•  88
    The author presents reasons for thinking that the evil we observe in the world is not even prima facie evidence against the existence of God.
  •  222
    This is an earlier version of the argument presented as the appendix to the author's final book, Peri Physeos.
  •  192
    Much traditional moral theory supposes that morality is primarily a matter of law or principle apprehended as something external to the moral agent and binding that agent in a manner that is contrary to inclination. If this were not so, morality would be superfluous. Nevertheless, in this essay I maintain that the appearance of an opposition between morality and inclination is simply an artifact of human sinfulness, which alienates us from our true nature as rational beings.
  •  210
    Subtitled "The Lazy Gambler's Guide to Choosing a Religion," this essay presents an account of Pascal's Wager that avoids most of the major traditional objections to Pascal's appeal to self-interest as an incentive to the investigation of Christian evidences. I then turn to what I call "the Lazy Objection" to the wager, which claims that there are too many religions all of which can make a similar appeal and argue that this is simply false. I conclude that, considered as a rhetorical strategy, t…Read more
  •  239
    I mostly agree with most of what Paul Moser has said in his books in the Philosophy of Religion. The views he has defended are a needed corrective to the evidentialist paradigm in the philosophy of religion. At the same time, his development of his central ideas has resulted in views that are, somewhat idiosyncratic and extreme. In this essay I hope to present a different articulation of those ideas, also defensible from within a Christian perspective, that preserves their central thrust witho…Read more
  •  139
    In a sequel to the author's argument for dualism from the lived experience of time, this paper continues the line of thought initiated by in that study a bit further by considering the implications of our experience of being in space for dualism. I conclude that four-dimensionalism cannot accommodate the facts of our experience of ourselves as being in time - localized in space but not located there after the manner of a material thing. Substance dualism, however, makes perfect sense of all the…Read more
  •  225
    This is an updated version of one section of my essay "Objections to Dualism" prepared for presentation at the 2019 Mountain-Pacific SCP Conference in Las Vegas, April 6-7, 2019.
  •  15590
    In this essay, I discuss the standard objections to substance dualism and conclude that they are far less formidable than is usually supposed.
  •  337
    In this essay, I use a thought experiment to illustrate the human predicament if determinism is true, then draw the implications of this result for human rationality. This paper was read at the Eastern Division of the Society for Christian Philosophers at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts in 2009.
  •  53
    Yeomans, Christopher. Freedom and Reflection: Hegel and the Logic of Agency (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 66 (1): 174-175. 2012.
    A brief review note of Yeoman's book.
  •  416
    Temporal passage is an irrefragable and ineliminable feature of our lived experience of time. In this essay, I argue that, regardless of whether one adopts a three-dimensional, A theory of time or a four-dimensional, B theory of time, the subject of lived experience of time has to be conceived of as something that stands outside of the physical order in order for the experience of temporal passage to actually occur. This implies the truth of Dualism as the only account of mind that can accommoda…Read more
  •  440
    Seeing Other Minds
    Seattle Critical Review (on Line) 1 (1): 1-30. 2010.
    In this paper, I offer an account of our knowledge of other minds based on V. C. Aldrich's account of aesthetic perception, according to which there is a sense in which we literally see other minds.
  •  443
    In this paper, I discuss the Categorical Imperative as a basis for an Ethics of Belief and its application to Kant's own project in his theoretical philosophy.
  •  305
    This is the third in a series of papers on material modality, which explores the concept of a materially necessary being and argues that such a being exists.
  •  672
    In his Beweisgrund (1762), Kant presents a sketch of "the only possible basis" for a proof of God's existence. In this essay, I attempt to present that proof as a valid and sound argument for the existence of God.
  •  235
    While the nature of the past and the future have received a lot of attention from recent analytic philosophers, the present has been somewhat neglected. I think the notion of the present is somewhat misunderstood and hope to rectify some of those misunderstandings in this essay. It is high time that this was done. Let's do it now!
  •  578
    In this paper, I explore the concept of happiness by relating it to those of desire, pleasure, and love, arriving at the classical view that objective happiness consists in the possession and enjoyment of the good.
  •  1140
    Descartes argues that, apart from the existence of a veracious God, we can have no reason to believe that we possess reliable cognitive faculties, with the result that, if atheism is true, not even our seemingly most certain beliefs can count as knowledge for us. Since the atheist denies the existence of God, he or she will be precisely in this position. I argue that Descartes' argument is sound, and that atheism is therefore self-refuting.
  •  285
    I agree with about 95% of what Paul Moser has written in his book The Elusive God. However, I have three main points of disagreement with Moser, two of which I ventilate in this paper. The third I discuss in my paper "What's Love Got to Do with It?" also on this website.
  •  351
    In this essay, I investigate the implications for the discussion of theism in philosophy of religion for the beliefs of ordinary Christians and conclude that, in light of its historical development, those implications are minimal.
  •  468
    In this paper I defend the thesis that, considered simply as certain sorts of bodily sensations, pleasure is not the good nor is pain intrinsically evil. In fact, the opposite is largely the case: pursuit of pleasure is generally productive of ontic evil, and pain, when heeded, directs us toward the ontic good.
  •  344
    It's Murder!(?)
    Seattle Critical Review (3): 8-12. 2013.
    Although this piece was inspired by the kinds of legal puzzles discussed by Hart and Honore in Causation in the Law, the puzzle cases presented here are intended to test the reader's intuitions about what constitutes murder. Play along!
  •  345
    In this paper, I defend traditional Platonic mathematical realism from its contemporary detractors, arguing that numbers, understood as abstract, non-physical objects of rational intuition, are indispensable for the act of counting.
  •  431
    Aquinas' Third Way is often dismissed as a howler, because he infers from the fact that, since the universe is metaphysically contingent that there was some time in the past when it didn't exist. I offer an argument to justify this inference.
  •  511
    In the course of writing a book on Free Will, I took the opportunity to read a good deal of contemporary literature on the Free Will problem. This paper is a survey and reflection on that reading, responding to the current trends and state of play concerning the existence of free will.
  •  509
    Based on a recently published essay by Jeremy Gwiazda, I argue that the possibility that the present state of the universe is the product of an actually infinite series of causally-ordered prior events is impossible in principle, and thus that a major criticism of the Secunda Via of St. Thomas is baseless after all.
  •  259
    This is the final paper in the Possibilities that Matter series and attempts to complete the project of constructing a material interpretation of modal logic.
  •  548
    In this essay I explore some of the basic elements of consciousness from a substance dualist point of view, incorporating some elements of Kant's Transcendental Analytic into an overall account of the constitution of consciousness.
  •  259
    I examine the notion of the authoritative command of divine love developed by Paul Moser in his book The Elusive God. Using a Calvinist objection to Moser's contention that God must love every one, including His enemies, I conclude that the notion of an authoritative command of divine love is paradoxical. I then offer a resolution of this paradox on terms that I judge to be in line with Moser's intentions.
  •  619
    In this paper I argue that there is no problem of Divine Hiddenness for Christians and offer an alternate explanation for the widespread claim that God's existence is hidden based on the Christian doctrine of Original Sin.