The Case That Our Moral Knowledge Points Toward God: Part 4

INTRODUCTION

This is the fourth and final article in a series on how one might offer several different moral arguments that all (1) focus on our knowledge of moral truth and (2) reinforce each other so that their joint force is even stronger than that of each individual argument.[1] This series of articles has focused specifically on three well-known arguments for God’s existence that have to do with our moral knowledge: the similar arguments of Mark Linville and Alvin Plantinga, an argument by Scott Smith, and an argument put forth by Angus Ritchie. In this article, the series concludes by offering a strategy for how these arguments can be used in conjunction so that they reinforce each other.

A CUMULATIVE CASE MORAL KNOWLEDGE ARGUMENT 

Although there are differences between each of the moral knowledge arguments described in this article, there are also many similarities; moreover, the differences are not such that the Christian moral apologist must choose one to the exclusion of the others. Instead, these versions are complementary and can be used in conjunction to make an even stronger moral argument for God’s existence—one that is sturdier than any one of these versions by itself. In this final section, we will consider how these different arguments may be used in combination and explore a strategy for making this work. To accomplish this, it is helpful to begin by comparing and contrasting these views before integrating them into a cumulative argument.

It is clear that Plantinga and Smith make the most ambitious claim, as they argue that there is reason to doubt that we could have any knowledge at all in a naturalistic world. Nevertheless, Plantinga and Smith make their cases entirely differently, since Plantinga argues that the evolutionary aspect of naturalism provides a defeater for moral knowledge and Smith attempts to show that the physicalist aspect of naturalism removes any basis for the personhood and mental states that would be needed for knowledge. Linville’s point is somewhat less bold, arguing that on naturalism we have a defeater for moral knowledge but not other types of knowledge. In doing so, his approach is more similar to Plantinga’s than Smith’s in terms of arguing that the evolutionary aspect of naturalism undermines knowledge; however, unlike both Plantinga and Smith, Linville does not deny that all knowledge is undermined on naturalism. Ritchie’s claim is the least ambitious, since he grants that moral knowledge is possible even on naturalism. Ritchie takes moral knowledge as a fact that requires explanation and makes the more modest claim that naturalism cannot adequately explain moral knowledge. In terms of how he goes about this, we have seen that his approach is more similar to that of Plantinga and Linville than to that of Smith, as Ritchie’s focus is on the evolutionary aspect of naturalism.

With these differences and similarities in mind, let us now consider how to integrate them into a cumulative moral argument. It is reasonable to begin with the most ambitious claims first. The arguments of both Plantinga and Smith lend themselves well to being the first line of argumentation for two reasons. First, if successful, they raise the sharpest challenge against naturalism by providing a defeater for all knowledge on naturalism. The naturalist who sees the force of either—or both—of these arguments thus has reason to doubt whether naturalism can be rationally affirmed; moreover, if the naturalist finds either of these arguments to be sound and also finds it plausible that we do have knowledge in the actual world, then he has good reason to doubt the truth of naturalism. Second, there is the advantage that these two arguments have an entirely different focus. If the moral apologist’s secular interlocuter is unconvinced by one of them, that does not weaken the force of the other; thus, using these two arguments as the first line of argumentation has an initial cumulative benefit.

Linville’s argument can be used next in order to make a more modest case in the event that the unbeliever sees merit in Plantinga’s argument but finds it implausible that all knowledge would be undermined on evolutionary naturalism. As we have seen, Plantinga rightly contends that it is irrelevant to his argument whether we seem to have knowledge in the actual world, and he argues persuasively that there is no reason to think that adaptive behavior requires the truthfulness of any of our beliefs; however, some may find it more plausible that holding true beliefs would provide a survival advantage. It is at this juncture that Linville’s more modest approach can be used, as he differentiates between moral and nonmoral beliefs by allowing that holding true nonmoral beliefs will often provide a survival advantage whereas the truthfulness of moral beliefs does not seem to provide a survival advantage. Linville makes a good case for why it is not arbitrary to exclude moral knowledge on naturalism even if one allows other knowledge.

If the skeptic of theism is still unconvinced and simply finds it unreasonable to doubt that we would have moral knowledge on naturalism, one can utilize Ritchie’s even more modest argument. Even if the defender of our cumulative moral knowledge argument does not agree with Ritchie that moral knowledge is justified on naturalism, one can grant this for the sake of argument and make the case along with Ritchie that naturalism cannot adequately explain how we have this knowledge. The moral apologist can defend Ritchie’s claim that any viable worldview must be able to explain moral knowledge and point out that Ritchie himself even goes so far as to accept that our nonmoral beliefs can be not only justified but explained by natural selection on naturalism. Ritchie’s dilemma can then be posed to the skeptic to show the difficulty of explaining moral knowledge on naturalism. If the skeptic recognizes that there is no evolutionary advantage to some of our moral beliefs, then she should be able to see that naturalism cannot explain those moral beliefs; however, if she claims that all of our moral beliefs do carry an evolutionary advantage then she faces the problem that some actions that are favorable for the survival and effective replication of the human species seem to be immoral (e.g., killing the weak, disabled, and diseased; mandating rape if the only women left on earth refused to procreate).

In this way, all of these arguments are complementary and fit nicely into a cumulative case strategy. For both apologetic and moral reasons, one does not want a naturalist to give up on thinking that there is objective moral truth or to hold onto her naturalism while abandoning her belief that she has genuine moral knowledge. It is therefore critical when making this case to encourage her to give up naturalism and not give up on moral knowledge. The intent of this cumulative moral argument is to show that naturalism cannot adequately justify—or at least explain—moral knowledge. This can in turn be used as part of an even broader cumulative moral argument that seeks to show that naturalism cannot justify other aspects of morality, such as the existence of objective moral values and duties, moral transformation, and moral rationality.

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1. These articles are adapted for a popular audience from an article that I published in the Journal of the International Society of Christian Apologetics (Volume 12, 2019, pp. 49-64) that is titled “Toward a Cumulative Epistemic Moral Argument for God’s Existence.”

The Case That Our Moral Knowledge Points Toward God: Part 3

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INTRODUCTION 

This is the third article in a series on how one might offer several different moral arguments that all (1) focus on our knowledge of moral truth and (2) reinforce each other so that their joint force is even stronger than that of each individual argument.[1] This series of articles focuses specifically on three well-known arguments for God’s existence that have to do with our moral knowledge. After examining the third argument (one given by Angus Ritchie) in this article, the series will conclude next time by offering a strategy for how the arguments can be used in conjunction so that they reinforce each other.

ANGUS RITCHIE’S ARGUMENT 

Unlike Linville, Plantinga, and Smith, Angus Ritchie grants that naturalism allows for moral knowledge and treats it as a fact in need of explanation. Although he allows for moral knowledge in a naturalistic world, his view is similar to that of Linville and Plantinga in the sense that he focuses on the challenge to moral knowledge faced by evolutionary naturalism (EN). He contends that “purposive accounts of the universe” are the only accounts that can explain our moral truth-tracking abilities and show why we have moral knowledge, and theism is the best of such accounts. Ultimately, Ritchie’s “central contention” is that “all secular theories which do justice to our most fundamental moral convictions” by affirming that we have objective moral knowledge leave an “explanatory gap” in terms of justifying adequately how humans “developing in a physical universe which is not itself shaped by any purposive force” are able to “apprehend objective moral norms.”[2] Let us examine Ritchie’s view.

Ritchie first makes the case for why he is willing to grant that genuine moral knowledge would be possible even if naturalism were true. Ritchie thinks that the process by which we form moral beliefs seems similar to how we form nonmoral beliefs, and this process seems to be reliable. He thinks that excluding moral beliefs from being true would be arbitrary and unjustified. While Linville and Plantinga have no problem with holding that our moral beliefs would be undermined on EN because such beliefs would have a defeater, Ritchie disagrees. Not only in ethics but also in math and science, we make intuitive judgments and systematize them into rules, and this process appears to be “indispensible.” Abandoning this kind of reasoning, he thinks, means rejecting “objectivism in all areas of knowledge,” which is a self-refuting position.[3] Ritchie thus is not inclined to deny that moral knowledge would be justified if naturalism were true, opting instead to contend that such knowledge cannot be adequately explained. While one might disagree with Ritchie at this juncture by recalling Plantinga’s point (from Part I of this series) that the features of the actual world (e.g., the fact that we seem to have knowledge and that this knowledge might seem indispensible to us) are irrelevant to his case that we have a defeater for knowledge in a naturalistic world, let us not be concerned with this at the present. For regardless of whether or not Ritchie is correct that moral knowledge is justified on naturalism, one could grant this point for the sake of argument and endeavor to show, as Ritchie attempts to do, that this knowledge cannot be adequately explained on naturalism.

While Ritchie allows that one is justified in having knowledge regardless of whether one can explain why he has it, he emphasizes that it is nevertheless problematic for a worldview if it cannot explain why we have moral knowledge.[4] Ritchie stresses that demanding a naturalistic explanation for why we have the capacity to track moral truth is a legitimate and essential demand to make. This is because natural selection is routinely put forth by naturalists as the explanation for our cognitive ability to track truth, since it is claimed that holding true beliefs would provide a survival advantage. Indeed, Ritchie himself—contra Plantinga—grants that natural selection is perfectly able both to justify and explain our beliefs when it comes to “physical perception and theoretical reasoning.” But, argues Ritchie, natural selection does not have the same power to explain why we can track moral truth. This is because “whereas there is a plausible correlation between maximal survival value and truth in the case of perceptual and theoretical reasoning, no such correlation is plausible in the moral case.”[5] This is because some things valued as moral by our cognitive faculties do not aid in survival. So if the naturalist admits that there is no evolutionary advantage to some of our moral beliefs, then those moral beliefs cannot be explained well by naturalism; however, if the naturalist claims that all of our moral beliefs do aim at survival and species replication, then this is morally problematic because some actions that are conducive to survival seem to be immoral (e.g., using eugenics to purify the human race).[6]

Ritchie rebuts four sorts of objections to this reasoning. Let us consider them in brief. First, there is the objection made by Richard Dawkins that natural selection allowed us to evolve consciousness, which in turn allows us to reason to moral truths that transcend natural selection and survival-aimed beliefs.[7] But Ritchie points out that natural selection does not explain the apparent truth “of those of our capacities which generate moral judgments which conflict with the imperatives to maximize species-replication.”[8] Second, a naturalist may contend that “all true moral judgments are analytic statements” (true by definition) so that “our capacity for moral knowledge would flow directly from our capacity for deductive reasoning.” However, analytic statements “lack the substantive content which moral judgments so clearly contain.” For example, there is nothing logically necessary about the claim that “one ought to care for one’s children.”[9] Third, Roger Crisp argues that we should seek pleasure and avoid pain. He claims this benefits survival and is the foundational explanation for all our moral beliefs. But the problem is that humans value things like accomplishment, personhood, and authentic understanding that do not depend on how we subjectively feel inside.[10] Finally, one may argue that evolving theoretical reasoning skills has survival advantage, and the ability to morally reason results from having general theoretical reasoning skills even though moral reasoning itself has no survival advantage. But “moral reasoning involves cognitive processes that are very clearly distinct from theoretical reasoning.” For example, “one can be an excellent theoretical reasoner and have the moral sensibilities of a sociopath.”[11]

Ritchie also evaluates prominent secular ethical theories and shows how they each fail to explain moral knowledge. He makes a good case that “all secular accounts either” allow for “insufficient objectivity” or suffer from “the explanatory gap (that is to say, they are unable to account for the human ability to track moral truth in our moral reasoning).”[12] He concludes that the explanatory gap either cannot be explained or the explanation involves design/purpose, and he gives a seven-premise argument that God is the best explanation of human moral knowledge.[13] Ritchie contends that regardless of whether God used guided evolution or some other method of designing humans, a guided process is needed to explain adequately our moral knowledge.

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1. These articles are adapted for a popular audience from an article that I published in the Journal of the International Society of Christian Apologetics (Volume 12, 2019, pp. 49-64) that is titled “Toward a Cumulative Epistemic Moral Argument for God’s Existence.”

2. Angus Ritchie, From Morality to Metaphysics: The Theistic Implications of Our Ethical Commitments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 4.

3. Ibid., 16-18.

4. Ibid., 44-47.

5. Ibid., 54-55.

6. Ibid., 56-58.

7. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Random House, 2006), 222.

8. Ritchie, From Morality to Metaphysics, 58-59.

9. Ibid., 59-61.

10. Ibid., 61-64.

11. Ibid., 65.

12. Ibid., 110. Ritchie deals with the “quasi-realism” of Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard; the “rational procedures” view of Christine Korsgaard and “reasons fundamentalism” of Tim Scanlon; Philippa Foot’s natural law theory involving “Aristotelian categoricals”; and the “second nature” view of John McDowell along with the similar view held by David Wiggins.

13. Ibid., 164.

Link: Does Humanism need God? A Debate with Angus Ritchie vs Stephen Law

One of our contributors, Angus Ritchie, recently debated atheist philosopher Stephen Law on whether "atheistic humanism can account for the human dignity, morality and reason it espouses." Ritchie, along with co-author Nick Spencer, wrote an essay defending the idea " that Christians ought to be more aware – and more proud – of their humanist credentials, rather than allowing humanism to become a cipher for atheism. Were it not for Christianity, they argue, the core ideas of humanism would simply not have developed in Europe." You can listen to the debate over at Unbelievable?.

Photo: "The Good Samaritan" by Lawrence OP. CC License. 

Review of Angus Ritchie's From Morality to Metaphysics

From Morality to Metaphysics: The Theistic Implications of our Ethical Commitments, by Angus Ritchie, Oxford University Press, 2012, 198 pages.

In this excellent and tightly argued book, Angus Ritchie offers a moral argument for theism, or at least a vital piece of a bigger argument to that effect. Theism, he argues cogently, explains the human capacity for moral cognition better than various secular rivals. For his pool of alternative candidates, he canvasses the field of meta-ethics. In this way he cuts to the heart of much of the contemporary ethical debate, and in so doing he highlights a serious and systemic problem facing secular positions that attempt to accommodate our pre-theoretical moral commitments. He also sketches a teleological and theistic alternative that he argues avoids such objections that prove intractable to the secular theories.

In my estimation Ritchie’s work is one of the more important books written in ethics in recent years. In terms of building a moral apologetic, it does three central tasks: it presses the distinction between justification and explanation of moral truths (a recurring and integrating motif of the book); it takes secular alternatives seriously enough to engage them with real seriousness (at sufficient length with arguments suitably generalizable); and spells out the theistic alternative (though a bit briefly, inviting others to extend the discussion). Despite its lamentable number of distracting typos that should have been fixed in editing, and its failure to discuss Railton, Joyce, or Parfit, I recommend this book with enthusiasm. I have every confidence it will be an important contributor to the resurgence of interest in moral arguments for God in both natural theology and popular apologetics.

Ritchie offers an inference to the best explanation (IBE); his argument is that classical theism better explains objective moral ontology and epistemology. His primary argument for the moral objectivism in need of explanation is its deliberative indispensability. Humans are committed to moral norms for much the same reason we believe norms underwrite practices indispensable to human thought and action in the arena of theoretical reasoning. It is impossible to engage in moral deliberation without taking oneself to be aiming at a normative truth that goes beyond personal preference or cultural custom.

Among the secular explanation candidates of moral cognition Ritchie considers are those provided by Blackburn, Gibbard, Korsgaard, and the early Scanlon, who argue that our fundamental moral convictions can be accommodated without objectivism; and those of Foot, Crisp, and the later Scanlon who seek to combine a fully objectivist account of moral norms with no purposive agent or force. What all of these secular accounts have in common is their systemic flaw. In the case of the less objectivist theories the concessions made to reductionism leave them unable to do justice to our most fundamental moral convictions; those that accommodate the pull of objectivism generate an ‘explanatory gap’. The book’s central contention is that all secular theories that do justice to our most fundamental moral convictions go on to generate an insoluble ‘explanatory gap’ that consists in their inability to answer the following question: How do human beings, developing in a physical universe which is not itself shaped by any purposive force, come to have the capacity to apprehend objective moral norms?

Secular (nonteleological) theories only escape the explanatory gap by failing to vindicate our pre-philosophical moral commitments. The gap arises when the following commitments are combined: (1) Robust moral objectivism, (2) secularism, and (3) the belief that humans, through the exercise of their normal belief-generating and belief-evaluating capacities, are able to apprehend the objective moral order. While secular theories can explain humans’ acquisition of moral sensibilities and practices of reasoning, this does not tell us why those practices and sensibilities have the property of tracking the truth.

Regarding cognitive capacities (perceptual, theoretical, practical), three questions can be asked about their genesis and justification: (1) What is the justification for our faith in their reliability? (2) What is the historical explanation of their development? And (3) what is theexplanation for their capacity for tracking truth? It is just because Ritchie takes the fundamental convictions that emerge from reflective equilibrium to be justified (to have non-accidental correlation with objective moral norms) that the third question arises. So Ritchie stresses the importance that we not confuse the demand for an explanation for the reliability of our moral beliefs with the demand for a justification of our trust in the human capacity to acquire and modify our moral beliefs in a way that tracks truth.

In terms of what sort of explanation is needed, what is most promising, he thinks, is a teleological form of explanation that explains a particular event or state of affairs by showing that it is either (1) part of the end-state which a system brings about or (2) part of the means by which a system brings about the end-state. To be an intelligible account, the teleological explanation will also have made it intelligible why the system yields the outcome and of the means by which the system is capable of generating those outcomes and why it tends to generate them.

Ritchie’s overall claim is that it is legitimate to raise questions of explanation with respect to the truth-tracking quality of humans’ moral faculties because we see in natural selection a way in which explanation can be answered for our truth-tracking capacities for theoretical reasoning and with respect to the physical world. The ability to track truth is selectively advantageous in those cases (unless Plantinga is right, which should prove no comfort to naturalists). Natural selection is the obvious candidate for an explanation of the development within humans of truth-tracking capacities regarding fundamental principles of deduction, IBE, and induction. It is highly probable that we will be better able to survive if we can come to true beliefs. So natural selection offers a story of how humans come to have truth-tracking capacities for theoretical reasoning; likewise for both physical perception and theoretical reasoning.

No such correlation is plausible in the moral case. On the account given by evolutionary biology, it is not the fact that moral beliefs are correct which leads to them being selected for. Rather, it is the fact that they are conducive to the flourishing of the collective. There is no guarantee that the qualities which lead to multiplication will have any other excellence about them. Any value system based on survival, replication, and pleasure alone is inadequate. If there is not a less obvious way in which moral valuations promote survival, replication, and pleasure, then they’re spandrels, lacking any direct connection with genetic survival and multiplication. Unless we have a wider teleological account, we have no reason to suppose that these valuations have any non-random connective with that moral order.

Beyond such a prima facie case, Ritchie turns to specific meta-ethical theories, beginning with quasi-realism (‘QR’). Gibbard respects what Blackburn calls the ‘realist-seeming grammar’ of practical deliberation, but they both seek to minimize its metaphysical implications. Both respond to an impulse to both reductionism and objectivism. They want to offer the best of both worlds while avoiding objections. Moral quasi-realism is designed to avoid the following kind of morally obnoxious counterfactuals:

(CF) If we approved of torturing the child it would be a good act,

while keeping the ontology to a minimum. In moral deliberations, we judge desires and the prevailing attitudes of our society by a standard which is independent of those desires and attitudes.

QR claims that (CF) should be read as a statement within ethics. They deny that it need be taken as a higher-order, metaethical assertion. When we consider counterfactuals, they insist, we cannot help but evaluate them from within our commitments. And as such, all decent people will obviously reject (CF). Blackburn insists that we have no conception of the nature of an independent order of reason. Ritchie disagrees, insisting that the existence of objective norms of theoretical reasoning shows that we do have a conception of what ‘an independent order of reason’ would be.

Ritchie thinks QR can answer various objections, but that it runs into difficulty when it has to account for the provisionality with which all human beings hold their ethical views. We simply do not regard moral truth as being fixed completely by our current views. In its efforts to accommodate such an objection, QR faces two challenges: tying morality too closely to current beliefs, precluding progress, or tying it to whatever we come to believe, thus introducing problematic counterfactuals.

The early Scanlon tried to accommodate the pull of reductionism by stressing rational procedures rather than an ontologically distinct moral reality, using the meta-ethics of Korsgaard.  Korsgaard says the procedural moral realist thinks there are correct answers to moral questions because there are correct procedures for arriving at them. Thus she tries to secure objectivity without ontological commitments. Ritchie responds that both Blackburn and Korsgaard locate moral value in a feature of the agent’s attitudes, but these only make sense as responses to an external order of value. Unlike Kant, Korsgaard says the way we choose between the different candidates for universalizable moral norms is an agent’s existential commitments. What, though, about someone who’s a member of the Mafiaso? In one sense this produces obligations, but Korsgaard says the Mafioso should, given sufficient reflection, come to see that obedience to the honor code is the wrong law to make for himself. Ritchie argues that agents’ valuations only have the wider implications her argument requires if they are understood as responses to an objective order of value. Korsgaard may disapprove of his existential choice, but it is hard to see why (on her account) the Mafiaso’s settled choice threatens his grip on himself as having any reason to do one thing rather than another, and with it his grip on himself as having any reason to live and act at all.

Later Scanlon moved toward a more objectivist position, describing himself as a ‘Reasons Fundamentalist’, contrasting the position with Korsgaard’s. Reasons Fundamentalism (RF) insists on the irreducible character of normativity. Scanlon has answered justification, but not of explanation of reliability. Once more, secular accounts fall foul of our most fundamental moral commitments, or in vindicating them they generate an explanatory gap.

Likewise Foot’s theory using ‘Aristotelian categoricals’ is trapped in this dilemma: we can define ‘good’ naturalistically, in which case it is reduced to that which enables the species to replicate and perhaps increase in complexity, but then what we call good we do not have good reason to promote. Or define ‘good’ to include evaluative judgments, but then we have gone far beyond anything those ‘Aristotelian categoricals’ could justify. To make this choice is to concede that the idea of ‘flourishing’ is itself heavily moralized, and there is no longer any sign of a purely biological story of natural normativity from which morality might emerge.

McDowell wants to defend moral realism. Instead of seeking to ground ethics in a non-moralized account of the natural world, McDowell urges Foot to acknowledge that ethical reasons are themselves part of any adequate account of nature. Ritchie insists, though, that there remains an explanatory question which McDowell is unwilling to answer, which is distinct from justificatory issues. Unless McDowell is urging a return to a fundamentally purposive account of the universe, the question of how we explain (rather than justify) the reliability of our belief-generating and belief-correcting processes will arise for him in a way it did not for Aristotle—who, incidentally, contrasted the natural not with the supernatural but the artificial.

Ritchie argues that theistic and teleological explanation is better than nomothetic explanation that is given in terms of causal laws. Natural selection has led to resistance of teleology. Natural selection can’t offer the explanation of our capacity for moral cognition, however, and nomothetic explanation is also unsuited to task. Teleological explanation accounts for an event or class of events by laws in terms of which an event’s occurring is held to be dependent on that event’s being required for some end. A paradigmatic teleological explanation involves a goal G of objective worth, the agent knows this to be so, the agent pursues G because of its value, and the agent has the power through X-ing to bring G about.

Theism explains the truth-tracking nature of human moral capacities by God’s understanding the value of such a state of affairs and intentionally bringing it about. Such an account avoids the explanatory gap, and the problems cited (raised by Rice and Hume) are far from intractable. A theistic explanation of the emergence of moral knowledge also need not conflict with a version of the theory of natural selection. All that the theist needs to add to the account given by evolutionary biology is the claim that the world is providentially ordered so that the interaction of the quasi-teleological process of natural selection and of the spandrel-like features it generates yield an outcome which enables human beings to apprehend that which is of objective value.

At this juncture the book left me slightly disappointed, but only because I had grown accustomed to seeing more. I could imagine a critic saying “God made it happen because he knew the value of its happening” does not so much explain as beg the question that God has or could. Although I might know that something happening in my head is making my hands type right now without my being able to explain that mechanism, the appeal to divine intentions to account for the truth-tracking ability of our moral faculties requires further analysis. It remains, in a sense, a promissory note and framework in need of fleshing out. If contemporary work on the moral argument is going to rival in quality the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments, more articulation of theism’s epistemic narrative of moral cognition is essential—particularly to answer the challenge posed by Harman and Joyce. Joyce, for example, echoes the case that the success of evolutionary moral psychology provides a stiff challenge to naturalistic ethics by explaining the formation of our moral beliefs without reference to their truth. Unlike Ritchie, though, he adds that “if the naturalist cannot make her case, Harman’s challenge seems to make non-naturalism and supernaturalism obsolete. . . . if moral naturalism fails non-naturalism and supernaturalism are sunk. Thus non-naturalism and supernaturalism suffer most in this argumentative fray.”[1]Although it is not clear why Joyce insists on this, beyond an earlier reference to parsimony, what is clear is that positing the possibility and, even more so, plausibility of a teleological explanation rooted in divine intentionality—however hopeful such a move promises to safeguard what ordinary speakers believe about morality—remains in need of careful articulation and strong cumulative evidential support in this emerging dialectic.

Throughout his excellent book, Ritchie is at pains to stress that theism is the most satisfying explanation of the human capacity for moral cognition. Theism can explain it simply better than the rivals can. As such he’s been doing philosophy as an autonomous enterprise to show the power of apologetic argument. Our moral commitments pull us to a supernatural source for our knowledge of what is good and evil. Philosophy, he argues and demonstrates, has a significant part to play, in helping us respond to the important and legitimate worry that the faith journey may be an exercise in wish fulfillment rather than a response to a genuine reality. Philosophy can create the intellectual space for an encounter of the heart. Apologetic arguments can show that unless our thought is open to the supernatural there are a number of correlations which are, by its own lights, inexplicable. Such arguments remind us of our need for God; they call us to humility rather than hubris.

[1] Richard Joyce, The Evolution of Morality (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), p. 210