•  453
    Review of Metaphysics, Peter van Inwagen (review)
    Philosophical Review 104 (2): 314-317. 1993.
    In this classic, exciting, and thoughtful text, Metaphysics , Peter van Inwagen examines three profound questions: What are the most general features of the world? Why is there a world? and What is the place of human beings in the world? Metaphysics introduces to readers the curious notion that is metaphysics, how it is conceived both historically and currently. The author's work can serve either as a textbook in a university course on metaphysics or as an introduction to metaphysical thinking f…Read more
  •  71
    Special issue of EuJAP: Free Will and Epistemology
    with Robert Lockie, László Bernáth, and András Szigeti
    European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 15 (2): 5-12. 2019.
    Preface to the Special Issue on Free Will and Epistemology written by Robert Lockie
  •  122
    How Do We Know That We Are Free?
    European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 15 (2): 79-98. 2019.
    We are naturally disposed to believe of ourselves and others that we are free: that what we do is often and to a considerable extent ‘up to us’ via the exercise of a power of choice to do or to refrain from doing one or more alternatives of which we are aware. In this article, I probe thesource and epistemic justification of our ‘freedom belief’. I propose an account that (unlike most) does not lean heavily on our first-personal experience of choice and action, and instead regards freedom belief…Read more
  • Reviews (review)
    with Kurt Marko, R. C. Elwood, Fred Seddon, John D. Windhausen, and Robert C. Williams
    Studies in Soviet Thought 37 (4): 333-351. 1989.
  •  40
    Reviews (review)
    with Frederick J. Adelmann and Tom Rockmore
    Studies in East European Thought 41 (3): 233-242. 1991.
  •  58
    Reviews (review)
    with Julien S. Murphy, Irving H. Anellis, Pavel Kovaly, Nigel Gibson, N. G. O. Pereira, Fred Seddon, Oliva Blanchette, and Friedrich Rapp
    Studies in East European Thought 48 (2-4): 135-137. 1996.
  •  69
    Reviews (review)
    with Kurt Marko, R. C. Elwood, Fred Seddon, John D. Windhausen, and Robert C. Williams
    Studies in East European Thought 37 (4): 227-229. 1989.
  •  45
    Reviews (review)
    with R. M. Davison, John Riser, Robert C. Williams, N. G. O. Pereira, John W. Murphy, and Irving H. Anellis
    Studies in East European Thought 45 (3): 59-67. 1993.
  •  2
    John Martin Fischer, The Metaphysics of Free Will (review)
    Humana Mente 5 (1): 125-129. 1997.
  • The Argument from Consciousness Revisited
    In Jonathan L. Kvanvig (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion Volume 3, Oxford University Press. 2011.
  • Reviews (review)
    with Julien S. Murphy, Irving H. Anellis, Pavel Kovaly, Nigel Gibson, N. G. O. Pereira, Fred Seddon, Oliva Blanchette, and Friedrich Rapp
    Studies in East European Thought 48 (2-4): 281-324. 1996.
  •  12
    Reasons Explanation and Agent Control
    Philosophical Topics 32 (1-2): 241-253. 2004.
  •  33
    Understanding Free Will: Might We Double‐Think? (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (1): 222-229. 2003.
    Philosophers have been offering competing accounts of the will and its mysterious freedom for quite a while now, yet few seem wholly satisfied with any particular one of them. Witness the pronounced tendency in recent times for thinkers to have several goes at it, accompanied by the universal philosophical practice, when handling weak points in one’s own position, of loudly reminding your reader of the truly desperate tactics of the opposition, whose sincerity surely may be doubted. Now consider…Read more
  •  85
    The Efficacy of Reasons: A Reply to Hendrickson
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 40 (1): 135-137. 2002.
    Noel Hendrickson, in “Against an Agent-Causal Theory of Action” (this volume), carefully and intelligently probes aspects of the agent-causal account of free will I present in Persons and Causes: The Metaphysics of Free Will. The central target of his criticism is my contention that agent-causal events, by their very nature, cannot be caused. Here, I respond to his argument on this point.
  • Reviews (review)
    with Frederick J. Adelmann and Tom Rockmore
    Studies in Soviet Thought 41 (3): 233-242. 1991.
  • Some Puzzles About Free Agency
    Dissertation, Cornell University. 1992.
    I discuss several issues that concern human freedom of action. I begin by addressing the question of whether moral responsibility for one's actions and the consequences thereof requires that one have the capacity to have refrained from the action or to have prevented the ensuing consequence. Drawing to a significant extent on Peter van Inwagen's discussion of this matter, I defend certain forms of "alternative possibilities" conditions on moral responsibility against several recent objections, a…Read more
  •  5
    Trying Without Willing: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (1): 242-244. 2000.
    In the specialized and often peculiar conversation of philosophers, some speak of themselves and of others as willing our actions. Usually, they intend to imply thereby a distinctive kind of psychological event, one that lies at the origin of every instance of intentional action. This thesis, of course, has become highly controversial. Many argue that despite much traditional philosophical theorizing committed to such an essential feature of action, there is no basis for it in ordinary speech, i…Read more
  •  1
    Emergence
    with H. Y. Wong
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Csli, Stanford University. forthcoming.
  •  115
    Chalmers, David J. The Character of Consciousness, Oxford University Press, 2010, 624 pp. Cliteur, Paul. The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, 328 pp. Cochran, Molly. The Cambridge Companion to Dewey, Cambridge Uni (review)
    with Fred Evans, Allan Gotthelf, James G. Lennox, Jesus Ilundain-Agurruza, Michael W. Austin, Constantine Sandis, Graham Oppy, Michael Scott, and Roland Pierik
    Metaphilosophy 42 (3): 0026-1068. 2011.
  •  23
    The Problem of Evil: introduction
    In William Lane Craig (ed.), Philosophy of Religion: A Reader and Guide, Rutgers University Press. pp. 309--310. 2002.
  •  3
    Part III Introduction
    In Antonella Corradini & Timothy O'Connor (eds.), Emergence in Science and Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 6--207. 2010.
  •  1
    Religious Faith and Intellectual Virtue (edited book)
    . forthcoming.
  •  22
    Is God’s Necessity Necessary?
    Philosophia Christi 12 (2). 2010.
    I briefly defend the following claims in response to my critics: (1) We cannot make a principled division between features of contingent reality that do and features that don’t "cry our for explanation." (2) The physical data indicating fine-tuning provide confirmation of the hypothesis of a personal necessary cause of the universe over against an impersonal necessary cause, notwithstanding the fact that the probability of either hypothesis, if true, would be 1. (3) Theism that commits to God’s …Read more
  •  11
    Trying Without Willing (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (1): 242-244. 2000.
  •  23
    Time and Eternity (review)
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 66 (4): 520-524. 1992.
  •  87
    Theism and Ultimate Explanation
    Philosophia Christi 12 (2): 265-272. 2010.
    Twentieth-century analytic philosophy was dominated by positivist antimetaphysics and neo-Humean deflationary metaphysics, and the nature of explanation was reconceived in order to fit these agendas. Unsurprisingly, the explanatory value of theist was widely discredited. I argue that the long-overdue revival of moralized, broadly neo-Aristotelian metaphysics and an improved perspective on modal knowledge dramatically changes the landscape. In this enriched context, there is no sharp divide betwe…Read more
  •  39
    Indeterminism and Free Agency
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (3): 499-526. 1993.
    In recent years, as the enterprise of speculative metaphysics has attained a newfound measure of respectability, incompatibilist philosophers who are inclined to think that freedom of action is not only possible, but actual, have re-emerged to take on the formidable task of providing a satisfactory indeterministic account of the connections among an agent's freedom to do otherwise, her reasons, and her control over her act. In this paper, I want to examine three of these proposals, all of which …Read more
  •  145
    Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves is a rhetorically powerful but philosophically unconvincing attempt to show that a deterministic and ontologically reductionist, but epistemologically pluralist, outlook may peacefully coexist with a robust acceptance of human freedom and moral responsibility. The key to understanding the harmony rests in recognizing that freedom is not a metaphysical or physical condition but is instead a product of deeply embedded social practices. I argue that Dennett's projec…Read more