Let there be realism! A critique of Crummett and Swenson (2019)

1.0 Introduction

In their article “God and moral knowledge,” Crummett and Swenson (2019) claim that we have moral knowledge, and explore the implications of this claim for naturalism (which they describe as “the view that all that exists is the natural world” (p. 33). According to C&S, naturalism encounters problems when accounting for moral knowledge that theism can solve. Their goal here, it seems, is to leverage the alleged existence of moral knowledge to provide evidence of God.

I’m not a naturalist and I don’t think we have moral knowledge. This leaves me with little motivation to respond to much of what they have to say. Instead, I think the best response is to simply deny that we have moral knowledge. They make a case for moral knowledge in the first section of their response. After addressing this, I turn my attention to their discussion of moral skepticism.

2.0 Moral knowledge

C&S’s case for moral knowledge begins with the following remark:

Our argument requires that human beings …