•  98
    Goldman's Early Causal Theory of Knowledge
    with L. Gregory Wheeless
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 47 (1): 143-154. 1994.
    In his 1967 paper 'A Causal Theory of Knowing', Alvin Goldman sketched an account of empirical knowledge in terms of appropriate causal connections between the fact known and the knower's belief in that fact. This early causal account has been much criticized, even by Goldman himself in later years. We argue that the theory is much more defensible than either he or its other critics have recognized, that there are plausible internal and external resources available to it which save it from many …Read more
  •  82
    Robert Adams's Theistic Argument from the Nature of Morality
    Journal of Religious Ethics 21 (2). 1993.
    In "Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief" Robert Merrihew Adams defends a theistic argument from the nature of morality according to which the existence of God is entailed by the divine-command theory, which Adams believes is our best account of morality. In reply I examine the four arguments for the modified divine-command theory that Adams develops in this and later papers, and I show that three of the arguments are much too weak to enable him to make a case for theism in this way and that the …Read more
  •  76
    Arbitrariness, divine commands, and morality
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 33 (1). 1993.
  •  43
    Deprivation, Lament and Death
    The Philosophers' Magazine 74 104-106. 2016.
  •  34
  •  32
    Goldman's Early Causal Theory of Knowledge
    with L. Gregory Wheeless
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 47 (1): 143-154. 1994.
    In his 1967 paper 'A Causal Theory of Knowing', Alvin Goldman sketched an account of empirical knowledge in terms of appropriate causal connections between the fact known and the knower's belief in that fact. This early causal account has been much criticized, even by Goldman himself in later years. We argue that the theory is much more defensible than either he or its other critics have recognized, that there are plausible internal and external resources available to it which save it from many …Read more
  •  29
    Harman, ethical naturalism, and token-token identity
    Philosophical Papers 20 (3): 203-205. 1991.
    No abstract
  •  3
    Abrahamic Theism, Free Will, and Eternal Torment
    Athens Journal of Philosophy 3 (1): 9-16. 2024.
    Atheist philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Kurt Baier, though from different philosophical traditions, shared a common concern about the traditional Judeo-Christian-Muslim doctrine that human beings are the creations of a Supreme Being. For Sartre, in “Existentialism is a Humanism” (1946), a God who designed us would thereby detract from our freedom and dignity. For Baier, in “The Meaning of Life” (1957), the idea that God designs us to serve his own purposes was deeply offensive in treating us a…Read more
  • Harman on Relativism and Moral Diversity
    with David Drebushenko
    Critica 30 (89): 95-104. 1998.
  • Moral Realism and Naturalized Metaethics
    Dissertation, Cornell University. 1990.
    Recent developments in the philosophy of language and epistemology--in particular, the "naturalizing" of reference, knowledge, and justification--have important metaethical implications. In my dissertation I show the relevance of causal theories of reference and knowledge, and of an noncausal but still nonfoundationalist theory of justification, to the metaethical debate over moral realism, and use these theories to defend realism against several popular objections. ;In Chapter 1 I characterize …Read more