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``Epistemic Value Monism"In John Greco (ed.), Ernest Sosa: And His Critics, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 190-198. 2004.
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Faith and ReasonIn Herman Cappelen, Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology, Oxford University Press. 2016.This article examines the potential conflict between faith and reason, with emphasis on the relation between beliefs arising from revelation and beliefs arising from reason. It analyses the reasonableness or unreasonableness of faith, focusing on the conditions that make believing what one is told reasonable, or unreasonable, and the sense of reasonable intended when applied to faith. In order to have a method for determining the reasonableness of a belief, it considers two kinds of epistemic re…Read more
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``Omniscience, Time, and Freedom"In William Mann (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Religion, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 3-26. 2004.
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Foreknowledge, Causal Relations, and Subjunctive ConditionalsIn The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, Oxford University Press. 1991.It is often thought that physical laws just are generalized subjunctive conditionals expressing relations between physical events. Metaphysical laws, on the other hand, seem to be more than the subjunctive conditionals grounded in them. This makes it much more difficult to give a positive account of the causal relations between nomically equivalent events that are related by metaphysical laws. No positive solution to the divine foreknowledge dilemma can be given until a very comprehensive explan…Read more
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Two More Solutions of My OwnIn The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, Oxford University Press. 1991.This chapter proposes two more solutions to the dilemma of divine foreknowledge and argues that they solve both the Accidental Necessity Version of the dilemma and what is termed the Timeless Knowledge Dilemma. It revisits the argument against free will from accidental necessity, which includes the statement “If when I bring about an act I cannot do otherwise, I do not bring it about freely.” It proposes a solution that denies this proposition. It asserts that even if all of a person's acts are …Read more
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1The Boethian SolutionIn The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, Oxford University Press. 1991.In the previous chapter, it was argued that the Accidental Necessity Version of the divine foreknowledge dilemma is very strong. In addition, there is the problem of the Causal Necessity Version. This chapter examines one classic response that would solve the differences between both of these. The move comes from Boethius and Saint Thomas Aquinas, but it has roots in the writing of Proclus and Ammonius. This is the claim that God does not have beliefs in time at all. The strongest forms of the f…Read more
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The Ockhamist SolutionIn The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, Oxford University Press. 1991.Perhaps the most widely discussed solution to the divine foreknowledge dilemma in recent years is the Ockhamist solution. Many variations of it have been proposed, and some are probably not very close to the original ntentions of William of Ockham. This chapter considers a solution which is Ockhamist in spirit as it takes accidental necessity seriously and at least initially identifies it with the necessity of the past. It assumes that God exists in time, and also denies that God's beliefs are a…Read more
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The Foreknowledge DilemmasIn The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, Oxford University Press. 1991.The problem of divine foreknowledge forces the religious person to give up one of a pair of beliefs both of which are central to Christian practice. These beliefs are, first, that God has infallibly true beliefs about everything that will happen in the future, and second, that human beings have free will in a sense of the “free” is something that is incompatible with determinism. A strong form of the dilemma of foreknowledge can be generated from just two properties that are consequences of esse…Read more
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The Molinist SolutionIn The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, Oxford University Press. 1991.Perhaps the most ingenious solution to the dilemma of divine foreknowledge and freedom was devised by the 16th-century Jesuit philosopher, Luis de Molina, in his theory of scientia media, or middle knowledge. Middle knowledge is said to be the knowledge of what any possible free creature would freely choose in any possible circumstance. Molina called it “middle” knowledge because it stands midway between God's natural knowledge, or his knowledge of what is necessary and possible, and God's free …Read more
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39Omnisubjectivity: An Essay on God and SubjectivityOxford University Press. 2023.Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski here explains and defends the idea that the God of the monotheistic religions does not only know all objective facts, but he also perfectly grasps the conscious states of all conscious beings from their own point of view. She calls that property omnisubjectivity. God not only knows that you are in pain, for instance, but is present in your pain, grasping your pain the way you grasp it. The same point applies to every feeling, every belief, every thought, every desire you…Read more
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4On epistemologyWadsworth, Cengage Learning. 2008.What is knowledge? Why do we want it? Is knowledge possible? How do we get it? What about other epistemic values like understanding and certainty? Why are so many epistemologists worried about luck? In ON EPISTEMOLOGY Linda Zagzebski situates epistemological questions within the broader framework of what we care about and why we care about it. Questions of value shape all of the above questions and explain some significant philosophical trends: the obsession with answering the skeptic, the fligh…Read more
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22Sterba's Logical Problem of Evil and the Metaphysics of MoralsInternational Journal of Applied Philosophy 37 (1): 131-139. 2023.
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47The Dilemma of Freedom and ForeknowledgeOup Usa. 1991.This original analysis examines the three leading traditional solutions to the dilemma of divine foreknowledge and human free will--those arising from Boethius, from Ockham, and from Molina. Though all three solutions are rejected in their best-known forms, three new solutions are proposed, and Zagzebski concludes that divine foreknowledge is compatible with human freedom. The discussion includes the relation between the foreknowledge dilemma and problems about the nature of time and the causal …Read more
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560Weighing evils: the C. S. Lewis approachInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 62 (2): 81-88. 2007.It is often argued that the great quantity of evil in our world makes God’s existence less likely than a lesser quantity would, and this, presumably, because the probability that some evils are gratuitous increases as the overall quantity of evil increases. Often, an additive approach to quantifying evil is employed in such arguments. In this paper, we examine C. S. Lewis’ objection to the additive approach, arguing that although he is correct to reject this approach, there is a sense in which h…Read more
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135Readings in philosophy of religion: ancient to contemporary (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2009.This anthology offers a comprehensive historical introduction to the central questions of philosophy of religion. Approximately two-thirds of the selections are from ancient, medieval, and modern sources, helping students to understand and engage the rich traditions of reflection on these timeless questions. The remaining contemporary readings introduce students to the more recent developments in the field. Each of the thematically arranged sections begins with an editor's introduction to clarif…Read more
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100Virtue EthicsThink 22 (63): 15-21. 2023.Is ethics all about rights and duties, or is it about living a happy, flourishing life? For millennia in the West, ethics was about the way to flourish as an individual and a community. The qualities that enable people to live that way are the virtues, and that style of ethics is called Virtue Ethics. In the early modern period, Virtue Ethics went out of fashion and ethics began to focus on right and duties, where rights and duties are demands made against others. In this article I argue that th…Read more
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1Omniscience, Time, and FreedomIn William Mann (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Religion, Wiley-blackwell. 2004.
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4Foreknowledge and Human FreedomIn Charles Taliaferro & Philip L. Quinn (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Wiley-blackwell. 1997.This chapter contains sections titled: Works cited Additional recommended readings.
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29Zagzebski on JustificationVirtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of KnowledgePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (1): 191. 2000.
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57The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God’s AssistancePhilosophical Review 108 (2): 291. 1999.The title of Hare’s book refers to the gap between the demand that morality places on us and our natural capacity to live by it. Such a gap is paradoxical if we accept the “‘ought’ implies ‘can”’ principle. The solution, Hare argues, is that the gap is filled by the Christian God. So we ought to be moral and can do so—with divine assistance. Hare’s statement and defense of the existence of the gap combines a rigorously Kantian notion of the moral demand with a rigorously Calvinist notion of huma…Read more
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33Exemplarist virtue theoryIn Heather D. Battaly (ed.), Virtue and Vice, Moral and Epistemic, Wiley-blackwell. 2010.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction My Theory of Moral Theory The Structure of Some Moral Theories Exemplarism A Comprehensive Exemplarist Virtue Theory References.
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17Intersubjective reasons and the transmission of religious knowledgeSynthese 200 (6). 2022.Greco argues that knowledge by transmission involves joint agency whose norms are governed by the quality of the social relations in the transmission, and these norms differ from the norms generating knowledge in the source. This approach to the transmission of knowledge allows Greco to respond to three common arguments against the rationality of religious belief on testimony: the argument against belief in miracles, the argument from luck, and the argument from peer disagreement. I agree with G…Read more
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Emotional self-trustIn Sabine Roeser & Cain Samuel Todd (eds.), Emotion and Value, Oxford University Press Uk. 2014.
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The search for the source of epistemic goodIn Jeremy Fantl, Matthew McGrath & Ernest Sosa (eds.), Contemporary epistemology: an anthology, Wiley. 2019.
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11The Two Greatest Ideas: How Our Grasp of the Universe and Our Minds Changed EverythingPrinceton University Press. 2021.Two simple yet tremendously powerful ideas that shaped virtually every aspect of civilization This book is a breathtaking examination of the two greatest ideas in human history. The first is the idea that the human mind can grasp the universe. The second is the idea that the human mind can grasp itself. Acclaimed philosopher Linda Zagzebski shows how the first unleashed a cultural awakening that swept across the world in the first millennium BCE, giving birth to philosophy, mathematics, science,…Read more
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85Epistemic Values: Collected Papers in EpistemologyOup Usa. 2020.This volume collects the most influential essays of philosopher Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, one of the most distinguished thinkers working in epistemology today, particularly where the theory of knowledge meets ethics and the philosophy of religion. The volume is organized into six key topics in epistemology: knowledge and understanding, intellectual virtue, epistemic value, virtue in religious epistemology, intellectual autonomy and authority, and skepticism and the Gettier problem.
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404. Individual Essence and the CreationIn Thomas V. Morris (ed.), Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism, Cornell University Press. pp. 119-144. 1988.