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43Contradictory Christ Without Contradictory ChristologyIn Jonathan Rutledge (ed.), Paradox and Contradiction in Theology, Routledge Academic. pp. 66-78. 2023.In this chapter, I grant Jc Beall’s assertion that the best understanding of the doctrine of the incarnation posits that Christ is a contradictory being, in the sense that it has him satisfying complementary pairs of predicates. I also argue, however, that by attending to a distinction between predicate negation and sentence negation, this view can be upheld without positing any classical logical contradictions. I argue that the resulting Christological view has several advantages over Beall’s…Read more
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248The Fine-Tuning Argument Against the MultiversePhilosophical Quarterly. forthcoming.It is commonly argued that the fact that our universe is fine-tuned for life favors both a design hypothesis as well as a non-teleological multiverse hypothesis. The claim that the fine-tuning of this universe supports a non-teleological multiverse hypothesis has been forcefully challenged however by Ian Hacking and Roger White. In this paper we take this challenge even further by arguing that if it succeeds, then not only does the fine-tuning of this universe fail to support a multiverse hypo…Read more
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368. Free Will and ProvidenceIn Tyron Goldschmidt & Daniel Rynolds (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Jewish Philosophy, Routledge. forthcoming.Many Jews, Christians, and Muslims adhere to the following three claims: First, God has comprehensive knowledge of all that is, was, and will be. Second, God makes use of this knowledge in order to exercise providential control over the world. Third, human beings have free will. This combination of views raises philosophical puzzles. My aim in this chapter is to explore how historic Jewish reflection on these puzzles relates to treatment of them by contemporary analytic philosophers.
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404An Explanationist Defense of Proper FunctionalismIn Luis R. G. Oliveira (ed.), Externalism about Knowledge, Oxford University Press. 2023.In this chapter, we defend an explanationist version of proper functionalism. After explaining proper functionalism’s initial appeal, we note two major objections to proper functionalism: creatures with no design plan who appear to have knowledge (Swampman) and creatures with malfunctions that increase reliability. We then note how proper functionalism needs to be clarified because there are cases of what we call warrant-compatible malfunction. We then formulate our own view: explanationist p…Read more
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1476Multi‐Peer Disagreement and the Preface ParadoxRatio 29 (1): 29-41. 2014.The problem of multi-peer disagreement concerns the reasonable response to a situation in which you believe P1 … Pn and disagree with a group of ‘epistemic peers’ of yours, who believe ∼P1 … ∼Pn, respectively. However, the problem of multi-peer disagreement is a variant on the preface paradox; because of this the problem poses no challenge to the so-called ‘steadfast view’ in the epistemology of disagreement, on which it is sometimes reasonable to believe P in the face of peer disagreement about…Read more
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432Mathematical surrealism as an alternative to easy-road fictionalismPhilosophical Studies 177 (10): 2815-2835. 2020.Easy-road mathematical fictionalists grant for the sake of argument that quantification over mathematical entities is indispensable to some of our best scientific theories and explanations. Even so they maintain we can accept those theories and explanations, without believing their mathematical components, provided we believe the concrete world is intrinsically as it needs to be for those components to be true. Those I refer to as “mathematical surrealists” by contrast appeal to facts about the …Read more
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404Mathematical application and the no confirmation thesisAnalysis 80 (1): 11-20. 2020.Some proponents of the indispensability argument for mathematical realism maintain that the empirical evidence that confirms our best scientific theories and explanations also confirms their pure mathematical components. I show that the falsity of this view follows from three highly plausible theses, two of which concern the nature of mathematical application and the other the nature of empirical confirmation. The first is that the background mathematical theories suitable for use in science are…Read more
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496Why inference to the best explanation doesn’t secure empirical grounds for mathematical platonismSynthese 198 (1): 1-13. 2018.Proponents of the explanatory indispensability argument for mathematical platonism maintain that claims about mathematical entities play an essential explanatory role in some of our best scientific explanations. They infer that the existence of mathematical entities is supported by way of inference to the best explanation from empirical phenomena and therefore that there are the same sort of empirical grounds for believing in mathematical entities as there are for believing in concrete unobserva…Read more
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44In Defense of Conciliar Christology: A Philosophical Essay. By Timothy Pawl (review)American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 91 (3): 495-497. 2017.
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815The Coincidentalist Reply to the No-Miracles ArgumentErkenntnis 83 (5): 929-946. 2018.Proponents of the no-miracles argument contend that scientific realism is “the only philosophy that doesn’t make the success of science a miracle.” Bas van Fraassen argued, however, that the success of our best theories can be explained in Darwinian terms—by the fact they are survivors of a winnowing process in which unsuccessful theories are rejected. Critics of this selectionist explanation complain that while it may account for the fact we have chosen successful theories, it does not explain …Read more
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508Existentialism entails anti-haecceitismPhilosophical Studies 168 (2): 297-326. 2014.Existentialism concerning singular propositions is the thesis that singular propositions ontologically depend on the individuals they are directly about in such a way that necessarily, those propositions exist only if the individuals they are directly about exist. Haecceitism is the thesis that what non-qualitative facts there are fails to supervene on what purely qualitative facts there are. I argue that existentialism concerning singular propositions entails the denial of haecceitism and that …Read more
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664On the equivalence of Goodman’s and Hempel’s paradoxesStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 45 32-42. 2014.Historically, Nelson Goodman’s paradox involving the predicates ‘grue’ and ‘bleen’ has been taken to furnish a serious blow to Carl Hempel’s theory of confirmation in particular and to purely formal theories of confirmation in general. In this paper, I argue that Goodman’s paradox is no more serious of a threat to Hempel’s theory of confirmation than is Hempel’s own paradox of the ravens. I proceed by developing a suggestion from R. D. Rosenkrantz into an argument for the conclusion that these p…Read more
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45Gratuitous Suffering and the Problem of Evil: A Comprehensive Introduction, by Bryan FrancesFaith and Philosophy 31 (3): 348-352. 2014.
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865Proper functionalismIn Andrew Cullison (ed.), The Continuum Companion to Epistemology, Continuum. pp. 124. 2012.
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2258In Defense of Proper Functionalism: Cognitive Science Takes on SwampmanSynthese 193 (9). 2016.According to proper functionalist theories of warrant, a belief is warranted only if it is formed by cognitive faculties that are properly functioning according to a good, truth-aimed design plan, one that is often thought to be specified either by intentional design or by natural selection. A formidable challenge to proper functionalist theories is the Swampman objection, according to which there are scenarios involving creatures who have warranted beliefs but whose cognitive faculties are not …Read more
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352Some Considerations Concerning CORNEA, Global Skepticism, and TrustIn Trent Dougherty Justin McBrayer (ed.), Skeptical Theism: New Essays (Oxford University Press, . pp. 103-114. 2014.Skeptical theists have been charged with being committed to global skepticism. I consider this objection as it applies to a common variety of skeptical theism based on an epistemological principle that Stephen Wykstra labeled “CORNEA.” I show how a recent reformulation of CORNEA (provided by Stephen Wykstra and Timothy Perrine) affords us with a formal apparatus that allows us to see just where this objection gets a grip on that view, as well as what is needed for an adequate response. I conclud…Read more
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32Proper FunctionalismInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2016.Proper Functionalism ‘Proper Functionalism’ refers to a family of epistemological views according to which whether a belief was formed by way of properly functioning cognitive faculties plays a crucial role in whether it has a certain kind of positive epistemic status (such as being an item of knowledge, or a … Continue reading Proper Functionalism →
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1498Non-Moral Evil and the Free Will DefenseFaith and Philosophy 28 (4): 371-384. 2011.Paradigmatic examples of logical arguments from evil are attempts to establish that the following claims are inconsistent with one another: (1) God is omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good. (2) There is evil in the world. Alvin Plantinga’s free will defense resists such arguments by providing a positive case that (1) and (2) are consistent. A weakness in Plantinga’s free will defense, however, is that it does not show that theism is consistent with the proposition that there are non-moral evils…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Religion |
Philosophy of Mathematics |
Philosophy of Physical Science |