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83Judaeo-Christian faith as trust and loyaltyReligious Studies 58 (1): 30-60. 2022.Disputes over the nature of faith, as understood in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, sometimes focus on whether it is to be identified exclusively with trust in God or with loyalty/fidelity to God. Drawing on recent work on the semantic range of the Hebrew ʾĕmûnâ and Greek pistis lexicons, we argue for a multidimensional account of what it is to be a person of faith that includes trust and loyalty in combination. The Trust-Loyalty account, we maintain, makes better sense of the faith of exemplars…Read more
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46Trusting in order to inspire trustworthinessSynthese 198 (12): 11897-11923. 2020.This paper explores the epistemology and moral psychology of “therapeutic trust,” in which one trusts with the aim of inspiring greater trust-responsiveness in the trusted. Theorists have appealed to alleged cases of rational therapeutic trust to show that trust can be adopted for broadly moral or practical reasons and to motivate accounts of trust that do not involve belief or confidence in someone’s trustworthiness. Some conclude from the cases that trust consists in having normative expectati…Read more
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26Evidentialism and the Will to Believe, by Scott F. AikinFaith and Philosophy 34 (4): 489-496. 2017.
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70The strength of faith and trustInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 81 (1-2): 135-150. 2017.While there has been considerable interest in the nature of faith and trust in recent philosophical literature, relatively little has been said about what it is for faith or trust to be psychologically stronger or weaker. Drawing on recent accounts of propositional faith by Daniel Howard-Snyder and Lara Buchak, I argue that the strength of one’s faith can vary in two distinct dimensions. The first primarily involves the extent to which one’s confidence motivates one to take risks. The second inv…Read more
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148Experiences, Seemings, and Perceptual JustificationAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (2): 226-241. 2017.Several philosophers have distinguished between three distinct mental states that play a role in visual recognition: experiences, propositional seemings, and beliefs. I clarify and offer some reasons for drawing this three-fold distinction, and I consider its epistemological implications. Some philosophers have held that propositional seemings always confer prima facie justification, regardless of a particular seeming's relation to experience. I add to criticisms of this view in the literature b…Read more
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24Review of Alva no, Action in Perception (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (11). 2005.
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174Foundationally justified perceptual beliefs and the problem of the speckled henPacific Philosophical Quarterly 91 (3): 401-441. 2010.Many epistemologists accept some version of the following foundationalist epistemic principle: if one has an experience as if p then one has prima facie justification that p. I argue that this principle faces a challenge that it inherits from classical foundationalism: the problem of the speckled hen. The crux of the problem is that some properties are presented in experience at a level of determinacy that outstrips our recognitional capacities. I argue for an amendment to the principle that add…Read more
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488The Epistemic Value of Moral Considerations: Justification, Moral Encroachment, and James' 'Will To Believe'Noûs 45 (2): 239-268. 2010.A moral-pragmatic argument for a proposition is an argument intended to establish that believing the proposition would be morally beneficial. Since such arguments do not adduce epistemic reasons, i.e., reasons that support the truth of a proposition, they can seem at best to be irrelevant epistemically. At worst, believing on the basis of such reasoning can seem to involve wishful thinking and intellectual dishonesty of a sort that that precludes such beliefs from being epistemically unjustified…Read more
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64Introspective Justification and the Fineness of Grain of ExperienceIn John Turri (ed.), Virtuous Thoughts: The Philosophy of Ernest Sosa, Springer. pp. 101--126. 2013.In its original context, the “problem of the speckled hen” was a challenge to classical foundationalists who held that introspective beliefs about experience enjoy infallible foundational justification. Ernest Sosa has led a revival of interest in the problem, using it to object to neo-classical foundationalists and to motivate his own reliabilist theory of introspective justification. His discussion has spawned replies from those who claim that there are viable non-reliabilist solutions to the …Read more
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239Blurred vision and the transparency of experiencePacific Philosophical Quarterly 88 (3). 2007.This paper considers an objection to intentionalism (the view that the phenomenal character of experience supervenes on intentional content) based on the phenomenology of blurred vision. Several intentionalists, including Michael Tye, Fred Dretske, and Timothy Crane, have proposed intentionalist explanations of blurred vision phenomenology. I argue that their proposals fail and propose a solution of my own that, I contend, is the only promising explanation consistent with intentionalism. The sol…Read more
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120Perceptual knowledge and the metaphysics of experiencePhilosophical Quarterly 58 (233): 642-664. 2008.There is a long-Standing tradition in philosophy that certain metaphysical theories of perceptual experience, if true, would lead to scepticism about the external world, whereas other theories, if true, would develop a non-sceptkal epistemology. I investigate these claims in the context of current metaphysical theories of sense-perception and argue that choice of perceptual ontology is of very limited help in developing a non-sceptical epistemology. Theorists who hold that perception is an inten…Read more
Orange, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Mind |
Areas of Interest
2 more
Foundationalism |
Hope |
Trust |
Epistemological Theories |
Pragmatic and Moral Encroachment |
Virtue Epistemology |
Perceptual Knowledge |