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In the human case there is a limited awareness of future possibilities, and the ability to reject some and so choose others. In the beginning, however, there was an unlimited awareness of future possibilities with an unlimited capacity to reject some and choose others. All these possibilities supervene on the material or, more accurately, the non-mental. This is the hypothesis of the Primordial God. We should think of the Primordial God as self-aware if and only if we identify it with all there was at the beginning. In addition, it is argued that the hedonic motive is not just one motive, but the only motive that we should ascribe to the Primordial God, and that it is based upon a capacity to know what it would be like to be in various circumstances. The resulting divine consequentialism is defended, and both Perfect Being Theology and Extreme Axiarchism are criticized.

This chapter develops a positive argument for theism, claiming it is capable (in a way secular accounts are not) of bridging the explanatory gap described in Chapter 2. It begins by defending agent explanation as the a form of teleological explanation. Having argued that theism would be able to explain the reliability of human moral cognition, the chapter goes on to objections to such an explanation by Hugh Rice (who argues against a personal deity, but in favour of teleology) and Stephen Law (who argues an evil God would explain phenomena as well as a benevolent deity, and offers this as a reductio ad absurdum of theism). The chapter defends a personal conception of God, outlines how this might plausibly relate to objective goodness, and argues that Law's ‘evil God hypothesis’ offers a less adequate explanation of human moral cognition.

This chapter considers the axiarchic account advanced by John Leslie and Hugh Rice. Against axiarchism, it argues that the goodness of a state of affairs is something that cries out for an explanation, rather than being something which can be invoked as the explanation. The chapter then evaluates non-axiarchic Neoplatonism — in which a non-personal power is postulated as the cause of good states of affairs. It argues that such a view would close the ‘explanatory gap’ described in Chapter 2, but not in as satisfying a way as theism.

Notwithstanding its apparently anti-realist character, traditionally idealism in ethics has also been characterized by a strongly realist vein; a metaphysical insistence that a place must be found for value at the very heart of reality. This chapter examines one argument for the reality of value—the so-called axiarchic argument—recently defended by John Leslie and Nicholas Rescher, who are both idealists. This argument attributes the very existence of the universe to the creative power of goodness, thereby according to value itself a fundamental level of reality. After considering the case in detail, and various objections which have been made against it, it is urged that this argument acquires an additional warrant when used by idealists: for the explanation of the existence of ideas always proceeds with reference to value.

This essay suggests that Berkeley’s Neoplatonism may be profitably viewed as developed under the influence of Cambridge Platonism. A brief account of some key aspects of Cambridge Platonism are reviewed, specifically the central idea of the Image of God Doctrine (IGD) and Cudworth’s Axiarchism. Then possible points of influence of these aspects on Berkeley’s views are explored. In support of its possible usefulness, this approach to Berkeley’s Neoplatonism is used to shed light on his otherwise puzzling embrace of the pure intellect and abstract ideas. If Berkeley is drawing on the Cambridge Platonism tradition in the way suggested, he can have his pure intellect and its innate ideas without dragging along a commitment to a faculty of abstraction and its abstract ideas. Instead, the pure intellect is seen as a reflective faculty directed to the perfectly particular, concrete self.