•  12
    Laura W. Ekstrom. God, Suffering, and the Value of Free Will (review)
    Journal of Analytic Theology 11 721-724. 2023.
  •  16
    The Values of Intellectual Transparency
    Social Epistemology 37 (3): 290-304. 2023.
    In a recent book and journal article, I have developed an account of intellectual transparency as an other-regarding intellectual virtue, and have explored its conceptual relationship to the virtue of honesty. This paper aims to further advance understanding of intellectual transparency by examining some of the ways in which the trait is instrumentally valuable. Specifically, I argue that intellectual transparency tends to enhance its possessor’s close personal relationships, work performance, a…Read more
  •  3
    This robust, clear, and well-researched textbook for classes in logic introduces students to both formal logic and to the virtues of intellectual inquiry. Part 1 challenges students to develop the analytical skills of deductive and inductive reasoning, showing them how to identify and evaluate arguments. Part 2 helps students develop the intellectual virtues of the wise inquirer. The book includes helpful pedagogical features such as practice exercises and a concluding summary with definitions o…Read more
  •  39
    Intellectual Honesty and Intellectual Transparency
    Episteme 20 (2): 410-428. 2023.
    The purpose of this paper is to advance understanding of intellectually virtuous honesty, by examining the relationship between a recent account of intellectual honesty and a recent account of intellectual transparency. The account of intellectual honesty comes from Nathan King, who adapts the work of Christian Miller on moral honesty, while the account of intellectual transparency comes from T. Ryan Byerly. After introducing the respective accounts, I identify four potential differences between…Read more
  •  10
    Philosophical reflection on transparency, including group transparency, is beginning to gain steam. This paper contributes to this work by developing a conceptualization of transparency as an intellectual character trait that groups can possess, and by presenting a novel argument for thinking that such transparency should be understood along non-summativist lines. According to the account offered, a group’s being intellectually transparent consists in the group’s tending to attend well to its pe…Read more
  •  12
    Death, Immortality, and Eternal Life (edited book)
    Routledge. 2021.
    This book offers a multifaceted exploration of death and the possibilities for an afterlife. By incorporating a variety of approaches to these subjects, it provides a unique framework for extending and reshaping enduring philosophical debates around human existence up to and after death. Featuring original essays from a diverse group of international scholars, the book is arranged in four main sections. Firstly, it addresses how death is or should be experienced, engaging with topics such as nea…Read more
  •  10
    Intellectual Dependability is the first research monograph devoted to addressing the question of what it is to be an intellectually dependable person--the sort of person on whom one's fellow inquirers can depend in their pursuit of epistemic goods. While neglected in recent scholarship, this question is an important one for both epistemology--how we should conceptualize the ideal inquirer--and education--how we can enable developing learners to grow toward this ideal. The book defends a virtue t…Read more
  •  992
    The Awe-some Argument for Pantheism
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 11 (2): 1-21. 2019.
    Many pantheists have claimed that their view of the divine is motivated by a kind of spiritual experience. In this paper, I articulate a novel argument, inspired by recent work on moral exemplarism, that gives voice to this kind of motivation for pantheism. The argument is based on two claims about the emotion of awe, each of which is defended primarily via critical engagement with empirical research on the emotion. I also illustrate how this pathway to pantheism offers pantheists distinctive re…Read more
  •  16
    Moral character and ascetic practice have not been major themes in contemporary analytic religious epistemology, but they have been major themes in the religious epistemologies of several influential historical figures, including the medieval Islamic philosopher al-Ghazalı. This article will be concerned with the place of moral character and ascetic practice in both al-Ghazalı’s religious epistemology and in contemporary analytic religious epistemology. By reading al-Ghazalı alongside contempora…Read more
  •  14
    Paradise Understood: New Philosophical Essays About Heaven (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2017.
    Paradise Understood: New Philosophical Essays about Heaven systematically investigates heaven, or paradise, as conceived within theistic religious traditions such as Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It considers a variety of topics concerning what life in paradise would, could, or will be like for human persons. The collection offers novel approaches to questions about heaven of perennial philosophical interest, and breaks new ground by expanding the range of questions about heaven tha…Read more
  •  14
    Epistemic Subjectivism in the Theory of Character
    Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 8 (4): 278-285. 2019.
    Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, Volume 8, Issue 4, Page 278-285, December 2019.
  •  27
    Truthmaker Trinitarianism
    TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology 3 (2). 2019.
    This paper employs recent developments in the theory of truthmakers to offer a novel solution to the most discussed philosophical challenge presented by the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. According to the view developed, the Father, Son, and Spirit each serve as the only substantial constituent of equally minimal truthmakers for claims about God. Because they do, there is a clear and robust sense in which each is a substance that “is” God as much as anything is, while the three remain distin…Read more
  •  47
    Introductory-level undergraduate classes in Logic or Critical Thinking are a staple in the portfolio of many Philosophy programs. A standard approach to these classes is to include teaching and learning activities focused on formal deductive and inductive logic, sometimes accompanied by teaching and learning activities focused on informal fallacies or argument construction. In this article, I discuss a proposal to include an additional element within these classes—namely, teaching and learning a…Read more
  •  32
    When deciding what to do, is it best to treat one's own interests as more important than the interests of others, others' interests as more important than one's own, or one's own and others' interests as equally important? This book develops an account of others-centeredness, a way of putting others first in the process of deciding what to do. Over the course of six chapters, Putting Others First investigates other-centeredness by drawing upon a wide range of academic disciplines including bibli…Read more
  •  11
    Paradise Understood: New Philosophical Essays about Heaven (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2017.
    A collection of seventeen philosophical essays that systematically investigate heaven, or paradise, as conceived within theistic religious traditions.
  •  1
    The Mechanics of Divine Foreknowledge and Providence: A Time-Ordering Account (review)
    Philosophia Christi 18 (1): 251-255. 2016.
  •  24
    The Indirect Response To The Foreknowledge Argument
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 9 (4): 3-12. 2017.
  •  265
    From a necessary being to a perfect being
    Analysis 79 (1): 10-17. 2019.
    Cosmological arguments for the existence of God face a gap problem. This is the problem of convincingly arguing that their intermediate conclusions that some first cause or necessary being exists provide evidence for their main conclusion that God exists. This paper develops a simple and innovative approach to solving this problem, applicable to many cosmological arguments. According to the proposal, the best explanation for why the necessary being is found to have necessary existence is that it…Read more
  •  61
    Moral property eliminativism
    Philosophical Studies 175 (11): 2695-2713. 2018.
    This paper argues that there is significant motivation for contemporary ethicists to affirm a view I call “moral property eliminativism.” On this eliminativist view, there are no moral properties, but there are moral truths that are made true by only nonmoral entities. Moral property eliminativism parallels eliminativist views defended in other domains of philosophical inquiry, but has gone nearly entirely overlooked by contemporary ethicists. I argue that moral property eliminativism is motivat…Read more
  •  676
    Infallible Divine Foreknowledge cannot Uniquely Threaten Human Freedom, but its Mechanics Might
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (4): 73-94. 2012.
    It is not uncommon to think that the existence of exhaustive and infallible divine foreknowledge uniquely threatens the existence of human freedom. This paper shows that this cannot be so. For, to uniquely threaten human freedom, infallible divine foreknowledge would have to make an essential contribution to an explanation for why our actions are not up to us. And infallible divine foreknowledge cannot do this. There remains, however, an important question about the compatibility of freedom and …Read more
  •  69
    God knows the future by ordering the times
    Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion. forthcoming.
  •  739
    Faith as an Epistemic Disposition
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (1): 109-28. 2012.
    This paper presents and defends a model of religious faith as an epistemic disposition. According to the model, religious faith is a disposition to take certain doxastic attitudes toward propositions of religious significance upon entertaining certain mental states. Three distinct advantages of the model are advanced. First, the model allows for religious faith to explain the presence and epistemic appropriateness of religious belief. Second, the model accommodates a variety of historically sign…Read more
  •  68
    Collective Virtue
    with Meghan Byerly
    Journal of Value Inquiry 50 (1): 33-50. 2016.
  •  42
    A Dispositional Internalist Evidentialist Virtue Epistemology
    Logos and Episteme 5 (4): 399-424. 2014.
    This paper articulates and defends a novel version of internalist evidentialism which employs dispositions to account for the relation of evidentialsupport. In section one, I explain internalist evidentialist views generally, highlighting the way in which the relation of evidential support stands at the heart of these views. I then discuss two leading ways in which evidential support has been understood by evidentialists, and argue that an account of support which employs what I call epistemic d…Read more
  •  65
    The Special Value of Epistemic Self‐Reliance
    Ratio 27 (1): 53-67. 2013.
    Philosophers have long held that epistemic self-reliance has a special value. But, this view has recently been challenged by prominent epistemologist Linda Zagzebski. Zagzebski argues that potential sources of support for the claim that epistemic self-reliance has a special value fail. Here I provide a novel defense of the special value of epistemic self-reliance. Self-reliance has a special value because it is required for attaining certain valuable cognitive achievements. Further, practicing s…Read more
  •  67
    Ordinary morality does not imply atheism
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 83 (1): 85-96. 2018.
    Many theist as well as many atheist philosophers have maintained that if God exists, then every instance of undeserved, unwanted suffering ultimately benefits the sufferer. Recently, several authors have argued that this implication of theism conflicts with ordinary morality. I show that these arguments all rest on a common mistake. Defenders of these arguments overlook the role of merely potential instances of suffering in determining our moral obligations toward suffering.
  •  1
    What's Wrong with Satanic Temptation?
    In Benjamin W. McCraw & Robert Arp (eds.), Philosophical Approaches to the Devil, Routledge. pp. 159-68. 2015.