Sweeping Contingency Under the Rug

How Erik Wielenberg’s Third Factor Model Fails to Rebut the Lucky Coincidence Objection

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

Erik Wielenberg describes his view as “godless robust normative realism,” a combination of holding that “robust normative realism is true and there is no God.”1 Enoch describes robust normative realism as the view that “there are response-independent, non-natural, irreducibly normative truths… objective ones, that when successful in our normative inquiries we discover rather than create or construct.”2 Adding ‘godless’ to this, Wielenberg’s position then is that objective moral values and obligations exist, even though God does not.

In his non-theistic model Wielenberg claims that moral facts and properties are objectively real and that we as human beings can have accurate moral knowledge of these facts and properties. These types of models have been critiqued by both theists and atheists alike. One common objection against such models is as follows: If there are such things as objective moral facts and properties, and assuming they are causally inert, it would be quite a lucky coincidence if our moral beliefs happened to correspond to them. Call this the “lucky coincidence” objection. Proponents of Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (EDA’s) point out that this objection is amplified for a person if she believes that our moral beliefs have developed contingently through a haphazard evolutionary process.

The lucky coincidence objection would never have been raised if moral facts and properties somehow caused our moral beliefs. However, most proponents of robust normative realism believe that this is not the case. For instance, Wielenberg explained that “[a]n important feature of my view is that while many of the non-moral properties upon which moral properties D-supervene can produce causal effects, the moral properties themselves are epiphenomenal—they have no causal impact on the rest of reality. That aspect of moral properties makes the question of how we could have knowledge of them particularly press.”3 He summarized the lucky coincidence objection well when he noted that “if moral facts do not explain the moral beliefs of human beings, then those beliefs being correct would involve a lucky coincidence that is incompatible with genuine knowledge.”4

Wielenberg attempted to address the lucky coincidence objection by proposing that a third factor, namely, our cognitive faculties, explains why there is a correspondence between objective moral properties and our moral beliefs. He argued that human cognitive faculties do two things: they make objective moral properties be instantiated and they also generate our moral beliefs. Because moral properties and moral beliefs both stem from the same thing, our cognitive faculties, this secures a correlation between them, while also allowing for the fact that moral properties themselves are causally inert. He explained that cognitive faculties “both entail certain moral facts and causally contribute to the presence of moral beliefs that correspond to those moral facts. On that model, it is not at all unlikely that moral beliefs and moral facts will correspond.”5 He used his third-factor model to deflect criticism from several prominent EDA proponents including Gilbert Harman, Michael Ruse, Sharon Street, and Richard Joyce.6   

In this paper I argue that Wielenberg’s third-factor model fails to rebut the lucky coincidence objection for two reasons. First, those who reject theism, if they are consistent, should also reject Wielenberg’s notion that cognitive faculties make moral properties be instantiated. Second, Wielenberg does not eliminate the lucky coincidence objection with his third-factor model, but only moves it somewhere else as he attempts to sweep contingency under the rug. Even if cognitive faculties do make moral properties be instantiated, the correspondence between moral properties and moral beliefs breaks down because, while his proposed relationship between cognitive faculties and moral properties is necessary, his proposed relationship between cognitive faculties and moral beliefs is contingent. And where there is contingency, there is luck.   

Atheists Like Wielenberg Who Argue for Objective Morality Have to Battle on Two Fronts

Theists often argue that the existence of objective morality is best explained by the existence of God. Robert Adams, one of the most well-known contemporary proponents of this moral argument for God, has made the following argument:

  1. Morality is objective, “certain things are morally right and others are morally wrong.”7
  2. Objective morality is best explained by theism, “the most adequate answer is provided by a theory that entails the existence of God.”8
  3. Therefore, there is good reason to think theism is true, “my metaethical views provide me with a reason of some weight for believing in the existence of God.”9

Similarly, William Lane Craig has been an influential voice in this conversation. He has regularly argued for the following two contentions:10

  1. If theism is true, we have a sound foundation for morality.
  2. If theism is false, we do not have a sound foundation for morality.

Nearly all theists agree that theism provides a more sound foundation for objective morality than atheism, though they may disagree on exactly how God provides such a foundation. Though theists may disagree on the details, an immaterial and personal God, as the ultimate source of all things, provides a much more fitting explanation for objective morality, which itself is both immaterial and personal. For instance, Baggett and Walls argue that “[t]he authority of moral obligations needs an account… Theism—entailing a loving, perfect God who commands, who knows us better than we know ourselves, who knows truly what is in our ultimate best interest, and who desires the best for us—can, we submit, most effectively provide it.”11

Interestingly enough, many atheists agree with Craig’s two contentions. Let us call such individuals ROM atheists, that is, atheists who Reject Objective Morality (ROM). Of Craig’s two contentions, the second one is heard more often from ROM atheists. Bertrand Russell wrote that “Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms…”12 Jacques Monod lamented that ““…[m]an at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty.”13 Richard Dawkins wrote that:

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, and other people are going to get lucky; and you won’t find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good; nothing but blind pitiless indifference… DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.14

Michael Ruse, explained that “…Darwinian theory shows that in fact morality is a function of (subjective) feelings, but it shows also that we have (and must have) the illusion of objectivity… In a sense, therefore, morality is a collective illusion foisted upon us by our genes.”15

However, some ROM even express agreement with Craig’s first contention, that theism provides a better explanation for objective morality than atheism. J. L. Mackie wrote:

[W]e might well argue… that objective intrinsically prescriptive features, supervening upon natural ones, constitute so odd a cluster of qualities and relations that they are most unlikely to have arisen in the ordinary course of events, without an all-powerful God to create them. If, then, there are such intrinsically prescriptive objective values, they make the existence of a god more probable than it would have been without them.16

More recently, Paul Draper proposed that “…the probability that moral agents exist given naturalism is extremely low, much lower than it is given theism… [there] is the possibility that some ‘historical outcomes’ like the existence of embodied moral agents are much more probable on theism than on naturalism and hence significantly raise the ratio of the probability of theism to the probability of naturalism.”17

Thus, in making his case for godless robust normative realism, Wielenberg finds himself in a difficult minority position, having to argue against critiques from two sides—theists and ROM atheists. He began his book explaining that he is, in large part, responding to atheists such as Gilbert Harman, whom Wielenberg said “suggested that we ought to take seriously the possible truth of nihilism,” and J. L. Mackie, of whom Wielenberg wrote “[i]nterestingly, Mackie himself, although an atheist, suggested that theism might be able to answer his worries about the queerness of the alleged supervenience relation between moral and natural properties.”18 Wielenberg differs from ROM atheists in that he believes in the existence of non-natural moral facts and properties. He believes these properties “are sui generis, a fundamental type of property not reducible to or fully constituted by some other type of property. Contra the Thaleans, all is not water, or physical, or natural.”19 Most likely referring to ROM atheists, he admits that “some have found this sort of view to be deeply puzzling if not wildly implausible.”20   

In particular, Wielenberg admits that “it is not only theistic philosophers who have found robust normative realism to be problematic. A number of contemporary non-theist philosophers charge that robust normative realism runs into trouble when it comes to accounting for human moral knowledge.”21 Sharon Street’s colorful articulation of the lucky coincidence objection below is quite memorable:

[A]llowing our evaluative judgments to be shaped by evolutionary influences is analogous to setting out for Bermuda and letting the course of your boat be determined by the wind and tides: just as the push of wind and tides on your boat has nothing to do with where you want to go, so the historical push of natural selection on the content of our evaluative judgments has nothing to do with evaluative truth… Of course it’s possible that as a matter of sheer chance, some large portion of our evaluative judgments ended up true, due to a happy coincidence between the realist’s independent evaluative truths and the evaluative directions in which natural selection tended to push us, but this would require a fluke of luck that’s not only extremely unlikely, in view of the huge universe of logically possible evaluative judgments and truths, but also astoundingly convenient to the realist.22

Street’s concern is that if there are such things as objective moral facts and properties, then it would be quite the lucky coincidence if our moral beliefs corresponded to them, given that our moral beliefs developed haphazardly through an evolutionary process which selected for survival and reproduction, not an ability to know truth correctly. While discussing the difficulty of explaining why we should think objective moral facts and our moral beliefs correspond, Wielenberg reminded his readers that robust normative realists like himself are “hamstrung in this task by the fact that there is no causal connection between moral facts and moral beliefs.”23 In response to this lucky coincidence objection, he proposed his third-factor model.

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.      

Contingency in the Relationship Between Cognitive Faculties and Moral Beliefs

It is important to note that Wielenberg describes this making relationship between cognitive faculties and moral properties, the first part of his third-factor model, as a necessary relationship, that it obtains in all possible worlds.40 This is the key difference I want to note between the first and second part of his third-factor model. While he proposes that the first part, the making relationship between cognitive faculties and moral properties, is necessary, he proposes that the second part of his third-factor model, the relationship between cognitive faculties and our moral beliefs, is contingent.

Wielenberg used his third factor model to try and show why it is not a lucky coincidence that moral properties and moral beliefs correspond; they correspond because they both come from our cognitive faculties. He summarized his strategy as follows:

Thus, there is a necessary connection between the cognitive faculties and moral rights. Those very cognitive faculties also generate moral beliefs, including the relevant beliefs about rights. The connection between the cognitive faculties and beliefs about moral rights is causal. In this way, the relevant cognitive faculties are responsible for both moral rights and beliefs about those rights, and so the cognitive faculties explain the correlation between moral rights and beliefs about those rights.41

However, including this third-factor in his model does not successfully rebut the lucky coincidence objection because his model still includes contingency, that is, the contingency in the relationship between our cognitive faculties and our moral beliefs. This contingency still leaves his model open to the lucky coincidence objection because, as Wielenberg himself admitted, where there is contingency, there is luck.42

In Wielenberg’s third factor model, he claims our cognitive faculties both make moral properties be instantiated and generate our moral beliefs. He noted that “[i]f these claims are correct, then we have explained the ‘remarkable fact’ [that moral properties and moral beliefs correspond]… it seems to me that if we can explain why (i) x causes y and (ii) x entails z, then we have explained why y and z tend to go together.”43 Assuming for the sake of argument that the first part of his model is correct, that cognitive faculties necessarily make moral properties be instantiated, his model does not avoid the lucky coincidence objection because of the contingency found in the second part, the relationship between cognitive faculties and moral beliefs. His proposed correspondence between moral properties and moral beliefs breaks down because of this difference in causal necessity. There is no good reason to think that beings with cognitive faculties like ours would have the same moral beliefs we do. In addition, we can easily imagine beings with similar cognitive faculties as our own but with radically different types of moral beliefs.

As noted earlier, this point is amplified if one believes, as most atheists do, that our cognitive faculties and moral beliefs came about haphazardly through a random evolutionary process. Wielenberg does not take a position on whether all our moral beliefs can be explained in evolutionary terms but he is “sympathetic to the view that at least some of our moral beliefs can be given evolutionary explanations.”44 In particular, he sketched an evolutionary explanation of how we came to have our beliefs about moral rights.45  

Consider the following refutation by analogy. If Wielenberg’s model works in the realm of moral knowledge, then it should also work in other realms of knowledge generated by our cognitive faculties, realms such as science and mathematics. Let us consider his third-factor in the context of Fermat’s Last Theorem.46 For the purpose of this analogy it is sufficient to note that Fermat’s Last Theorem is a mathematical theorem proposed by Pierre de Fermat in 1637. He claimed he had developed a proof of this theorem but such a proof was never found in any of his writings. Despite numerous attempts by mathematicians, there were no published successful proofs of this theorem until 1994. If we insert Fermat’s Last Theorem in Wielenberg’s third-factor model, the two parts of the model would be as follows:

  1. Our cognitive faculties make the property of ‘being able to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem’ be instantiated.
  2. Our cognitive faculties cause us to believe we can prove Fermat’s Last Theorem.

We can easily imagine beings like us who have the cognitive faculties which make them able to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem, but who do not have the belief that they can. Similarly, we can easily imagine beings like us who have cognitive faculties which make them have moral properties such as rights and obligations (assuming the first part of Wielenberg’s model is correct), but who do not have the belief that they do. We do not even have to use our imagination because there are such people, that is, human beings who do not think they have moral rights and obligations. The reason that beings with cognitive faculties like ours may not have the belief that they have moral properties is that the causal connection between cognitive faculties and moral beliefs is contingent, not necessary.            

Attempting to Avoid Contingency by Claiming That the Laws of Nature are Necessary

Wielenberg understands that, because his model still contains contingency, it remains vulnerable to the lucky coincidence objection. The issue under consideration is how lucky it is for our moral beliefs and objective moral facts to correspond. He noted that “because the basic ethical facts are necessary truths, if there is any luck in the correspondence between our psychological dispositions and moral reality, it must lie entirely on the psychological side of the equation.”47 Therefore, in a final attempt to remove all contingency, he spent the last few pages of his book asking his readers to entertain the idea that laws of nature are metaphysically necessary. If this were the case, he argued, then any being with cognitive faculties like ours would necessarily have moral beliefs similar to ours.48 Eliminating contingency is the only way to ultimately rebut the lucky coincidence objection.

He noted that the amount of lucky coincidence involved in having moral beliefs that correspond with objective moral facts depends on the answer to this question: “[T]o what extent do the actual laws of nature permit the emergence of species of beings that m-possess moral principles radically different from the moral principles we m-possess?”49 He began his answer to this question with the following hypothetical claim, which he calls Extreme Specificity (ES): “The actual laws of nature entail that any being capable of forming moral beliefs at all m-possess all and only the principles included in Moral Truth [all the necessarily true general moral principles, or brute ethical facts].”50 He argues that if the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary in this regard then “there is no luck at all involved in the fact that Bart [a hypothetical person he used as an example] m-possesses moral principles that correspond with moral reality rather than m-possessing radically different (and false) moral principles.”51

Wielenberg concluded that ES must be false and he admitted that “we simply lack the knowledge required to warrant a clear and confident answer” concerning ES, but he did suggest that “we may be relatively close to ES—or at least, closer to ES than some philosophers have suggested.”52 He understands that the closer we are to ES in real life, the smaller amount of luck is entailed by our having moral beliefs that correspond to objective moral facts and properties. He concluded his book by stating that “[a]s far as I can tell, a certain degree of agnosticism is called for with respect to just how lucky we are to have moral knowledge on a view like mine.”53

A Response to the Speculative Notion that the Laws of Nature Might Be Necessary

First of all, it is interesting to note that Wielenberg seems to agree with theists that there must be a necessary foundation of some sort for the existence of objective moral principles and beliefs. For if something is necessary, then that provides the stability needed for morality to be objective as opposed to just a subjective accidental human construct. Theists argue that God provides such a necessary foundation whereas Wielenberg asks his readers to consider that the laws of nature may be necessary. He wrote that “[i]f there is no God but the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, then the fact that there is no God to put in place just the right laws for moral knowledge to arise doesn’t make us any luckier to have moral knowledge than we would be if God did exist because the laws of nature couldn’t have been any different from what they are.”54 Whether one believes that God exists or not, it seems much easier to believe that, if He exists, then He exists necessarily, that is, easier than it is to believe that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary.  

Secondly, it is notoriously difficult to make the case that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, as Wielenberg readily admits.55 But even if some laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, this would not mean that the evolutionary path that led to human beings was necessary. Therefore, Wielenberg had to go even further and speculate that the evolutionary process that led to the development of human beings may itself have been necessary in some sense. He summarized this possibility as follows:

These considerations are hardly decisive, but I think they do indicate that it is a mistake simply to assume that it is nomologically possible for us (or other beings) to have evolved to m-possess radically different moral principles than the ones we actually possess. For all we know, m-possessing the DDE [a particular moral principle] is an inevitable outcome of the evolutionary process that made us capable of forming moral judgments in the first place.56

Wielenberg is forced into this remarkable speculation because he realizes that if the evolutionary process which supposedly produced human beings was contingent, if it could have occurred differently, then our moral beliefs could have turned out to be vastly different as well. Charles Darwin himself noted that if our evolutionary path were more similar that of bees, then “there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering. Nevertheless, the bee, or any other social animal, would gain in our supposed case some feeling of right or wrong, or a conscience.”57

Wielenberg claimed that theists are not in a position to argue that the laws of nature, as well as the evolutionary path which produced human beings, could have been different based on the fact that we can easily imagine them as being different. He explained his concern as follows:

One might be tempted to argue that the fact that it is easy to imagine the laws of nature being different than they are is an indication of their metaphysical contingency. However, theists typically maintain that God’s existence is metaphysically necessary; yet it is easy to imagine the non-existence of God. Therefore, theists cannot consistently appeal to the conceivability of different laws of nature to support the metaphysical contingency of the actual laws of nature.58

He is correct; just because a person can think of other paths evolution could have taken does not mean that those paths are actually possible. On the other hand, the supposed evolutionary tree would seem to say that evolution not only could have, but in fact did sprout off in many different directions, leading to radically different organisms. Thus the only imagination required is to consider an evolutionary path that results in beings who develop cognitive faculties like ours but do not have similar moral beliefs. It is difficult to think of reasons why we should believe such paths are impossible.

What is more, Wielenberg himself seems to have regularly affirmed that human beings were produced by an evolutionary process that was contingent and accidental. He wrote that “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.”59 He also wrote that “contemporary atheists typically maintain that human beings are accidental, evolved, mortal, and relatively short-lived…”60 Realizing the implications of this statement, he explained in a footnote that ‘accidental’ should not be understood as a result of entirely random processes because “[a]ccording to contemporary evolutionary theory, evolutionary processes are not, contrary to popular mischaracterizations, entirely chance-driven. Rather, they are driven by a combination of chance and necessity; see Mayr 2001, 119-20.”61 It is important to note that Mayr actually stated that chance rules at the first step of evolution, with the production of variation through random mutation, and that determinism only comes in during the second step through non-random aspects of survival and reproduction based on a particular species’ fixed, or determined, environment.62 Thus, if evolution works as atheists claim, that it was driven by accidental random mutations (which Wielenberg affirms), as well as chance changes in the environment (the success or failure of other competing species, climate changes, meteorites, etc.), then it is very difficult to believe that evolution had to necessarily produce human beings just the way they are.

The suggestion that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary comes dangerously close, for an atheist such as Wielenberg that is, to another line of reasoning: fine-tuning arguments for the existence of God.63 Wielenberg himself admitted that “[t]here is… one view that might seem to require much less luck for moral knowledge than my view does. That is our old friend theism.”64 He continued by quoting the following comment by Parfit, another advocate of robust normative realism: “God might have designed our brains so that, without causal contact, we can reason in ways that lead us to reach true answers to mathematical questions. We might have similar God-given abilities to respond to reasons, and to form true beliefs about these reasons.”65 Mark Linville has even suggested a specific “moral fine-tuning argument… Certain of our moral beliefs – in particular, those that are presupposed in all moral reflection – are truth-aimed because human moral faculties are designed to guide human conduct in light of moral truth.”66 

Wielenberg explained that if it is metaphysically necessary that any being capable of forming moral beliefs at all possesses only true moral beliefs, then “there is no luck at all involved in the fact that Bart [a hypothetical person used as an example] m-possesses moral principles that correspond with moral reality rather than m-possessing radically different (and false) moral principles.”67 Possibly recognizing that this may be seen as a hint of fine tuning, he followed this up in a footnote by noting that “[p]erhaps Bart is lucky to exist at all, but that is a separate issue—one that connects with so-called ‘fine-tuning’ arguments, a topic I cannot engage in here.”68

The fine-tuning debate has sparked a lot of discussion over the last couple of decades, instigating a whole host of arguments for and against it. The fine-tuning argument itself, as well as the most common argument against it, the argument for a proposed multi-verse, are both based on the strong intuition that the laws of nature are contingent. Wielenberg’s suggestion that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary would thus effectively rebut the prominent positions on both sides of the fine-tuning debate. At the very least, this should give one pause in accepting Wielenberg’s speculative proposal that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary.

Conclusion

Erik Wielenberg has argued for a position which he calls “godless robust normative realism.” Many have pushed back against positions like this with an argument that I have referred to as the lucky coincidence objection; it seems quite a lucky coincidence that our moral beliefs happen to match up with the objective moral facts postulated by the realist. Wielenberg’s response to this objection was to propose that there is a third factor at play—our cognitive faculties. He proposed that our cognitive faculties both cause moral properties to be instantiated and generate our moral beliefs, thus explaining why it is that the two correspond. I argued that his third-factor model failed to rebut the lucky coincidence objection for two reasons. First, to explain his third-factor model, Wielenberg used several concepts he borrowed from theism, concepts that seem quite out of place within the belief system of atheism. Given atheism, robust causal making and brute ethical facts seem quite fantastical. Thus I argued that atheists, if they are consistent, should reject his model. Second, I argued that he did not rebut the lucky coincidence objection because he did not eliminate contingency, he only moved it to a different location in an attempt to sweep it under the rug. I explained that there is still contingency in his model, namely, in his proposed relationship between our cognitive faculties and our moral beliefs. And where there is contingency, there is luck.


Footnotes

[1] Erik J. Wielenberg, Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 57. Other proponents of robust normative realism include Michael Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), Derek Parfit, On What Matters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), David Enoch, Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), and Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

[2] David Enoch, “An Outline of an Argument for Robust Metanormative Realism,” in Oxford Studies in Metaethics (ed. Russ Shafer-Landau; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 21.

[3] Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 13–14.

[4] Ibid., 153.

[5] Ibid., 154.

[6] Ibid., 146–64.

[7] Robert M. Adams, “Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief,” in Rationality and Religious Belief (ed. C. F. Delaney; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), 116.

[8] Ibid., 117.

[9] Ibid.

[10] William Lane Craig, “Opening Statement by William Lane Craig,” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics (eds. Nathan L. King and Robert K. Garcia; Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), 30.

[11] David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls, God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning (Oxford University Press, 2016), 290.

[12] Bertrand Russell, “The Free Man’s Worship,” The Independent Review 1 (1903): 416.

[13] Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology (New York: Knopf, 1971), 180.

[14] Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, Repr. (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 133.

[15] Michael Ruse, Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy (New York: Blackwell, 1986), 253.

[16] J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 115–16.

[17] Paul Draper, “Cosmic Fine-Tuning and Terrestrial Suffering: Parallel Problems for Naturalism and Theism,” American Philosophical Quarterly 41.4 (2004): 311.

[18] Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, viii.

[19] Ibid., 14.

[20] Ibid., 16.

[21] Ibid., 85.

[22] Sharon Street, “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value,” Philosophical Studies 127 (2006): 121–22.

[23] Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 155.

[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.

[40] Ibid., 36, 145, 156.

[41] Ibid., 145.

[42] Wielenberg agreed that contingency entails luck when he noted that “Where there is no contingency, there is no luck.” Ibid., 167.

[43] Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 156.

[44] Ibid., 148.

[45] Ibid., 135–44.

[46] This particular refutation by analogy was developed by Dr. Greg Welty.

[47] Ibid., 167.

[48] Ibid., 166–75.

[49] Ibid., 167.

[50] Ibid., 168. Moral Truth is the set of all necessarily true general moral principles, which, as I have noted, are what he claims are BEFs.

[51] Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 168.

[52] Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 169.

[53] Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 175.

[54] Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 174.

[55] Ibid., 169.

[56] Ibid., 172.

[57] Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998), 102.

[58] Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 174.

[59] Ibid., 56.

[60] Ibid., 51.

[61] Ibid.

[62] Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 120–21.

[63] Robin Collins, “The teleological argument: an exploration of the fine-tuning of the universe” in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (eds. William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland; Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 202–82.

[64] Ibid., 173.

[65] Derek Parfit, On What Matters, vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 493.

[66] Mark D. Linville, “The moral argument,” in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (eds. William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland; Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 5.

[67] Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 168.

[68] Ibid.


Bibliography

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Evans, C. Stephen. “Moral Arguments for the Existence of God.” Edited by Edward N. Zalta. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, June 12, 2014.

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Monod, Jacques. Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology. New York: Knopf, 1971.

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Russell, Bertrand. “The Free Man’s Worship.” The Independent Review 1 (1903): 415–24.

Shafer-Landau, Russ, ed. Oxford Studies in Metaethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Street, Sharon. “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value.” Philosophical Studies 127 (2006): 109–66.

Wielenberg, Erik J. Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Convincing Proof