This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Shafer-Landau, R. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Moral and Theological Realism: The Explanatory Argument

Department of Philosophy University of Wisconsin Madison, USA, shaferlandau{at}wisc.edu

There are striking parallels, largely unexplored in the literature, between skeptical arguments against theism and against moral realism. After sketching four arguments meant to do this double duty, I restrict my attention to an explanatory argument that claims that we have most reason to deny the existence of moral facts (and so, by extrapolation, theistic ones), because such putative facts have no causal-explanatory power. I reject the proposed parity, and offer reasons to think that the potential vulnerabilities of moral realism on this front are quite different from those of the theist.

Key Words: causal power • explanatory power • Gilbert Harman • moral facts • moral realism • theism

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?