-
4Introduction to Free Will and TheismIn Kevin Timpe & Daniel Speak (eds.), Free Will and Theism: Connections, Contingencies, and Concerns, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 1-26. 2016.Concerns both about the nature of free will and about the credibility of theistic belief and commitment have long preoccupied philosophers. This is just to make the obvious point that philosophical questions about whether we enjoy free will and about whether God exists are truly perennial. In addition, there can be no denying that the history of philosophical inquiry into these two questions has been dynamic and, at least to some degree, integrated. In a great many cases, classical answers to th…Read more
-
115Death and the psychological conception of personal identityMidwest Studies in Philosophy 24 (1). 2000.
-
20Free Will and Soul‐Making TheodiciesIn Justin P. McBrayer & Daniel Howard-Snyder (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to The Problem of Evil, Wiley. 2014.Appeals to the respective values of free will and of moral and spiritual development (soul‐making) have long been lynchpins in the project of theodicy. The two most prominent contemporary efforts at systematic and comprehensive theodicy have been executed by John Hick and Richard Swinburne, both of whom appeal explicitly to these values. This chapter sympathetically explicates their appeals to these values and considers some of the challenges facing any theodicy that follows them in doing so.
-
22Free Will and Theism: Connections, Contingencies, and Concerns (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2016.This volume presents a systematic exploration of the relationship between religious beliefs and various accounts of free will in the contemporary domain. With a particular eye on how theological commitments might shape our views about the nature of free will, a team of leading experts in the field explores an important gap in the current debate. They focus their attention on this crucial point of intellectual intersection with surprising and illuminating results.
-
21The problem of evilPolity Press. 2015.The most forceful philosophical objections to belief in God arise from the existence of evil. Bad things happen in the world and it is not clear how this is compatible with the existence of an all-powerful and perfectly loving being. Unsurprisingly then, philosophers have formulated powerful arguments for atheism based on the existence of apparently unjustified suffering. These arguments give expression to what we call the problem of evil. This volume is an engaging introduction to the philosoph…Read more
-
8Willard, Warfare, and Free WillJournal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care 1 (2): 207-216. 2008.
-
28Hugh McCann, ed. Free Will and Classical Theism: The Significance of Freedom in Perfect Being TheologyJournal of Analytic Theology 7 (1): 759-764. 2019.ㅤ.
-
24Fischer and AvoidabilityFaith and Philosophy 16 (2): 239-247. 1999.In a recent exchange, John M. Fischer and David Widerker have debated whether or not it is appropriate to employ Frankfurt-style examples in efforts to challenge the intuitively plausible “principle of alternative possibilities.” Most recently, David Widerker and Charlotte Katzoff have tried to defend Widerker’s initial claim that such examples beg the question against libertarianism. As a libertarian sympathizer, I would like very much for these arguments to go through. However, I argue here th…Read more
-
Moral Responsibility and the Relevance of Alternative PossibilitiesDissertation, University of California, Riverside. 2002.My dissertation is a systematic defense of the moral relevance of alternative possibilities. As such, it constitutes an attack on semi-compatibilism. ;To begin, then, I defend alternative possibilities against three related but independent lines of criticism. The most prominent of these is Harry Frankfurt's now famous counterexample strategy in which cases are constructed that purport to show that a person can, in fact, be responsible even when he cannot do otherwise. Another line of criticism i…Read more
-
130The impertinence of Frankfurt-style argumentPhilosophical Quarterly 57 (226): 76-95. 2007.Discussions of the principle of alternative possibilities have largely ignored the limits of what Frankfurt-style counter-examples can show. Rather than challenging the coherence of the cases, I argue that even if they are taken to demonstrate the falsity of the principle, they cannot advance the compatibilist cause. For a forceful incompatibilist argument can be constructed from the Frankfurtian premise that agents in Frankfurtian circumstances would have done what they did even if they could h…Read more
-
68Semi-compatibilism and stalematePhilosophical Explorations 8 (2): 95-102. 2005.This Article does not have an abstract
-
59On the possibility of making even more sense of freedom and responsibilityPhilosophical Studies 163 (1): 117-122. 2013.
-
1The consequence argument revisitedIn Robert Kane (ed.), Oxford Handbook on Free Will, 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press. pp. 115-130. 2011.
-
45Review of John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Derk Pereboom, Manuel Vargas, Four Views on Free Will (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (5). 2008.
-
30Libertarianism, Luck, and GiftModern Schoolman 88 (1-2): 29-49. 2011.According to libertarianism, free will requires indeterminism. Many opponents of libertarianism have suggested that indeterminism would inject luck or chance into human action in a problematic way. Alfred Mele’s recent “contrast argument” is an especially clear effort to make this kind of objection to libertarianism precise. This paper is response to the contrast argument on behalf of libertarianism. I argue that worries about luck and chance, enshrined in the contrast argument, arise largely fr…Read more
-
74Salvation without beliefReligious Studies 43 (2): 229-236. 2007.In the Christian tradition, it is rather natural to assume that a person can receive salvation only if she believes that certain crucial and relevant propositions are true. Louis Pojman has, however, attacked this assumption. He has formulated what I call the 'ethics' argument against the claim that belief is necessary for salvation. After explicating this argument, I complain that it is based on an unnecessarily controversial premise and that it proves too little. I then construct a parallel ar…Read more
-
59Domination and the Free Will DefenseFaith and Philosophy 32 (3): 313-324. 2015.Few arguments have enjoyed as strong a reputation for philosophical success as Alvin Plantinga’s free will defense. Despite the striking reputation for decisiveness, however, concerns about the success of the FWD have begun to trickle into the philosophical literature. In a recent article in this journal, Alexander Pruss has contributed to this flow with an intriguing argument that a proposition necessary to the success of Plantinga’s FWD is false. Specifically, Pruss has argued, contrary to the…Read more
-
86Metaphysics and God: Essays in honor of Eleonore Stump * edited by Kevin TimpeAnalysis 71 (4): 794-796. 2011.
Westchester, Los Angeles, California, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Religion |
Meta-Ethics |