Volume 35, Issue 4, October 2018
Andrew Brenner
Pages 447-463
https://doi.org/10.5840/faithphil20181016111
Theism and Explanationist Defenses of Moral Realism
Some moral realists have defended moral realism on the basis of the purported fact that moral facts figure as components in some good explanations of non-moral phenomena. In this paper I explore the relationship between theism and this sort of explanationist defense of moral realism. Theistic explanations often make reference to moral facts, and do so in a manner which is ineliminable in an important respect¡ªremove the moral facts from those explanations, and they suffer as a result. In this respect theistic moral explanations seem to differ from the sorts of moral explanations typically offered by moral explanationists.