Abstract: In brief, here is Alvin Plantinga’s (1993) evolutionary argument against naturalism (henceforth, ‘EAAN’). Those who accept naturalism and evolution have a defeater for the belief that their cognitive faculties are reliable; this in turn gives them a defeater for all of their beliefs, including their belief in naturalism. More recently, arguments similar to EAAN have garnered much attention in metaethics. I’ll call them “Evolutionary Moral Debunking Arguments” (henceforth, ‘EMDAs’). Though they come in many forms, they all affirm that those who accept moral realism and evolution have a defeater for the belief that the processes producing their moral beliefs are reliable; this in turn gives them a defeater for all of their moral beliefs. Despite over two decades of discussions of EAAN by many prominent philosophers, virtually no one involved in the more recent EMDA discussions has in any substantial way partaken of insights from the EAAN literature. A goal of this paper, therefore, is to identify such insights. In particular, I show that discussions in the EAAN literature of the so-called “conditionalization problem” and epistemic circularity can help clarify the debate in the EMDA literature between the so-called “third-factor” responders and those who charge that those responders beg the question. With that debate clarified, I can then provide a new argument that the charge of question begging fails. This leaves important questions unanswered, but it is clearer just what is needed to move discussions in both literatures forward: a solution to the conditionalization problem.
Andrew Moon is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Philosophy of Religion at Rutgers University.
