•  301
    Reasons Explanation And Agent Control: In Search Of An Integrated Account
    with Timothy O’Connor
    Philosophical Topics 32 (1): 241-256. 2004.
    Many philosophers judge that typical agent-causal accounts of freedom improperly sacrifice the possibility of rational explanation of the action for the sake of securing control, while others judge that the reverse shortcoming plagues typical event causal accounts. (Of course, many philosophers make both these judgments.) After briefly rehearsing the reasons for these verdicts on the two traditional strategies, we undertake an extended examination of Randolph Clarke's recent attempt to meet the …Read more
  •  5
    Reckoning With the Imagination: Wittgenstein and the Aesthetics of Literary Experience. By Charles Altieri (review)
    International Philosophical Quarterly 56 (3): 374-375. 2016.
  •  9
    Merold Westphal, Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism (review)
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 47 (3): 183-185. 2000.
  • The dynamic of religious expression employs symbolic language, actions, and art. These symbols are symbols of transcendence because it is transcendence which is the unique referent that sets apart symbols which give rise to religious understanding from symbols which do not. The main objective of this book is to demonstrate that in Louis Dupre's work all religious expression, insofar as it has a transcendent reference, is intrinsically symbolic. Religious language is never purely objective nor pu…Read more
  •  138
    Mere Theistic Evolution
    Philosophia Christi 22 (1): 7-41. 2020.
    A key takeaway from the recent volume Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique is that no version of theistic evolution that adheres largely to consensus views in biology is a plausible option for orthodox Christians. In this paper we argue that this is false: contrary to the arguments in the volume, evolutionary theory, properly understood, is perfectly compatible with traditional Christian commitments. In addition, we argue that the lines between Intelligent De…Read more
  •  7
    Paul J. Levesque, Symbols of Transcendence: Religious Expression in the Thought of Louis Dupré (review)
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 47 (3): 177-179. 2000.
  •  12
    Reasons Explanation and Agent Control
    Philosophical Topics 32 (1-2): 241-253. 2004.
  •  50
    Intuition, Orthodoxy, and Moral Responsibility
    Faith and Philosophy 33 (2): 179-199. 2016.
    Many Christian philosophers hold that moral responsibility is incompatible with causal determinism, a thesis known as incompatibilism. But there are good reasons for resisting this trend. To illustrate this, I first examine an innovative recent case for incompatibilism by a Christian philosopher, one that depends crucially on the claim that intuitions favor incompatibilism. I argue that the case is flawed in ways that should keep us from accepting its conclusions. I then argue for a shift in the…Read more
  •  66
    Determinism and Divine Blame
    Faith and Philosophy 34 (4): 425-448. 2017.
    Theological determinism is, at first glance, difficult to square with the typical Christian commitment to the appropriateness of divine blame. How, we may wonder, can it be appropriate for God to blame someone for something that was determined to occur by God in the first place? In this paper, I try to clarify this challenge to Christian theological determinism, arguing that its most cogent version includes specific commitments about what is involved when God blames wrongdoers. I then argue that…Read more
  •  37
    Intuition, Orthodoxy, and Moral Responsibility
    Faith and Philosophy 33 (2): 179-199. 2016.
    Many Christian philosophers hold that moral responsibility is incompatible with causal determinism, a thesis known as incompatibilism. But there are good reasons for resisting this trend. To illustrate this, I first examine an innovative recent case for incompatibilism by a Christian philosopher, one that depends crucially on the claim that intuitions favor incompatibilism. I argue that the case is flawed in ways that should keep us from accepting its conclusions. I then argue for a shift in the…Read more
  •  100
    This thesis presents a case for theological compatibilism, the view that divine foreknowledge and human freedom are compatible. My attempt to support theological compatibilism is based chiefly upon two arguments, which appear in the second and third chapters of this thesis. While these arguments differ, they are united in one respect: each argument relies heavily upon the doctrine of divine sustenance, which is the doctrine that God is causally responsible for the continual existence of the univ…Read more
  •  138
    Nonreductive physicalism or emergent dualism : the argument from mental causation
    In Robert C. Koons & George Bealer (eds.), The Waning of Materialism, Oxford University Press. 2010.
    Throughout the 1990s, Jaegwon Kim developed a line of argument that what purport to be nonreductive forms of physicalism are ultimately untenable, since they cannot accommodate the causal efficacy of mental states. His argument has received a great deal of discussion, much of it critical. We believe that, while the argument needs some tweaking, its basic thrust is sound. In what follows, we will lay out our preferred version of the argument and highlight its essential dependence on a causal-powe…Read more