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20Faith and Hinge Epistemology in Calvin’s InstitutesPhilosophia Reformata 1-26. forthcoming.In mainstream analytic epistemology, Reformed theology has made its presence prominently felt in Reformed epistemology, the view of religious belief according to which religious beliefs can be properly basic and warranted when formed by the proper functioning of the sensus divinitatis, an inborn capacity or faculty for belief in God that can be prompted to generate certain religious beliefs when presented with things (e.g., certain majestic aspects of creation). A major competitor to Reformed ep…Read more
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62That’s Not Double Checking, or “There’s only a Problem if You Make One”Philosophia 51 (4): 1923-1931. 2023.
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13Making sense of the right side of historyThink 21 (62): 103-115. 2022.This article explores arguments from ‘the right side of history’. These arguments are often interpreted as making an appeal to a trajectory which independently guides history. These arguments are often criticized on the grounds that history simply doesn't work that way. I offer an interpretation of right side of history arguments that does not rely on this sort of historical trajectory, and argue that even this version of the argument fails.
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79Quasi-fideist Presuppositionalism: Cornelius Van Til, Wittgenstein, and Hinge EpistemologyPhilosophia Reformata 88 (1): 26-48. 2023.I argue that the epistemology underlying Cornelius Van Til’s presuppositional apologetic methodology is quasi-fideist. According to this view, the rationality of religious belief is dependent on absolutely certain ungrounded grounds, called hinges. I further argue that the quasi-fideist epistemology of presuppositional apologetics explains why Van Til’s method is neither fideist nor problematically circular: hinges are rational in the sense that they are partly constitutive of rationality, and a…Read more
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393How To Hang A Door: Picking Hinges for Quasi-FideismEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13 (1): 51-82. 2021.: In the epistemology of the late Wittgenstein, a central place is given to the notion of the hinge: an arational commitment that provides a foundation of some sort for the rest of our beliefs. Quasi-fideism is an approach to the epistemology of religion that argues that religious belief is on an epistemic par with other sorts of belief inasmuch as religious and non-religious beliefs all rely on hinges. I consider in this paper what it takes to find the appropriate hinge for a quasi-fideist appr…Read more
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46Statistically responsible artificial intelligencesEthics and Information Technology 23 (3): 483-493. 2021.As artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous, it will be increasingly involved in novel, morally significant situations. Thus, understanding what it means for a machine to be morally responsible is important for machine ethics. Any method for ascribing moral responsibility to AI must be intelligible and intuitive to the humans who interact with it. We argue that the appropriate approach is to determine how AIs might fare on a standard account of human moral responsibility: a Strawsonian account…Read more
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36Simply Finding Answers, or the Entirety of Inquiry While Standing on One FootDisputatio 12 (57): 181-198. 2020.I argue that inquiry can be defined without reference to the attitudes inquirers have during inquiry. Inquiry can instead be defined by its aim: it is the activity that has the aim of answering a question. I call this approach to defining inquiry a “naive” account. I present the naive account of inquiry in contrast to a prominent contemporary account of inquiry most notably defended by Jane Friedman. According to this view of inquiry, which I call an attitude-centric view, inquiry is appropriate…Read more
Nicholas Smith
Alabama A&M
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Alabama A&MAssistant Professor
APA Western Division
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Epistemology of Religion |
Ethics of Artificial Intelligence |