Recently, companions in guilt strategies have garnered significant philosophical attention as a response to arguments for moral error theory, the view that there are no moral facts and that our moral beliefs are thus systematically mistaken. According to Cuneo (The normative web: an argument for moral realism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007), Das (Philos Q 66:152–160, 2016; Australas J Philos 95(1):58–69, 2017), Rowland (J Ethics Soc Philos 7(1):1–24, 2012; Philos Q 66:161–171, 2016) and others, epistemic facts would be just as (...) metaphysically problematic (or ‘guilty’) as moral facts. But since epistemic error theory is implausible, arguments for moral error theory prove too much and should be rejected. My aim is to argue that the success of this strategy is limited. In particular, the companions in guilt response fails against error-theoretic arguments motivated by concerns about explanatory dispensability, as recently developed by Joyce (The evolution of morality, MIT press, Bradford, 2005) and Olson (Moral error theory: history, critique, defence, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014: Ch. 7). To succeed, the response would require a prima facie plausible argument to the effect that epistemic facts are metaphysically dubious because they, too, are explanatorily dispensable. But, as I show, any such argument proves self-effacing: its premise commits us to believing in epistemic facts, while its conclusion forces us to deny their existence. Consequently, companions in guilt strategies don’t offer a panacea against arguments for moral error theory. (shrink)

In my essay, I will argue that evolution does not undermine naturalism. This is because Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism rests on a false and unmotivated premise and is thus invalid. My argument consists of two parts: In the expository part, I outline Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism in considerable detail (section 2). In the argumentative part, I firstly pose William Ramsey’s challenge to Plantinga’s probabilistic claim that the reliability of human cognitive faculties is low and critically examine Plantinga’s (...) response in order to reinforce it (section 3). Secondly, I attack Plantinga’s understanding of human evolution, which motivates his cognitive skepticism, as being unduly narrow (section 4). (shrink)