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7Cause and Effect in FictionSpringer Nature Switzerland. 2024.This book explores and defends George Saunders’ causal thesis that successful stories are those that establish causation well. The book includes an in-depth discussion of causation’s role in several different key craft elements of fiction writing and examines different theories of causation and their implications for causation in fiction. Other discussions include the role of causation in building suspense, character and causation, causation in dialogue and connections between fiction and counte…Read more
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184It's the thought that countsUtilitas 17 (3): 265-281. 2005.Agnes's brakes fail. Should she continue straight into the busy intersection or should she swerve into the field? Add to the story, what Agnes does not and cannot know, that continuing into the intersection will cause no harm, whereas swerving into the apparently empty field will cause a death. I evaluate arguments for the claim that she should enter the intersection, i.e. for objectivism about right and wrong; and arguments for the claim that she should swerve, i.e. for subjectivism about right…Read more
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102Infallibilism and Gettier's legacyPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (2): 304-327. 2003.Infallibilism is the view that a belief cannot be at once warranted and false. In this essay we assess three nonpartisan arguments for infallibilism, arguments that do not depend on a prior commitment to some substantive theory of warrant. Three premises, one from each argument, are most significant: if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then the Gettier Problem cannot be solved; if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then its warrant can be transferred to an accidentally true…Read more
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A Puzzle about HypocrisyIn Jonathan L. Kvanvig (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion Volume 3, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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23Gimpse of Light: New Meditations on First Philosophy (review)The Philosophers' Magazine 81 117-118. 2018.
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An Analysis and Defense of an Ethics of LoveDissertation, Syracuse University. 1991.What kind of love does the commandment "Love your neighbor as yourself" enjoin? On the basis of textual and analogical evidence, I argue that in enjoins love not unlike the natural loves we have for our family and lovers. If this is right, we can use our experience of those loves as models for how we should feel and act towards other human beings. I argue that the love this commandment advocates is emotional love, rather than practical love. I respond to a number of objections to this, and in th…Read more
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23A new argument for consequentialism? A reply to Sinnott-ArmstrongAnalysis 56 (2): 111-115. 1996.
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35The pearl of great priceInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 81 (1-2): 151-160. 2017.“The Pearl of Great Price” is a short story that explores the ways faith can go wrong. The central character, Janet, a single mom in a dead end job, is drawn into a multi-level marketing scheme, Benevite, by an unscrupulous salesman. She is encouraged to believe in herself and her dream and to give everything she has to it. She is fed the standard clichés to the effect that you can achieve whatever you want if you try hard enough. In the end her faith in her dream leads to the loss of her relati…Read more
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710The Christian Theodicist's Appeal to LoveReligious Studies 29 (2). 1993.Many Christian theodicists believe that God's creating us with the capacity to love Him and each other justifies, in large part, God's permitting evil. For example, after reminding us that, according to Christian doctrine, the supreme good for human beings is to enter into a reciprocal love relationship with God, Vincent Brummer recently wrote: In creating human persons in order to love them, God necessarily assumes vulnerability in relation to them. In fact, in this relation, he becomes even mo…Read more
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116How an Unsurpassable Being Can Create a Surpassable WorldFaith and Philosophy 11 (2): 260-268. 1994.Imagine that there exists a good, essentially omniscient and omnipotent being named Jove, and that there exists nothing else. No possible being is more powerful or knowledgable. Out of his goodness, Jove decides to create. Since he is all-powerful, there is nothing but the bounds of possibility to prevent him from getting what he wants. Unfortunately, as he holds before his mind the host of worlds, Jove sees that for each there is a better one. Although he can create any of them, he can't create…Read more
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38Degrees and Dimensions of Rightness: Reflections on Martin Peterson’s Dimensions of ConsequentialismEthical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (1): 31-38. 2016.Martin Peterson argues for two interesting and appealing claims: multi-dimensionalism and degrees of rightness. Multi-dimensionalism is the view that more than one factor determines whether an act is right. According to Peterson’s multi-dimensionalism, these factors are not simply ways of achieving some greater aggregate good. Degrees of rightness is the view that some actions are more wrong or less right than others without being entirely wrong. It is of course, compatible with this, that some …Read more
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91A Consequentialist Case for Rejecting the RightJournal of Philosophical Research 18 109-125. 1993.Satisficing and maximizing versions of consequentialism have both assumed that rightness is an alI-or-nothing property. We argue thal this is inimical to the spirit of consequentialism, and that, from the point of view of the consequentialist, actions should be evaluated purely in terms that admit of degree. We first consider the suggestion that rightness and wrongness are a matter of degree. If so, this raises the question of whether the claim that something is wrong says any more than that it …Read more
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14The power of logicMcGraw-Hill. 2012.Basic concepts -- Identifying arguments -- Logic and language -- Informal fallacies -- Categorical logic: statements -- Categorical logic: syllogisms -- Statement logic: truth tables -- Statement logic: proofs -- Predicate logic -- Induction -- Probability.
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41On These Two Commandments Hang All the Law and the ProphetsFaith and Philosophy 22 (1): 3-20. 2005.
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14Review of Peter van Inwagen, God, Mystery, and Knowledge (review)Faith and PhilosophyThis volume collects nine essays published by Peter van Inwagen between 1977 and 1995. Part I features, among other things, modal skepticism with respect to ontological arguments and arguments from evil. Part II addresses certain tensions Christians may feel between modern biology, critical studies of the New Testament, and the comparative study of religions, on the one hand, and Christian orthodoxy, on the other. Part III deploys a formal logic of relative identity to model the internal consist…Read more
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431The Rejection of Objective ConsequentialismUtilitas 9 (2): 241-248. 1997.Objective consequentialism is often criticized because it is impossible to know which of our actions will have the best consequences. Why exactly does this undermine objective consequentialism? I offer a new link between the claim that our knowledge of the future is limited and the rejection of objective consequentialism: that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ and we cannot produce the best consequences available to us. I support this apparently paradoxical contention by way of an analogy. I cannot beat Kar…Read more
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39Is it less wrong to harm the vulnerable than the secure?Journal of Philosophy 89 (12): 643-647. 1992.
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123Damned If You Do; Damned If You Don’t!Philosophia 36 (1): 1-15. 2008.This paper discusses the Principle of Normative Invariance: ‘An action’s moral status does not depend on whether or not it is performed.’ I show the importance of this principle for arguments regarding actualism and other variations on the person-affecting restriction, discuss and rebut arguments in favor of the principle, and then discuss five counterexamples to it. I conclude that the principle as it stands is false; and that if it is modified to avoid the counterexamples, it is gutted of any …Read more
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35A Consequentialist Case for Rejecting the RightJournal of Philosophical Research 18 109-125. 1993.Satisficing and maximizing versions of consequentialism have both assumed that rightness is an alI-or-nothing property. We argue thal this is inimical to the spirit of consequentialism, and that, from the point of view of the consequentialist, actions should be evaluated purely in terms that admit of degree. We first consider the suggestion that rightness and wrongness are a matter of degree. If so, this raises the question of whether the claim that something is wrong says any more than that it …Read more
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1416The Puzzle of Petitionary PrayerEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 2 (2): 43-68. 2010.The fact that our asking God to do something can make a difference to what he does underwrites the point of petitionary prayer. Here, however, a puzzle arises: Either doing what we ask is the best God can do or it is not. If it is, then our asking won’t make any difference to whether he does it. If it is not, then our asking won’t make any difference to whether he does it. So, our asking won’t make any difference to whether God does it. Our asking is therefore pointless. In this paper, we try to…Read more
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705God, Knowledge, and Mystery (review)Faith and Philosophy 16 (1): 126-134. 1999.This is a review of Peter van Inwagen's collection of essays. It corrects a typesetter’s deletion of 75% of the review originally published in _Faith and Philosophy_15, 1998: 397-399.
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76The Real Problem of No Best WorldFaith and Philosophy 13 (3): 422-425. 1996.This is a reply to William Rowe, "The Problem of No Best World," Faith and Philosophy (1994).
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Religion |
Normative Ethics |