Abstract
The levers of natural selection are random genetic mutation, fitness for survival, and reproductive success. Defenders of the evolutionary debunking account (EDA) hold that such mechanisms aren’t likely to produce cognitive faculties that reliably form true moral beliefs. So, according to EDA, given that our cognitive faculties are a product of unguided natural selection, we should be in doubt about the reliability of our moral cognition. Let the term ‘sanspsychism’ describe the view that no supramundane consciousness exists. In arguing against theism, some sanspsychists advance a normative claim about the moral significance of phenomena like sentient suffering. But if no supramundane consciousness exists, our cognitive faculties are a product of unguided natural selection. It follows that if EDA is correct, the sanspsychist should not think that our moral cognition is reliable. So unless the sanspsychist has a defeater for EDA, she should not think herself justified in appealing to normative reasons for denying the existence of God.
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Notes
Plantinga and Tooley (2008): 146. I do not claim that Tooley would endorse sanspsychism. The point is that a sanspsychist might attempt to use an argument like Tooley’s to reject theism (supplemented, presumably, by other arguments that support sanspsychism over other non-theistic alternatives to sanspsychism).
Plantinga and Tooley (2008): 120. N1 is indispensable in the sense that Tooley’s argument requires a premise with something relevantly like the normative content of N1.
See Rowe (1996).
A referee observes that some arguments from evil claim that sentient suffering is at odds with the definition of a benevolent God. This is a fair point. So note that my position in this paper is not meant to cover formulations of the problem of evil, according to which God’s existence is logically incompatible with sentient suffering. My argument concerns only inductive arguments from evil against the existence of God.
Clearly, theism and sanspsychism are mutually exclusive. Supposing as we are that theism and sanspsychism are jointly exhaustive, it follows—where ‘T’ stands for theism and ‘S’ stands for sanspsychism—that Pr(S)=1−Pr(T). Thus, it follows from C that the truth of sanspsychism is extremely likely. So in the absence of countervailing evidence or non-inferential justification for theism, it follows from C that we should affirm sanspsychism.
Technically, EDA claims that given moral realism, we should embrace moral skepticism, since our moral-cognitive faculties are a product of unguided natural selection. (Some defenders of EDA (e.g., Street) go on to claim that we should reject moral realism rather than embrace moral skepticism.) The above characterization of EDA will simplify exposition at no cost to our analysis.
F is a feature of mind-independent moral truth just in case F holds independently of any human belief about F.
Note that I do not claim that the sanspsychist should think that her moral cognition is unreliable. Rather, I have argued that the sanspsychist should not believe that her moral cognition is reliable.
In treating various forms of ethical naturalism vis-à-vis God’s moral situation, I draw from Murphy (2017: 48−62).
For the record, I do not regard this as a consequence of my argument. Rather, with or without EDA, it’s difficult to see how ethical naturalism might provide normative resources to apply a claim like N to God’s moral situation. I highlight this incapacity merely to foreclose ethical naturalism as an avenue of reply for the sanspsychist.
Shafer-Landau (2008: 91). Assuming as we are that moral truth is mind-independent, substantive moral disagreement arises only when at least one party to the disagreement is mistaken.
See Sinnott-Armstrong (2008: 71). It’s worth observing that there’s no way to ‘check’ our moral beliefs in the relevant sense—at least on sanspsychism.
By ‘abstract moral principle’, I mean something like the principle that ‘Ceteris paribus, it is wrong to harm other persons’. By ‘general moral principle’, I mean something like the principle that ‘Ceteris paribus, it is wrong to steal’. What abstract and general moral principles have in common is that each involves normative principles that range over a variety of particular cases. For present purposes, the differences between abstract and general moral intuitions are unimportant.
It would seem that beyond being consistent with skeptical theistic skepticism, my account would furnish the skeptical theist with additional reason for holding that the sanspsychist, in particular, should not think that the goods and entailments that are known to her are representative of those there are. For more on skeptical theism, see Bergmann (2001) and Howard-Snyder (2009).
For more on theistic background beliefs about God’s moral situation, see Murphy (2017).
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Coley, S.M. Evolutionary Debunking and Normative Arguments Against Theism. SOPHIA 61, 521–532 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-021-00830-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-021-00830-y