University of Notre Dame
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1996
Notre Dame, Indiana, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics
Philosophy of Religion
  •  98
    A Dilemma for Conferralism
    with Elizabeth VanKammen
    Analysis. forthcoming.
    Conferralism is the view that social properties are neither intrinsic to the things that have them nor possessed simply by virtue of their causal or spatiotemporal relations to other things, but are somehow bestowed (intentionally or not, explicitly or not) upon them by persons who have both the capacity and the standing to bestow them. We argue that conferralism faces a dilemma: either it is viciously circular, or it is limited in scope in a way that undercuts its motivation.
  •  5
    The Hiddenness of God
    Oxford University Press. 2018.
    This study considers the hiddenness of God, and the problems it raises for belief and trust in GOd. Talk of divine hiddenness evokes a variety of phenomena--the relative paucity and ambiguity of the available evidence for God's existence, the elusiveness of God's comforting presence when we are afraid and in pain, the palpable and devastating experience of divine absence and abandonment, and more. Many of these phenomena are hard to reconcile with the idea, central to the Jewish and Christian sc…Read more
  •  7
    Philosophical naturalism, according to which philosophy is continuous with the natural sciences, has dominated the Western academy for well over a century; but Michael Rea claims that it is without rational foundation, and that the costs of embracing it are surprisingly high. Rea argues compellingly to the surprising conclusion that naturalists are committed to rejecting realism about material objects, materialism, and perhaps realism about other minds. That is surely a price that naturalists ar…Read more
  •  8
    Philosophical naturalism, according to which philosophy is continuous with the natural sciences, has dominated the Western academy for well over a century; but Michael Rea claims that it is without rational foundation, and that the costs of embracing it are surprisingly high. The first part of World Without Design aims to provide a fair and historically informed characterization of naturalism. Rea then argues compellingly to the surprising conclusion that naturalists are committed to rejecting r…Read more
  •  37
    Representational and Attitudinal Sexual Objectification
    Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 5 (4). 2019.
    “James Tiptree Jr.” is a pseudonym of Alice B. Sheldon, US Air Force intelligence officer, CIA analyst, experimental psychologist, and one of the most important and highly acclaimed science fiction writers of the twentieth century. Sheldon’s work as Tiptree deals with a variety of important feminist concerns—among them, sexism, misogyny, objectification, sexual assault, the “otherness” of women, and silencing. This paper explores in a philosophical mode some of the important insights about objec…Read more
  • Oksfordskoe rukovodstvo po filosofskoĭ teologii = (edited book)
    with Thomas P. Flint, V. V. Vasilʹev, and M. O. Kedrova
    I︠A︡zyki slavi︠a︡nskoĭ kulʹtury. 2013.
    The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology attempts both to familiarize readers with the directions in which the scholarship of this discipline has gone and to pursue the discussion into hitherto under-examined areas. Philosophical theology is aimed primarily at theoretical understanding of the nature and attributes of God and of God's relationship to the world and its inhabitants. During the twentieth century, much of the philosophical community (both in the Anglo-American analytic tradition…Read more
  •  5
    Essays in Analytic Theology
    Oxford University Press. 2020.
    This two-volume collection brings together Michael C. Rea's most substantial work in analytic theology. The first volume considers the nature of God and our ability to talk and discover truths about God, whereas Volume II focuses on theological questions about humanity and the human condition. The chapters in the first part of Volume I explore issues pertaining to discourse about God and the authority of scripture. Part two focuses on divine attributes, while part three discusses doctrine of the…Read more
  •  606
    Gender as a Self-Conferred Identity
    Feminist Philosophy Quarterly 8 (2). 2022.
    This paper develops and defends the view that gender is an identity that we confer upon ourselves. The claim that gender is a self-conferred identity is not novel; but its metaphysics is obscure at best. What exactly is an identity, and how do we manage to confer identities upon ourselves? Furthermore, how does the claim that gender is a self-conferred identity comport with the widely accepted notion that gender is also a social identity, and that social identities are (at least partly) either…Read more
  •  577
    The Metaphysics of the Narrative Self
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 8 (4): 586-603. 2022.
    This essay develops a theory of identities, selves, and ‘the self’ that both explains the sense in which selves are narratively constituted and also explains how the self relates to a person's individual autobiographical identity and to their various social identities. I argue that identities are the contents of narratively structured representations, some of which are hosted individually and are autobiographical in form, and others of which are hosted collectively and are biographical in form. …Read more
  •  16
    We Have Liftoff..
    with Oliver Crisp, Kevin Diller, and Trent Dougherty
    Journal of Analytic Theology 1. 2013.
    A brief introduction to the first issue of the Journal of Analytic Theology
  •  25
    This book addresses the various ways in which key social identities--for example, race, gender, and disability--intersect with, shape, and are shaped by traditional questions in analytic theology and philosophy of religion. The book both breaks new ground and encourages further analytic-theological work in these important areas of research.
  •  63
    PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: AN ANTHOLOGY, 7E introduces students to the philosophy of religion through a balanced blend of classic and contemporary articles. Using a topical approach, this engaging textbook begins by outlining traditional concepts of God, then moves into related fields of inquiry such as the problem of evil, feminist perspectives of God, and mystical experiences. In addition, the textbook presents traditional proofs of God's existence, along with counter arguments. PHILOSOPHY OF REL…Read more
  •  352
    The Ill-Made Knight and the Stain on the Soul
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 11 (1): 117-134. 2019.
    One of the main tasks for an account of the Christian doctrine of the atonement is to explain how and in what ways the salvifically relevant work of Christ heals the damage wrought by human sin on our souls, our relationships with one another, and our relationship with God. One kind of damage often neglected in philosophical treatments of the atonement, but discussed at some length in Eleonore Stump’s forthcoming At-one-ment, is what she, following St. Thomas Aquinas, calls the stain on the soul…Read more
  •  5
    The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology (edited book)
    Oxford University Press UK. 2008.
    Philosophical theology is aimed primarily at theoretical understanding of the nature and attributes of God and of God's relationship to the world and its inhabitants. During the twentieth century, much of the philosophical community had grave doubts about our ability to attain any such understanding. In recent years the analytic tradition in particular has moved beyond the biases that placed obstacles in the way of the pursuing questions located on the interface of philosophy and religion. The r…Read more
  •  17
    Over the past several decades, scholars working in biblical, theological, and religious studies have increasingly attended to the substantive ways that our experiences and understanding of God and God's relation to the world are structured by our experiences and concepts of race, gender, disability, and sexuality. These personal and social identities and their intersections serve as a hermeneutical lens for our interpretations of God, self, the other, and our religious texts and traditions. Howe…Read more
  •  605
    In May 2010, philosophers, family and friends gathered at the University of Notre Dame to celebrate the career and retirement of Alvin Plantinga, widely recognized as one of the world's leading figures in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion. Plantinga has earned particular respect within the community of Christian philosophers for the pivotal role that he played in the recent renewal and development of philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. Each of the essays in…Read more
  •  100
    Philosophy and Christian theology
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.
    Many of the doctrines central to Christianity have important philosophical implications or presuppositions. In this article, we begin with a brief general discussion of the relationship between philosophy and Christian dogma, and then we turn our attention to three of the most philosophically challenging Christian doctrines: the trinity, the incarnation, and the atonement. We take these three as our focus because, unlike (for example) doctrines about providence or the attributes of God, these ar…Read more
  •  79
    Material Constitution: A Reader (edited book)
    Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1997.
    The only anthology available on material constitution, this book collects important recent work on well known puzzles in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. The extensive, clearly written introduction helps to make the essays accessible to a wide audience.
  •  227
    Four-dimensionalism
    In Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics, Oxford University Press. pp. 1-59. 2003.
    This article characterizes the varieties of four - dimensionalism and provides a critical overview of the main arguments in support of it.
  •  126
    Divine Evil?: The Moral Character of the God of Abraham (edited book)
    Oxford University Press UK. 2010.
    Adherents of the Abrahamic religions have traditionally held that God is morally perfect and unconditionally deserving of devotion, obedience, love, and worship. The Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scriptures tell us that God is compassionate, merciful, and just. As is well-known, however, these same scriptures contain passages that portray God as wrathful, severely punitive, and jealous. Critics furthermore argue that the God of these scriptures commends bigotry, misogyny, and homophobia, condon…Read more
  •  19
    Personal Identity and Psychological Continuity
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (1): 185-193. 2000.
    In a recent article, Trenton Mericks argues that psychological continuity analyses (PC-analyses) of personal identity over time are incompatible with endurantism. We contend that if Merricks’s argument is valid, a parallel argument establishes that PC-analyses of personal identity are incompatible with perdurantism; hence, the correct conclusion to draw is simply that such analyses are all necessarily false. However, we also show that there is good reason to doubt that Merricks’s argument is val…Read more
  •  39
    In Defense of Mereological Universalism
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (2): 347-360. 1998.
    This paper defends Mereological Universalism (the thesis that, for any set S of disjoint objects, there is an object that the members of S compose. Universalism is unpalatable to many philosophers because it entails that if there are such things as my left tennis shoe, W. V. Quine, and the Taj Mahal, then there is another object that those three things compose. This paper presents and criticizes Peter van Inwagen’s argument against Universalism and then presents a new argument in favor of Univer…Read more
  •  35
    Temporal Parts Unmotivated
    Philosophical Review 107 (2): 225-260. 1998.
    In debate about the nature of persistence over time, the view that material objects endure has played the role of “champion” and the view that they perdure has played the role of “challenger.” As in other contests, the champion’s job is merely to defend her title, whereas the challenger’s job is to prove herself worthy. I have no view about how these roles came to be assigned; but the historical fact is that perdurantists have traditionally borne the proverbial burden of proof in this debate. It…Read more
  •  366
    Understanding the Trinity
    Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 8 (1): 145-157. 2005.
    The doctrine of the Trinity poses a deep and difficult problem. On the one hand, it says that there are three distinct Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and that each of these Persons “is God”. On the other hand, it says that there is one and only one God. So it appears to involve a contradiction. It seems to say that there is exactly one divine being, and also that there is more than one. How are we to make sense of this?
  •  16
    Lynne Baker on Material Constitution
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (3): 607-614. 2002.
    In Persons and Bodies, Lynne Baker defends what she calls the “Constitution View” of human persons, according to which human persons are constituted by their bodies, and constitution is an asymmetric, nontransitive relation that is somehow “intermediate between identity and separate existence”. Thesis, or something like it, is precisely what we would expect from someone who believes that persons and bodies both are material objects. But thesis is distinctive. Materialists who treat constitution …Read more
  •  24
    McGrath on Universalism
    Analysis 59 (3): 200-203. 1999.
  • The Metaphysics of Material Constitution
    Dissertation, University of Notre Dame. 1996.
    Over the past three decades there has been a great deal of philosophical interest in puzzles about composition and identity over time. Familiar examples include the "Ship of Theseus" puzzle, the "Paradox of Increase", and the "Body-minus" puzzle. The metaphysical importance of these puzzles is hard to overemphasize; their solutions have ramifications for our views about personal identity, de re modality, the mind-body problem, and a host of other ontological issues. Surprisingly, however, no one…Read more
  •  1121
    Skeptical Theism and the 'Too-Much-Skepticism' Objection
    In Justin P. McBrayer & Daniel Howard‐Snyder (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to the Problem of Evil, Wiley. pp. 482-506. 2013.
    In the first section, I characterize skeptical theism more fully. This is necessary in order to address some important misconceptions and mischaracterizations that appear in the essays by Maitzen, Wilks, and O’Connor. In the second section, I describe the most important objections they raise and group them into four “families” so as to facilitate an orderly series of responses. In the four sections that follow, I respond to the objections.
  •  275
    In this paper, I present an Aristotelian solution to the problem of material constitution. The problem of material constitution arises whenever it appears that an object a and an object b share all of the same parts and yet are essentially related to their parts in different ways. (A familiar example: A lump of bronze constitutes a statue of Athena. The lump and the statue share all of the same parts, but it appears that the lump can, whereas the statue cannot, survive radical rearrangements of …Read more