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382I propose some arguments suggested by Descartes' text for the conclusion that we are not identical to our bodies. I suggest that a natural extension of those arguments leads to Plantinga's Replacement Argument. I conclude that even if such an argument is plausible, its conclusion does not establish the further claim that we can exist without a body.
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248The Ontological Argument and Objects of ThoughtPhilosophic Exchange 42 (1): 82-103. 2011.Is there anything new to be said about Anselm's ontological argument? Recent work by Lynne Baker and Gareth Matthews raises some interesting and important questions about the argument. First, Anselm's argument is set in the context of a prayer to God, whose existence Anselm seeks to prove. Is that peculiar or paradoxical? Does it imply that Anselm's prayer is insincere? Baker and Matthews have offered a novel interpretation of Anselm's argument, designed to solve a crucial problem with it. Does …Read more
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207Prophecy, freedom, and the necessity of the pastPhilosophical Perspectives 5 425-445. 1991.One of the strongest arguments for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human free action appeals to the apparent fixity or necessity of the past. Two leading responses to the argument—Ockhamism, which denies a premiss of the argument, and the so-called “eternity solution”, which holds that strictly speaking God does not have foreknowledge—have both come under attack on similar grounds. Neither response, it is alleged, is adequate to the case of divine prophecy. In this paper I sha…Read more
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164Trinity and PolytheismFaith and Philosophy 21 (3): 281-294. 2004.This paper develops an interpretation of the doctrine of the Trinity, drawn from Augustine and the Athanasian Creed. Such a doctrine includes divinity claims (the persons are divine), diversity claims (the persons are distinct), and a uniqueness claim (there is only one God). I propose and defend an interpretation of these theses according to which they are neither logically incompatible nor do they do entail that there are three (or four) gods
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127Augustinian perfect being theology and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and JacobInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 69 (2): 139-151. 2011.All of the ingredients for what has become known as Anselmian perfect being theology were present already in the thought of St. Augustine. This paper develops that thesis by calling attention to various claims Augustine makes. It then asks whether there are principled reasons for determining which properties the greatest possible being has and whether an account of what contributes to greatness can settle the question whether the greatest possible being is the same as the God of Abraham, Isaac, …Read more
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127Thalberg on the Irreducibility of EventsAnalysis 39 (1). 1979.Several debates in contemporary metaphysics provoke us to ask what an event is. One theory, Pioneered by chisholm, Develops the analogy between the occurrence of events and the truth of corresponding propositions. I call these propositional analyses. It is unclear whether their adherents wish to jettison our event-Concepts, And replace them with concepts from another category, Such as semantics. The other theory of what events are that I scrutinize, Namely kim's and goldman's property-Exemplific…Read more
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100The Nature of God: An Inquiry into Divine AttributesCornell University Press. 1989.The Nature of God explores a perennial problem in the philosophy of religion.
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89OmniscienceIn Thomas P. Flint & Michael Rea (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophical theology, Oxford University Press. 2008.Omniscience is the divine attribute of possessing complete or unlimited knowledge. This article examines motivations for taking such a property to be a divine attribute, attempts to define or analyse omniscience, possible limitations on the extent of divine knowledge, and, finally, objections either to the coherence of the concept or to its compatibility with other divine attributes or with widely accepted claims.
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56Intrinsic Maxima and OmnibenevolenceInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 10 (1). 1979.
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55Identity Conditions and EventsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 11 (1). 1981.According to Myles Brand, ‘[t]he key to advocating a particularist account of events -or any account of events - is to provide adequate identity conditions’. He thinks that the function of an identity condition is ‘to specify the nature of’ events.To state an identity condition for events is to provide a way to complete the formula: The mere fact that a proposed completion of is true does not imply that it is an informative identity condition for events or that it plays any role in specifying th…Read more
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40The Skepticism of Skeptical TheismJournal of Philosophical Theological Research 21 (3): 27-42. 2019.Skeptical theism is a type of reply to arguments from evil against God’s existence. The skeptical theist declines to accept a premiss of some such argument, professing ignorance, for example, about whether God is justified in permitting certain evils or about the conditional probability that the world contains as much evil as it does, or evils of a particular sort, on the hypothesis that God exists. Skeptical theists are thus not supposed to be skeptical about theism; rather, they are theists wh…Read more
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36Proxy consent and counterfactual wishesJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 8 (4): 405-416. 1983.I discuss conditions for the validity of proxy consent to treatment on behalf of an incompetent person. I distinguish those incompetents who, when previously competent, expressed an opinion on the treatment in question from those who were never competent or who, though previously competent, never expressed an opinion on the proposed treatment. In the former case valid proxy consent usually requires respecting the stated wishes of the patient. The latter case is more difficult. I consider a widel…Read more
Rochester, New York, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |