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239Philosophical Perspectives on InfinityCambridge University Press. 2006.This book is an exploration of philosophical questions about infinity. Graham Oppy examines how the infinite lurks everywhere, both in science and in our ordinary thoughts about the world. He also analyses the many puzzles and paradoxes that follow in the train of the infinite. Even simple notions, such as counting, adding and maximising present serious difficulties. Other topics examined include the nature of space and time, infinities in physical science, infinities in theories of probability …Read more
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90Describing Gods: An Investigation of Divine AttributesCambridge University Press. 2014.This book begins with a careful taxonomy of divine attributes. It continues with detailed examinations of: divine infinity; divine simplicity; divine perfection; divine necessity; omnipotence; omniscience; divine goodness; divine beauty; divine fundamentality; divine will; divine freedom; etc.
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657Salmon on the contingent a priori and the necessary a posterioriPhilosophical Studies 73 (1). 1994.This paper is an examination of the contingent a priori and the necessary a posteriori. In particular, it considers -- and assesses -- the criticisms that Nathan Salmon makes of the views of Saul Kripke.
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585Maydole’s Modal Perfection Argument (Again)Philo 10 (1): 72-84. 2007.In “On Oppy’s Objections to the Modal Perfection Argument,” Philo 8, 2, 2005, 123–30, Robert Maydole argues that his modal perfection argument—set out in his “The Modal Perfection Argument for a Supreme Being,” Philo 6, 2, 2003, 299–313—“remains arguably sound” in the face of the criticisms that I made of this argument in my “Maydole’s 2QS5 Argument,” Philo 7, 2, 2004, 203–11. I reply that Maydole is wrong: his argument is fatally flawed, and his attempts to avoid the criticisms that I have made…Read more
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1Inter-Christian Philosophical Dialogues (edited book)Routledge. 2017.This book is a collection of exchanges between Christian philosophers who adopt very different perspectives on Christianity.
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180Response to MaydoleIn Miroslaw Szatkowski (ed.), Ontological Proofs Today, Ontos Verlag. pp. 445-68. 2012.This paper is my second contribution to the Szatkowski volume. In the first paper, I provide a critical discussion of Bob Maydole's ontological arguments. In this second paper, I respond to Maydole's critical response to my first paper. My overall verdict is that Maydole does not successfully defend his arguments against my critical attack.
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518As the chapter headings--and title--reveal, the book is about the role of causation and chance in modern science, and, in particular, in modern cosmology. However, because the book is shot through with serious conceptual confusion, anyone who is interested in actually learning something about the role of causation and chance in modern science is advised to look elsewhere.
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151Positive review of Laats and Siegel (2016) *Teaching Evolution in a Creation Nation* (University of Chicago Press).
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389On Rescher on Pascal's WagerInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 30 (3). 1991.In Pascal's Wager: A Study Of Practical Reasoning In Philosophical Theology ,[1] Nicholas Rescher aims to show that, contrary to received philosophical opinion, Pascal's Wager argument is "the vehicle of a fruitful and valuable insight--one which not only represents a milestone in the development of an historically important tradition of thought but can still be seen as making an instructive contribution to philosophical theology".[2] In particular, Rescher argues that one only needs to adopt a …Read more
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271Biblical Science? (review)Philo 1 (2): 68-78. 1998.Short critical review of Gerard Schroeder's *The Science of God*.
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45Reinventing Philosophy of Religion: An Opinionated IntroductionPalgrave-Macmillan. 2014.This book is an opinionated introduction to philosophy of religion. It is divided into three parts: one on epistemology, one on metaphysics, and one on values. The book embodies an approach to philosophy of religion that is very different from prevalent contemporary approaches.
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306A fairly lengthy book review that appears at the Secular Web.
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255Ontological argumentsStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2014.Latest version of my SEP entry on ontological arguments, which first appeared in 1996. General discussion of ontological arguments. Includes a brief historical overview, a taxonomy of different kinds of ontological arguments, a brief survey of objections to the different kinds of ontological arguments identified in the taxonomy, and more extended discussions of Anselm's ontological argument (Proslogion 2), Godel's ontological argument, and Plantinga's ontological argument.
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3378Arguments for atheismIn Stephen Bullivant & Michael Ruse (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Atheism, Oxford University Press. pp. 53. 2013.This paper consider three families of arguments for atheism. First, there are direct arguments for atheism: arguments that theism is meaningless, or incoherent, or logically inconsistent, or impossible, or inconsistent with known fact, of improbable given known fact, or morally repugnant, or the like. Second, there are indirect arguments for atheism: direct arguments for something that entails atheism. Third, there are comparative arguments for atheism: e.g., arguments for the view that (atheist…Read more
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1120Review of H Kragh (1996) Cosmology and Controversy (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 77 (3): 387-9. 1999.Short review of Helge Kragh's excellent book on the contest between big bang and steady state theories of the universe.
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247God and Infinity: Directions for Future ResearchIn Michał Heller & W. H. Woodin (eds.), Infinity: new research frontiers, Cambridge University Press. pp. 233. 2011.This paper discusses the treatment of "infinity" in philosophy of religion, including its use in discussions of divine attributes, and its use in various arguments about the existence of God (including the kalam cosmological argument and Pascal's wager). The aim of the paper is to set out -- and where possible, to resolve -- various foundational problems about infinity.
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763The Shape of Causal Reality: A Naturalistic Adaptation of O’Connor’s Cosmological ArgumentPhilosophia Christi 12 (2): 281-288. 2010.This paper is a companion to an article that I published in *Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion*. The OSPR discusses the third chapter of Tim O'Connor's *Theism and Ultimate Explanation. This paper discusses a range of other issues that are not picked up in the OSPR discussion.
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731More 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.
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319The 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.)
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3739Rowe'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.
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672Naturalism: A Critical Analysis (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (4): 576-577. 2001.Review of Craig And Mroeland: *Naturalism: A Critical Analysis*
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765Epistemological 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
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1762The 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
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247Universal 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
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408Pruss, 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.
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489This 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.
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163This 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).
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325Lowe 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.
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386On 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
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |