That Adorable Genius and a Prime Minister

Abstract

Abstract William James offered several resources that a moral apologist can deploy. James saw it as irrational to embrace a rule of reasoning that precludes finding truth that’s really there to be found. He argued that the category of moral regret is a bad fit with a naturalistic worldview. Like other philosophers we’ve considered, his was an expansive empiricism that included considering the evidential value of relational, aesthetic, and ethical deliverances. Arthur Balfour similarly recognized the moral deficiencies of naturalism, though, more so than James, he thought reconcilable the religious and metaphysical accounts of theism. Balfour was particularly intent on underscoring the ways in which deflationary analyses of moral values and duties are better at explaining them away than actually explaining them. He didn’t think the moral argument was best thought of as a deduction; rather, he saw it as something closer to an inductive or abductive approach.