The possibility of such an explanation is not of course to be dismissed out of hand. There is no contradiction in the idea of experience-independent access to synthetic truths. After all, until the eighteenth century no modern philosopher doubted that God had bestowed on us powers of reason that would enable us to arrive at perception-independent knowledge of a range of synthetic claims. Even if few contemporary philosophers would still appeal to God in this context, there are other possible mechanisms that could play an equivalent role.[13] It is not to be ruled out that our biological heritage, for example, has fixed a range of beliefs in us whose reliability owes nothing to our individual ontogenetic experience.  Indeed there is a case for viewing certain aspects of our cultural heritage as playing a similar role, imbuing us with certain beliefs whose justification rests on ancestral rather than individual experience.[14]