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James Cain [23]James Wallace Cain [1]
  1. Infinite utility.James Cain - 1995 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 73 (3):401 – 404.
    Suppose we wish to decide which of a pair of actions has better consequences in a case in which both actions result in infinite utility. Peter Vallentyne and others have proposed that one action has better consequences than a second if there is a time after which the cumulative utility of the first action always outstrips the cumulative utility of the second. I argue against this principle, in particular I show how cases may arise in which up to any point (...)
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  2. The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Logic of Relative Identity.James Cain - 1989 - Religious Studies 25 (2):141 - 152.
    I EXPLORE ONE WAY IN WHICH THE THEORY OF RELATIVE IDENTITY (DEVELOPED ALONG LINES SUGGESTED BY GEACH’S WRITINGS) CAN BE USED TO UNDERSTAND THE WAY LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS IN TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE. THIS INCLUDES A DISCUSSION OF REDUPLICATIVE PROPOSITIONS.
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  3. Free Will, Resiliency and Flip-flopping.James Cain - 2019 - Southwest Philosophy Review 35 (1):91-98.
    Many philosophers accept with certainty that we are morally responsible but take it to be an open question whether determinism holds. They treat determinism as epistemically compatible with responsibility. Should one who accepts this form of epistemic compatibilism also hold that determinism is metaphysically compatible with responsibility—that it is metaphysically possible for determinism and responsibility to coexist? John Martin Fischer gives two arguments that appear to favor an affirmative answer to this question. He argues that accounts of responsibility, such as (...)
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  4. A Frankfurt Example to End All Frankfurt Examples.James Cain - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (1):83-93.
    Frankfurt examples are frequently used in arguments designed to show that agents lacking alternatives, or lacking ‘regulative control’ over their actions, can be morally responsible for what they do. I will maintain that Frankfurt examples can be constructed that undermine those very arguments when applied to actions for which the agent bears fundamental responsibility.
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  5. On the weak Kleene scheme in Kripke's theory of truth.James Cain & Zlatan Damnjanovic - 1991 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 56 (4):1452-1468.
    It is well known that the following features hold of AR + T under the strong Kleene scheme, regardless of the way the language is Gödel numbered: 1. There exist sentences that are neither paradoxical nor grounded. 2. There are 2ℵ0 fixed points. 3. In the minimal fixed point the weakly definable sets (i.e., sets definable as {n∣ A(n) is true in the minimal fixed point where A(x) is a formula of AR + T) are precisely the Π1 1 sets. (...)
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  6. On the problem of hell.James Cain - 2002 - Religious Studies 38 (3):355-362.
    There is a conception of hell that holds that God punishes some people in a way that brings about endless suffering and unhappiness. An objection to this view holds that such punishment could not be just since it punishes finite sins with infinite suffering. In answer to this objection, it is shown that endless suffering, even intense suffering, is consistent with the suffering being finite. Another objection holds that such punishment is contrary to God's love. A possible response to this (...)
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  7. The Kane-Widerker Objection to Frankfurt Examples.James Cain - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (4):949-957.
    I will argue that the Kane-Widerker objection to Frankfurt examples is much weaker than is generally recognized. The Kane-Widerker objection holds that proponents of Frankfurt examples beg the question against incompatibilist accounts of free and responsible action by constructing examples that tacitly assume a compatibilist account of moral responsibility; that is, they assume that one can have non-derivative responsibility for choices that were not undetermined prior to their occurrence. The notion of an event, E, being ‘undetermined prior to its occurrence’ (...)
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  8. Free will and the problem of evil.James Cain - 2004 - Religious Studies 40 (4):437-456.
    According to the free-will defence, the exercise of free will by creatures is of such value that God is willing to allow the existence of evil which comes from the misuse of free will. A well-known objection holds that the exercise of free will is compatible with determinism and thus, if God exists, God could have predetermined exactly how the will would be exercised; God could even have predetermined that free will would be exercised sinlessly. Thus, it is held, the (...)
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  9. Frankfurt Style Examples.James Cain - 2003 - Southwest Philosophy Review 19 (1):221-229.
    Frankfurt style examples (FSEs) have played an important role in the development of metaphysical accounts of moral agency. The legitimacy of this approach often requires that FSEs be metaphysically possible. I argue that, given our current knowledge of the nature of decision-making, we have no grounds to accept the metaphysical possibility of many standard FSEs involving a device that can be triggered to bring about a predetermined decision.
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  10. On the Geachian Theory of the Trinity And Incarnation.James Cain - 2016 - Faith and Philosophy 33 (4):474-486.
    Contemporary accounts of the Trinity and Incarnation sometimes employ aspects of Peter Geach's theory of relative identity. Geach's theory provides an account not merely of identity predicates, but also proper names and restricted quantification. In a previous work I developed an account of the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation incorporating these three aspects of Geach's theory and tried to show how each might contribute to our understanding of the doctrines. Joseph Jedwab has recently argued that my account—or any that (...)
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  11. The Prejudice of Freedom: an Application of Kripke’s Notion of a Prejudice to our Understanding of Free Will.James Cain - 2021 - Acta Analytica 36 (3):323-339.
    This essay reframes salient issues in discussions of free will using conceptual apparatus developed in the works of Saul Kripke, with particular attention paid to his little-discussed technical notion of a prejudice. I begin by focusing on how various forms of modality (metaphysical, epistemic, and conceptual) underlie alternate forms of compatibilism and discuss why it is important to avoid conflating these forms of compatibilism. The concept of a prejudice is then introduced. We consider the semantic role of prejudices, in particular (...)
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  12. Some Radical Consequences of Geach's Logical Theories.James Cain - 1985 - Analysis 45 (2):83 - 88.
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  13. Is the Existence of Heaven Compatible with the Existence of Hell?James Cain - 2002 - Southwest Philosophy Review 18 (2):153-158.
  14. Utilitarianism and the Moral Significance of an Individual.James Cain - 2005 - Southwest Philosophy Review 21 (1):53-60.
    Classical utilitarianism attempts to reduce the moral significance of the individual to something more basic: the value of the individual is seen as fully grounded in considerations of utility maximization. This paper criticizes this aspect of utilitarianism and tries to do so through an appeal to considerations that would be acceptable to one who embraces utilitarianism. First, an example is developed in which (1) a pair of mutually exclusive actions each yield infinite utility; (2) neither action can be said to (...)
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  15. Why I Am Unconvinced by Arguments against the Existence of Hell.James Cain - 2010 - In Joel Buenting (ed.), The Problem of Hell: A Philosophical Anthology. Ashgate. pp. 133-44.
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  16. Trinity and Consistency.James Cain - 2006 - Faith and Philosophy 23 (1):45-54.
    P. T. Geach has argued that it is impossible to demonstrate that the doctrine of the Trinity is consistent. I try to show why -- on a common understanding of the notion of consistency -- his reasoning is flawed and why, on Geach’s own principles, one should expect that if the doctrine of the Trinity is true then it will be possible to prove that the doctrine is consistent, and it will be possible to do this in a way that (...)
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  17. Arithmetic with Satisfaction.James Cain - 1995 - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 36 (2):299-303.
    A language in which we can express arithmetic and which contains its own satisfaction predicate (in the style of Kripke's theory of truth) can be formulated using just two nonlogical primitives: (the successor function) and Sat (a satisfaction predicate).
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  18. Teaching Truth-Functional Conditionals.James Cain - 1999 - APA Newsletter on Teaching Philosophy 98 (2):160-162.
  19. The Theory of Computability Developed in Terms of Satisfaction.James Cain - 1999 - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 40 (4):515-532.
    The notion of computability is developed through the study of the behavior of a set of languages interpreted over the natural numbers which contain their own fully defined satisfaction predicate and whose only other vocabulary is limited to "0", individual variables, the successor function, the identity relation and operators for disjunction, conjunction, and existential quantification.
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  20. Are analytic statements necessarily a priori?James Cain - 1991 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69 (3):334 – 337.
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  21.  49
    (1 other version)Fred Berthold, jr God, evil, and human learning: A critique and revision of the free will defense in theodicy. (Albany NY: State university of new York press, 2004). Pp. VIII+108. $32.00 (hbk). ISBN 0 7914 6041 X. [REVIEW]James Cain - 2005 - Religious Studies 41 (4):480-483.
  22.  26
    Tracking Reason. [REVIEW]James Cain - 2007 - Review of Metaphysics 60 (3):646-648.