•  1162
    Panpsychism and Priority Cosmopsychism
    with Khai Wager
    In Godehard Brüntrup & Ludwig Jaskolla (eds.), Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives, Oxford University Press. pp. 113-129. 2016.
    A contemporary form of panpsychism says that phenomenality is prevalent because all physical ultimates instantiate phenomenal or protophenomenal properties. According to priority cosmopsychism, an alternative to panpsychism that we propose in this chapter, phenomenality is prevalent because the whole cosmos instantiates phenomenal or protophenomenal properties. It says, moreover, that the consciousness of the cosmos is ontologically prior to the consciousness of ordinary individuals like us. Sin…Read more
  •  731
    The arguments presented in this comprehensive collection have important implications for the philosophy of mind and the study of consciousness.
  •  676
    According to one antitheist argument, the necessarily omniscient, necessarily omnipotent, and necessarily omnibenevolent Anselmian God does not exist, because if God is necessarily omnipotent it is impossible for Him to comprehend fully certain concepts, such as fear, frustration and despair, that an omniscient being needs to possess. Torin Alter examines this argument and provides three elaborate objections to it. I argue that theists would not accept any of them because they con ict with tradi…Read more
  •  609
    Is There a Shallow Logical Refutation of the Ontological Argument?
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (2): 87--99. 2012.
    The beauty of Anselm’s ontological argument is, I believe, that no matter how one approaches it, one cannot refute it without making a significant metaphysical assumption, one that is likely to be contentious in its own right. Peter Millican disagrees. He introduces an objection according to which one can refute the argument merely by analysing its shallow logical details, without making any significant metaphysical assumption. He maintains, moreover, that his objection does not depend on a spec…Read more
  •  601
    Skeptical theists purport to undermine evidential arguments from evil by appealing to the fact that our knowledge of goods, evils, and their interconnections is significantly limited. Michael J. Almeida and Graham Oppy have recently argued that skeptical theism is unacceptable because it results in a form of moral skepticism which rejects inferences that play an important role in our ordinary moral reasoning. In this reply to Almeida and Oppy's argument we offer some reasons for thinking that sk…Read more
  •  552
    A place for protoconsciousness?
    PSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 12. 2006.
    I argue that Gregg Rosenberg’s panexperientialism is either extremely implausible or irrelevant to the mystery of consciousness by introducing metaphysical and conceptual objections to his appeal to the notion of ‘protoconsciousness’
  •  510
    Immortality without boredom
    Ratio 22 (3): 261-277. 2009.
    In this paper we address Bernard Williams' argument for the undesirability of immortality. Williams argues that unavoidable and pervasive boredom would characterise the immortal life of an individual with unchanging categorical desires. We resist this conclusion on the basis of the distinction between habitual and situational boredom and a psychologically realistic account of significant factors in the formation of boredom. We conclude that Williams has offered no persuasive argument for the nec…Read more
  •  497
    The ontological argument and the devil
    Philosophical Quarterly 60 (238): 72-91. 2010.
    The 'parody objection' to the ontological argument for the existence of God advances parallel arguments apparently proving the existence of various absurd entities. I discuss recent versions of the parody objection concerning the existence of 'AntiGod' and the devil, as introduced by Peter Millican and Timothy Chambers. I argue that the parody objection always fails, because any parody is either (i) not structurally parallel to the ontological argument, or (ii) not dialectically parallel to the …Read more
  •  413
    Daniel A. Dombrowski. A Platonic Philosophy of Religion: A Process Perspective (review)
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 1 (1). 2009.
  •  383
    Thomas versus Thomas: A new approach to Nagel's bat argument
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 46 (3): 377-395. 2003.
    i l l ustrat es t he di ffi cul t y of providing a purely physical characterisation of phenomenal experi ence wi t ha vi vi d exampl e about a bat ’ s sensory apparatus. Whi l e a number of obj ect i ons have al ready been made to Nagel.
  •  379
    The Knowledge Argument and Epiphenomenalism
    Erkenntnis 72 (1). 2010.
    Frank Jackson endorses epiphenomenalism because he thinks that his knowledge argument undermines physicalism. One of the most interesting criticisms of Jackson's position is what I call the 'inconsistency objection'. The inconsistency objection says that Jackson's position is untenable because epiphenomenalism undermines the knowledge argument. The inconsistency objection has been defended by various philosophers independently, including Michael Watkins, Fredrik Stjernberg, and Neil Campbell. Su…Read more
  •  338
    The knowledge argument against dualism
    Theoria 68 (3): 205-223. 2002.
    Paul Churchland argues that Frank Jackson
  •  297
    The grounds of worship
    with Tim Bayne
    Religious Studies 42 (3): 299-313. 2006.
    Although worship has a pivotal place in religious thought and practice, philosophers of religion have had remarkably little to say about it. In this paper we examine some of the many questions surrounding the notion of worship, focusing on the claim that human beings have obligations to worship God. We explore a number of attempts to ground our supposed duty to worship God, and argue that each is problematic. We conclude by examining the implications of this result, and suggest that it might be …Read more
  •  212
    Millican on the Ontological Argument
    Mind 116 (464): 1027-1040. 2007.
    Peter Millican (2004) provides a novel and elaborate objection to Anselm's ontological argument. Millican thinks that his objection is more powerful than any other because it does not dispute contentious 'deep philosophical theories' that underlie the argument. Instead, it tries to reveal the 'fatal flaw' of the argument by considering its 'shallow logical details'. Millican's objection is based on his interpretation of the argument, according to which Anselm relies on what I call the 'principle…Read more
  •  207
    What is Russellian Monism?
    with Torin Alter
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 19 (9-10). 2012.
    Russellian monism offers a distinctive perspective on the relationship between the physical and the phenomenal. For example, on one version of the view, phenomenal properties are the categorical bases of fundamental physical properties, such as mass and charge, which are dispositional. Russellian monism has prominent supporters, such as Bertrand Russell, Grover Maxwell, Michael Lockwood, and David Chalmers. But its strengths and shortcomings are often misunderstood. In this paper we try to elimi…Read more
  •  190
    Salvation in Heaven
    Philosophical Papers 33 (1): 97-119. 2004.
    The aim of this paper is to examine the difficulties that belief in a paradisiacal afterlife creates for orthodox theists. In particular, we consider the difficulties that arise when one asks whether there is freedom in Heaven, i.e. whether the denizens of Heaven have libertarian freedom in action. Our main contention is that this 'Problem of Heaven' makes serious difficulties for proponents of free will theodicies and for proponents of free will defences
  •  187
    A new defence of Anselmian theism
    Philosophical Quarterly 58 (233): 577-596. 2008.
    Anselmian theists, for whom God is the being than which no greater can be thought, usually infer that he is an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent being. Critics have attacked these claims by numerous distinct arguments, such as the paradox of the stone, the argument from God's inability to sin, and the argument from evil. Anselmian theists have responded to these arguments by constructing an independent response to each. This way of defending Anselmian theism is uneconomical. I seek to es…Read more
  •  179
    Introduction to There's Something About Mary
    In Peter Ludlow, Daniel Stoljar & Yujin Nagasawa (eds.), There's Something About Mary, . 2004.
    Mary is confined to a black-and-white room, is educated through black-and-white books and through lectures relayed on black-and white television. In this way she learns everything there is to know about the physical nature of the world. She knows all the physical facts about us and our environment, in a wide sense of 'physical' which includes everything in completed physics, chemistry, and neurophysiology, and all there is to know about the causal and relational facts consequent upon all this, i…Read more
  •  171
    The best of all possible worlds
    Synthese 143 (3): 309-320. 2005.
    The Argument from Inferiority holds that our world cannot be the creation of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being; for if it were, it would be the best of all possible worlds, which evidently it is not. We argue that this argument rests on an implausible principle concerning which worlds it is permissible for an omnipotent being to create: roughly, the principle that such a being ought not to create a non-best world. More specifically, we argue that this principle is plausible only if we assum…Read more
  •  149
    The knowledge argument is an argument against physicalism that was first formulated by Frank Jackson in 1982. While Jackson no longer endorses it, it is still regarded as one of the most important arguments in the philosophy of mind. Physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that, roughly speaking, everything in this world—including tables, galaxies, cheese cakes, cars, atoms, and even our sensations— are ultimately physical. The knowledge argument attempts to undermine this thesis by appealing to …Read more
  •  142
    Divine omniscience and knowledge de se
    International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 53 (2): 73-82. 2003.
    Patrick Grim argues that God cannot beomniscient because no one other than me canacquire knowledge de se of myself. Inparticular, according to Grim, God cannot knowwhat I know in knowing that I am making amess. I argue, however, that given twoplausible principles regarding divineattributes there is no reason to accept Grim'sconclusion that God cannot be omniscient. Inthis paper I focus on the relationship betweendivine omniscience and necessaryimpossibilities, in contrast to the generaltrend of …Read more
  •  126
    I can't make you worship me
    Ratio 18 (2). 2005.
    This paper argues that Divine Command Theory is inconsistent with the veiw, held by many theists, that we have a moral obligation to worship God.
  •  119
    Externalism and the memory argument
    Dialectica 56 (4): 335-46. 2002.
    Pa ul Boghos s i a n’ s ‘ Me mor y Ar gume nt ’ a l l ege dl y s hows , us i ng t he f ami l i a r s l ow-switching scenario, that externalism and authoritative self-knowledge are incompatible. The aim of this paper is to undermine the argument by examining..
  •  115
    Anselmian Theism
    Philosophy Compass 6 (8): 564-571. 2011.
    In this article, I discuss Anselmian theism, which is arguably the most widely accepted form of monotheism. First, I introduce the core theses of Anselmian theism and consider its historical and developmental origins. I contend that, despite its name, Anselmian theism might well be older than Anselm. I also claim, supporting my argument by reference to research in the cognitive science of religion, that, contrary to what many think, Anselmian theism might be a natural result of human cognitive d…Read more
  •  110
    A Panpsychist Dead End
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 95 (1): 25-50. 2021.
    Panpsychism has received much attention in the philosophy of mind in recent years. So-called constitutive Russellian panpsychism, in particular, is considered by many the most promising panpsychist approach to the hard problem of consciousness. In this paper, however, I develop a new challenge to this approach. I argue that the three elements of constitutive Russellian panpsychism—that is, the constitutive element, the Russellian element and the panpsychist element—jointly entail a ‘cognitive de…Read more
  •  109
    Formulating the explanatory gap
    American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers. forthcoming.
    The American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers. Harman
  •  97
    Moral evil and human freedom: A reply to Tierno
    Sophia 42 (2): 107-111. 2003.
    Many theists believe that the so-called ‘free will defence’ successfully undermines the antitheist argument from moral evil. However, in a recent issue of Sophia Joel Thomas Tierno provides the ‘adequacy argument’ in order to show an alleged difficulty with the free will defence. I argue that the adequacy argument fails because it equivocates on the notion of moral evil.
  •  94
    Evil And The Problem Of Impermanence In Medieval Japanese Philosophy
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (3): 195-226. 2022.
    . The problem of evil is widely considered a problem only for traditional Western monotheists who believe that there is an omnipotent and morally perfect God. I argue, however, that the problem of evil, more specifically a variant of the problem of evil which I call the ‘problem of impermanence’, arises even for those adhering to the philosophical and religious traditions of the East. I analyse and assess various responses to the problem of impermanence found in medieval Japanese literature. I a…Read more
  •  90
    Models of Anselmian Theism
    Faith and Philosophy 30 (1): 3-25. 2013.
    The so-called Anselmian thesis says that God is that than which no greater can be thought. This thesis has been widely accepted among traditional theists and it has for several hundred years been a central notion whenever philosophers debate the existence and nature of God. Proponents of the thesis are often silent, however, about exactly what it means to say that God is that than which no greater can be thought. The aim of this paper is to offer an answer to this question by providing rigorous,…Read more