•  14
    Replies to Chudnoff, Lemos, and McCain
    International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 13 (2): 140-181. 2023.
    These replies to critical comments by Elijah Chudnoff, Noah Lemos, and Kevin McCain on my book Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition begin (after the Introduction) with Section 2, where I address a cluster of complaints from Chudnoff and McCain in connection with skepticism-supporting underdetermination principles. (These principles play a significant role in my portrayal of radical skepticism and in my Reidian response to it.) In Section 3, I reply to some objections from Lemos concerning …Read more
  •  14
    Précis of Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition
    International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 13 (2): 91-94. 2023.
    In this précis of Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition, I highlight the main lines of argument in the book and provide an outline of each of the book’s three parts. I explain how: Part I lays out an argument for radical skepticism and objects to one of the two main ways of responding to it; Part ii presents my version of the other main way of responding to that skeptical argument (a version that relies heavily on epistemic intuition); and Part iii defends epistemic intuition (and, thereby,…Read more
  •  14
    Précis
    Analysis 82 (4): 695-697. 2022.
    Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition (henceforward RS&EI)1 is about radical scepticism, which is extreme insofar as it involves serious doubts about l.
  •  20
    Replies to Nagel, Neta and Pritchard
    Analysis 82 (4): 725-737. 2022.
    I have long admired the work of Jennifer Nagel, Ram Neta and Duncan Pritchard. Each of them is an extremely impressive philosopher from whom I’ve learned much o.
  •  16
    Nathan Ballantyne, Knowing Our Limits
    Faith and Philosophy 37 (2): 242-248. 2020.
    This is a review of Nathan Ballantyne's book *Knowing our Limits*.
  •  37
    Modest Molinism
    TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology 8 (2). 2022.
    Molinism, which says that God has middle knowledge, offers one of the most impressive and popular ways of combining libertarian creaturely freedom with full providential control by God. The aim of this paper is to explain, motivate, and defend a heretofore overlooked version of Molinism that I call ‘Modest Molinism’. In Section 1, I explain Modest Molinism and make an initial case for it. Then, in Sections 2 and 3, I defend Modest Molinism against Dean Zimmerman’s anti-Molinist argument, which i…Read more
  •  25
    Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition
    Oxford University Press. 2021.
    Radical skepticism endorses the extreme claim that large swaths of our ordinary beliefs, such as those produced by perception or memory, are irrational. The best arguments for such skepticism are, in their essentials, as familiar as a popular science fiction movie and yet even seasoned epistemologists continue to find them strangely seductive. Moreover, although most contemporary philosophers dismiss radical skepticism, they cannot agree on how best to respond to the challenge it presents. In th…Read more
  •  30
    Concerns about Lycan's commonsensism
    Metaphilosophy 53 (5): 573-582. 2022.
    Despite wholeheartedly endorsing Lycan's commonsensism on display in On Evidence in Philosophy, this paper raises concerns about three views Lycan defends in that book. The first view is compatibilism about free will and determinism. The paper argues that Lycan's Moorean defense of compatibilism fails and that it is plausible for commonsensists to think that, in their dispute with incompatibilists, the burden of proof is on compatibilists. The second view is Lycan's Principle of Humility, offere…Read more
  •  20
    Religious Disagreement and Rational Demotion
    Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 6 21-57. 2015.
    This paper defends the view that, in certain actual circumstances that aren’t uncommon for educated westerners, an awareness of the facts of religious disagreement doesn’t make theistic belief irrational. The first section makes some general remarks about when discovering disagreement (on any topic) makes it rational to give up your beliefs: it discusses the two main possible outcomes of disagreement (i.e., defeat of one’s disputed belief and demotion of one’s disputant), the main kinds of evid…Read more
  •  1
    Faith with Reason
    Mind 110 (439): 771-774. 2001.
    This is a review of Paul Helm's *Faith with Reason*.
  •  17
    Dialogue on Good, Evil and the Existence of God
    Philosophia Christi 1 (2): 140-141. 1999.
  •  1
    Evil does not make atheism more reasonable than theism
    with D. Howard-Snyder
    In Michael L. Peterson & Raymond J. VanArragon (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, Blackwell. 2004.
  •  63
    Epistemic Justification illuminates in a deep way some core issues in contemporary epistemology. Its two authors disagree sharply about the nature of epistemic justification: both are foundationalists but whereas BonJour is a staunch defender of a traditional version of internalist foundationalism, Sosa argues for an externalist virtue reliabilism. In spite of their differences they speak the same language and employ the same rigorous standards for philosophical interchange. They most assuredly …Read more
  •  1489
    Is Plantinga a Friend of Evolutionary Science?
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 5 (3): 3--17. 2013.
  •  54
    Religious Disagreement and Epistemic Intuitions
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 81 19-43. 2017.
    Religious disagreement is, quite understandably, viewed as a problem for religious belief. In this paper, I consider why religious disagreement is a problem—why it is a potential defeater for religious belief—and I propose a way of dealing with this sort of potential defeater. I begin by focusing elsewhere—on arguments for radical skepticism. In section 1, I consider skeptical arguments proposed as potential defeaters for all of our perceptual and memory beliefs and explain what I think the rati…Read more
  •  60
    Plantinga’s Free Will Defense (FWD) employs the following proposition as a premise:◊TD. Possibly, every essence is transworld depraved.I argue that he fails to establish his intended conclusion because the denial of ◊TD is epistemically possible. I then consider an improved version of the FWD which relies on◊TU. Possibly, every essence is transworld untrustworthy.(The notion of transworld untrustworthiness is the might-counterfactual counterpart to Plantinga’s would-counterfactual notion of tran…Read more
  •  248
    In defence of sceptical theism: a reply to Almeida and Oppy
    with Michael Rea
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (2): 241-251. 2005.
    Some evidential arguments from evil rely on an inference of the following sort: ‘If, after thinking hard, we can't think of any God-justifying reason for permitting some horrific evil then it is likely that there is no such reason’. Sceptical theists, us included, say that this inference is not a good one and that evidential arguments from evil that depend on it are, as a result, unsound. Michael Almeida and Graham Oppy have argued (in a previous issue of this journal) that Michael Bergmann's wa…Read more
  •  36
    Deontology and Defeat
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (1): 87-102. 2000.
    It is currently fashionable to hold that deontology induces internalism. That is, those who think that epistemic justification is essentially a matter of duty fulfillment are thought to have a good reason for accepting internalism in epistemology. I shall argue that no deontological conception of epistemic justification provides a good reason for endorsing internalism. My main contention is that a requirement having to do with epistemic defeat---a requirement that many externalists impose on kno…Read more
  •  782
    Grounds for belief in God aside, does evil make atheism more reasonable than theism?
    with Daniel Howard-Snyder
    In Michael Peterson & Raymond Van Arrogan (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, Blackwell. pp. 140--55. 2003.
    Preprinted in God and the Problem of Evil(Blackwell 2001), ed. William Rowe. Many people deny that evil makes belief in atheism more reasonable for us than belief in theism. After all, they say, the grounds for belief in God are much better than the evidence for atheism, including the evidence provided by evil. We will not join their ranks on this occasion. Rather, we wish to consider the proposition that, setting aside grounds for belief in God and relying only on the background knowledge share…Read more
  •  566
    Reply to Rowe
    with Daniel Howard-Snyder
    In Michael Peterson (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, Blackwell. 2003.
    Preprinted in God and the Problem of Evil (Blackwell 2001), ed. William Rowe. In this article, we reply to Bill Rowe's "Evil is Evidence Against Theistic Belief" in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion (Blackwell 2003).
  •  343
    Rational Disagreement after Full Disclosure
    Episteme 6 (3): 336-353. 2009.
    The question I consider is this: The Question: Can two people–who are, and realize they are, intellectually virtuous to about the same degree–both be rational in continuing knowingly to disagree after full disclosure (by each to the other of all the relevant evidence they can think of) while at the same time thinking that the other may well be rational too? I distinguish two kinds of rationality–internal and external–and argue in section 1 that, whichever kind we have in mind, the answer to The …Read more
  •  3
    An exchange on the problem of evil
    with Daniel Howard-Snyder and William Rowe
    In William L. Rowe (ed.), God and the Problem of Evil, Blackwell. pp. 124--158. 2001.
  •  14
    What's NOT Wrong with Foundationalism
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (1): 161-165. 2004.
    One thing all forms of foundationalism have in common is that they hold that a belief can be justified noninferentially–i.e., that its justification need not depend on its being inferred from some other justified (or unjustified) belief. In some recent publications, Peter Klein argues that in virtue of having this feature, all forms of foundationalism are infected with an unacceptable arbitrariness that makes it irrational to be a practicing foundationalist. In this paper, I will explain why his…Read more
  •  85
    Intellectual Assurance: Essays on Traditional Epistemic Internalism (edited book)
    with Brett Coppenger
    Oxford University Press. 2016.
    Ordinarily, people take themselves to know a lot. I know where I was born, I know that I have two hands, I know that two plus two equals four, and I also think I know a lot of other stuff too. However, the project of trying to provide a philosophically satisfying account of knowledge, one that holds up against skeptical challenges, has proven surprisingly difficult. Either one aims for an account of justification (and knowledge) that is epistemologically demanding, in an effort to offer an accou…Read more
  •  119
    The God of Eth and the God of Earth
    Think 5 (14): 33-38. 2007.
    Stephen Law has recently argued (Think 9), using a dialogue set on the fictional planet Eth, that traditional belief in God is . Bergmann and Brower argue that theists on Earth should not be convinced
  •  192
    What’s Not Wrong with Foundationalism
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (1). 2004.
    One thing all forms of foundationalism have in common is that they hold that a belief can be justified noninferentially--i.e., that its justification need not depend on its being inferred from some other justified (or unjustified) belief. In some recent publications, Peter Klein argues that in virtue of having this feature, all forms of foundationalism are infected with an unacceptable arbitrariness that makes it irrational to be a practicing foundationalist. In this paper, I will explain why hi…Read more