•  1915
    The Problem of Evil and Replies to Some Important Responses
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 10 (3): 105-131. 2018.
    I begin by distinguishing four different versions of the argument from evil that start from four different moral premises that in various ways link the existence of God to the absence of suffering. The version of the argument from evil that I defend starts from the premise that if God exists, he would not allow excessive, unnecessary suffering. The argument continues by denying the consequent of this conditional to conclude that God does not exist. I defend the argument against Skeptical Theists…Read more
  •  323
    The Persistent Problem of Evil
    Faith and Philosophy 6 (2): 121-139. 1989.
    In this paper I consider several versions of the argument from evil against the existence of a God who is omniscient, omnipotent and wholly good and raise some objections to them. Then I offer my own version of the argument from evil that says that if God exists, nothing happens that he should have prevented from happening and that he should have prevented the brutal rape and murder of a certain little girl if he exists. Since it was not prevented, God does not exist. My conclusion rests on the …Read more
  •  231
    On the relation between psychological and ethical egoism
    Philosophical Studies 42 (1): 91-99. 1982.
    Recently Terrance McConnell has attempted to show that not only does psychological egoism lend no support to ethical egoism but is even incompatible with it. 1 McConneU's attempt has been vitiated by Paul Simpson's critique of the version of psychological egoism that McConnell offered) In this discussion I will consider McConnell's and Simpson's arguments and then offer a version of psychological egoism that avoids Simpson's objections. After showing that one version of ethical egoism is incompa…Read more
  •  143
    7. The “Inductive” Argument from Evil
    Philosophical Topics 16 (2): 133-160. 1988.
  •  133
    On the presumption against taking life
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 4 (3): 244-250. 1979.
  •  116
    II.--On Denoting
    Mind 114 (456): 873-887. 2005.
  •  69
    Rock bottom: Coherentism's soft spot
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 50 (1): 94-111. 2012.
    Often coherentism is taken to be the view that justification is solely a function of the coherence among a person's beliefs. I offer a counterexample to the idea that when so understood coherence is sufficient for justification. I then argue that the counterexample will still work if coherence is understood as coherence among a person's beliefs and experiences. I defend a form of nondoxastic foundationalism that takes sensations and philosophical intuitions as basic and sees nearly all other jus…Read more
  •  61
    How to be an Anti-Skeptic and a NonContextualist
    Erkenntnis 61 (2-3): 245-255. 2004.
    Contextualists often argue from examples where it seems true to say in one context that a person knows something but not true to say that in another context where skeptical hypotheses have been introduced. The skeptical hypotheses can be moderate, simply mentioning what might be the case or raising questions about what a person is certain of, or radical, where scenarios about demon worlds, brains in vats, The Matrix, etc., are introduced. I argue that the introduction of these skeptical hypothes…Read more
  •  61
    Moral Relativism and Moral Realism
    The Monist 67 (3): 435-451. 1984.
    Gilbert Harman has recently distinguished three different kinds of moral relativism. One form of moral relativism Harman calls moral judgment relativism. It is the view that all “moral judgments contain an implicit reference to the speaker or some other person or group or certain moral standards, etc.” Harman never says what he means by “implicit reference,” but he does say that an ideal observer theorist who thinks “It would be wrong to do X” means the same as “If I were normal, impartial, and …Read more
  •  60
    Contextualism on a pragmatic, not a skeptical, footing
    Acta Analytica 20 (2): 26-37. 2005.
    Contextualism is supposed to explain why the following argument for skepticism seems plausible: (1) I don’t know that I am not a bodiless brain-in-a-vat (BIV); (2) If I know I have hands, then I know I am not a bodiless BIV; (3) Therefore, I do not know I have hands. Keith DeRose claims that (1) and (2) are “initially plausible.” I claim that (1) is initially plausible only because of an implicit argument that stands behind it; it is not intuitively plausible. The argument DeRose offers is based…Read more
  •  58
    Presumption, intrinsic relevance, and equivalence
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 4 (3): 263-268. 1979.
  •  40
    What is the ethical in fear and trembling?
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 18 (3). 1975.
    James Bogen misinterprets what Kierkegaard (or more accurately, Johannes de Silentio) meant by the ethical in Fear and Trembling (see Inquiry, 5 [1962], pp. 305?17). Kierkegaard did not intend to depict morality as a system of duties where moral duties derive from the particular position(s) one holds in society. Kierkegaard thought that moral duties were based on universal principles that were divine commands. Although Kierkegaard thought that it was necessary for an action to be moral that it b…Read more
  •  31
    Beetle Boxes
    Teaching Philosophy 1 (2): 153-157. 1975.
  •  26
    Brute rationality
    Philosophical Books 48 (2): 150-154. 2007.
  •  17
  •  15
    Review of Stephen Hetherington (ed.), Epistemology Futures (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (3). 2007.
  • SWINBURNE, R.-Providence and the Problem of Evil
    Philosophical Books 41 (3): 222-224. 2000.