Introduction 5
worthwhile contribution to the larger conversation, even if in
the end it should prove to be a suasive failure; if nothing else,
this book may provide champions of the dominant view an
occasion for honest reflection and scrupulous cerebration and
serious analysis (and a whole host of other bracing intellectual
virtues of that sort). Even if it should serve merely as a kind of
negative probation of the tradition -the plaintiff's brief duti-
fully submitted by an advocatus diaboli, on behalf of an eccen-
tric minority position, in full anticipation that the final ver-
dict will go the other way-it may at least help the majority to
clarify their convictions. So, I offer all that follows as a logical
and rhetorical experiment, and ask chiefly for the reader's in-
dulgence as I proceed as far along the path of my reasoning as
I find it possible to go. My expectations regarding its effect are
very limited. Even so, if by chance the reader should happen
to find any of my arguments convincing after all, I ask also that
he or she consider whether that might be the result of some in-
trinsic merit in them.
I should note that this is not the first public exposition of
my views, but I intend it to be more or less the last. In my ex-
perience, this particular issue is especially fertile in generating
circular debates, and in inviting the most repetitious sorts of
argument. But I feel I have to give a complete account of my
views on the matter simply as a courtesy to those who have
taken the time to respond to my earlier statements, but with-
out the benefit of knowing the entire shape of my thinking.
Back in July 2015, at the University of Notre Dame, I deliv-
ered a lecture, most of whose argument is reprised below in my
First Meditation. At the time, it received considerable atten -
tion, and it continues to provoke discussion and commentary
in various venues. Many readers have followed its argument
without difficulty, usually with approbation, probably on ac-