Atheism and Theism 29leading to the complex world that we know. But wouldn’t this be an odd way
of bringing about value? Would one not expect the axiarchic principle to
bring about directly a universe of (say) Cartesian immaterial and happy souls?
Mind you, the souls would not have all that Leslie and I value. He likes rock
climbing and I like bush walking. Souls cannot do these. Whether or not
having the illusion of doing these things would do is another matter – there
would still be a good deal of indirectness in what comes from the axiarchic
principle. In any case the happy souls might have only intellectual pleasures.
(2) Would one expect Leslie’s axiarchic principle to bring about a universe
in which evil exists? (It is clear that we should understand the statement of
the principle to be glossed as ‘the principle that positive value comes into
existence’.) One of Leslie’s replies is that ‘it is no easy matter to bring about
ethical requirements in consistent sets’.^50 This indicates that Leslie’s appar-
ently simple concept of God as an ethical principle must conceal a great deal
of complexity. Part of the complexity might lie in the need for ethical sub-
principles saying what sorts of things have value. Sub-principles may conflict,
and then there must be a trade off. These sub-principles might be proposi-
tions about what means bring about what ends. So Leslie’s apparently simple
ethical principle does seem to conceal a lot of complexity of the sort that
traditional theologians have associated with God’s omniscience. If Leslie’s
principle corresponded only to God qua designer, then this complexity and
perhaps the existence of evil could be put down to the recalcitrance of the
material with which he had to work. But then there would be a lot that
the principle could not explain. Or does the designer merely work on proto-
laws determining only the values of the fundamental constants that emerge
after symmetry breaking? This might conflict with the idea of God as not
only designer but also Creator.
(3) The theory of extreme axiarchism depends on an objectivist theory
about the nature of ethical judgements and speech acts. In the space available
here it will of course be impossible to do proper justice to such theories.^51
First of all we may note theories such as those of G.E. Moore in his Principia
Ethica^52 and W.D. Ross in his Foundations of Ethics.^53 According to this sort
of theory the mind has an ability to intuit that things or events that possess
certain ‘natural’ properties or relations (such as being pleasant or being an
instance of truth telling) also possess ‘non-natural’ properties or relations
(such as goodness or rightness). Such intuitions would be of synthetic a priori
truths about the world, which supervene on purely natural facts. According
to this view ethical judgements would be about objective facts, and this sort
of theory would seem at first sight to be required if we are to believe in
Leslie’s axiarchic principle. The Moore–Ross theory fails to explain the
motivating power of ethical belief. Furthermore, the intellectual intuition of
non-natural properties and their relations is mysterious and incompatible