Baylor University
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2016
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion
Normative Ethics
  •  78
    Perceiving God through Natural Beauty
    Faith and Philosophy 32 (3): 293-312. 2015.
    In Perceiving God, William Alston briefly suggests the possibility of perceiving God indirectly through the perception of another object. Following recent work by C. Stephen Evans, we argue that Thomas Reid’s notion of “natural signs” helpfully illuminates how people can perceive God indirectly through natural beauty. First, we explain how some natural signs enable what Alston labels “indirect perception.” Second, we explore how certain emotions make it possible to see both beauty and the excell…Read more
  •  14
    Integrity, honesty, and truth seeking are important virtues that most people care about and want to see promoted in society. Yet surprisingly, there has been relatively little work among scholars today aimed at helping us better understand this cluster of virtues related to truth. This volume incorporates the insights and perspectives of experts working in a variety of disciplines, including philosophy, law, communication and rhetorical studies, theology, psychology, history, and education. For …Read more
  •  26
    Cultivating Virtue: A Review Essay
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 16 (3): 359-370. 2019.
    Cultivating Virtue brings together philosophers, theologians, and psychologists to provide substantive formational insight and to chart the course for future investigation of character development. After a brief overview of the volume, I interact with a few of its central themes as represented in two essays: “Aristotle on Cultivating Virtue” by Daniel C. Russell, and “Cultivating Virtue: Two Problems for Virtue Ethics” by Christine Swanton.
  •  29
    Virtue Ethics is Empirically Adequate: A Defense of the Caps Response to Situationism
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99 (S1): 79-111. 2017.
    According to situationists, the available empirical psychological data show that prevalent conceptions of virtue are ‘empirically inadequate.’ The charge is ambiguous. I begin by differentiating four families of empirical inadequacy charges, explaining the conceptual connections among the families, and showing how different situationists press different versions of the charges from each family. Then I explain how the empirical psychological model known as the ‘cognitive affective personality sys…Read more
  •  71
    Faith as a Passion and Virtue
    Res Philosophica 90 (4): 565-587. 2013.
    The Christian tradition affirms that faith is a virtue. Faith is a multifaceted reality, though, encompassing such diverse aspects as belief, trust, obedience, and more. Given this complexity, it is no surprise that various thinkers emphasize different aspects of faith in accounting for faith’s status as a virtue. In this paper I join Søren Kierkegaard in arguing that faith is a passion, and that faith is a virtue because it disposes the person of faith to proper emotional responses. The paper h…Read more
  •  89
    Natural epistemic defects and corrective virtues
    with Robert C. Roberts
    Synthese 192 (8): 2557-2576. 2015.
    Cognitive psychologists have uncovered a number of natural tendencies to systematic errors in thinking. This paper proposes some ways that intellectual character virtues might help correct these sources of epistemic unreliability. We begin with an overview of some insights from recent work in dual-process cognitive psychology regarding ‘biases and heuristics’, and argue that the dozens of hazards the psychologists catalogue arise from combinations and specifications of a small handful of more ba…Read more
  •  21
    Virtues and Their Vices, edited by Kevin Timpe and Craig A. Boyd
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 14 (2): 229-232. 2017.
  •  64
    Anger and the virtues: a critical study in virtue individuation
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (6): 877-897. 2016.
    Aristotle and others suggest that a single virtue – ‘good temper’ – pertains specifically to anger. I argue that if good temper is a single virtue, it is constituted by aspects of a combination of other virtues. I present three categories of anger-relevant virtues – those that dispose one to anger; those that delay, mitigate, and qualify anger; and those required for effortful anger control – and show how virtues in each category make distinct contributions to good temper. In addition to clarify…Read more
  •  56
    Contempt and the Cultivation of Character
    Journal of Religious Ethics 43 (3): 493-519. 2015.
    Macalester Bell urges the cultivation of apt contempt as the best response to what she calls “the vices of superiority”. In this essay, I sketch two character profiles. The first—the ideal contemnor—paradigmatically answers the vices of superiority with contempt. The second—the ideal Christian neighbor—is marked by humility and love, and answers the vices of superiority in non-contemptuous ways. I argue that the latter character rivals the former as a fitting moral response to the vices of super…Read more