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17Abrahamic Theism, Free Will, and Eternal TormentAthens 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
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39Review of Robert L. Arrington: Rationalism, Realism, and Relativism: Perspectives in Contemporary Moral Epistemology (review)Ethics 101 (2): 406-408. 1991.
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36Goldman's Early Causal Theory of KnowledgeGrazer 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
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Moral Realism and Naturalized MetaethicsDissertation, 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
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121Goldman's Early Causal Theory of KnowledgeGrazer 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
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40Harman, ethical naturalism, and token-token identityPhilosophical Papers 20 (3): 203-205. 1991.No abstract
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90Robert Adams's Theistic Argument from the Nature of MoralityJournal 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
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80Arbitrariness, divine commands, and moralityInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 33 (1). 1993.
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94Why Adams Needs to Modify His Divine-Command Theory One More TimeFaith and Philosophy 11 (1): 72-81. 1994.
Edinboro, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Religion |
Applied Ethics |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |