University of Notre Dame
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1985
Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
  •  27
    Redeeming the Time
    The Personalist Forum 11 (1): 17-32. 1995.
    I borrow an idea from the fiction of C. S. Lewis that future outcomes may affect the value of past events. I then defend this idea via the concept of a “temporal whole”, and show its promise as a partial theodicy and its resonance with both Christian theism and a robust personalism.
  •  17
    Absolutism, Utilitarianism and Agent-Relative Constraints
    International Philosophical Quarterly 62 (2): 243-252. 2022.
    Absolutism—the idea that some kinds of acts are absolutely wrong and must never be done—plays an important role in medical ethics. Nicholas Denyer has defended it from some influential consequentialist critics who have alleged that absolutism is committed to “agent-relative constraints” and therefore intolerably complex and messy. Denyer ingeniously argues that, if there are problems with agent-relative constraints, then they are problems for consequentialism, since it contains agent-relative co…Read more
  •  6
    The Contingency Cosmological Argument
    In Michael Bruce & Steven Barbone (eds.), Just the Arguments, Wiley‐blackwell. 2011.
    A brief synopsis of the "contingency" version of the cosmological argument for theism, as developed by Samuel Clarke and explained/examined by William Rowe.
  •  6
    Is/Ought Fallacy
    In Robert Arp, Steven Barbone & Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad Arguments, Wiley. 2018.
    This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called the 'is/ought fallacy (IOF)'. Some philosophers conclude that the IOF is not a logical problem but an epistemological one, meaning that even if inferences like this one are logically valid, they cannot be used epistemologically to warrant anyone's real‐life moral beliefs. Arguments do not warrant their conclusions unless the premises of those arguments are themselves warranted, and in the real world, they say, no on…Read more
  •  32
    Just Business
    with Elaine Sternberg
    Philosophical Quarterly 46 (185): 554. 1996.
  •  6
    Bald Lies
    Cogito 10 (3): 235-237. 1996.
    It is wrong to deceive people, to get them to believe falsehoods. At least some times, when I wear a wig, I attempt to deceive people about how much hair I have. Why is this not deception? Why is this not wrong? These are the questions I explore.
  •  33
    Bald Lies
    Cogito 10 (3): 235-237. 1996.
    I present a short, informal vignette that poses the question of whether altering one's appearance by wearing a wig counts as deception, since in both cases one (apparently) tries to bring about false beliefs in others. The bald-headed wig-wearer tries to get others to believe falsely that he has a thick head of hair. If deception is generally wrong, why isn't wig-wearing wrong also?
  •  2
    Could there be an Atheistic Political Theology?
    Forum Philosophicum: International Journal for Philosophy 26 (2): 303-327. 2021.
    “Only a God can save us.” So says Martin Heidegger in his pessimistic assessment of merely human philosophy’s ability to change the world. The thought is not unique to Heidegger: another thinker who arrived at a similar conclusion was Heidegger’s contemporary and sometime admirer, Carl Schmitt, in his idea of “political theology.” I take up Schmitt’s version of the idea and use it to examine the New Atheism, a relatively recent polemical critique of religion by an informal coalition of English-s…Read more
  •  168
    What if human joy went on endlessly? Suppose, for example, that each human generation were followed by another, or that the Western religions are right when they teach that each human being lives eternally after death. If any such possibility is true in the actual world, then an agent might sometimes be so situated that more than one course of action would produce an infinite amount of utility. Deciding whether to have a child born this year rather than next is a situation wherein an agent may f…Read more
  •  10
    Knowledge and Evidence (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 43 (171): 242-244. 1993.
  •  6
    Ethical Formation (review)
    Mind 113 (449): 189-192. 2004.
    A critical review of Sabina Lovibond's book Ethical Formation (2004).
  •  54
    Intuitionism and conservatism
    Metaphilosophy 21 (3): 282-293. 1990.
    I define ethical intuitionism as the view that it is appropriate to appeal to inferentially unsupported moral beliefs in the course of moral reasoning. I mention four common objections to this view, including the view that all such appeals to intuition make ethical theory politically and noetically conservative. I defend intuitionism from versions of this criticism expressed by R.B. Brandt, R.M. Hare and Richard Miller.
  •  43
    Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics
    Philosophical Books 31 (3): 169-171. 1990.
  •  4
    Must we argue?
    The Philosophers' Magazine 26 41-42. 2004.
  •  1
    God, Reason and Theistic Proofs (review)
    Religious Studies 35 (1): 99-111. 1999.
  •  2
    Ethical Formation (review)
    Mind 113 (449): 189-192. 2004.
  •  27
    Temporal Wholes and the Problem of Evil
    Religious Studies 29 (3). 1993.
    I borrow an idea from the fiction of C. S. Lewis that future outcomes may affect the value of past events, defend this idea via the concept of a 'temporal whole' and show its promise as a part of a theodicy and its resonance with Christian theism.
  •  28
    Christian theism and moral philosophy (edited book)
    with Michael D. Beaty and Carlton D. Fisher
    Mercer University Press. 1998.
    These essays exhibit explanation and argument regarding some of the possible answers to these fundamental questions in moral philosophy.
  •  105
    The Morality of a Free Market for Transplant Organs
    Public Affairs Quarterly 5 (1): 63-79. 1991.
    There is a world-wide shortage of kidneys for transplantation. Many people will have to endure lengthy and unpleasant dialysis treatments, or die before an organ becomes available. Given this chronic shortage, some doctors and health economists have proposed offering financial incentives to potential donors to increase the supply of transplantable organs. In this paper, I explore objections to the practice of buying and selling organs from the point of view 1) justice, 2) beneficence and 3) …Read more
  •  55
    Must we argue?
    The Philosophers' Magazine 26 (26): 41-42. 2004.
    Analytic philosophers often claim that the giving and criticizing of deductive arguments is the main or only business of philosophy. I argue that this is mistaken and show analytic philosophers also use formal schemas, distinctions, examples, and analogies so as to make some aspect of reality manifest. That is, some analytic philosophers sometimes simply try to ‘tell it like it is’. This ‘method of descriptive manifestation’ is less commonly recognized than it should be given its divergence from…Read more
  •  13
    Introduction
    Philosophical Papers 40 (3): 279-283. 2011.
    Philosophical Papers, Volume 40, Issue 3, Page 279-283, November 2011
  •  59
    What justification could not be
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 10 (3). 2002.
    I begin by asking the meta-epistemological question, 'What is justification?', analogous to the meta-ethical question, 'What is rightness?' I introduce the possibility of non-cognitivist, naturalist, non-naturalist, and eliminativist answers in meta-epistemology,corresponding to those in meta-ethics. I devote special attention to the naturalistic hypothesis that epistemic justification is identical to probability, showing its antecedent plausibility. I argue that despite this plausibility, justi…Read more
  •  133
    A problem for conservatism
    Analysis 69 (4): 620-630. 2009.
    I present a problem for a prominent kind of conservatism, viz., the combination of traditional moral & religious values, patriotic nationalism, and libertarian capitalism. The problem is that these elements sometimes conflict. In particular, I show how libertarian capitalism and patriotic nationalism conflict via a scenario in which the thing that libertarian capitalists love – unregulated market activity – threatens what American patriots love – a strong, independent America. Unrestricted li…Read more
  •  44
    The Clarke/Rowe version of the Cosmological Argument is sound only if the Principle of Sufficient Reason is true, but many philosophers, including Rowe, think that there is not adequate evidence for the principle of sufficient reason. I argue that there may be indirect evidence for PSR on the grounds that if we do not accept it, we lose our best justification for an important principle of metaethics, namely, the Principle of Universalizability. To show this, I argue that all the other justificat…Read more
  •  68
    Walter Sinnott-Armstrong's recent defense of moral skepticism raises the debate to a new level, but I argue that it is unsatisfactory because of problems with its assumption of global skepticism, with its use of the Skeptical Hypothesis Argument, and with its use of the idea of contrast classes and the correlative distinction between "everyday" justification and "philosophical" justification. I draw on Chisholm's treatment of the Problem of the Criterion to show that my claim that I know that, …Read more
  •  43
    Bertrand Russell famously disparaged Thomas Aquinas as having ‘little of the true philosophic spirit’, because ‘he does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead.’ Like many of Russell's pronouncements, this is breathtakingly supercilious and unfair. Still, even an enthusiastic admirer of Aquinas may worry that there is something in it, that there is something wrong with religious ‘commitments’ in philosophy. I examine Russell's objection by comparing stan…Read more
  •  19
    More Bad News For The Logical Autonomy of Ethics
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (2): 203-216. 2007.
    Since the time of Hume, many philosophers have thought it impossible to deduce an ‘Ought’ from an ‘Is,’ or in general to deduce ‘ethical sentences’ from purely ‘factual sentences.’ This is the thesis of the logical autonomy of ethics. I consider a more recent argument by Toomas Karmo in support of the autonomism, but show its limitations in the context of justification skepticism about ethics.