A review of Edward Feser's Five Proofs of the Existence of God.

In this chapter, we argue for a phenomenal conservative perspective on religious epistemology and attempt to answer some common criticisms of this perspective.

In this chapter, Logan Paul Gage examines the only real attempt to disprove God’s existence by a New Atheist: Richard Dawkins’s “Ultimate 747 Gambit.” Central to Dawkins’s argument is the claim that God is more complex than what he is invoked to explain. Gage evaluates this claim using the main extant notions of simplicity in the literature. Gage concludes that on no reading does this claim survive scrutiny. Along the way, Dawkins claims that there are no good positive arguments for (...) God’s existence. Gage attempts to show that Dawkins’s argument depends upon distinctively philosophical assumptions that do not appear to withstand scrutiny. (shrink)

Recently, the Intelligent Design (ID) movement has challenged the claim of many in the scientific establishment that nature gives no empirical signs of having been deliberately designed. In particular, ID arguments in biology dispute the notion that neo-Darwinian evolution is the only viable scientific explanation of the origin of biological novelty, arguing that there are telltale signs of the activity of intelligence which can be recognized and studied empirically. In recent years, a number of Catholic philosophers, theologians, and scientists have (...) expressed opposition to ID. Some of these critics claim that there is a conflict between the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas and that of the ID movement, and even an affinity between Aquinas’s ideas and theistic Darwinism. We consider six such criticisms and find each wanting. (shrink)

In this essay, I describe my journey to Catholicism and explain one of the many reasons I became Catholic--namely, an argument from the canon of Scripture.

It is still a live question in epistemology and philosophy of science as to what exactly evidence is. In my view, evidence consists in experiences called “seemings.” This view is a version of the phenomenal conception of evidence, the position that evidence consists in nonfactive mental states with propositional content. This conception is opposed by sense-data theorists, disjunctivists, and those who think evidence consists in physical objects or publicly observable states of affairs—call it the courtroom conception of evidence. Thomas Kelly (...) has recently argued that the phenomenal conception cannot play all the roles evidence plays and is thus inadequate. Having first explained the nature of seemings, in this essay I utilize Kelly’s own understanding of the four major roles of evidence and argue that the phenomenal conception can play each one. Experience is a good candidate for evidence. (shrink)

Contextualism (the view that ‘knowledge’ and its variants are context-sensitive) has been supported in large part through appeal to intuitions about Keith DeRose’s Bank Cases. Recently, however, the contextualist construal of these cases has come under fire from Kent Bach and Jennifer Nagel who question whether the Bank Case subject’s confidence can remain constant in both low- and high-stakes cases. Having explained the Bank Cases and this challenge to them, I argue that DeRose has given a reasonable reply to this (...) initial challenge. However, I proceed to argue that the current stalemate can be broken. Seeking to extend the Bach-Nagel critique, I offer a novel interpretation of the Bank Cases according to which the subject’s evidence changes between low- and high-stakes cases. If I am correct, then, given the amount of support the Bank Cases have been thought to lend contextualism, the case for contextualism is seriously weakened. (shrink)

A discussion of several tensions between Thomistic philosophy and modern Darwinian theory as well as several recent Thomistic criticisms of intelligent design.

Some prominent epistemologists make a distinction between evidence on the one hand and what is made of that evidence by a subject on the other. For reasons that will become clear, this view threatens the evidentialist project. Yet, I argue, it is possible to retain evidentialism while preserving the intuition behind this distinction. First, I explain this distinction and illustrate it with two examples. Second, I explain what is at stake for evidentialism. Third, I develop a possible solution to the (...) problem. I close by considering some likely objections to this solution. (shrink)

A brief introduction to the life and key work of Rudolf Carnap with special attention to his work on inductive logic.

A review of Thomas Nagel's book Mind and Cosmos.

A brief introduction to the life and work of William Paley, including a discussion of the structure of his famous design argument.

A brief introduction to a diverse and interesting group of papers in contemporary epistemology.

A review of Jerry Root's book C.S. Lewis and a Problem of Evil.