•  3903
    What Quantum Mechanics Doesn't Show
    Teaching Philosophy 39 (2): 163-176. 2016.
    Students often invoke quantum mechanics in class or papers to make philosophical points. This tendency has been encouraged by pop culture influences like the film What the Bleep do We Know? There is little merit to most of these putative implications. However, it is difficult for philosophy teachers unfamiliar with quantum mechanics to handle these supposed implications in a clear and careful way. This paper is a philosophy of science version of MythBusters. We offer a brief primer on the nature…Read more
  •  879
    Scepticism about the argument from divine hiddenness
    with Philip Swenson
    Religious Studies 48 (2). 2012.
    Some philosophers have argued that the paucity of evidence for theism — along with basic assumptions about God's nature — is ipso facto evidence for atheism. The resulting argument has come to be known as the argument from divine hiddenness. Theists have challenged both the major and minor premises of the argument by offering defences. However, all of the major, contemporary defences are failures. What unites these failures is instructive: each is implausible given other commitments shared by ev…Read more
  •  731
    Personhood, Vagueness and Abortion
    Australian Journal of Professional and Applied Ethics 9 (1). 2007.
    In a recent paper, Lee Kerckhove and Sara Waller (hereafter K & W) argue that the concept of personhood is irrelevant for the abortion debate.1 Surprisingly, this irrelevance is due merely to the fact that the predicate ‘being a person’ — hereafter ‘personhood’ — is inherently vague. This vagueness, they argue, reduces ‘personhood’ to incoherency and disqualifies the notion from being a useful moral concept. In other words, if ‘personhood’ isn’t a precise notion with well-defined boundaries, th…Read more
  •  428
    The Epistemology of Genealogies
    In Hans van Eyghen, Rik Peels & Gijsbert van den Brink (eds.), New Developments in the Cognitive Science of Religion - The Rationality of Religious Belief, Springer. pp. 157-169. 2018.
    Beliefs have genealogies. Can tracing a belief’s genealogy illuminate the epistemic quality of the belief? This paper sets out a general epistemology of genealogies. As it turns out, genealogies for beliefs come in two sorts: those that trace a belief to some mental event that doubles as evidence for the belief and those that do not. The former have the potential to undercut the belief, rebut the belief, or—importantly—both. The latter have the potential to reinforce the belief or rebut the beli…Read more
  •  424
    Process Reliabilism, Virtue Reliabilism, and the Value of Knowledge
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 45 (2): 289-302. 2010.
    The value problem for knowledge is the problem of explaining why knowledge is cognitively more valuable than mere true belief. If an account of the nature of knowledge is unable to solve the value problem for knowledge, this provides a pro tanto reason to reject that account. Recent literature argues that process reliabilism is unable to solve the value problem because it succumbs to an objection known as the swamping objection. Virtue reliabilism (i.e., agent reliabilism), on the other hand, is…Read more
  •  400
    The Case for Preserving Bears Ears
    Ethics, Policy and Environment 21 (1): 48-51. 2018.
    In December of 2017, President Trump reduced the size of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante Monuments by 2 million acres. Conservatives rejoiced, and progressives railed. Yet neither side has clearly identified the moral facets of the situation. The crucial moral question is this: How ought public property be regulated to protect landscapes with cultural significance? We offer criteria for determining when something has cultural value and argue that the moral merits of the present case tur…Read more
  •  381
    Counterpart and Appreciation Theodicies
    In Justin P. McBrayer & Daniel Howard-Snyder (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to The Problem of Evil, Wiley. 2014.
    One popular theodicy says that good can’t exist without evil, and so God must allow evil in order to allow good. Call this the counterpart theodicy. The counterpart theodicy relies on a metaphysical claim about existence—good cannot exist without evil. A second popular theodicy says that we would be unable to know/recognize/appreciate the good without evil, and so God is forced to allow evil in order to allow for such appreciation. Call this the appreciation theodicy. The appreciation theod…Read more
  •  344
    A limited defense of moral perception
    Philosophical Studies 149 (3). 2010.
    One popular reason for rejecting moral realism is the lack of a plausible epistemology that explains how we come to know moral facts. Recently, a number of philosophers have insisted that it is possible to have moral knowledge in a very straightforward way—by perception. However, there is a significant objection to the possibility of moral perception: it does not seem that we could have a perceptual experience that represents a moral property, but a necessary condition for coming to know that X …Read more
  •  343
    Skeptical theism
    Philosophy Compass 5 (7): 611-623. 2010.
    Most a posteriori arguments against the existence of God take the following form: (1) If God exists, the world would not be like this (where 'this' picks out some feature of the world like the existence of evil, etc.) (2) But the world is like this . (3) Therefore, God does not exist. Skeptical theists are theists who are skeptical of our ability to make judgments of the sort expressed by premise (1). According to skeptical theism, if there were a God, it is likely that he would have reasons for…Read more
  •  205
    Moral perception and the causal objection
    Ratio 23 (3): 291-307. 2010.
    One of the primary motivations behind moral anti-realism is a deep-rooted scepticism about moral knowledge. Moral realists attempt counter this worry by sketching a plausible moral epistemology. One of the most radical proposals in the recent literature is that we know moral facts by perception – we can literally see that an action is wrong, etc. A serious objection to moral perception is the causal objection. It is widely conceded that perception requires a causal connection between the perceiv…Read more
  •  178
    Are skeptical theists really skeptics? Sometimes yes and sometimes no
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 72 (1): 3-16. 2012.
    Skeptical theism is the view that God exists but, given our cognitive limitations, the fact that we cannot see a compensating good for some instance of evil is not a reason to think that there is no such good. Hence, we are not justified in concluding that any actual instance of evil is gratuitous, thus undercutting the evidential argument from evil for atheism. This paper focuses on the epistemic role of context and contrast classes to advance the debate over skeptical theism in two ways. First…Read more
  •  126
    Do Plants Feel Pain?
    Disputatio 12 (56): 71-98. 2020.
    Many people are attracted to the idea that plants experience phenomenal conscious states like pain, sensory awareness, or emotions like fear. If true, this would have wide-ranging moral implications for human behavior, including land development, farming, vegetarianism, and more. Determining whether plants have minds relies on the work of both empirical disciplines and philosophy. Epistemology should settle the standards for evidence of other minds, and science …Read more
  •  124
    Christianity, homosexual behavior, and sexism
    Think 11 (31): 47-63. 2012.
  •  116
    The non-identity problem is the problem of grounding moral wrongdoing in cases in which an action affects who will exist in the future. Consider a woman who intentionally conceives while on medication that is harmful for a fetus. If the resulting child is disabled as a result of the medication, what makes the woman's action morally wrong? I argue that an explanation in terms of harmful rights violations fails, and I focus on Peter Markie's recent rights-based defense. Markie's analysis rests on …Read more
  •  115
    Cornea and Inductive Evidence
    Faith and Philosophy 26 (1): 77-86. 2009.
    One of the primary tools in the theist’s defense against “noseeum” arguments from evil is an epistemic principle concerning the Conditions Of ReasoNableEpistemic Access (CORNEA) which places an important restriction on what counts as evidence. However, CORNEA is false because it places too strong acondition on what counts as inductive evidence. If CORNEA is true, we lack evidence for a great many of our inductive beliefs. This is because CORNEA amounts to a sensitivity constraint on evidence, an…Read more
  •  88
    The Wager Renewed: Believing in God is Good for You (review)
    Science, Religion and Culture 1 (3): 130. 2014.
    Not all of our reasons for belief are epistemic in nature. Some of our reasons for belief are prudential in the sense that believing a certain thing advances our personal goals. When it comes to belief in God, the most famous formulation of a prudential reason for belief is Pascal’s Wager. And although Pascal’s Wager fails, its failure is instructive. Pascal’s Wager fails because it relies on unjustified assumptions about what happens in the afterlife to those who believe in God verses those who…Read more
  •  83
    A Phenomenal Defense of Reflective Equilibrium
    with Weston Mudge Ellis
    Journal of Philosophical Research 43 1-12. 2019.
    The method of reflective equilibrium starts with a set of initial judgments about some subject matter and refines that set to arrive at an improved philosophical worldview. However, the method faces two, trenchant objections. The Garbage-In, Garbage-Out Objection argues that reflective equilibrium fails because it has no principled reason to rely on some inputs to the method rather than others and putting garbage-in assures you of getting garbage-out. The Circularity Objection argues that reflec…Read more
  •  71
    The Epistemic Benefits of Ideological Diversity
    Acta Analytica 39 (4): 611-626. 2024.
    We carry out most of our epistemic projects as groups. Networks of individuals work together to identify questions, accumulate evidence, and settle on answers that lie beyond the ken of individual knowers. This is particularly important for controversial issues. And when it comes to ideologically contested issues, groups that are ideologically diverse in their membership are epistemically superior to groups that are ideologically homogenous. That’s because ideologically diverse groups are better…Read more
  •  71
    Caveat Auditor: Epistemic Trust and Conflicts of Interest
    Social Epistemology 38 (3): 290-301. 2024.
    To place epistemic trust in someone is to take their word for something. Much of the existing literature on epistemic trust concerns epistemic authorities. But as important as authority is to epistemic trust, it pales in comparison to the epistemic importance of conflicts of interests. In economics, we say that buyers shouldn’t take the word of sellers. Caveat emptor: let the buyer beware. I argue for a similar principle in epistemology. Caveat auditor: let the hearer beware. Others often have i…Read more
  •  60
    Perceiving God
    Southwest Philosophy Review 23 (1): 17-25. 2007.
    I examine John Pollock's 2005 account of epistemic direct realism and argue that his account implies that at least some religious beliefs are both perceptual and justified. Whether this is a virtue or a vice of Pollock's direct realism depends on one's religious epistemology. I close by dismissing a number of objections to the expansion of direct realism to religious belief.
  •  56
    The world is swimming in misinformation. Conflicting messages bombard us every day with news on everything from politics and world events to investments and alternative health. The daily paper, nightly news, websites, and social media each compete for our attention and each often insist on a different version of the facts. Inevitably, we have questions: Who is telling the truth? How would we know? How did we get here? What can we do?  Beyond Fake News answers these and other queries. It offers a…Read more
  •  55
    Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief
    Analysis 76 (2): 223-231. 2016.
    Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief is a collection of new papers that explores epistemic challenges to moral and religious belief. In particular, the collection investigates whether the epistemic status of moral or religious beliefs is impinged upon in some way by recent advancements in understanding about disagreement or evolution. Is it reasonable to continue to hold my moral or religious beliefs when so many other intelligent people disagree with me? Is it reasonable to continue to hold…Read more
  •  50
    The X-claim argument against religious belief offers nothing new
    with Weston Ellis
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 84 (2): 223-232. 2018.
    Stephen Law has recently offered an argument against the rationality of certain religious beliefs that he calls the X-claim argument against religious beliefs. The argument purports to show that it is irrational to believe in the existence of extraordinary beings associated with religions. However, the X-claim argument is beset by certain ambiguities that, once resolved, leave the argument undifferentiated from two other common objections to the rationality of religious belief: the objection fro…Read more
  •  47
    John Corvino, "What’s Wrong With Homosexuality?" (review)
    Social Theory and Practice 40 (1): 159-165. 2014.
  •  47
    The Problem of Evil & Sceptical Theism
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 81 45-54. 2017.
    The problem of evil is the problem of reconciling the existence of a perfect God with the existence of horrible things in the world. Many take this problem as a convincing reason to be an atheist. But others think that the problem can be solved. One prominent solution is called ‘sceptical theism’. A sceptical theist is someone who believes in God but thinks that the problem of evil is not a real problem since humans are unable to see whether the horrible things in our world are truly pointless o…Read more
  •  45
    This volume has a two-fold purpose: reference and research. As a work of reference, it is designed to provide accessible, objective, and accurate summaries of contemporary developments within the problem of evil. As a work of research, it is designed to advance the dialectic within the problem of evil by offering novel insights, criticisms and responses from top scholars in the field. As such, the volume will serve as a guide to both specialists within the philosophy of religion and nonspecia…Read more
  •  36
    Evidential Arguments from Evil and the "Seeability" of Compensating Goods
    Auslegung. A Journal of Philosophy Lawrence, Kans 27 (1): 17-22. 2004.
    William Rowe has offered one of the most simple and convincing evidential arguments from evil by arguing that the existence of gratuitous evil in our world serves as strong evidence against the claim that God exists. Stephen J. Wykstra attempts to defeat this evidential argument from evil by denying the plausibility of Rowe’s claim that there are gratuitous evils in the world. Wykstra sets up an epistemological test that he refers to as CORNEA, and he proceeds to demonstrate that Rowe’s infere…Read more
  •  34
    Progressive atheism: how moral evolution changes the god debate
    with Egan Wynne
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 89 (1): 91-97. 2021.
    Professor Schellenberg thinks that recent progress in our moral thinking about what counts as a good person and what counts as morally permissible action strengthen the case for atheism. Moral evolution ought to lead to religious evolution. We don’t think the maneuver works. Despite being a clear and accessible piece of philosophy that makes some important contributions to the literature, the central move of the book falls short. In that sense, Progressive Atheism makes little progress. Our rev…Read more
  •  32
    Does the fact that other people believe something give me a reason to believe it, too? Yes, and this epistemic fact is explained by the principle of common consent. PCC says that if S knows that others believe that P, then this fact gives S a reason to believe that P. Despite the fact that most logic texts file the appeal to the majority under the category of a fallacy, the principle of common consent is true. The principle can be defended by an appeal to the interpretive dilemma, a lesson from …Read more