On Good and Evil: Discussing the Nature and Morality of God (from the Veritas Forum)

C. Stephen Evans (Baylor) and Gideon Rosen (Princeton) discuss the nature of morality and God in “On Good & Evil: Discussing the Nature of Morality and God.”

Forum hosted by The Veritas Forum at Princeton University (11/18/2021).

Speakers: C. Stephen Evans - Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Baylor University

Gideon Rosen - Stuart Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Princeton University

LINK

Mailbag: What about the Cudworth Objection?

Question:

I am writing to you because I am currently working on an article that is critical of certain versions of the moral argument and I am researching the work that you have done on the topic. I have read both Good God and God and Cosmos. Recently, as I was reviewing your arguments concerning moral obligation, I was re-reading a passage from chapter 9 of God and Cosmos, specifically the section titled, "Moral Obligations." What caught my attention is something that you say on p. 289: "[God's] commands would furnish powerful new reasons or performing various acts." 

I hope that you might have time to consider and respond to a couple of questions about what you say here. The focus of my article is precisely on the question of whether God's commands can provide us with additional reasons. My view, roughly, is that divine commands provide additional reasons only when there is an antecedent obligation to obey God. In the absence of such an antecedent obligation, divine commands are normatively impotent (i.e., they add nothing to our reasons to engage in any action). My question is this: Do you agree that God's commands provide additional reasons only given the existence of such a prior obligation or do you think that God's commands can provide such reasons without such a prior obligation? If the latter, do you have an argument for the conclusion that God's commands can provide additional reasons in the absence of any prior obligation to obey God (and have you provided such an argument in any of your published works?). 
Please forgive me if you have addressed these questions in your books or other writings. I have tried to track down answers, but I have not found anything that directly addresses these questions. If I have missed something, I sincerely apologize.

Thank you very much for you time,

Jason

 Answer:

Hi Jason! Thanks for the note. Hope you are well. I'll offer what I have, which isn't much!

What a fun project you're working on. Appreciate the question, and it's an important one, I think. I suspect the answer to your question is "yes," that DCT provides new reasons iff we're antecedently obligated to obey God. The question then boils down to why whether we're obligated to obey God and, if so, why. This is the "prior obligations objection," and it's a thorny challenge, I think. We first discussed it a bit on pp. 122-123 of Good God, though not by name. There we took up the question of God's authority--does he have the authority to give us binding commands? And we try tying our answer to his great-making properties. That was at least our first go trying to address what we considered the crux of the issue. 

In a later book that my wife and I wrote together called The Morals of the Story, we discuss it at a bit more length, though still altogether too briefly. Here we discuss it explicitly by name, on pages 147-149. The objection is tied to Cudworth historically, so sometimes gets dubbed the "Cudworth objection." At any rate, we mention what Jer and I said about it in Good God, but also discuss a half dozen possible solutions to the puzzle that Evans provides in God and Moral Obligation. We don't really discuss them at length as much as point readers to take a look at what he says on pages 98-101 of his book. We also mention Hare's solution echoing Scotus and Pufendorf that you can find on p. 58 of God's Command.

'm sure there's quite a bit more to say about this important objection, but so far those are the only places I've addressed it. I'm inclined to think that if we can answer the question of God's authority well, it will address the matter. Although Evans made mention of the possibility of bootstrapping, most worry that there's something circular to punting to God's command to account for the authority of God's command--even though God does tell us to obey him. I'm left wanting more, and understand others who do as well. So far I've rested somewhat content with the sketch of an answer provided by the considerations Evans, Hare, and Jer and I have offered, but as I say I'm sure quite a bit more can and should be said.

The reason I retain such openness to DCT is not because I think it's the only possible way to ground ethics in God, but just because, honestly, it strikes me as intuitive that God would be the one able to issue authoritative commands owing to who he is and who we are as creatures, and because the objections to it I've heard usually strike me as admitting to a solution. So it's never seemed an obviously bad theory to me, although I'm more strongly committed to a dependence relation of morality on God in one way or another than specifically this way. Regarding this objection, if bootstrapping isn't enough, as I suspect it isn't, it would show that a key foundational principle on which DCT is predicated is an obligation not attributable to DCT. But since I don't think that all moral realities are grounded in DCT, this doesn't bother me too much. Maybe it should bother me more than it does, but at least I console myself by the reminder that other moral theories, at their root, encounter a similar challenge. For example, the utilitarian is confronted with the question, Why maximize utility? Appealing to the maximization of utility doesn't help much. It makes some amount of sense, to me anyway, that so foundational a grounding principle might have a slightly different moral rationale than the rest of the theory. And if, for the DCT'ist, it comes down to something as foundational as good moral reasons, and even an obligation, to obey our Creator who loves us, is perfect, who desires our well-being, etc., then I feel like we're on the right track. 

As I say, I have tended to divide the two questions you're tying together, though I can see why you think them intimately connected: does God have authority to issue us binding commands, and does DCT offer us distinctive ("powerful new") reasons to perform various acts. I find that explicit connection intriguing, and wondering if there's something new you're pointing out there or if there are just two conceptually distinct questions here.

Blessings in your work! I look forward to what you come up with.

Best,

Dave

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Sweeping Contingency Under the Rug (Part 2)

Editor’s note: This article was originally published at Convincing Proof

Table of Contents

Atheists Should Reject the Notion that Cognitive Faculties Instantiate Moral Properties

Wielenberg used this third-factor model to respond to Street’s articulation of the lucky coincidence objection, as well other EDA’s made by Harman, Ruse, Joyce, and Kahane.24 Because he believes that moral properties and facts are causally inert, that they “cannot causally affect our senses or our minds,”25 he proposed that a third factor, our cognitive faculties, are responsible for both moral properties as well as our moral beliefs. If moral properties and moral beliefs come from the same source, then this explains the correspondence between these two seemingly unrelated types of things. Thus his third-factor model has two parts to it: 1. Cognitive faculties make moral properties be instantiated; and 2. Cognitive faculties generate moral beliefs.

The first part of Wielenberg’s third-factor model, his claim that cognitive faculties make moral properties be instantiated, is built on the concept of D-supervenience, a term he coined as a way to refer to Michael DePaul’s version of supervenience.26 Wielenberg argued that moral properties D-supervene on non-normative properties, and particularly on our cognitive faculties. He explained that “[g]iven DePaul’s understanding of dependency, if M depends on some base properties B, then M is not identical with, reducible to, or entirely constituted by B, but the instantiation of B explains the instantiation of M; it is B’s instantiation that makes M be instantiated… This making relation (as I shall henceforth refer to it) is distinct from supervenience.”27

His proposed D-supervenience, or making relationship, is distinct because supervenience, as it is normally understood, is merely a relationship of correlation whereas making is actually explanatory. He construes the making relationship involved in D-supervenience as a sort of robust causation, thus describing making as type of causation.28 In his model he maintains that “the making relation is the cement of the foundation of normative reality.”29 Wielenberg summarized well this making relationship in his model when responding to the following question: What is the source of human moral rights and obligations?

I propose the following answer: any being that can reason, suffer, experience happiness, tell the difference between right and wrong, choose between right and wrong, and set goals for itself has certain rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and certain obligations, including the duty to refrain from rape (in typical circumstances). Having such cognitive capacities makes one have such rights and duties. Evolutionary processes have produced human beings that can reason, suffer, experience happiness, tell the difference between right and wrong, choose between right and wrong, and set goals for themselves. In this way, evolutionary processes have endowed us with certain unalienable rights and duties. Evolution has given us these moral properties by giving us the non-moral properties that make such moral properties be instantiated. And if, as I believe, there is no God, then it is in some sense an accident that we have the moral properties that we do. But that they are accidental in origin does not make these moral properties unreal or unimportant.30

It should be noted that some have questioned this first part of Wielenberg’s model. For instance, Baggett and Walls, while not opposed to a third-factor approach in principle, argue that the possession of cognitive faculties does not “satisfactorily explain the existence of binding moral obligations and inextirpable human rights.”31 While considering a similar notion, that we should ascribe value to human beings because they have the capacity for rational reflection, C. Stephen Evans makes the point that “many people believe that young infants and people suffering from dementia still have… intrinsic dignity, but in both cases there is no capacity for rational reflection.”32 In other words, Wielenberg’s model seems to imply that if a particular human being does not have sufficient cognitive faculties—if they are unable to “reason, suffer, experience happiness…” etc.—then they do not have moral rights. Surely Wielenberg believes that infants and people suffering from dementia have moral rights, but the fact that his model does not seem to allow for such rights might be an indication that his model is deficient.  

Interestingly, to make his case for D-supervenience, Wielenberg uses as an example a belief that theist’s have, namely, that God has the power to make moral properties be instantiated. He pointed out that DePaul, to explain his notion of supervenience as making, used an example from William Paley where Paley claimed God’s commands make certain activities morally obligatory.33 In fact, Wielenberg often borrowed concepts from theism; for example, he also wrote that “[a] paradigmatic example of the sort of robust causation I have in mind is the causal relation that many theists take to hold between a state of affairs being divinely willed and the obtaining of that state of affairs.”34 In addition, he also made the following suggestion:

[I]t may be helpful to consider the doctrine of divine conservation… On at least some versions of this doctrine, there is a robust causal relation between divine willing and every contingent thing at each moment of its existence. One way of construing my proposal… is as a doctrine of non-moral conservation: whatever moral properties are instantiated are conserved or sustained by various underlying non-moral properties via a robust causal relation that holds between the relevant non-moral and moral properties.35

After using this theistic concept as an example, he even felt it necessary to warns his readers that this “should of course not be understood as ascribing agency to non-moral properties.”36

Wielenberg’s numerous appeals to theistic concepts may be part of his strategy to preempt criticism from theists. In other words, it may be more difficult for theists to criticize these concepts within his model because these concepts are found in their models too. That this is part of his strategy is evidenced by his admission that “I highlighted some important common ground between my version of robust normative realism and traditional theism. I will argue… that the existence of this common ground short-circuits some common theistic objections to my brand of robust normative realism.”37 However, such a strategy further distances his position from ROM atheists. If someone rejects theism, it would seem that, to be consistent, she should also reject Wielenberg’s model because it includes many concepts that are borrowed from theism.  

By using numerous theistic concepts to build his model, Wielenberg actually illustrated that objective morality is more plausible given theism as opposed to atheism. He touched on this point after he explained that his model “has an ontological commitment shared by many theists” in that it includes the existence of metaphysically necessary brute ethical facts.38 In a footnote he responded to theist C. Stephen Evans’ observation that many atheists find such facts odd:

Evans questions the existence of basic ethical facts as characterized here as follows: ‘The fact that so many naturalists, including philosophers such as Mackie and Nietzsche, find the idea of non-natural moral facts odd or queer, shows that they are indeed the kind of thing one would like to have an explanation for.’ In light of the fact that the very same naturalists have similar doubts about the existence of God, it’s hard to see how traditional theists can consistently press this sort of objection against a view like mine.39

By pointing out that many atheists doubt the existence of brute ethical facts, Evans is not condoning the reason (in this particular case, that the item in question seems to have no explanation) atheists give for this doubt per se. If Evans was condoning their reason, then Wielenberg would be correct—theists would be condoning a reason atheists often give for doubting the existence of God as well. Instead, Evans is making the point that doubting the existence of God is similar to, as well as related to, doubting the existence of brute ethical facts. If an atheist doubts God because there is no explanation for His existence then, if consistent, she should also doubt the existence of Wielenberg’s brute ethical facts because he claims they have no explanation. Theists might not be able to press this particular reason against Wielenberg’s view, but ROM atheists can—and that is what Evans is pointing out. In other words, many of Wielenberg’s concepts (the power of robust causal making and brute ethical facts) seem out of place in the belief system of atheism, as many atheists have recognized. Given atheism, robust causal making and brute ethical facts seem quite fantastical, causing many atheists to doubt such things are real.     

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[24] Ibid., 146–65.

[25] Ibid., 86.

[26] Ibid., 10-13. Michael R. DePaul, “Supervenience and Moral Dependence,” Philosophical Studies 51 (1987): 425–39..

[27] Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 10–11.

[28] Ibid., 18-19.

[29] Ibid., 38.

[30] Ibid., 56.

[31] Baggett and Walls, God and Cosmos, 209.

[32] C. Stephen Evans, “Moral Arguments for the Existence of God,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (ed. Edward N. Zalta, June 12, 2014), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-arguments-god/>.

[33] Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 11.

[34] Ibid., 18.

[35] Ibid., 20.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid., 36.

[38] Ibid., 38.

[39] Ibid.

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Adam Lloyd Johnson serves as a university campus missionary with Ratio Christi. He also teaches classes for Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and spends one month each year living and teaching at Rhineland Theological Seminary in Wölmersen, Germany. Adam received his PhD in Theological Studies with an emphasis in Philosophy of Religion from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2020.

Adam grew up in Nebraska and became a Christian as a teenager in 1994. He graduated from the University of Nebraska and then worked in the field of actuarial science for ten years in Lincoln, Nebraska. While in his twenties, he went through a crisis of faith: are there good reasons and evidence to believe God exists and that the Bible is really from Him? His search for answers led him to apologetics and propelled him into ministry with a passion to serve others by equipping Christians and encouraging non-Christians to trust in Christ. Adam served as a Southern Baptist pastor for eight years (2009-2017) but stepped down from the pastorate to serve others full-time in the area of apologetics. He’s been married to his wife Kristin since 1996, and they have four children – Caroline, Will, Xander, and Ray.

Adam has presented his work at the National Apologetics Conference, the Society of Christian Philosophers, the Evangelical Philosophical Society, the International Society of Christian Apologetics, the Canadian Centre for Scholarship and the Christian Faith, the American Academy of Religion, and the Evangelical Theological Society. His work has been published in the Journal of the International Society of Christian Apologetics, Philosophia Christi, the Westminster Theological Journal, and the Canadian Journal for Scholarship and the Christian Faith. Adam has spoken at numerous churches and conferences in America and around the world – Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, Boston, Orlando, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. He is also the editor and co-author of the book A Debate on God and Morality: What is the Best Account of Objective Moral Values and Duties? published by Routledge and co-authored with William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, Erik Wielenberg, and others.

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A Dozen Moral Arguments

The Center for the Foundations of Ethics at Houston Baptist University exists to generate a community of scholars devoted to exploring the rich resources of moral apologetics. Moral apologetics has for its focus the evidential significance of moral realities of various sorts. On occasion such evidence can be put into premise/conclusion format. The following is a nonexhaustive list of moral arguments hammered into discursive format, in an effort to show some of the range of possibilities in two senses:

First, there is diversity when it comes to the moral phenomena under consideration. Second, there are several ways in which to couch the evidential connections—from natural signs to induction, from deductive to abductive formulations. Obviously, all of these arguments invite critique and critical scrutiny; the purpose of this list is not to settle such matters, but simply to provide some examples of possible arguments. The footnotes have been kept to a relative few, but point to some of the complexities involved in the analysis of such arguments, and a few of the salient sources.

Immanuel Kant: Arguments from Grace and Providence

            Argument from Grace:

1. Morality requires us to achieve a standard too exacting and demanding to meet on our own without some sort of outside assistance, resulting in a “moral gap.”

2. Exaggerating human capacities, lowering the moral demand, or finding a secular form assistance are inadequate for the purpose of closing the moral gap.

3. Divine assistance is sufficient to close the gap.

4. Therefore, rationality dictates the postulation of God’s existence.

Argument from Providence:

1. Full rational commitment to morality requires that morality is a rationally stable enterprise.

2. In order for morality to be a rationally stable enterprise, it must feature ultimate correspondence between happiness and virtue.

3. There is no reason to think that such correspondence obtains unless God exists.

4. Therefore, rationality dictates the postulation of God’s existence.[1]

Henry Sidgwick: An Argument Based on the Dualism of Practical Reason

1. Morality can be made completely rational only if a complete harmony between the maxim of rational self-love and the maxim of rational benevolence can somehow be demonstrated.

2. If God exists, we may legitimately infer Divine sanctions such that there is a complete harmony between rational self-love (one’s interest) and rational benevolence (universal happiness).

3. If we can legitimately infer that there is complete harmony between rational self-love and rational benevolence, morality can be made completely rational.

4. Therefore, if God exists, morality can be made completely rational.[2]

C. S. Lewis: Argument from Book 1 of Mere Christianity

1. There is a universal Moral Law.

2. If there is a universal Moral Law, there is a Moral Law-giver.

3. If there is a Moral Law-giver, it must be something beyond the universe.

4. Therefore, there is something beyond the universe.

 Austin Farrer: An Argument Based on Human Worth/Dignity

1. Human persons have a special kind of intrinsic value that we call dignity.

2. The only (or best) explanation of the fact that humans possess dignity is that they are created by a supremely good God in God’s own image.

3. Probably there is a supremely good God.[3]

 Alvin Plantinga: A Moral Obligations Argument

1. If there are objective moral duties, then God exists.

2. There are objective moral duties.

3. So, God exists.[4]

Richard Swinburne: An Inductive Epistemic Argument

1. Humans possess objective moral knowledge.

2. Probably, if God does not exist, humans would not possess objective moral knowledge.

3. Probably, God exists.[5]

C. Stephen Evans: Natural Signs Approach

1. Natural signs satisfy the Pascalian constraints of wide accessibility and easy resistibility and dispose us to believe in God.

2. Human value and authoritative moral obligations function as moral natural signs.

3. Therefore, human value and authoritative moral obligations dispose us to believe in God.[6]

William Lane Craig: Value and Duties Argument

1. If God doesn’t exist, then objective moral values and duties don’t exist.

2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.

3. Therefore, God exists.

C. Stephen Layman: Authority of Morality Argument

1. The overriding (or strongest) reasons always favor doing what is morally required. (“Overriding Reasons Thesis” (ORT))

2. If there is no God and no life after death, then ORT is not true. (“Conditional Thesis”)

3. Therefore, either there is a God or there is life after death in which virtue is rewarded.

4. If (3) then God exists.

Mark Linville: A Deductive Epistemic Argument

1. If evolutionary naturalism (EN) is true, then human morality is a byproduct of natural selection.

2. If human morality is a byproduct of natural selection, then there is no moral knowledge.

3. There is moral knowledge.

4. So, EN is false.[7]

Baggett/Walls: A Four-Fold Abductive Cumulative Argument

1. Moral facts[8], moral knowledge, moral transformation, and moral rationality require robust explanation.[9]

2. The best explanation of these phenomena is God.

3. Therefore, God (probably) exists.[10]

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[1] See John Hare’s Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God’s Assistance for these formulations.

[2] This formulation has obvious limitations. Even if we affirm that morality can be made completely rational, it doesn’t logically follow that God exists. It is probably best interpreted either inductively or abductively.

[3] This formulation is not directly from Farrer, but Farrer focused heavily on the value we should recognize in our neighbor for being made in God’s image.

[4] See my article on this argument in Walls and Dougherty’s Two Dozen (Or So) Arguments for God.

[5] Find Swinburne’s discussion in his Existence of God. He thinks of the argument as a P-inductive argument, increasing the likelihood of theism somewhat, without making it more likely true than not (though the argument might be part of a cumulative case that does do the latter). Angus Ritchie gives an epistemic moral argument in his From Morality to Metaphysics: The Theistic Implication of Our Ethical Commitments.

[6] Find Evans’ argument in his Natural Signs and Knowledge of God.

[7] Find Linville’s argument online here: https://appearedtoblogly.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/linville-mark-22the-moral-argument22.pdf. That article also features critiques of the standard substantive ethical theories of egoism, utilitarianism, and virtue theory with respect to intrinsic human worth.

[8] Among relevant moral facts we discuss are moral goodness per se (objective values), human moral worth, binding moral duties, moral freedom, moral regrets, etc.

[9] Moral transformation and moral rationality correspond to the two Kantian arguments above, and to the two aspects of Kantian moral faith: (a) that morality is possible (and we emphasize three existential moral needs, namely, to be forgiven, changed, and perfected) and (b) that morality is a fully rational enterprise.

[10] See God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning for a fuller explication of this approach. For a slightly more accessible discussion, see The Morals of the Story: Good News about a Good God. For a much more comprehensive history of moral apologetics, see The Moral Argument: A History.

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David Baggett is professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Moral Apologetics at Houston Baptist University. Author or editor of about fifteen books, he’s a two-time winner of Christianity Today book awards. He’s currently under contract for his fourth and fifth books with Oxford University Press: a book on moral realism with Jerry Walls, and a collection on the moral argument with Yale’s John Hare.

Chapter 5 of God and Cosmos, “Moral Obligations.” (Part 1)

In this chapter, Baggett and Walls focus on deontic moral concepts, which include moral permissibility, moral obligation, and moral forbiddenness. Such are also expressed as moral duties (right/wrong). First, they point out that moral obligations are not identical to feelings of obligation. The feelings of obligation are neither necessary nor sufficient for moral obligations. One might have a moral obligation to do X without feeling so. One could also feel obligated to do X without actually having a moral obligation to do X. Hence explaining one's feeling of moral obligations is not sufficient to explain moral obligations themselves.

Baggett and Walls start by visiting a few ways of understanding the nature of moral obligations. Scott M. James lists these truths about moral judgments: (1) Moral creatures understand prohibitions; (2) moral prohibitions appear independent of human desires and (3) human conventions; (4) moral judgments are tightly linked to motivation; (5) moral judgments imply notions of dessert (punishment is justified); (6) moral creatures experience a distinctive affective response to our own wrongdoing, and this response often prompts us to make amends for the wrongdoing.

Robert Adams identifies two features responsible for guilt. The first is based on the harm caused to, and the second is alienation from, people. He regards obligations as a species of social requirement, and guilt consists in alienation from those who have required of us what we did not do. Adams of course does not think that every social bond results in obligations, only a morally good one. How good the demand is, who the demander is, and the consequences of the demand all plays a role.

C. Stephen Evans similarly lists four features of moral obligations: (1) A judgment about a moral obligation is a kind of verdict on my action; (2) a moral obligation brings reflection to closure; (3) a moral obligation involves accountability or responsibility; and (4) a moral obligation holds for persons simply as persons.

In sum, moral duties are not mere suggestions, or merely prescriptions there are excellent reasons to fulfill. Moral obligations possess authority (which gives us decisive reasons for action) and are inescapable (applying to persons with few exceptions). Moral laws are what we must do, not in the sense of the causal must (like the physical laws), but of the moral must. Violating moral duties also results in an experience of guilt (rather than shame or degradation).

Now Baggett and Walls move to various accounts that attempt to explain moral obligations. First is the functionalist approach advanced by primatologist Frans de Waal. De Waal argues that social primates have tendencies to prosociality, altruistic behaviors, community concern, and aversion to inequality. He thinks that the weight of morality comes not from above but from inside of us. So he thinks that morality has its origin in evolutionary history. What distinguishes human morality from the prosociality, altruism, and empathy with other primates is our capacity as humans to reflect about such things.

The problem is that when it comes to accounting for moral obligations, de Waal either (1) eschews their importance, by arguing that moral feelings provide better moral reasons to act than do obligations; or (2) does not explain moral obligations at all, but merely our feelings or sense of moral obligations. Regarding the first strategy, while he may be right to say that moral motivation should come from higher moral impulses (as most virtue theorists would agree), he still needs to explain the existence of moral obligations themselves. The second strategy also does nothing to provide an explanation of moral obligations themselves, only a feeling of obligation.

What he calls "morality" isn't moral truths; rather, they are moral beliefs, feelings, and practices at most. He has fallaciously conflated feeling obligated with being obligated. Even moral skeptics can affirm what he has said. In fact many moral skeptics argue that since naturalistic evolution can explain why we have moral beliefs, without any reference to their truth, there is no reason to affirm moral realism. Furthermore, others like E. O. Wilson and Michael Ruse have argued based on a naturalistic evolutionary account that if humans had evolved differently, we could have quite different ethical beliefs. Hence this leaves morality redundant.

Another evolutionary account comes from Philip Kitcher, who offers a naturalized virtue ethic. On his view, evolution gave us certain capacities to empathize with others. These faculties are limited and morality has for its function to extend such empathy. What we morally ought to do follows from the traits we ought to develop, which depends on the sorts of creatures that we are. Rather than explaining moral obligations, however, Kitcher explains them away. On his account, it is a good idea to follow certain rules, and to coerce the unwilling to follow them, in order to maintain functional harmony. This is merely prudential and far from moral obligations.

Scott M. James offers yet another evolutionary account. He takes on a response-dependency view, allowing him to affirm that moral facts are real, though mind-dependent. He thinks that this can be done in a way that makes moral facts objective. He adopts a tracking account that says our minds evolved in the way they did because they were tracking moral facts. His proposal has two parts. The first part talks about how we developed a special sensitivity to how others would view our behavior. He thinks the evolution of our particular moral sense was the result of the recognition of facts about hypothetical agreement. He claims that we first evolved a disposition to consider how others would likely react to our behavior. This allowed cooperation. However, keeping track of the responses of others would be a challenge. The solution is to ask this hypothetical question: if your counterpart were only seeking principles that all could agree to live by, would he have any reason to condemn your behavior? Over time, we became only concerned with the evaluations of a hypothetical observer. By the time modern humans evolved, we had moral minds that place special weight on how others would respond to proposed courses of action. Second, many primate societies and extant hunter-gather tribes have a strong tendency towards egalitarianism (the view that supports equality). Third, certain studies suggest that the earliest (recognizably) moral communities exemplify the social contract tradition of morality. Finally, there is cross-cultural evidence of this.

In the second part, he lays out a metaethical story about what moral judgments are and about what makes them true. On his view, an action is wrong just in case others (who have an interest in general rules governing behavior) would tend to object to that action.

Baggett and Walls have a few worries. First is a Euthyphro dilemma problem. Is an action right because hypothetical observers say so, or do hypothetical observers say so because it is right? Baggett and Walls are skeptical that what hypothetical observers say becomes true because they say it. Rather, hypothetical observers would say it because it is true. Second, some empirical evidence that James cites underdetermine the answer to what is at question here. Even if something that externally looks like a social contract is empirically verified in the earliest moral communities, the question of what makes something right/wrong has still not been answered. The social contract can be based on a shared recognition of objectively true moral principles (independent of the social contract). Lastly, this still does not account for the strong sense of moral obligations which includes, guilt for violation, its binding authority, and the like.