# Michael Huemer American **philosopher** (b. 1969), Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado Boulder. An **atheist** whose work sits, unusually, on both sides of the codex's arguments. He is the leading defender of **phenomenal conservatism** in epistemology, a robust **ethical intuitionist** who holds objective moral facts without God, the author of a book-length treatment of infinity paradoxes, and, most relevant to the cosmological cluster, the co-author of a sustained defense of the thesis that **all direct causation is simultaneous with its effect**. Huemer's codex relevance is dialectical and double-edged. His epistemology and metaethics are borrowed by Christian philosophers (phenomenal conservatism licenses religious experience as defeasible evidence); his atheism makes his moral realism a live challenge the [Moral Arguments](/codex/moral-arguments/) family must answer; and his metaphysics of causation supplies independent, non-theistic support for a move the [Contingency Argument](/codex/contingency-argument/) and [Kalam Cosmological Argument](/codex/kalam-cosmological-argument/) both need. He is the atheist you cite for a premise and the atheist you answer for a conclusion, often in the same conversation. --- ## Biographical sketch - **Born** 1969; American analytic philosopher. - **Academic appointment:** Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado Boulder. - **Self-identification:** Atheist. A rationalist about ethics and epistemology who defends strong realist positions (moral realism, direct realism about perception) while rejecting theism. - **Public profile:** A prolific writer and blogger (Fake Nous), known for defending unfashionable realist and libertarian positions with unusual clarity. --- ## Major works - **Skepticism and the Veil of Perception** (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), the founding statement of phenomenal conservatism and a defense of direct realism against skepticism. - **Ethical Intuitionism** (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), the canonical contemporary defense of non-natural moral realism known by intuition. - **The Problem of Political Authority** (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), his libertarian political philosophy; tangential to apologetics. - **Approaching Infinity** (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), a book-length treatment of the paradoxes of infinity and why certain infinite regresses and actual infinites are impossible. - **Causation as Simultaneous and Continuous** (with Ben Kovitz), *The Philosophical Quarterly* 53, no. 213 (2003), the paper argues that every cause is simultaneous with its immediate effect. - **Knowledge, Reality, and Value** (2021), a widely-read introductory survey of the central problems of philosophy. --- ## Phenomenal conservatism Huemer's signature epistemological principle: **"If it seems to S that P, then in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some justification for believing P."** A *seeming* (an experiential state of apparent perception, memory, intuition, or testimony) is itself defeasible evidence. Justification is *internalist*: it depends on what is accessible to the believer's reflective awareness, not on external facts about cognitive function. The framework is treated in the codex at [Christian Theories of Knowledge](/codex/christian-theories-of-knowledge/) as the "rising sixth school" of religious epistemology. Christian philosophers (Chris Tucker, Trent Dougherty, the McGrews) adopt it because it licenses religious experience as defeasible justification through the same principle that grounds ordinary perception, without needing Plantinga's proper-function machinery. **Huemer himself is an atheist** and does not run the argument to theistic conclusions; the Christian deployment is a borrowing, not his own move. The live in-house debate it frames is internalism (Huemer, Tucker, Dougherty) versus externalism (Plantinga, Alston). --- ## Ethical intuitionism and godless moral realism In *Ethical Intuitionism* (2005) Huemer defends **objective, mind-independent moral facts** that are *non-natural* (not reducible to physical or biological facts) and known by rational intuition, all without a divine grounding. This places him alongside [Erik Wielenberg](/codex/erik-wielenberg/) as one of the two strongest contemporary defenders of atheistic moral realism, and the codex's [Moral Anti-Realism Defeater](/codex/moral-anti-realism-defeater/) already lists him (with G.E. Moore, Derek Parfit, Russ Shafer-Landau, and Robert Audi) as atheist-internal precedent for moral realism. The apologetic posture toward Huemer mirrors the posture toward Wielenberg: sharp on the position, respectful of the philosopher. His realism is granted; it is the *grounding* that is contested. The [Moral Arguments](/codex/moral-arguments/) reply is not "atheists cannot be moral realists" (Huemer refutes that) but "non-natural moral facts hanging free of any mind are ontologically homeless and unaccounted-for, whereas moral facts grounded in a necessary personal nature are explained." He has the moral phenomena right and the metaphysics unpaid-for. --- ## Causation as simultaneous and continuous The work most relevant to the codex's cosmological cluster. In "Causation as Simultaneous and Continuous" (2003), Huemer and Ben Kovitz argue that **every direct cause is simultaneous with its immediate effect**, against the ordinary picture on which causes temporally precede effects. The core principle: **a thing cannot directly influence anything at a time when it does not exist.** So if an effect occurred strictly *after* its cause, the cause would be producing that effect at a moment when the cause no longer exists, which is impossible. The immediate effect must therefore be simultaneous with the cause. Supporting considerations: - **The continuity of time.** Time is a dense continuum with no "next instant," so one cannot say the effect occurs "at the next moment." Extended causal chains arise by integrating continuous rates of change over an interval, not by discrete step-after-step succession. - **Physics.** Laws such as F = ma relate force and acceleration at the *same* time t, not force-now to acceleration-later. - **Example.** In a billiard-ball collision, momentum transfers continuously *during* the brief contact interval, with conservation holding simultaneously throughout. Huemer draws **no theological conclusion**; the paper is pure metaphysics of causation by an atheist. That is exactly what makes it useful to the codex and why it must be deployed carefully: - **What it supports.** It is independent, atheist-internal grounds for the distinction between *causal priority* and *temporal priority*. If even ordinary causation is simultaneous, then the demand that the cause of the universe must temporally *precede* the universe is not a special requirement the theist is evading; it is false of causation as such. See [Contingency Argument](/codex/contingency-argument/) and the "personal cause" reasoning in [Kalam Cosmological Argument](/codex/kalam-cosmological-argument/). - **The honest tension.** Huemer's simultaneity has cause and effect *coexisting* at one time. That fits the picture on which the first cause is simultaneous with the first state of the world (the necessary being timeless without creation and temporal with creation, in Craig's formulation) more cleanly than the strict Boethian picture of a wholly atemporal cause. A skeptic can press this: if all causation is simultaneous and coexistent, the cause of the first moment exists *at* that moment. The classical-theist reply runs through the temporal-at-creation reading. The point is answerable, not pre-empted, and Huemer should not be quoted as if he settles it for the theist. --- ## Approaching Infinity In *Approaching Infinity* (2016) Huemer argues that certain infinite regresses and actual infinites generate impossibilities. Although he is not a theist and does not deploy it this way, the anti-actual-infinite conclusions overlap the philosophical wing of the [Kalam Cosmological Argument](/codex/kalam-cosmological-argument/) (the impossibility of an actual infinite, the impossibility of forming an actual infinite by successive addition). Any apologetic use of Huemer here should note that he reaches the infinity results on independent grounds and draws no cosmological-theistic inference from them. --- ## The codex's engagement Huemer is a rare figure who is cited *for* premises and answered *on* conclusions: - **Borrowed for:** phenomenal conservatism (epistemic backing for religious experience), and the simultaneous-causation thesis (defusing the "cause must precede effect" objection to a timeless first cause). - **Answered on:** godless moral realism (the [Moral Arguments](/codex/moral-arguments/) grounding challenge) and, in principle, his atheism generally. The engagement should match the tone the codex uses for [Erik Wielenberg](/codex/erik-wielenberg/): serious, precise, and courteous. Most popular atheist positions are cruder than Huemer's; when the interlocutor is analytically trained, his are the versions worth engaging. --- ## See also - [Christian Theories of Knowledge](/codex/christian-theories-of-knowledge/), where phenomenal conservatism is treated as the rising sixth school - [Moral Anti-Realism Defeater](/codex/moral-anti-realism-defeater/), which lists Huemer as atheist-internal precedent for moral realism - [Moral Arguments](/codex/moral-arguments/), the family his godless realism challenges - [Erik Wielenberg](/codex/erik-wielenberg/), the parallel atheist moral realist the codex steel-mans - [Contingency Argument](/codex/contingency-argument/), which cites his simultaneous-causation thesis on the timeless first cause - [Kalam Cosmological Argument](/codex/kalam-cosmological-argument/), the "personal cause" reasoning that turns on simultaneous causation - [Alvin Plantinga](/codex/alvin-plantinga/), the externalist foil to Huemer's internalist phenomenal conservatism - [Necessary vs Contingent Being](/codex/necessary-vs-contingent-being/), the modal distinction behind the first-cause discussion