  A less superficial objection is that it is possible to explain both the origin and usefulness of our moral perceptions without supposing that any non-natural moral realm exists as an object of moral knowledge. This objection is similar to the last in that it emphasizes our dependence on examples and authority in acquiring moral perceptions that are stable once the relevant non-moral facts are at hand, but the claim is not that this dependence is inconsistent with the existence of a non-natural moral reality. Rather the claim is that postulating the latter reality is unnecessary to comprehending all the facts about moral development and the social usefulness of moral codes. We don’t need to assume such a reality in order to explain all that is beyond doubt and hence don’t need to postulate a faculty of moral intuition of any of the kinds just canvassed. Moral intuition and the moral knowledge it is presumed to make possible are redundant hypotheses that we can safely discard. It is largely this dismissal of moral intuitionism that has given rise in the second half of the last century to moral naturalism as the dominant moral theory among those who continue to believe that moral knowledge is possible. (For further discussion see the entry on  moral non-naturalism.)