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552 BURKARD
Richard grew up a devout Catholic, accepting the sexual morals he was taught. However,
he has long since become an atheist and has cast off many of the views of his youth. Only
his belief in the special moral status of monogamous, heterosexual marriage has not
changed. When he is challenged by his friend Susan to provide a justification for this
view, Richard realises that he has no non-religious basis for it. As a consequence, he rethinks
his position on marriage.
Richard’s reaction to Susan’s challenge is clearly reasonable since he has been presented with
an explanation for a belief of his which undermines any justification he might have had for it.
But how exactly are we to understand the undermining force of such explanations? Although
this is not the place to provide a comprehensive account of debunking arguments, a few clarifications
are needed.
First, the fact that someone’s justification for believing that p has been undermined by a
debunking explanation does of course not imply the falsity of p. P could still turn out to be
true, but the person currently has no justificatory basis for believing so. That is, successful
debunking explanations function as so called undercutting, not as rebutting defeaters (cf.
Pollock and Cruz 1987/1999: 196f. for this distinction).
Second, the explanations referred to in debunking arguments only work in this undermining
fashion insofar as we understand them as leaving no room for alternative, non-undermining
or vindicating explanations. In a variant of the scenario just described, Richard could have
come to hold the same view on marriage but on a different basis. In that case, reference to his
religious upbringing would not have provided the best (or a complete) explanation for the
relevant belief, which would hence not have been undermined (cf. Kahane 2011: 106 for a
similar point).
Third, it is a complex question what qualifies as a good explanation, and in many cases
philosophers will disagree as to what best explains the acceptance of some moral proposition.
For present purposes, just note that it is not presupposed here that the explanations referred
to in debunking arguments must be causal, or that they cannot make reference to non-natural
properties. 7 Also, I take it that there are at least some cases in which it is fairly easy to determine
what best explains someone’s acceptance of certain moral propositions (as I have
stipulated in Richard’s case above).
Fourth, the notions of ‘correctness’ and ‘truth’ used in debunking arguments should be understood
broadly. Reference to moral truth is not limited to robust forms of moral realism
(and the correspondence theory of truth with which it is associated). Rather, the term is also
employed by defenders of moral constructivism, by proponents of a coherence theory of
moral truth or by quasi-realists who subscribe to minimalism about truth (cf. e.g. Blackburn
1998, 75-80, Skorupski 1999 and Street 2010). Thus the unspecific formulation used in the
second premise (“X has nothing to do with the truth or correctness of p”) is deliberately
chosen to make it compatible with different conceptions of truth.
And, finally, attempts to debunk beliefs by pointing out their supposedly dubious origins can
of course misfire. Consider the following example:
Irene learns about evolutionary hypotheses regarding the origins of our cognitive faculties,
among them our ability to make simple calculations. She worries that the fact that
these faculties were selected through evolutionary processes speaks for their usefulness
for survival, rather than for our ability to recognise algebraic truths. But Joan points out
to her that it is plausible to assume that the ability to calculate was useful for survival only
because it enabled humans to calculate correctly.
7
Cf. Mayes 2005 for a discussion of some central issues concerning the nature of explanations,
including reference to anti-realist approaches to (scientific) explanations.