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Samuel Fleischacker, On Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: A Philosophical Companion (review)Philosophy in Review 26 (1): 30-33. 2006.
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42Locke's Theory of Original Appropriation and the Right of Settlement in Iroquois TerritoryCanadian Journal of Philosophy 27 (3): 311-337. 1997.James Tully and others have argued recently that the theory of property Locke defends in the Second Treatise was designed to justify European settlement on the lands of North American Natives. If this view becomes generally accepted, and Tuck suggests it will be, doubts may arise about the impartiality of Lockean property theories. Locke, as is well established and documented again by Tully, had huge vested interests in the European settlement of North America and possibly in the enslavement of …Read more
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16The main object of this thesis is to explain in a systematic fashion Francis Hutcheson's moral theory. Such an attempt will necessarily involve a discussion of the various philosophical problems which are inherent in his theory. For example, I discuss the issue of whether Hutcheson's theory of the moral sense is to be interpreted in an intuitionist or an emotivist fashion. It is argued that some aspects of his moral sense theory favour the former and some the latter interpretation, Hutcheson's t…Read more
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Matthew H. Kramer, John Locke and the Origins of Private Property: Philosophical explorations of individualism, community, and equality (review)Philosophy in Review 18 354-356. 1998.
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Terry L. Price, Understanding Ethical Failures in Leadership (review)Philosophy in Review 27 289-290. 2007.
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Samuel Fleischacker, On Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: A Philosophical Companion Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 26 (1): 30-33. 2006.
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7Sajama, Seppo. Idea, Judgement and Will, University of Turku, Finland, 1983, Reports from the Department of Theoretical Philosophy (review)Theoria 52 (1-2): 98-117. 1986.
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90Towards a religiously adequate alternative to omnigod theismSophia 48 (4): 419-433. 2009.Theistic religious believers should be concerned that the God they worship is not an idol. Conceptions of God thus need to be judged according to criteria of religious adequacy that are implicit in the ‘God-role’—that is, the way the concept of God properly functions in the conceptual economy and form of life of theistic believers. I argue that the conception of God as ‘omniGod’—an immaterial personal creator with the omni-properties—may reasonably be judged inadequate, at any rate from the pers…Read more
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46How to answer the de jure question about Christian beliefInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 56 (2-3): 109-129. 2004.
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38Believing by Faith: An Essay in the Epistemology and Ethics of Religious BeliefOxford University Press. 2007.Does our available evidence show that some particular religion is correct? It seems unlikely, given the great diversity of religious - and non-religious - views of the world. But if no religious beliefs can be shown true on the evidence, can it be right to make a religious commitment? Should people make 'leaps of faith'? Or would we all be better off avoiding commitments that outrun our evidence? And, if leaps of faith can be acceptable, how do we tell the difference between goodand bad ones - b…Read more
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137Prospects for a Naturalist Libertarianism: O’Connor’s Persons and CausesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (1): 228-243. 2003.There is an alternative reconciliatory naturalist position that rejects each key feature of this “libertarian agent-causationist” view. Taking the features in reverse order, this alternative.
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231Adam Smith's invisible hand argumentJournal of Business Ethics 14 (3). 1995.Adam Smith is usually thought to argue that the result of everyone pursuing their own interests will be the maximization of the interests of society. The invisible hand of the free market will transform the individual''s pursuit of gain into the general utility of society. This is the invisible hand argument.Many people, although Smith did not, draw a moral corollary from this argument, and use it to defend the moral acceptability of pursuing one''s own self-interest.
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41Moral Intuitions versus Game Theory: A Response to Marcoux on Résumé EmbellishingJournal of Business Ethics 67 (2): 181-189. 2006.Marcoux argues that job candidates ought to embellish non-verifiable information on their résumés because it is the best way to coordinate collective action in the résumé ‚game’. I do not dispute his analysis of collective action; I look at the larger picture, which throws light on the role game theory might play in ethics. I conclude that game theory’s conclusions have nothing directly to do with ethics. Game theory suggests the means to certain ends, but the ethics of both the means and ends m…Read more
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23God, Purpose, and Reality: A Euteleological Understanding of TheismOxford University Press. 2023.Euteleology is a metaphysics according to which reality is inherently purposive and the contingent Universe exists ultimately because reality’s overall telos, the supreme good, is realized within it. This book provides an exposition of euteleology and a defence of its coherence. The main aim is to establish that euteleological metaphysics provides a religiously adequate alternative to the ‘personal-omniGod’ understanding of theism prevalent amongst analytic philosophers. The quest for an alterna…Read more
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Concepts of God and problems of evilIn Andrei A. Buckareff & Yujin Nagasawa (eds.), Alternative Concepts of God: Essays on the Metaphysics of the Divine, Oxford University Press. 2016.
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26Review of Jonathan L. Kvanvig, Faith and Humility, Oxford Univ. Press, 2018 (review)European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 12 (1): 191. 2020.
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44Arguing for Atheism. An Introduction to the Philosophy of ReligionMind 110 (438): 497-501. 2001.
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7119Natural Agency: An Essay on the Causal Theory of ActionCambridge University Press. 1989.From a moral point of view we think of ourselves as capable of responsible actions. From a scientific point of view we think of ourselves as animals whose behaviour, however highly evolved, conforms to natural scientific laws. Natural Agency argues that these different perspectives can be reconciled, despite the scepticism of many philosophers who have argued that 'free will' is impossible under 'scientific determinism'. This scepticism is best overcome, according to the author, by defending a c…Read more
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385What Theological Explanation Could and Could Not BeEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 10 (4): 141-160. 2018.The worldview of theism proposes an ultimate and global explanation of existence itself. What could such “theological explanation” possibly amount to? I shall consider what is unsatisfactory about a widely accepted answer–namely that existence is to be explained as produced and sustained by a supernatural personal agent of unsurpassably great power and goodness. I will suggest an alternative way in which existence could be open to a genuinely ultimate explanation, namely in terms of its being i…Read more
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14Faith with ReasonAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 80 (1): 130-131. 2002.Book Information Faith with Reason. By Paul Helm. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 2000. Pp. xvi + 185.
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568In Quest of Authentic Divinity: Critical Notice of Mark Johnston’s ’Saving God: Religion after Idolatry’European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (4): 175--191. 2012.
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201Divine Action beyond the Personal OmniGodOxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 5 1-21. 2014.
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28Review of rolfe King, Obstacles to Divine Revelation: God and the Reorientation of Human Reason (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (10). 2009.
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Religion |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Religion |