under contract with Cambridge Elements in Global Philosophy of Religion (CUP)
In this monograph, I propose the framework of Pluralistic Theism to understand the seeming contradictions implied by religious syncretism in Southeast Asia. Pluralistic Theism is the philosophical view that there are different and equally correct conceptions of the divine, and conjoining these conceptions need not imply a (logical) contradiction. I compare and contrast the theoretical merits of this view with those of Ninian Smart’s Philosophy of Worldviews and John Hick’s Religious Pluralism. Finally, and conclude that Pluralistic Theism better explains the religious data than the latter two views.
for Aletheia Publishing
In this monograph, I defend a version of the Simple View of personal identity. This version has three main theses: (i) personal identity is a primitive, unanalyzable concept, (ii) persons are ontologically fundamental, not derivative, and (iii) prudential concern is identity-involving. I present some arguments for these theses and respond to possible objections against them.
a collection of interviews with some of the top philosophers in the world
under contract with Springer Singapore
a collection of essays on Alan Hajek's work
edited with Branden Fitelson and Weng Hong Tang
under contract with Springer Synthese Library
under review - journal article
In Introduction to Logic (chapter 12), the late Jesuit philosopher Harry Gensler developed a rather curious natural deduction proof system for deontic logic. In this paper, I present a version of this and show its ramifications to some well-known deontic principles, particularly Hare's do's-from-ought principle, Kant's ought-implies-can principle, Hume's no-ought-from-is principle, and Poincare's no-do's-from-is principle. I also show how it addresses some familiar deontic paradoxes, particularly Ross's paradox of obligation, Prior's good Samaritan paradox, and Chisholm's contrary-to-duty puzzle.
with Brian Garrett
under review - journal article
In this note, we argue that even if Paul Benacerraf’s well-known criticism of J. F. Thomson is successful, Thomson’s supertask generates an unexpected consequence.
with Ben Blumson
under review - journal article
According to a traditional conception, romantic love is both constant – roughly, if someone loves another, they continue to love them – and exclusive – roughly, if someone loves another, they love only the other. We argue:
If fission or fusion is possible, then constancy and exclusivity are not both essential features of love.
If fission or fusion is possible, and exclusivity and constancy are both obligatory features of love, then moral dilemmas are possible.
One man’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens, but we conclude exclusivity is neither essential nor obligatory.
drafting stage
In this paper, I formulate Weak Kleene semantics in a multiple-conclusion entailment setting. I show some interesting facts that result from this formulation.
drafting stage
The Frege-Geach problem for expressivists is often cashed out as the challenge of explaining the logical behaviour of expressive, non-truth-evaluable sentences. In particular, it asks (i) how an expressive sentence and its negation can be logically inconsistent and (ii) how expressive sentences can figure in logically valid inferences. Both problems form the general embedding problem for expressivists. That is, the problem of explaining how expressive sentences could be subsentences of compound sentences. In this paper, I explore two versions of the Weak Kleene semantic framework that could address these challenges. These frameworks imply the non-truth-aptness of these expressive sentences and their logical infectiousness as well.
drafting stage
Jorgensen's dilemma is the problem of explaining how arguments that contain imperative sentences could be deductively valid. In this paper, we extend this dilemma to moral arguments in general. We show that the current metaethical theories could be seen as possible answers to this generalised dilemma.
drafting stage
In this paper, I argue that the parable of sheep and goats found in Matthew 25:31-46 implies a philosophical puzzle about eschatological fatalism. I show why this puzzle is a problem for theists who accept God’s traditional omni-attributes. Finally, I evaluate possible ways that theists may take to resist the puzzle.
drafting stage
In 'What's wrong with tonk(?)', Roy T. Cook proposes a semantics for Prior's binary connective tonk. In this note, we show that this semantics is not truth-functionally complete.
drafting stage
In Problems of Logic, Ushenko presents a version of the liar paradox, which he claims to be an exception to Russell’s theory of types or Ramsey’s theory of language levels. Encarnacion, however, shows that far from being an exception to these theories, Ushenko’s paradox only rests on a mere symbolic fallacy. In this paper, I aim to evaluate Encarnacion’s argument for his verdict by looking at the immediate responses to it.
with Abbas Ahsan
drafting stage
Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam embrace contradictions within their respective core doctrines. Using a certain type of non-classical logic, some dialetheists have offered a piecemeal approach to understanding the doctrinal contradictions of a particular religion. In this paper, we propose a more general dialetheic approach to classifying these contradictions. We then discuss the ramifications of this approach to analytic theology, in particular, and the global philosophy of religion, in general.
with Jc Beall
drafting stage
The classical collapse thesis implies that in a multiple-conclusions setting, sub-classical logics like LP, K3, and FDE collapse into classical (propositional) logic. In this paper, we argue that the thesis also holds for other weaker logics such as Weak Kleene and Cooper's Ordinary Logic.
with Michael DeVito
drafting stage
The OmniGod thesis – that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent – faces several familiar problems, e.g., the paradox of omnipotence, the puzzle of impeccability, and the problem of evil. Recently, Yujin Nagasawa argued for the Maximal God Thesis, which he thinks is a 'wholesale solution' to these problems. In this paper, we present a gappy alternative to Nagasawa's proposal. This alternative is based on Jc Beall and AJ Cotnoir's 'God-of-the-gaps' thesis. We show why this gappy solution is preferable to Nagasawa's.
drafting stage
Entailment barrier theses abound in philosophy -- theses that tell us that some derivations are illicit or fallacious. For example, Hume's 'no-ought-from-is' thesis tells us that deriving normative, obligation conclusions from purely factual statements is fallacious, while Bertrand Russell's 'no-general-from-particular' thesis warns us against deriving general statements from purely particular statements. This paper explores yet another entailment barrier thesis, which stems from Tertullian's polemical work, De Carne Christi. As we shall argue in this paper, Tertullian's thesis implies that it is illicit to derive statements about what is eternal from statements about what is temporal. We show that if this thesis holds, then certain arguments for the existence of the Christian God fail.
drafting stage
In 'The Role of Trust in Argumentation', Catarina Dutilh-Novaes offers the Attend-Trust-Engage (ATE) framework of how epistemic social exchanges ought to be. This paper formalises ATE in social choice theoretic terms and explores its conceptual ramifications to argumentation theory.