University of California, Santa Barbara
Department of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara
PhD, 2013
Santa Clara, California, United States of America
  •  4
    I Know There Is Good in You
    In Jason T. Eberl & Kevin S. Decker (eds.), Star Wars and Philosophy Strikes Back, Wiley. 2023.
    Relationships between children and parents pervade the Star Wars saga, especially if people include surrogate parents. Anakin's relationship with his mother, Shmi, in the prequels impacts his trajectory toward the dark side. In The Mandalorian, Mando's role as a surrogate father to Grogu transforms them into a “Clan of Two”. But the most significant parent‐child relationship in the saga may be the one between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Confucius's teachings highlight the importance of benev…Read more
  •  12
    Worship, Apophaticism, and Non-Propositional Knowledge
    Journal of Analytic Theology 10 98-114. 2022.
    This paper addresses the alleged tension between the kind of strong apophaticism endorsed by Maimonides and his view of worshiping God. After considering some extant resolutions to this problem, I offer a proposal that utilizes the role of silence and imitative activity in Maimonides. While this solution may not have been one that Maimonides would have offered, I argue that Maimonides had conceptual resources for offering a promising solution within his theological framework.
  •  284
    Are Reduplicative Qua-Operators Superfluous?
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13 (2): 145-162. 2021.
    Reduplicative approaches to the incarnation attempt to avoid the charge of incoherence by employing a qua-operator that operates on an entire assertion. The main objection to this approach is that it still yields a contradiction. Recently, two new reduplicative approaches have been offered that purport to avoid contradiction, one that offers a novel analysis of negative predications and the other which prevents conjoining divine and human predicates into a meaningful sentence. In this paper, I a…Read more
  •  45
    A recent solution to the Body-Minus problem, which is a problem of material constitution, claims that ordinary proper parts (such as left feet) exist, but the complements of these objects (such as left-foot complements) do not exist. In this paper, I examine a defense of this solution from the worry of arbitrariness and from its ineffectiveness against a revised version of the problem that focuses on the head, and I show that this defense fails.
  •  55
    Resisting the Remnant-Person Problem
    Acta Analytica 35 (3): 389-404. 2020.
    Some opponents of animalism have offered a relatively new worry: the remnant-person problem. After presenting the problem, I lay out several responses and show why they are either problematic or come with too many theoretical costs. I then present my own response to the problem, which unlike the other responses, it is one that can be adopted by animalists of any stripe. What I hope to show is that some of the key assumptions of the remnant-person problem can be rejected, and thus, the remnant-pe…Read more
  •  2
    Kenoticism and Essential Divine Properties
    Religious Studies. forthcoming.
    Traditional Christology maintains that Christ was a single divine person with two natures (human and divine). According to kenotic Christology, certain divine properties such as omniscience and omnipotence were divested in order for Christ to acquire essential human properties. However, such a view appears to conflict with perfect-being theology, which takes omniscience and omnipotence to be essential properties for being divine. I propose a view that adopts a Thomistic theory of essences in ord…Read more
  •  17
    Spiritual Experience and Imagination
    In Heather Salazar & Roderick Nicholls (eds.), The Philosophy of Spirituality, Brill. 2018.
  •  1
  •  24
    Composition and the will of God
    In T. Ryan Byerly & Eric J. Silverman (eds.), Paradise Understood: New Philosophical Essays About Heaven, Oxford University Press. 2017.
  • Atonement and the Wrath of God
    In Oliver Crisp & Fred Sanders (eds.), Locating Atonement, Zondervan Academic. pp. 154-167. 2015.
  •  34
    The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism
    Philosophia Christi 21 (1): 221-225. 2019.
  •  12
    Conceptual and Methodological Considerations for the Study of Wisdom Arising from Adversity
    with William J. Chopik, Eranda Jayawickreme, and Ursula Renz
    Journal of Value Inquiry 53 (3): 393-396. 2019.
  •  50
    Persons, Simplicity, and Substance
    Philosophical Papers 47 (2): 299-311. 2018.
    A novel argument has recently been advanced against materialism—the view that human persons are identical to composite, material objects. The argument claims that pairs of people are not conscious and that the only viable explanation for why they are not is because pairs of people are not simple. The argument concludes that only a simple thing can be the subject of conscious states. In this paper, I offer an alternative explanation for why pairs of people are not conscious: pairs of people are n…Read more
  •  19
    Wisdom, Risk-Taking, and Understanding
    Philosophy and Theology 29 (2): 419-428. 2017.
    With a few exceptions, much of epistemology in the last century has been dominated by discussions centered on knowledge, and in particular propositional knowledge (along with associated concepts such as justification, the reliability of cognitive processes, etc.). Recently, attention has been given to other cognitive states such as understanding and wisdom, due in some part to the resurgence of theorizing about intellectual virtues. As with typical epistemic concepts such as justification and kn…Read more
  •  19
  •  34
    Does Death Restriction-Harm Us?
    Journal of Value Inquiry 52 (4): 429-436. 2018.
    Recently, Stephan Blatti has argued that a deprivationist view (DV) of death’s harm is incomplete, and he presents a view such that the kind of distinctive harm that death brings to an individual involves the restriction of that individual’s autonomy.2 Not only does death deprivation-harm us, but it also restriction-harms us. Let us label such an account—one that includes both deprivation and restriction as comprising death’s harm—as a ‘deprivationist-restrictionist view’ (or ‘DRV’). Blatti favo…Read more
  •  57
    Against an Updated Ontological Argument
    Res Philosophica 95 (1): 179-187. 2017.
    This paper examines a recent attempt at updating Anselm’s ontological argument by employing the notion of mediated and unmediated causal powers. After presenting the updated argument and the underlying metaphysical framework of causal powers that is utilized in the argument, I show that some of the key assumptions can be rejected. Once we closely examine some of the assumptions, it will also be evident that the updated version in some ways collapses back to Anselm’s original version and so is su…Read more
  •  48
    Social Trinitarianism Unscathed
    Journal of Analytic Theology 5 220-229. 2017.
    Social Trinitarianism is a family of views that bear some resemblance to each other in a way that distinguishes them from other Trinitarian accounts. In this paper, we address recent objections by Carl Mosser against ST, objections which have not received much attention by defenders of ST. Mosser claims that proponents of ST offer a narrative that is historically inaccurate, employs concepts of personhood and perichoresis that are incompatible, upholds dubious hermeneutical assumptions, and is u…Read more
  •  39
    Choosing Eternal Separation: Reply to Gwiazda
    Sophia 54 (2): 217-219. 2015.
    Recently, in this journal, Jeremy Gwiazda has offered a critique of our separationist view of hell. His objection relies on two key assumptions, and we show in our reply that both assumptions can be denied
  •  137
    The compatibility of property dualism and substance materialism
    Philosophical Studies 172 (12): 3211-3219. 2015.
    Several philosophers have argued that property dualism and substance materialism are incompatible positions. Recently, Susan Schneider has provided a novel version of such an argument, claiming that the incompatibility will be evident once we examine some underlying metaphysical issues. She purports to show that on any account of substance and property-possession, substance materialism and property dualism turn out incompatible. In this paper, I argue that Schneider’s case for incompatibility be…Read more
  •  80
    Defending Direct Source Incompatibilism
    Acta Analytica 27 (3): 325-333. 2012.
    Joseph Keim Campbell has attempted to say “farewell” to a particular version of source incompatibilism, viz. direct source incompatibilism, arguing that direct source incompatibilism is committed to two theses that are in tension, thereby threatening the coherence of the position. He states that direct source incompatibilism is committed to the following claims: SI-F: there are genuine Frankfurt-style counterexamples. SI-D: there is a sound version of the Direct Argument. Campbell argues that bo…Read more
  •  219
    Unrestricted animalism and the too many candidates problem
    Philosophical Studies 172 (3): 635-652. 2015.
    Standard animalists are committed to a stringent form of restricted composition, thereby denying the existence of brains, hands, and other proper parts of an organism . One reason for positing this near-nihilistic ontology comes from various challenges to animalism such as the Thinking Parts Argument, the Unity Argument, and the Argument from the Problem of the Many. In this paper, I show that these putatively distinct arguments are all instances of a more general problem, which I call the ‘Too …Read more
  •  252
    Eliminativism, interventionism and the Overdetermination Argument
    Philosophical Studies 164 (2): 321-340. 2013.
    In trying to establish the view that there are no non-living macrophysical objects, Trenton Merricks has produced an influential argument—the Overdetermination Argument—against the causal efficacy of composite objects. A serious problem for the Overdetermination Argument is the ambiguity in the notion of overdetermination that is being employed, which is due to the fact that Merricks does not provide any theory of causation to support his claims. Once we adopt a plausible theory of causation, vi…Read more
  •  26
    Against Piecemeal Skepticism
    International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 5 (3): 253-256. 2015.
  •  145
    Thinking animals, disagreement, and skepticism
    Philosophical Studies 166 (1): 109-121. 2013.
    According to Eric Olson, the Thinking Animal Argument (TAA) is the best reason to accept animalism, the view that we are identical to animals. A novel criticism has been advanced against TAA, suggesting that it implicitly employs a dubious epistemological principle. I will argue that other epistemological principles can do the trick of saving the TAA, principles that appeal to recent issues regarding disagreement with peers and experts. I conclude with some remarks about the consequence of accep…Read more
  •  165
    Defending constituent ontology
    Philosophical Studies 175 (5): 1207-1216. 2018.
    Constituent ontologies maintain that the properties of an object are either parts or something very much like parts of that object. Recently, such a view has been criticized as leading to a bizarre and problematic form of substance dualism and implying the existence of impossible objects. After briefly presenting constituent and relational ontologies, I respond to both objections, arguing that constituent ontology does not yield either of these two consequences and so is not shown to be an unacc…Read more