Paul Moser

Paul Moser

Paul K. Moser (born 1957 in Bismarck, North Dakota) is an American philosopher who writes on epistemology and the philosophy of religion. He is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago and past editor of the American Philosophical Quarterly. He is the author of many works in epistemology and the philosophy of religion, in which he has supported versions of epistemic foundationalism and volitional theism. His work brings these two positions together to support volitional evidentialism about theistic belief, in contrast to fideism and traditional natural theology. He draws from some epistemological and theological insights of the apostle Paul, Kierkegaard, P.T. Forsyth, H.R. Mackintosh, and H. H. Farmer, but he adds (i) a notion of purposively available evidence of God’s existence, (ii) a notion of authoritative evidence in contrast with spectator evidence, (iii) a notion of personifying evidence of God whereby some willing humans become salient evidence of God's existence, and (iv) a notion of convictional knowledge of divine reality. His most recent work emphasizes the importance of experiential foundational evidence from the self-manifestation of God's moral character to cooperative humans, particularly in moral conscience. An evidential role for experienced agapē, along the lines of Romans 5:5, is central to his theistic epistemology, as is his view that God is self-authenticating or self-evidencing via self-manifestation and conviction toward unselfish love. One result is a distinctive approach to divine hiddenness and the evidence for God's reality and presence.

Authored books

• The God Relationship: The Ethics for Inquiry about the Divine

Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. ISBN 978-1-107-19534-9

• Understanding Religious Experience

Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, 2019.

• The Severity of God: Religion and Philosophy Reconceived

Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-1-107-61532-8

• The Evidence for God: Religious Knowledge Reexamined

Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-521-73628-2

• The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology

Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 304 pages. ISBN 978-0-521-88903-2

Winner of the 2011 Alpha Sigma Nu (Honor Society of Jesuit Colleges and Universities) Book Award for Philosophy

• The Theory of Knowledge: A Thematic Introduction (with D.H. Mulder and J.D. Trout)

New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. 212 pages. Translated by Marcelo Brandao Cipolla as A Teoria Do Conhecimentio: Uma Introducao Tematica. Sao Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2004. 233 pages.

• Philosophy After Objectivity: New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. 267 pages. Paperback edition, 1999. Electronic version published in NetLibrary, 2002.
• Knowledge and Evidence

Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Cambridge Studies in Philosophy Series (Series Editor: Sydney Shoemaker). 285 pages. Paperback edition, 1991.

• Empirical Justification

Boston/Dordrecht: D. Reidel (Kluwer/Springer) Publishing Company, 1985. Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, Vol. 34 (Series Editors: Keith Lehrer and Wilfrid Sellars). 263 pages. Published also in Reidel's Pallas Paperback Series, 1985.

Edited books

• God in Experience: Essays of Hugh Ross Mackintosh (with Benjamin Nasmith). Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications/Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2018. 240 pages.
• The Cambridge Companion to Religious Experience (with Chad Meister). Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2019. 350 pages.
• The Testimony of the Spirit: New Essays (with Doug Geivett). New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
• The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil (with Chad Meister). Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
• The Wisdom of the Christian Faith (with Michael McFall). Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• Jesus and Philosophy: New Essays. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. (An anthology of ten previously unpublished essays on what Jesus has to do with philosophy.)
• The Rationality of Theism (with Paul Copan). London/New York: Routledge Ltd., 2003. (A 292-page anthology of previously unpublished essays by thirteen authors on evidence for Christian theism.)
• Divine Hiddenness: New Essays (with Daniel Howard-Snyder). Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. (A 242-page anthology of previously unpublished essays by eleven authors on the idea of a God who hides.)
• Oxford Handbook of Epistemology. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. (A 595-page anthology of previously unpublished essays by nineteen authors, in the series Oxford Handbooks of Philosophy, a series of which Paul Moser is the General Editor.) Also in Oxford Scholarship Online, 2004.
• Human Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Approaches (with A. vander Nat). New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, 1995, 2002.  (A 582-page anthology with a 28-page general introduction and five section introductions and bibliographies; second edition, 1995; third edition, 2002.)
• Moral Relativism (with T.L. Carson). New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. (A 337-page anthology on contemporary ethical relativism, with a 21-page general introduction and a 6-page topical bibliography.)
• Morality and the Good Life (with T.L. Carson). New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. (A 522-page anthology on contemporary ethical theory, with a 22-page general introduction and a 16-page topical bibliography.)
• Empirical Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Epistemology   Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, Publishers, 1986, 1996. (A 468-page anthology with a 34-page general introduction and a 17-page topical bibliography; Second Edition, 1996.)
• Contemporary Materialism (with J.D. Trout). London/New York: Routledge Ltd., 1995. (A 378-page anthology with a 32-page general introduction and a topical bibliography.)
• Contemporary Approaches to Philosophy (with D.H. Mulder). New York/Toronto: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993. (A 488-page anthology on metaphilosophy, with a 13-page general introduction, four section introductions, and a 15-page topical bibliography; now distributed by Prentice-Hall, Inc.)
• Reality In Focus: Contemporary Readings on Metaphysics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., A Division of Simon & Schuster, Publishers, 1990. (A 456-page anthology with an 11-page general introduction and five section introductions and bibliographies.)
• Rationality In Action: Contemporary Approaches. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. (A 493-page anthology with a 10-page general introduction, three section introductions, and a topical bibliography.)
• A Priori Knowledge. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Oxford Readings in Philosophy Series. (A 222-page anthology with a 14-page general introduction and a 10-page bibliography.)

See also

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers