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18The Skeptical Challenges of Hume and Berkeley: Can They Be Answered?Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 85 (2): 27-46. 2011.My topic is the skeptical challenges that are posed by Hume and Berkeley. Can one show, contrary to what Hume claimed, that one is justified in projecting regularities that have held in the past into the future? Can one show that induction is justified? Or can one show, contrary to what Berkeley claimed, not only that the hypothesis that there is an external, physical world expresses a coherent proposition, but also one that is extremely likely to be true? The basic theses concerning skepticis…Read more
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13Particulars, actuality, and identity over time (edited book)Garland. 1999.First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
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12Emotion in motion: perceiving fear in the behaviour of individuals from minimal motion capture displaysCognition and Emotion. forthcoming.The ability to quickly and accurately recognise emotional states is adaptive for numerous social functions. Although body movements are a potentially crucial cue for inferring emotions, few studies have studied the perception of body movements made in naturalistic emotional states. The current research focuses on the use of body movement information in the perception of fear expressed by targets in a virtual heights paradigm. Across three studies, participants made judgments about the emotional …Read more
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10Abortion and InfanticideClarendon Press. 1983.This book has two main concerns. The first is to isolate the fundamental issues that must be resolved if one is to be able to formulate a defensible position on the question of the moral status of abortion. The second is to determine the most plausible answer to that question. With respect to the first question, the author argues that the following issue–most of which are ignored in public debate on the question of abortion–need to be considered. First, can the abortion question be decided witho…Read more
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10Is Abortion Murder?In Robert L. Perkins (ed.), Abortion: Pro and Con, Schenkman. 1974.This essay deals with the morality of abortion. We argue that abortion is morally unobjectionable and that society benefits if abortion is available on demand. We begin by setting out a preliminary case in support of the practice of abortion. We then examine moral objections to abortion and show why those objections are unsound. We conclude by considering what properties something needs in order to have a serious right to life, and we show that a human fetus does not possess those properties. Th…Read more
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8Review of Bas C. Van Fraassen: Laws and symmetry (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46 (2): 280-283. 1995.
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8Does God Exist?In Ernest Sosa (ed.), Knowledge of God, Blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Some Preliminary Issues Arguments Against the Existence of God The Argument from Evil and the Existence of God The Evidential Argument from Evil Summing Up Appendix: The Structure‐Description Approach to Inductive Logic.
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7The Nature of Causation: A Singularist AccountCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 16 (n/a): 271-322. 1990.Is a singularist conception of causation coherent? That is to say, is it possible for two events to be causally related, without that relationship being an instance of some causal law, either basic or derived, and either probabilistic or non-probabilistic? Since the time of Hume, the overwhelmingly dominant philosophical view has been that such a conception of causation is not coherent.
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5Voluntary euthanasia: active versus passive, and the question of consistencyRevue Internationale de Philosophie 49 (193): 305-322. 1995.
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5EvidenceIn Graham Oppy (ed.), A Companion to Atheism and Philosophy, Wiley. 2019.This chapter is concerned with evidentialism, and with the bearing of evidentialism on the question of whether theistic belief is epistemically justified. The first task is to determine how evidentialism is best formulated, and answering that question requires considering both the concept of evidence, and the idea of epistemically basic, or non‐inferentially justified beliefs. Given a promising account of evidentialism, I then consider two important objections, one of which claims that beliefs a…Read more
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4IndexIn Ernest Sosa (ed.), Knowledge of God, Blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: Theism Alternatives to Theism Naturalism and Its Woes Conclusion.
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4Helping People to Think Critically About Their Religious BeliefsIn Russell Blackford & Udo Schüklenk (eds.), 50 Voices of Disbelief, Wiley‐blackwell. 2009-09-10.This chapter contains sections titled: Rejection of Belief in God versus Rejection of Christianity Jesus and Christianity Jesus: A Brief Examination Conclusion References.
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4Reply to Plantinga's Opening StatementIn Ernest Sosa (ed.), Knowledge of God, Blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: Plantinga's First Objection: Naturalism and the Concept of Function Plantinga's Third Objection: Materialism and Belief Plantinga's Second Argument: Naturalism as Self‐Defeating Summing Up.
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3Alvin Plantinga and Michael Tooley: Knowledge of GodInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 66 (2): 105-107. 2009.
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3Closing statement and reponse to Plantinga's commentsIn Alvin Plantinga (ed.), Knowledge of God, Blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: Plantinga's Responses to My Two Arguments Is Belief in God Non‐Inferentially Justified? The Argument from Evil Versus Justifications for Believing in the Existence of God Concluding Comment: Naturalism, Supernaturalism, and Theism.
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3In Defense of Volumtary Active Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide (edited book)Blackwell Publishing. 2005.In this essay I defend the following two claims: first, given appropriate circumstances, neither voluntary active euthanasia, nor assisting someone to commit suicide, is in any way morally wrong; secondly, there should be no laws prohibiting such actions, in the relevant cases. The discussion is organized as follows. In the first section, I set out some preliminary concepts and distinctions. Then, in sections two and three, I offer two arguments in support of the thesis that assisted suicide …Read more
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3CausationIn Robin Le Poidevin, Simons Peter, McGonigal Andrew & Ross P. Cameron (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics, Routledge. 2009.This volume presents a selection of the most influential recent discussions of the crucial metaphysical questions: what is it for one event to cause another? The subject of causation bears on many topics, such as time, explanation, mental states, the laws of nature, and the philosphy of science.
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2The Moral Status of the Cloning of HumansIn James Humber (ed.), Biomedical Ethics Reviews: Human Cloning, Humana Press. 1999.This essay is concerned with two questions. First, is the cloning of humans beings morally acceptable, or not? Secondly, if it is acceptable, are there any significant benefits that might result from it? I begin by drawing a distinction between two very different cases in which a human organism is cloned: the first aims at producing a mindless human organism that will serve as a living organ bank; the second, at producing a person. I then consider each of these in turn. The moral issues raise…Read more
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2Ch. 8. Inductive logic and the probability that God exists : farewell to sceptical TheismIn Jake Chandler & Victoria S. Harrison (eds.), Probability in the Philosophy of Religion, Oxford University Press. 2012.
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2``Freedom and Foreknowledge"Faith and Philosophy 17 (2): 212-224. 2000.In her book, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, Linda Zagzebski suggests that among the strongest ways of supporting the thesis that libertarian free will is incompatible with divine foreknowledge is what she refers to as the Accidental Necessity argument. Zagzebski contends, however, that at least three satisfactory responses to that argument are available.I argue that two of the proposed solutions are open to strong objections, and that the third, although it may very well handle the sp…Read more
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2Two Arguments for Absolute SimultaneityIn William Lane Craig & Quentin Smith (eds.), Absolute Simultaneity, Routledge. 2006.
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1Probability and causationIn Phil Dowe & Paul Noordhof (eds.), Cause and Chance: Causation in an Indeterministic World, Routledge. 2003.
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1Is Backward Causation Logically Possible?Philosphical Studies (University of Tokyo) 18 (1). 1999.This paper consists of a combination of material from sections 3.2, 4.5, and 4.6 from the 1997 edition of Time, Tense, and Causation, together with material added to correct an error in that earlier discussion. The added material was then used in the revised, paperback edition of Time, Tense, and Causation (2000), partly in section 4.6.2, but mainly in the Appendix.
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1Hume and the Problem of EvilIn Jeffrey J. Jordan (ed.), Philosophy of Religion: The Key Thinkers, Continuum. pp. 159-86. 2011.1.1 The Concept of Evil The problem of evil, in the sense relevant here, concerns the question of the reasonableness of believing in the existence of a deity with certain characteristics. In most discussions, the deity is God, understood as an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect person. But the problem of evil also arises, as Hume saw very clearly, for deities that are less than all-powerful, less than all-knowing, and less than morally perfect. What is the relevant concept of evil, i…Read more
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1Causes, Laws, and OntologyIn Helen Beebee, Peter Menzies & Christopher Hitchcock (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Causation, Oxford University Press. 2009.Different approaches to causation often diverge very significantly on ontological issues, in the case of both causal laws, and causal relations between states of affairs. This article sets out the main alternatives with regard to each. Causal concepts have surely been present from the time that language began, since the vast majority of action verbs involve the idea of causally affecting something. Thus, in the case of transitive verbs describing physical actions, there is the idea of causally a…Read more
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