* (CUP, 2014).
-
344Lowe on "The Ontological Argument"In Chad Meister, J. P. Moreland & K. Sweus (eds.), Debating Christian Theism, Oxford University Press. pp. 72-84. 2013.This paper is a discussion of an ontological argument defended by E. J. Lowe in the *Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion* (edited by C. Meister and P. Copan, at pp.332-40). The volume to which this paper belongs contains an article by Lowe which defends a different ontological argument from the one that I discuss.
-
255Universal bayesian inference?Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (4): 662-663. 2001.We criticise Shepard's notions of “invariance” and “universality,” and the incorporation of Shepard's work on inference into the general framework of his paper. We then criticise Tenenbaum and Griffiths' account of Shepard (1987b), including the attributed likelihood function, and the assumption of “weak sampling.” Finally, we endorse Barlow's suggestion that minimum message length (MML) theory has useful things to say about the Bayesian inference problems discussed by Shepard and Tenenbaum and …Read more
-
417Pruss, motivational centrality, and probabilities attached to possibility premises in modal ontological argumentsEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (2): 65-85. 2012.This paper is a critique of a paper by Alex Pruss. I argue that Pruss's attempt to motivate acceptance of the key possiblity premise in modal ontological arguments fails.
-
495This paper investigates the question whether we could have reason to believe that time is two-dimensional. I connect discussion of this question to discussion of the question whether we could have reason to believe that there has been a global time freeze.
-
883Kalām cosmological arguments: Reply to professor CraigSophia 34 (2): 15-29. 1995.This paper is a reply to Professor William Lane Craig's “Graham Oppy On The kalām Cosmological Argument” Sophia 32.1, 1993, pp. 1–11. Further references to the literature are contained therein.
-
398On the lack of true philosophic spirit in AquinasPhilosophy 76 (4): 615-624. 2001.Mark Nelson claims that Russell's remarks—in his History of Western Philosophy—about Aquinas are ‘breathtakingly supercilious and unfair’ and ‘sniffy’. I argue that Nelson completely misrepresents Russell's criticisms of Aquinas. In particular, I argue that the silly epistemological doctrine which Nelson attributes to Russell plays no role at all in the criticism which Russell actually makes of Aquinas. Since—as Nelson himself concedes—there is no other reason to think that Russell commits himse…Read more
-
1074Craig, Mackie, and the Kalam Cosmological ArgumentReligious Studies 27 (2). 1991.In ‘Professor Mackie and the Kalam Cosmological Argument’ , 367–75), Professor William Lane Craig undertakes to demonstrate that J. L. Mackie's analysis of the kalam cosmological argument in The Miracle of Theism is ‘superficial’, and that Mackie ‘has failed to provide any compelling or even intuitively appealing objection against the argument’ . I disagree with Craig's judgement; for it seems to me that the considerations which Mackie advances do serve to refute the kalam cosmological argument.…Read more
-
636Inverse Operations with Transfinite Numbers and the Kalam Cosmological ArgumentInternational Philosophical Quarterly 35 (2): 219-221. 1995.William Lane Craig has argued that there cannot be actual infinities because inverse operations are not well-defined for infinities. I point out that, in fact, there are mathematical systems in which inverse operations for infinities are well-defined. In particular, the theory introduced in John Conway's *On Numbers and Games* yields a well-defined field that includes all of Cantor's transfinite numbers.
-
593Higher-order ontological argumentsPhilosophy Compass 3 (5): 1066-1078. 2008.This paper discusses recent work on higher-order ontological arguments, including work on arguments due to Gödel, Maydole and Pruss. After setting out a range of these arguments, the paper seeks to highlight the principal difficulties that these kinds of arguments confront. One important aim of the paper is to cast light on Gödel's ontological argument by way of an examination of a range of related higher-order arguments.
-
1649Ultimate naturalistic casual explanationsIn Ty Goldschmidt (ed.), Why is the something rather than nothing?, Routledge. pp. 46-63. 2013.This paper discusses attempts to explain why there are more than zero instances of the causal relation. In particular, it argues for the conclusion that theism is no better placed than naturalism to provide an "ultimate causal explanation".
-
819O'Connor's Cosmological ArgumentOxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion: Vol. 3 3 (1): 166. 2011.This chapter is a critical discussion of the third chapter of Tim O'Connor's *Theism and Ultimate Explanation*. In this chapter, O'Connor advances the 'existence stage' of his cosmological argument from contingency. I argue that naturalists have good reason to think that on each of the live hypotheses -- infinite regress, brute contingency, brute necessity -- naturalism is preferable to theism.
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |