•  376
    Why is There Anything?
    In Jerry L. Walls & Trent Dougherty (eds.), Two Dozen (or so) Arguments for God: The Plantinga Project, Oxford University Press. pp. 137-156. 2018.
    We argue that there exists a necessary causally potent being. We then argue that that being is God.
  • Why is there anything at all?
    with Christopher Gregory Weaver
    In Jerry L. Walls Trent Dougherty (ed.), Two Dozen (or so) Arguments for God: The Plantinga Project, Oxford University Press. 2018.
  •  24
    Against Nonreductive Physicalism
    In Jonathan J. Loose, Angus John Louis Menuge & J. P. Moreland (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism, Wiley-blackwell. 2018.
    This chapter aims to develop an argument in support of the basic mentality thesis. A “counting” argument is constructed in the chapter that poses a problem for the identity thesis. Then, the chapter extends the “counting” argument in a way that exposes a problem for the dependence (mind grounded in physical) thesis. The basic strategy of a counting argument is to show that there is a greater quantity of members of the one category than of some other. To illustrate, the chapter considers the cate…Read more
  •  84
    Does atheism entail a contradiction?
    Manuscrito 44 (4): 31-48. 2021.
    I consider whether a contradiction may be deducible from the proposition that God does not exist. First, I expose a candidate counterexample to a key premise in Swinburne’s argument against the deducibility of a contradiction from God’s non-existence. Second, I present two new strategies one might use to deduce a contradiction. Both strategies make use of Tarski's T-schema together with developments in other theistic arguments. One argument is a conceptualist argument from necessary truth for a …Read more
  •  1048
    On Whitcomb's Grounding Argument for Atheism
    Faith and Philosophy 30 (2): 198-204. 2013.
    Dennis Whitcomb argues that there is no God on the grounds that God is supposed to be omniscient, yet nothing could be omniscient due to the nature of grounding. We give a formally identical argument that concludes that one of the present co-authors does not exist. Since he does exist, Whitcomb’s argument is unsound. But why is it unsound? That is a difficult question. We venture two answers. First, one of the grounding principles that the argument relies on is false. Second, the argument equivo…Read more
  •  5502
    How Valuable Could a Person Be?
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (2): 264-277. 2020.
    We investigate the value of persons. Our primary goal is to chart a path from equal and extreme value to infinite value. We advance two arguments. Each argument offers a reason to think that equal and extreme value are best accounted for if we are infinitely valuable. We then raise some difficult but fruitful questions about the possible grounds or sources of our infinite value, if we indeed have such value.
  •  3874
    No Pairing Problem
    with Andrew M. Bailey and Luke Van Horn
    Philosophical Studies 154 (3): 349-360. 2011.
    Many have thought that there is a problem with causal commerce between immaterial souls and material bodies. In Physicalism or Something Near Enough, Jaegwon Kim attempts to spell out that problem. Rather than merely posing a question or raising a mystery for defenders of substance dualism to answer or address, he offers a compelling argument for the conclusion that immaterial souls cannot causally interact with material bodies. We offer a reconstruction of that argument that hinges on two premi…Read more
  •  4260
    How to Build a Thought
    Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 9 (2): 75-83. 2020.
    We uncover a surprising discovery about the basis of thoughts. We begin by giving some plausible axioms about thoughts and their grounds. We then deduce a theorem, which has dramatic ramifications for the basis of all thoughts. The theorem implies that thoughts cannot come deterministically from any purely “thoughtless” states. We expect this result to be too dramatic for many philosophers. Hence, we proceed to investigate the prospect of giving up the axioms. We show that each axiom’s negation …Read more
  •  4205
    A new puppet puzzle
    Philosophical Explorations 23 (3): 202-213. 2020.
    We develop a new puzzle concerning a material being's relationship to the smallest parts of the material world. In particular, we investigate how a being could be responsible for anything if its be...
  •  267
    This book provides an up to date, high-level exchange on God in a uniquely productive style. Readers witness a contemporary version of a classic debate, as two professional philosophers seek to learn from each other while making their cases for their distinct positions. In their dialogue, Joshua Rasmussen and Felipe Leon examine classical and cutting-edge arguments for and against a theistic explanation of general features of reality. The book also provides original lines of thought based on the…Read more
  •  198
    A New Theist Response to the New Atheists (edited book)
    Routledge. 2020.
    In response to the intellectual movement of New Atheism, this volume articulates a "New Theist" response that has at its core a desire to engage in productive and depolarizing dialogue. To ensure this book is of interest to atheists and theists alike, a team of experts in the field of philosophy of religion offer an assessment of the strongest New Atheist arguments. The chapters address the most pertinent questions about God, including politics and morality, and each essay shows how a reflectiv…Read more
  •  389
    From a necessary being to god
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 66 (1): 1-13. 2009.
    Not a lot of work on theistic arguments has been devoted to drawing connections between a necessary being and theistic properties. In this paper, I identify novel paths from a necessary being to certain theistic properties: volition, infinite power, infinite knowledge, and infinite goodness. The steps in those paths are an outline for future work on what William Rowe (The Cosmological Argument, 1975, p. 6) has called “stage II” of the cosmological argument.
  •  2
    Function biomedical informatics research network recommendations for prospective multicenter functional MRI studies
    with G. H. Glover, B. A. Mueller, J. A. Turner, T. G. M. Van Erp, T. T. Liu, D. N. Greve, J. T. Voyvodic, G. G. Brown, D. B. Keator, V. D. Calhoun, H. J. Lee, J. M. Ford, D. H. Mathalon, M. Diaz, D. S. O'Leary, S. Gadde, A. Preda, K. O. Lim, C. G. Wible, H. S. Stern, A. Belger, G. McCarthy, B. Ozyurt, and S. G. Potkin
    This report provides practical recommendations for the design and execution of multicenter functional MRI studies based on the collective experience of the Function Biomedical Informatics Research Network. The study was inspired by many requests from the fMRI community to FBIRN group members for advice on how to conduct MC-fMRI studies. The introduction briefly discusses the advantages and complexities of MC-fMRI studies. Prerequisites for MC-fMRI studies are addressed before delving into the pr…Read more
  •  134
    Tenseless times
    Philosophical Studies 172 (12): 3221-3227. 2015.
    I develop a new theory of times. I show how to analyze times as tenselessly describable “abstract” entities. Some philosophers make use of ersatz times, which are abstract entities such as maximal states of affairs that bear earlier than and later than relations to one another. Although these times are normally thought to exemplify A-properties that cannot be expressed in a purely tenseless language, I explain how a tenseless theory can accommodate abstract times. I do this by defending Rasmusse…Read more
  •  93
    Necessary Existence
    Oxford University Press. 2018.
    Necessary Existence breaks ground on one of the deepest questions anyone ever asks: why is there anything? Pruss and Rasmussen present an original defence of the hypothesis that there is a necessarily existing being capable of providing an ultimate foundation for the existence of all things.
  •  4480
    How valuable could a material object be?
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 2 (2): 332-343. 2016.
    Arguments for substance dualism—the theory that we are at least partly non-material beings—abound. Many such arguments begin with our capacity to engage in conscious thought and end with dualism. Such are familiar. But there is another route to dualism. It begins with our moral value and ends with dualism. In this article, we develop and assess the prospects for this new style of argument. We show that, though one extant version of the argument does not succeed, there may yet be a deep problem f…Read more
  •  107
    From Necessary Truth to Necessary Existence
    Polish Journal of Philosophy 7 (1): 19-30. 2013.
    I introduce new details in an argument for necessarily existing propositions. The crux of the argument marks out a pathway to the conclusion that necessary truths cannot themselves be necessarily true unless they necessarily exist. I motivate the steps in the argument and then address several standard objections, including one that makes use of the distinction between ‘truth in’ and ‘truth at’. The purpose of the argument is to generate deeper insights into the nature of propositions and the log…Read more
  •  68
  •  37
    Defending the Correspondence Theory of Truth
    Cambridge University Press. 2014.
    The correspondence theory of truth is a precise and innovative account of how the truth of a proposition depends upon that proposition's connection to a piece of reality. Joshua Rasmussen refines and defends the correspondence theory of truth, proposing new accounts of facts, propositions, and the correspondence between them. With these theories in hand, he then offers original solutions to the toughest objections facing correspondence theorists. Addressing the Problem of Funny Facts, Liar Parad…Read more
  •  71
    About Aboutness
    Metaphysica 15 (1). 2014.
  •  142
    Time without Creation?
    Faith and Philosophy 31 (4): 401-411. 2014.
    We introduce three arguments for the thesis that time cannot exist prior to an original creation event. In the first argument, we seek to show that if time doesn’t depend upon creation, then time is infinite in the backwards direction, which is incompatible with arguments for a finite past. In the second and third arguments, we allow for the possibility of backwards-infinite time but argue that God could not have a sufficiently good reason to refrain from creating for infinitely many moments—eit…Read more
  •  130
    A randomness‐based theodicy for evolutionary evils
    with Jordan Wessling
    Zygon 52 (4): 984-1004. 2017.
    We develop and knit together several theodicies in order to find a more complete picture of why certain forms of animal suffering might be permitted by a perfect being. We focus on an especially potent form of the problem of evil, which arises from considering why a perfectly good, wise, and powerful God might use evolutionary mechanisms that predictably result in so much animal suffering and loss of life. There are many existing theodicies on the market, and although they offer helpful resource…Read more
  •  48
    Problems with plurals
    Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 9. 2015.
    Plural quantification, often used to evade Russell paradoxes, will lead back to them, given certain assumptions about propositions. This chapter provides a more generalized version of the path to paradox by showing that any theory that makes possible the construction of an appropriate packaging relation falls prey to a Russell paradox. It gives examples of widely-held metaphysical theories that require such a relation. It shows that the paradoxes that can result from plural quantification are mo…Read more
  •  248
    Could God Fail to Exist?
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 8 (3): 159-177. 2016.
    I apply developments in modal reasoning to the question of whether God has necessary existence. My larger task is to assess the main reasons to think that God is not a metaphysically necessary being. I consider Hume’s conceivability-based argument, and then I pay attention to more recent arguments, including Swinburne’s neo-Humean argument and the subtraction argument. I show that such arguments face a ‘parity’ problem, since the very reasoning that gets them off the ground also launches paralle…Read more
  •  117
    Building thoughts from dust: a Cantorian puzzle
    Synthese 192 (2): 393-404. 2015.
    I bring to light a set-theoretic reason to think that there are more mental properties than shapes, sizes, masses, and other characteristically “physical” properties. I make use of a couple counting principles. One principle, backed by a Cantorian-style argument, is that pluralities outnumber particulars: that is, there is a distinct plurality of particulars for each particular, but not vice versa. The other is a principle by which we may coherently identify distinct mental properties in terms o…Read more
  •  670
    Review of God and Ultimate Origins (review)
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 10 (1): 189-194. 2018.
  •  171
    On the Value of Freedom To Do Evil
    Faith and Philosophy 30 (4): 418-428. 2013.
    Theists typically think the freedom to choose between right and wrong is a great good . Yet, they also typically think that the very best being—God—and inhabitants of the very best place—heaven—lack this kind of freedom. The question arises: if freedom to choose evil is so good, then why is it absent from the best being and the best place? I discuss articulations of this question in the literature and point out drawbacks of answers that have been proposed. I then propose a new answer by showing …Read more
  •  170
    Presentists may say goodbye to A-properties
    Analysis 72 (2): 270-276. 2012.
    Philosophers of time say that if presentism is true (i.e. if reality is comprised solely of presently existing things), then a complete description of reality must contain tensed terms, such as ‘was’, ‘presently is’ and ‘will be’. I counter this viewpoint by explaining how the presentist may de-tense our talk about times. I argue, furthermore, that, since the A-theory of time denies the success of any such de-tensing strategy, presentism is not a version of the A-theory – contrary to the popular…Read more
  •  66
    How Truth Relates to Reality
    American Philosophical Quarterly 50 (2): 167-180. 2013.
    Many people think that truth somehow depends upon the way things are. Yet, it has proven difficult to precisely explain the nature of this dependence. The most common view is that truth depends upon the way things are by corresponding to things. But this account relocates the difficulty: one now wonders what correspondence is. It is worth emphasizing that the question of how truth relates to reality is not only a question for correspondence theorists; theorists of all stripes may wonder how trut…Read more
  •  198
    From states of affairs to a necessary being
    Philosophical Studies 148 (2). 2010.
    I develop new paths to the existence of a concrete necessary being. These paths assume a metaphysical framework in which there are abstract states of affairs that can obtain or fail to obtain. One path begins with the following causal principle: necessarily, any contingent concrete object possibly has a cause. I mark out steps from that principle to a more complex causal principle and from there to the existence of a concrete necessary being. I offer a couple alternative causal principles and pa…Read more