John DePoe - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Book by John DePoe

Debating Christian Religious Epistemology: An Introduction to Five Views on the Knowledge of God, 2020

What should a subject do if she believes that p , but her friend, who she judges to be just as sm... more What should a subject do if she believes that p , but her friend, who she judges to be just as smart and knowledgeable as she is, believes ¬ p ? Is she

Papers by John DePoe

This essay provides a broad overview and defense of skeptical theism as a response to the evident... more This essay provides a broad overview and defense of skeptical theism as a response to the evidential problem of evil.

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2023

Some have put forward a normative principle that it is immoral and highly disrespectful to create... more Some have put forward a normative principle that it is immoral and highly disrespectful to create free, rational creatures (like human beings) without their prior consent. (See, for instance, P. X. Monaghan, “God* Does Not Exist: A Novel Logical Problem of Evil,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 88, no. 2 (2020): 181–195.) If true, this principle constitutes a new argument against the existence of God since it is logically impossible to acquire the consent of someone before they are created. Thus, God’s existence is taken to be incompatible with creating any persons. I shall examine this normative claim and show that it is not plausible. In the first place, it fails to meet three criteria that are commonplace to the “logical problem of evil.” In the second place, the principle has clear counterexamples that show many plausible exceptions that could justify God in creating persons.

Philosophia Christi, 2022

One objection to skeptical theism is that it implies radical moral skepticism. Humans cannot make... more One objection to skeptical theism is that it implies radical moral skepticism. Humans cannot make any moral judgments on this view because of their ignorance of the inaccessible divine knowledge that is called upon to explain the existence of apparently gratuitous evil. In answering this objection, I propose two important moves for skeptical theists. First, skeptical theists should be positive skeptical theists (the existence of God positively implies the appearance of gratuitous evil), rather than negative skeptical theists (the appearance of gratuitous evil is probabilistically inscrutable given theism). Second, the skeptical theist can affirm a model of divine transcendence whereby the unknown divine moral knowledge is continuous with human moral knowledge. These two moves, I contend, assist in saving skeptical theism from accusations of radical moral skepticism.

Synthese, 2021

While there is no shortage of philosophical literature discussing knowledge by acquaintance, ther... more While there is no shortage of philosophical literature discussing knowledge by acquaintance, there is a surprising dearth of work about theories of epistemic justification based on direct acquaintance. This paper explores a basic framework for a thoroughly general account of epistemic justification by acquaintance. I argue that this approach to epistemic justification satisfies two importance aspects (objective and subjective) of justification. After sketching how the acquaintance approach can meet both objective and subjective aspects for epistemic justification, I will outline how this general account of justification by acquaintance can be applied to the analysis of justification for many types of beliefs (e.g., non-inferential, inferential, a priori, empirical justification, etc.). Finally, some of the objections to the acquaintance approach will be considered and answered.

Global Journal for Classical Theology, 2016

Evidentialism can roughly be understood as the idea that in order for a belief to be justified, t... more Evidentialism can roughly be understood as the idea that in order for a belief to be justified, the subject must have some awareness of what makes the belief true. Recently, evidentialism has fallen on hard times, especially in discussions about the justification of religious beliefs. With the advance of externalist theories of epistemic justification, such as Plantinga’s reformed epistemology, it is commonplace to denounce evidentialist standards for justified beliefs and to accept that one’s religious beliefs are “properly basic” without requiring any awareness of the evidential basis for that belief. In other words, anti-evidentialists endorse that people can be justified in believing that God exists or that Jesus rose from dead, for example, without any awareness as to why those beliefs are true. In this paper, I will contend that evidentialism is still a viable option. To this end, I will point out misconceptions about evidentialism, especially concerning its requirement for awareness. By distinguishing conceptual from non-conceptual awareness, many of the objections against evidentialism can be dispelled. In conclusion, I intend to show that evidentialism remains a serious contender (if not the most plausible account) in religious epistemology.

Philosophia Christi, 2017

In response to the recent resurgence of idealism among a cluster of Christian theologians and phi... more In response to the recent resurgence of idealism among a cluster of Christian theologians and philosophers, this article raises a difficulty for Christians to be idealists. Unlike traditional accounts of Christianity that must explain why God permits or allows evil, idealists face a different and more difficult problem—namely why does God willfully and directly produce experiences of evil. Because the metaphysics of idealism requires God to produce experiences of evil directly and willfully, it is difficult to reconcile it with the essential goodness of God. The existence of matter, therefore, may play an important role in maintaining God’s innocence while allowing creatures to exercise free will.

Philosophia Christi, 2018

The problem of peer disagreement represents a growing challenge to justified religious belief. Af... more The problem of peer disagreement represents a growing challenge to justified religious belief. After surveying the state of the dialectic of the problem, I explore three ways for religious believers to remain steadfast in light of religious disagreement. The first two ways focus on the believer’s basing his religious beliefs on a direct awareness of the truth or evidence of his beliefs. The third way considers the virtue of faith as a means for resisting peer disagreement.

Ratio, 2018

Epistemic Indirect Realism (EIR) is the position that justification for contingent propositions a... more Epistemic Indirect Realism (EIR) is the position that justification for contingent propositions about the extra-mental world requires an inference based on a subjective, experiential mental state. One objection against EIR is that it runs contrary to common sense and practice; in essence, ordinary people do not form beliefs about things in the external world on the basis of experiential mental states. This objection implies EIR is contrary to ordinary experience, impractical, and leads to scepticism. In this paper, I will defend EIR against this objection by distinguishing EIR based on conceptual awareness and non-conceptual awareness. In particular, I will argue that direct acquaintance provides sufficient (non-conceptual) awareness that can explain how ordinary folks are capable of forming justified beliefs about the external world in a way consistent with EIR. Overall, I present a framework for showing that EIR can satisfy ordinary epistemic practices without betraying human nature or over-intellectualizing the required epistemic standards for possessing a justified belief.

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2017

In a recent article, Erik Wielenberg has argued that positive skeptical theism fails to circumven... more In a recent article, Erik Wielenberg has argued that positive skeptical theism fails to circumvent his new argument from apparent gratuitous evil. Wielenberg's new argument focuses on apparently gratuitous suffering and abandonment, and he argues that negative skeptical theistic responses fail to respond to the challenge posed by these apparent gratuitous evils due to the parent-child analogy often invoked by theists. The greatest challenge to his view, he admits, is positive skeptical theism. To stave off this potential problem with his argument, he maintains that positive skeptical theism entails divine deception, which creates insuperable problems for traditional theism. This essay shows that Wielenberg is mistaken. Although positive skeptical theism claims that we should expect the appearance of gratuitous evil (when there is no actual gratuitous evil) given Christian theism, this does not entail divine deception. I maintain that God is not a deceiver on positive skeptical theism because God does not meet two requirements to be a deceiver: (i) God does not intend to cause people to believe any false propositions and (ii) God does not provide sufficient evidence for someone to justifiably believe a false proposition. Consequently, Wielenberg's new argument from evil fails and positive skeptical theism remains a viable response to the evidential argument from evil.

Skeptical Theism: New Essays, 2014

Most contemporary versions of skeptical theism are motivated solely by the idea that the human co... more Most contemporary versions of skeptical theism are motivated solely by the idea that the human cognitive situation is such that we are unable to tell if our judgment about the ultimate justifiability of any given evil is accurate. I refer to this view as negative skeptical theism, and I maintain that there is a better framework in which to situate one's skeptical theism so as to avoid the most effective objections to skeptical theism based on moral skepticism and paralysis. I propose the framework of positive skeptical theism where one remains skeptical about the human perspective to discern the justification for apparently gratuitous evils, but which positively recognizes second-order justifications that one would expect to find for the appearance of gratuitous evils if God exists. This alternative framework helps the skeptical theist to be skeptical about one's ability to discern any God-permitting reason for a specific seemingly gratuitous evil, while avoiding the undesirable implications of negative skeptical theism.

Christian Scholars Review, 2014

Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism is often considered to follow similarl... more Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism is often considered to follow similarly to an argument given by C. S. Lewis. However, there are significant differences in their arguments against naturalism, which my analysis of their arguments emphasizes. The most significant contrast is the standard for rational thought that is used in each argument. By examining these differences I raise some criticisms to Plantinga’s argument and suggest some reasons to prefer Lewis’s version. In particular I maintain that the account of rationality in Plantinga’s argument makes Lewis’s argument the superior way to argue against naturalism.

Review and Expositor, 2014

This article presents an overview of various formations of contemporary teleological arguments wi... more This article presents an overview of various formations of contemporary teleological arguments with a brief historical background. The fine-tuning argument and three of its most well-known objections are considered first. Next, the argument from design based on the origins of life is presented. The third teleological argument is based on the temporal order of the universe. The final section of the paper considers and responds to well-known objections commonly raised against design arguments. The conclusion is that the contemporary versions of the teleological argument have a positive role to play in Christian apologetics despite some of their limitations.

Philosophia Christi, 2013

Arguments in natural theology have recently increased in their number and level of sophistication... more Arguments in natural theology have recently increased in their number and level of sophistication. However, there has not been much analysis of the ways in which these arguments should be evaluated as good, taken collectively or individually. After providing an overview of some proposed goals and good-making criteria for arguments in natural theology, we provide an analysis that stands as a corrective to some of the ill-formed standards that are currently in circulation. Specifically, our analysis focuses on the relation between the veracity of the premises and their relation to the conclusion of an argument. In addition to providing a clearer account of what makes an argument good, an upshot of our account is that there remain positive contributions for " weak " arguments, especially within cumulative case arguments in ramified natural theology.

Philosophia Christi, 2013

Daniel Dennett has argued that consciousness can be satisfactorily accounted for in terms of phys... more Daniel Dennett has argued that consciousness can be satisfactorily accounted for in terms of physical entities and processes. In some of his most recent publications, he has made this case by casting doubts on purely conceptual thought experiments and proposing his own thought experiments to “pump” the intuition that consciousness can be physical. In this paper, I will summarize Dennett’s recent defenses of physicalism, followed by a careful critique of his position. The critique presses two flaws in Dennett’s defense of physicalism. First, I will rebut his case against the traditional conceptual arguments against physicalism. Second, I will present some empirical grounds (empirical scientific findings on blind sight and tactile vision substitute systems) for thinking that a crucial move in the argument against physicalism is well-supported. For someone, like Dennett, who finds conceptual arguments dubious, the empirical findings make it exceptionally difficult to deny the anti-physicalist argument.

Acta Analytica, 2012

Michael Bergmann has argued that internalist accounts of justification face an insoluble dilemma.... more Michael Bergmann has argued that internalist accounts of justification face an insoluble dilemma. This paper begins with an explanation of Bergmann’s dilemma. Next, I review some recent attempts to answer the dilemma, which I argue are insufficient to overcome it. The solution I propose presents an internalist account of justification through direct acquaintance. My thesis is that direct acquaintance can provide subjective epistemic assurance without falling prey to the quagmire of difficulties that Bergmann alleges all internalist accounts of justification cannot surmount.

Philosophical Studies, 2011

Michael Huemer has argued for the justification principle known as phenomenal conservativism by e... more Michael Huemer has argued for the justification principle known as phenomenal conservativism by employing a transcendental argument that claims all attempts to reject phenomenal conservativism ultimately are doomed to self-defeat. My contribution presents two independent arguments against the self-defeat argument for phenomenal conservativism after briefly presenting Huemer's account of phenomenal conservativism and the justification for the self-defeat argument. My first argument suggests some ways that philosophers may reject Huemer's premise that all justified beliefs are formed on the basis of seemings. In the second argument I contend that phenomenal conservativism is not a well-motivated account of internal justification, which is a further reason to reject the self-defeat argument. Consequently, the self-defeat argument fails to show that rejecting phenomenal conservativism inevitably leads one to a self-defeating position.

The South African Journal of Philosophy, 2007

In numerous works Alvin Plantinga has argued that classical foundationalism is a failed theory of... more In numerous works Alvin Plantinga has argued that classical foundationalism is a failed theory of knowledge due to its self- referential incoherence. Plantinga’s argument, however, falls short of demonstrating that classical foundationalism is self-refuting. To bring this to light, I will review the form of Plantinga’s argument in comparison with other examples of self-refutation. Upon closer inspection, it will be clear that classical foundationalism is not self- refuting as Plantinga claims. Furthermore, I will expose another flaw in Plantinga’s argument against classical foundationalism, which shows at best that Plantinga’s argument cannot be reconstructed to show that classical foundationalism is improbable. While Plantinga’s argument may highlight a challenge for classical foundationalism, his argument does not establish the falsity of classical foundationalism, nor does it offer any other overriding reason to reject it. Thus, Plantinga’s criticisms of classical foundationalism are not sufficient by themselves to rule out the theory’s viability.

Southwest Philosophical Studies, 2008

Timothy Williamson has offered a novel approach to refuting external world skepticism in his infl... more Timothy Williamson has offered a novel approach to refuting external world skepticism in his influential book, Knowledge and Its Limits. The strategy employed by Williamson is to show that skeptics falsely attribute too much self-knowledge to the epistemic agent when they claim that

Philosophia Christi, 2008

This paper defends a Bayesian approach to confirming a miracle against Jordan Howard Sobel’s rece... more This paper defends a Bayesian approach to confirming a miracle against Jordan Howard Sobel’s recent novel interpretation of Hume’s criticisms. In his book, Logic and Theism, Sobel offers an intriguing and original way to apply Hume’s criticisms against the possibility of having sufficient evidence to confirm a miracle. The key idea behind Sobel’s approach is to employ infinitesimal probabilities to neutralize the cumulative effects of positive evidence for any miracle. This paper aims to undermine Sobel’s use of infinitesimal probabilities to block a Bayesian approach to confirming a miracle.

Debating Christian Religious Epistemology: An Introduction to Five Views on the Knowledge of God, 2020

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2023

Philosophia Christi, 2022

Synthese, 2021

Global Journal for Classical Theology, 2016

Philosophia Christi, 2017

Philosophia Christi, 2018

Ratio, 2018

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2017

Skeptical Theism: New Essays, 2014

Christian Scholars Review, 2014

Review and Expositor, 2014

Philosophia Christi, 2013

Acta Analytica, 2012

Philosophical Studies, 2011

The South African Journal of Philosophy, 2007

Southwest Philosophical Studies, 2008

Philosophia Christi, 2008

In Theaetetus 170c-171d, Plato offers an argument against Protagoras’s dictum that “man is the me... more In Theaetetus 170c-171d, Plato offers an argument against Protagoras’s dictum that “man is the measure of all things.” I offer a reading of Plato’s argument which contends that Plato is correctly attributing a radical relativism to Protagoras’s epistemology (and not merely an infallibilist). Then, I proceed to show the structure of Plato’s argument and how it succeeds in showing how the relativist position is self-refuting. In order to make the case that Protagoras is a full-blown relativist, and not merely an infallibilist, I show how the Heraclitean “metaphysics of flux” is important to reading Plato’s argument and understanding Protagoras’s position. The final part of the article concludes by showing how the sort of reading of Plato I am defending can naturally answer the typical response that questions whether Plato needs to include the relativistic qualifiers in the final steps of his self-refutation argument.

The so-called “continuity argument” given in the third dialogue of DHP (230-31) raises a number o... more The so-called “continuity argument” given in the third dialogue of DHP (230-31) raises a number of fundamental interpretive questions about Berkeley’s understanding of God and the continuity of sensible objects. In this paper, I respond to Bennett’s charges that Berkeley’s continuity argument is a “momentary aberration” as well as “disgraceful and astonishing.” In order to present Berkeley in a more charitable light, I bring together a unified reading of Berkeley’s position on the continuity of objects and the nature of God’s knowledge. One strength of my proposal is that it undercuts Bennett’s reasons for dismissing Berkeley’s interest in the continuity hypothesis by appealing to Berkeley’s theological commitments. The paper defends Berkeley’s interest in a continuity thesis, which squares his guarded language about continuity with his theological commitments. Then, I offer a reading of the continuity argument that dispels any trace of circularity in Berkeley’s reasoning. Ultimately, I conclude that the continuity argument rests essentially on the same basis as his well-known passivity argument for the existence of God.

Daniel Hill has argued that it is never morally permissible to torture another person, including ... more Daniel Hill has argued that it is never morally permissible to torture another person, including situations when doing so will save the lives of many innocent persons. While Hill concedes that the use of harm to protect innocent lives can be morally justified, interrogational torture is different because it requires using harm to force a person to act in compliance with a positive duty. However, Hill maintains, it is only permissible to use harm to force people to comply with their negative duties. This paper points out two independent problems with Hill's reasoning. The first problem is that one can plausibly claim that the terrorist is still violating his negative duty and thereby one can be morally permitted to inflict harm on the terrorist by Hill's moral reasoning. Second, Hill is mistaken in believing that negative duties always override positive duties. By recognizing instead that negative duties have prima facie significance over positive duties, it is possible that interrogational torture may be morally permitted in some circumstances. The paper concludes with a brief suggestion on how to categorically rule out the moral permissibility of torture in light of Hill's failure to do so.

An overview of Molinism (e.g., Christianity plus the doctrine of divine middle knowledge) and the... more An overview of Molinism (e.g., Christianity plus the doctrine of divine middle knowledge) and the problem of evil. It provides a big picture perspective on how Molinism impacts the problem of evil. This was originally written for a volume on Molinism that ended up being aborted.