I. Analysis of Moral Concepts
Goal: - Introduction of conceptual analysis and
definition terms.
- Many
proponents of moral arguments for God advocate an implausible version of moral subjectivism.
- Claims
like “You ought to do X” can be used descriptive claims regarding normative
facts. And we employ this usage for moral ought-statements.
- Moral
obligations and requirements do not conceptually entail a mental requirer.
- Moral statements are best interpreted as
non-relativist, non-subjectivist assertions, unless someone engages in an ad
hoc and atypical use of moral language.
I-A. Conceptual Analysis in General
- We can draw a tri-partite distinction between:
·
Words or labels
·
The concepts those
words or labels place-hold for
(The same word can place-hold for different concepts, and
different words can place-hold for the same concept)
·
The referents those
concepts refer to
(Different concepts can refer to the same referent)
- Conceptual analysis involves both a priori
(armchair) and a posteriori (experimental) methods.
- If a given conceptual analysis disagrees with
the lay people’s conceptual intuitions regarding a concept with which they
remain very familiar, then this counts as defeasible evidence against that
conceptual analysis.
- All other things being equal, we should not
change the concept a word place-holds in ways that leads to:
1) Begging the question against error theories such
that one engages in special pleading when one advocates an error theory on a
different topic. And we all have to advocate error theories at some point for
some topics (ex: for square circles).
2) Crippling discourse built around the word
since the proponent can no longer make the core claims of said discourse
3) Failing to make sense of the practices that
come along with the discourse
4) Stalling effective communication, and in
extreme cases, preventing communication.
5) Fooling people into thinking they agree/disagree
when they actually talk past one another.
6) Incorrectly thinking one has rebutted error
theory. This still does not save one from error theory because even though one
plays around with words, one still agrees to precisely the same things that define
error theory’s meaning. And it is concepts’ and their meaning, not mere words
or symbols, which determine agreement and disagreement.
I-B. Conceptual
Analysis of Moral Oughts
- The claim that “moral requirements
conceptually entail a divine moral requirer” suffers from the following flaws:
1) it confuses psychological oughts/should/requirements
with normative oughts/should/requirements
2) it commits to either moral subjectivism or
moral non-cognitivism, both of which have deep flaws
3) Moore’s Open Question Argument rebuts it
4) a posteriori data suggest even young
Christian children reject it as implausible moral subjectivism and instead
employ the concept of “moral requirement” in a way that does not require God’s
existence
5) numerous people clearly employ the concept of
“moral requirements” in a way that does presuppose God’s existence (ex: people
who link moral oughts to moral reasons)
6) the argument prevents people from numerous
people from agreeing and disagreeing with one another when they use moral
language
- God-based
ethicists (those who claim God is necessary for moral realism) often
advance a very implausible moral subjectivism.
- The
Objectivist Argument against God-based Moral Realism
P1: If moral properties are objective
properties, then moral properties can exist in the absence of God.
P2: Moral properties are objective properties.
C: Therefore, moral properties can exist in
the absence of God.
[from
P1 and P2]
(I focus on
defending P1 in section I-B-1b-i; I defend P2 in I-C-3 and section III-E-2)
-
The Subjectivist Argument against God-based Moral Realism
P3: If moral
properties are subjective properties, then moral properties can exist in the
absence of God.
P4: Moral properties are subjective properties.
C: Therefore, moral properties can exist in
the absence of God.
[from
P3 and P4]
(I focus on
defending P3 in section I-B-1b-ii and I-B-3; I grant P4 for the sake of
argument)
I-B-1. The RR
Argument + the Subjectivist Argument Against God-based Ethics
I-B-1a. The
“Requirements Entail a Requirer” [RR] Argument
- The conceptual
RR argument claims the moral requirements/obligations conceptually entail a
communicative God.
- The substantive
RR argument says moral requirements/obligations are best explained via a
communicative God.
I-B-1b. Moral Subjectivism and God
- Many versions of God-based ethics count as
moral subjectivism and can thus be rejected.
- One should always make sure to define
the following terms before using them in any meta-ethical
discussion: moral subjectivism, objectivism, objective, subjective, relativism,
absolutism, particularism, and realism. This should prevent tiresome
equivocations
I-B-1b-i. God-based Ethics and Moral Subjectivism
- Moral subjectivism makes the truth or falsity
of moral claims depend on a (real or imagined) mind’s view on the matter. Ontologically
grounding moral properties in a mind need not commit one to moral subjectivism.
- Many forms of God-based ethics
count as moral subjectivism (I argue all forms count as moral subjectivism in
section IV-D-1b).
- Theistic re-definitions of “moral
subjectivism” such that it applies only to making morality depend human views,
as opposed to God’s views, fail because:
1) it fails for Trinitarian Christians in
particular, since they think Jesus is both human and God, and thus if they base
moral truth on God’s views, then they base moral truth on a human’s views
2) it does not fit with standard definition of
moral subjectivism
3) virtually every move God-based theists use to
avoid moral subjectivism could be employed by prototypical moral subjectivists
4) there is no reason, in principle, why the
“subject” in moral subjectivism should be limited to human minds and human
views as opposed to non-human minds such as alien minds or the mind of a deity
5) our judgments regarding morality’s
“objectivity” include moral truth being independent of any minds views on the
matter, including divine minds
- Theistic moral subjectivism fails for at least
two reasons:
1) It is a recipe for moral abuse, in the sense
of a mind being able to control factors we do not expect it to have control
over.
2) Unless we opt for global subjectivism, then there
are clear examples of facts that do not depend on a mind’s, divine or
otherwise, view on the matter and these facts therefore ground truths that do
not change based on a mind’s opinion. Some special argument will thus be needed
to show point does not apply to moral facts.
I-B-1b-ii.
The Varieties of Moral Subjectivism
God-based
moral subjectivism is particularly implausible because it allows moral truth to
be determined by an existent mind.
I-B-2. A Priori
Rebuttal of the Conceptual RR
The conceptual
RR can be rebutted on five a priori grounds:
1) On
most interpretations, it amounts to non-cognitivism or moral subjectivism,
neither of which are plausible.
2) It equivocates between normative terminology
and psychological terminology.
3) It prevents atheists (and some theists) from
coherently disagreeing with conceptual RR advocates when they assert opposing
moral claims.
4) Oughts can be grounded in reasons which do
not depend on a mental requirer or God.
5) A Moorean OQA shifts the burden of proof onto
the conceptual RR proponent to show normative requirements conceptually entail
psychological requirements.
I-B-2a. P/D
usage and E/N facts: Do not Confuse Them
- We can distinguish descriptive and expressive modes
of communication, and normative and non-normative properties.
- Unfortunately, some people incorrectly
think moral statements such as “You morally ought to do X” can only be expressively
used, and they therefore think these statements are not descriptive. Thus these
statements could not refer to moral properties. However, the Frege-Geach
problem and Jorgensen’s Dilemma, among other arguments, show that moral
statements such as “You morally ought to do X” are truth-apt and descriptive.
- “You morally ought to do A” and other similar
moral statements, should be viewed as descriptive claims regarding normative
properties, and must be treated as such if one adopts moral realism and claims
obligations/requirements exist.
- Motivation externalism argues against moral
subjectivism and moral non-cognitivism.
- The conceptual RR proponent position does not
count as moral objectivism. They have the following options regarding “moral
ought/required/should” as relating to descriptive and expressive usage:
1) Expression without description: They are only
expressions of a mind’s emotions, commands, etc. and thus the proponent denies
moral realism by adopting non-cognitivism.
2) Expression with description, version 1: They
can be assertions regarding a mind’s will and thus the proponent adopts moral
subjectivism.
3) Expression with description, version 2: They
are statements regarding facts that do not depend on a mind’s will or opinion
(maybe they are ontologically grounded in the requirer’s mind; though this
still leads to subjectivism as argued in section IV-D-1b) and thus the
proponents gives up on the core idea that a mind demanding/commanding things of
people is a necessary component of moral requirements. The expressive usage
would also be irrelevant since moral realism requires description, not expression.
4) Description without expression: All moral
realism requires, but denies that moral-ought-claims need to be the expressed
commands, will, etc. of a mind. If the moral-ought claims are true in virtue of
a divine mind’s view on the matter, then that amounts to moral subjectivism.
- The “moral law requires a moral law-giver
argument” fails since moral laws are true descriptive statements regarding
normative properties, not expressed prescriptions from a mind.
- The claim that “atheism (or moral naturalism
or…) cannot provide an objective moral standard” fails since:
·
If by “standard” the
critic means “an account of the properties which make moral statements true”,
then non-theistic moral naturalism provides that.
·
If by “standard” the
critic means “a moral epistemology for distinguishing true moral claims from
false moral claims”, then non-theistic moral naturalism provides that.
·
If by “standard” the
critic means something else, then they need to provide an explanation for what
this third factor is. This third factor will likely amount to an irrelevant
addition to moral philosophy, which the critic introduced, ad hoc, since they
wanted to argue against non-theistic moral realism. After all, other fields
such as science, mathematics, other branches of philosophy, etc. do not require
this mysterious third factor. It would special pleading to say otherwise for
morality, unless the critic offers some justification for including this third
factor in morality.
I-B-2b. Oughts and Reasons
- Normative reasons (epistemic, moral, and so
on) can be grounded in an agent’s recognition of certain facts regarding the
world regardless of a mind’s communications to that agent. These normative
reason supply normative oughts that do not conceptually imply a mental requirer,
contra the conceptual RR.
- Moral reasons are more plausibly grounded in
externalistic reasons based on concern for others as opposed to the
internalistic reasons associated with a punishing mental requirer.
I-B-2c. A Moorean
OQA Against the Conceptual RR + an Aside on the Atheism/Theism Debate
- Questions relating normative requirements to
psychological requirements remain open, which shifts the burden onto the
conceptual RR proponent to show the former conceptually entails the latter.
- Even if an atheist is a moral anti-realist,
they should address God-based ethics by showing it is a massively implausible
version of moral realism and thus even if moral realism is true God-based
ethics would still be false (i.e. attack it on realist grounds, as opposed to
anti-realist grounds).
I-B-3. A
Posteriori Rebuttal of the Conceptual RR Argument
I could not find
researchers performing exactly the experiments I needed, but the following
evidence exists for thinking people employ a concept of normative requirement
that does not conceptually entail a mental requirer, contra the conceptual RR
argument:
1) Young children (and many adults) reject the
idea that moral requirements depend on any mind’s opinion or will.
2) Many atheists and theists base moral
requirements in externalistic reasons associated with concern for others, as
opposed to mentioning following the will of a mental requirer.
The conceptual
RR argument prevents people from morally agreeing or disagreeing with one
another when they use terms such as “morally required”, “morally ought to be
done”, etc. since one group of people will conceptually commit to a use of
these terms that presupposes God’s existence, while other people will not.
I-C. A Posteriori Rebuttal of Relativism,
Subjectivism, and Non-cognitivism
The empirical data
argues against relativist, subjectivist, and non-cognitivist analyses of moral
statements and concepts. If these views turn out to be correct and count as
moral success theories, then they will likely need to be offered as synthetic
views as opposed to analytic views. And even so, it remains unlikely that these
views will meet enough of the moral conceptual platitudes and substantive
judgments to count as success theories.
I-D. A Common Internet Anti-Realist Mistake and the Landscape of
the Debate
Many people who
take themselves to be moral anti-realists make the following mistake: they
claim moral statements/concepts refer to one’s personal preferences when this
amounts to subjectivist moral realism. They can avoid this problem by offering
a non-subjectivist, non-relativist analysis of moral statements/concepts and
then arguing these moral statements/concepts refer to properties which do not
exist; i.e. moral nihilism. Or they can claim moral statements/concepts are not
in the business of referring to anything; i.e. moral non-cognitivism.
II. Is/ought, as Hume Intended
- Hume did not offer
a knock-down argument against moral realism, but instead asked for
justification for the move from is-claims to ought-claims.
- Hume thought the “is/ought”
distinction was bridgeable since he himself bridged it.
- If Hume’s law
rebuts moral realism, then it hits all its forms ranging from the atheistic to
the theistic, consequentialism to deontology; though some consequentialists can
easily avoid it by rejecting moral ought-claims.
III. Dealing with Is/Ought,
Pluralistic Moral Naturalism, and Normativity
Goal: - The moral realist can easily rebut the
supposed “is/ought” gap or “Hume’s law” in at least four ways:
1) Hume
provides no argument for the “is/ought” gap. It’s just a question-begging, bare
assertion.
[The moral nihilist and moral skeptic Richard
Joyce makes a related point in The
Evolution of Morality, page 155]
2) The is/ought distinction cannot be about
moving from the descriptive to the normative since the normative claims
(including moral ought-claims) are descriptive.
[from
section I-B-2a; largely supported via the Frege-Geach problem, Jorgensen’s
Dilemma, and other such arguments against moral non-cognitivism and in favor of
cognitivism regarding moral ought-statements]
3) The following moral realist argument against
Hume’s law:
(where examples of “moral
ought-statements” include claims such as “You morally ought not rape Susan” and
“rape morally ought not be done”):
P1: If
moral ought-statements are descriptive, then moral ought-statements refer to
properties and are true or false in virtue of the existence or non-existence of
those properties.
[from
section I-B-2a]
P2: Moral
ought-statements are descriptive.
[from
section I-B-2a; largely supported via the Frege-Geach problem, Jorgensen’s
Dilemma, and other such arguments against moral non-cognitivism and in favor of
cognitivism regarding moral ought-statements]
P3: Moral
ought-statements refer to properties and are true or false in virtue of the
existence or non-existence of those properties.
[from
P1 and P3]
- The
moral realist can then offer an account of what type of properties moral
ought-statements refer to (subjective properties, objective properties,
non-natural properties, etc.).
- To
further support the argument (or more precisely: characterize the relationship
between the “is” properties and the “moral ought” properties), realists can
employ one of the following options or opt for something else to connect
is-claims to ought-claims:
1) Conceptual
truths linking “is” concepts to “ought” concepts
2) Identity
theses between “is” properties and “ought” properties (possibly supported via
naturalistic supervenience theses between “is” properties and “ought” properties)
3) Some
type of supervenience relationship that does not amount to 1 or 2
4) Metaphysically
necessary causal laws connecting “is” and “ought” properties
4) The moral realist can provide a plausible
moral epistemology for moral judgments, including moral judgments about moral
ought-claims and judgments that infer moral ought-claims from moral is-claims
III-A. Logical Independence
If Hume meant that
one could not use pure logic to derive ought-claims from is-claims, his thesis
is either false (if one allows for trivial deduction) or uninteresting (if one
blocks trivial deduction) since it would not show ought-claims could not be
justifiably inferred from is-claims.
III-B. Conceptual Independence and the OQA
- Analytic moral realists might say is-claims
conceptually entail ought-claims; i.e. they bridge “is/ought” by saying the
is-concepts entail ought-concepts.
- Moore’s OQA shifts the burden of proof against
the analytic moral realist by arguing that since the question of the conceptual
relationship between an ought-claim and is-claim is always open, then is-claims
do not conceptually entail ought-claims.
III-C. Metaphysical Independence
- Synthetic moral realists might say is-claims
and ought-claims refer to the same property.
- Neither Hume’s law nor Moore’s OQA rebut
synthetic moral realism, since synthetic moral naturalists do not employ
conceptual deductions between the concept of “morally ought to be done” and
other “is”-concepts.
- The leveled-view
of natural properties asserts that properties of the various sciences occur
at different levels. For example, biological properties occur at a higher level
than the properties discussed in atomic physics. Higher-level natural
properties depend on, or “supervene”, on lower-level natural properties.
- Though we can often specify all the
lower-level natural properties a higher-level natural property supervenes upon,
we sometimes cannot do this. Call the former position monism and the latter pluralism.
But even on pluralism we can still know what types of lower-level natural
properties determine the instantiation of the higher-level natural property.
- I
advocate naturalistic pluralism regarding moral properties: I think
they are higher-level natural properties that naturalistically supervene on
lower-level natural properties
III-D. Nomological Independence
Moral
non-naturalists might say:
1) Ought-claims supervene on is-claims (or the
properties referred to by the former supervene on the latter in a way that does
not entail the two properties are identical nor that the moral property is a
natural property).
2) The properties referred to by is-claims
necessarily cause the properties referred to by ought-claims to exist.
III-E. Moral
Justification and Knowledge
The output of the
moral faculty provides defeasible evidence for moral realism, particularly
moral naturalism.
III-E-1. An
All too Brief Sketch of the Moral Faculty
The scientific evidence clearly supports the
following:
1) People have cognitive faculties that take in
information and produce moral judgments.
2) People take in information regarding natural
properties when making moral judgments.
3) There is no evidence people take in evidence
from a divine source or a non-natural source.
The real debate
in moral psychology is over the role of emotion, culture, reasoning, and other
factors in affecting moral judgments.
Based on the
data, I advocate naturalistic non-emotionism:
People’s
moral faculties track natural properties when making moral judgments. Recognition and analysis (often
unconscious analysis) of natural properties, not emotion, acts as the
predominant cause of moral judgments
Including existent
deities or non-natural moral properties fails to improve this explanation, so
scientist usually do not mention such properties in their explanations of moral
judgments and moral reasoning. So unless we have some other justification for
positing such properties, we should remove them from our explanation via
Occam’s razor.
III-E-2. Human
Judgments are not Necessarily Unjustified
- As with scientific realism, our ability to
reason regarding our moral judgments allows those judgments to escape the
charge that they merely represent unjustified personal opinion or
culturally-relative hegemony. We form judgments about what properties we think
exist in science, morality, and other topics we are realists about. And we use
these judgments, combined with the epistemic methods of philosophy and science,
as evidence for our claims.
- We can characterize this in five steps for
addressing whether “X” exists
(where “X”
can be virtually any descriptively-used concept, including: “cat”, “witch”,
“hat”, “God”, “B cells”, “morally good”, and “morally ought to be done”):
1) We examine how people employ the concept
referring to X, to see if the concept is descriptive as opposed to expressive,
is meant to refer to objective or subjective properties, etc. This involves the
methods from section I-A.
2) If the concept is descriptive, then we gather
together examples we think the concept applies to. This can include examples
generated from thought experiments, real-world examples, etc. We first start
with the clearest and easiest examples.
3) We investigate the examples to see what they
have in common. This can involve philosophical/arm-chair/a priori discussion of
the examples, examination via the experimental methods of the various sciences,
etc. This should help reveal which features the examples share.
4) Knowing which features the examples share
will allow us to know what we referred to with our concept; i.e. the instantiation conditions for X, and if X
is a natural property, the lower-level natural properties X naturalistically
supervenes upon.
5) We provide various philosophical arguments
and scientific evidence for thinking the instantiation conditions for X are met
or not met in the real world. In some cases they are met (ex: water) and in
some cases they are not (ex: witch).
This
epistemology fits with the way people actually reason in philosophy, science,
theology, etc. So this does not represent an ad hoc epistemology offered from
out-of-the blue. I provide examples of this methodology in:
·
the “treasure hunt” from
the introduction to this paper
·
the “God” example from
section I-A
·
the “witch” example
from section I-A and endnote 13
·
the “nemea” parable
from section I-C-2
·
the “cat” and
“hurricane” examples from sections III-C, III-E-2 and endnote 11
·
the “water” example
from sections IV-D-3d and IV-D-3d-i
·
the “life” example
from section VI-A
- To elaborate on this in another way: in
both scientific and moral reasoning, we take various experiences
(observations of the external world), thought experiments, etc. and categorize
them under various concepts to help explain and discuss them. We think that
various things we experience have certain features in common; i.e. they share
properties. We use real-world examples and thought experiments to help us
understand what property(ies) our concept refers to and the instantiation
conditions for said property. This will often involve determining the
supervenience relationships between a given higher-order natural property and
the lower-level natural properties it naturalistically supervenes upon. Further
empirical investigation of said examples can provide precision on the
instantiation conditions and help us discover new truths regarding the
properties we tracked. We employ this epistemic frame-work in science,
theology, philosophy, etc. If one
rejects, without further justification, this methodology and epistemology for
moral judgments while accepting that it works for science, then one commits the
fallacy of special pleading.
III-E-3. The
“Subjective Opinion” Objection and Some Loose-ends
- The anti-realist/relativist’s concern that
moral judgments may be “subjective opinions based on judging others” carries
some force, but the naturalistic moral realist can easily address it.
- The apologist’s concern that non-God-based
moral judgments may be “subjective opinions based on judging others” is trite and
beneath consideration based on:
1) How these same apologists mischaracterize
meta-ethics, moral psychology, and so on.
2) How these same apologists engage in special
pleading by not applying the same standards to their own ethical views, unlike
the anti-realist/relativist.
III-E-3a. An
Anti-Realist’s “Subjective Opinion” Objection
The relativist
or anti-realist’s objection can be interpreted in five ways:
1) One should not form moral beliefs regarding
other cultures.
2) One should not allow moral beliefs to cause
us to mistreat other cultures, or impose our views on other people.
3) The fact that people disagree regarding moral
claims counts as an argument against moral realism or moral knowledge.
4) Moral beliefs are unjustified because we lack
enough information regarding other cultures.
5) Moral beliefs cannot be true or false, are
true or false depending on culture/one’s normative outlook (i.e. moral
relativism), or are all false.
My replies
are as follows:
1) Moral beliefs, as with other beliefs, are not
voluntary, so we cannot help ourselves in forming such beliefs.
2) Moral
beliefs need not translate into mistreatment/intolerance of others or imposing
one’s views on others. Saying, “X is objectively true (or objectively false)”
does not imply that one is certain, that one needs to force everyone else to accept
this, or that one cannot weigh moral considerations against other
considerations such as pragmatic and political concerns.
3) Scientific disagreement does not lead to
anti-realism regarding science or scientific knowledge; so why think moral
disagreement does so in the moral case? In both cases we have plausible realist
explanations for the differences in people’s views, along with having the
epistemic tools to reliably distinguish truth from falsity regarding these
topics.
4) Anthropologists and other sources can supply
the requisite information.
5) My moral faculty (among other lines of
evidence) supports my moral judgments. The critic will thus need to provide a
counterargument, not a bare assertion that moral beliefs are unjustified.
III-E-3b. An Apologist’s “Subjective Opinion” Objection
The
apologist’s reply that non-theistic moral judgments are based on subjective
human opinion fails because:
1) The same reasons mentioned above to the anti-realist’s
objection.
2) The apologist is in no better position; they
use all the same moral/human reasoning capacities the rest of us do, yet act as
if only they can justifiably use it. That amounts to special pleading.
3) They themselves will undercut moral
epistemology when it suits their purposes, so they engage in special pleading
when they say atheist moral realists lack a sound moral epistemology.
4) Some variations of the apologist’s criticism
(especially those advanced by presuppositionalists) are simply ridiculous; ex:
advocating global theistic subjectivism regarding truth.
IV. Rebutting a Theistic
Argument Regarding Moral Ontology, and Developing Arguments for Non-theistic
Moral Naturalism
Goal: The MF argument seeks to use necessarily
true moral statements to argue for a necessarily existent non-human mind; i.e.
God.
I rebut
the MF argument (and God-based ethics) by showing:
1) All versions of it amount to an implausible
variety of moral subjectivism.
2) It cannot account for moral necessity/moral
supervenience without borrowing from non-theistic worldviews.
3) If God is important for moral realism, its
status as such depends on concepts/properties that obtain even in God does not
exists. So the MF argument fails to show God exists.
4) Other non-divine properties serve as more
plausible candidates for what make moral statements true or false.
Moral property
tracking argues for moral naturalism
(i.e. natural properties serve to make moral statements true and moral
properties are natural properties) over other moral realist options because moral
naturalism best meets the following criteria:
1) Ontological parsimony; its moral properties do
not fall to Occam’s razor.
2) An unmysterious, empirically supported causal
explanation for moral property tracking.
3) Explanatory power, both in terms of
explaining our moral experience and how the appropriate moral judgments
historically arose.
4) A robust moral epistemology compatible with
and supported by moral property tracking.
5) A plausible account of how moral statements
refer to the properties tracked by one’s moral faculties.
6) A well-supported account of appropriate moral
motivation and how people successfully achieve it.
IV-A. Clarifying the MF Argument
IV-A-1. Why
the MF Argument Persuades
- Certain moral statements are necessarily true,
even on moral particularism.
- The MF argument claims that since certain
moral statements are true in every possible world, a non-human mind must exist
in every possible world in order to make those statements true.
IV-A-2. Giving
Context to the MF Argument
- MTMs
are the properties that make moral statements true. God-grounded ethics claims facts regarding an existent God serve as
the MTMs. If one can show that non-theistic properties, which would exist even
if God did not exist, serve as the MTMs refutes the claim that moral realism
implies God’s existence (or that God’s existence is required for moral
realism).
- If the
empirical evidence and philosophical arguments point toward moral anti-realism,
then we should adopt moral anti-realism (that includes theists). God, the
principle of epistemic conservation, properly basic beliefs, and so on, should
not be used as ad hoc stop-gaps for avoiding uncomfortable conclusions.
IV-B. Confusion
Over the Identity of the Mind
The MF argument
fails to show God exists since:
1) One could ground the MTMs in a different mind
in different possible worlds, and thus one need not posit one necessary mind
(i.e. God) to serve as the MTM
2) The argument cannot explain how God grounds
truths regarding what is evil, morally forbidden, moral ought not be done, and
so on, without admitting that those properties need not be instantiated for us
to make true claims about them. And so the MF proponent cannot rebut the
counterfactual criticism (see the next section) without engaging in special pleading;
i.e. saying evil need not be instantiated for one to make true claims about it
while simultaneously saying at least one moral property must be instantiated
for moral statements to count as true.
IV-C. The
“Counterfactual Objection” to the MF Argument
IV-C-1. Moral
Statements as Counterfactuals
- Moral statements can be rendered as
counterfactuals and thus be true in a given possible world even if no moral
properties exist in that world.
- Rendering moral statements as counterfactuals
is not ad hoc since we often employ counterfactuals to model our knowledge
regarding different domains and plan for the future; i.e. counterfactuals play
a crucial role in any epistemology, especially moral epistemology.
IV-C-2. Technical
Asides on Truth-makers
The following
claims hold for counterfactuals in general:
1) They may be made true via existent
dispositional states.
2) One can use data from the actual world,
imaginative ingenuity, and the insights provided by fiction/thought experiments
to help determine the truth or falsity of a given counterfactual.
3) One need not posit “lack of X” properties to
explain why statements of the form “X does not exist” are true.
IV-D. Competition
between Truth-makers
Facts regarding an
existent God cannot be the sole MTMs because:
1) This amounts to moral subjectivism
2) An existent God cannot account for moral
necessity without borrowing character traits or concepts from non-theistic
worldviews (i.e. employing concepts or properties that do not require God’s
existence)
3) The same as 2, except now an existent God
cannot even count as morally good, have its commands count as moral
requirements, and so on, without borrowing from non-theism
4) Other non-divine properties serve as more plausible
MTMs than facts regarding God
IV-D-1. Making
Morality Subjective
Theists can
either:
A) Make the truth/falsity of moral statements
change in response to an existent God’s opinion/will/commands and thus fall to
anti-moral subjectivism arguments.
B) Deny God-based ethics + God-grounded ethics.
IV-D-1a. Rebutting
the “Causal Dependence” Reply
Saying God
causes moral properties to exist does not support the MF argument nor does it
show that facts about God serve to make moral realism true. Causal
dependence =/= ontological dependence. It also reduces the
moral argument for God to an easily-rebutted, pseudo-first cause argument.
IV-D-1b. Rebutting the “Ontological Dependence”
Reply
God-based
ethics amounts to moral subjectivism since changes in God’s opinions result in
changes in which moral statements are true. This is so even if the God-based
proponent only ontologically grounds moral properties in facts regarding God.
The God-based proponent cannot employ the preference utilitarian’s
counterfactual method for avoiding having to advocate moral subjectivism, since
this would require the God-based proponent to accept that God does not have to
exist for moral statements to be true.
IV-D-1c. Rebutting the “Necessary Nature” Reply
IV-D-1c-i. Dependency and the “Necessary Nature” Reply
Saying God
is metaphysically necessary does not help defend the theist against
anti-subjectivist arguments nor show that moral realism requires God’s
existence. The theist must still answer the question of whether the true/false
status of moral statements would change in response to changes in God’s
opinion.
IV-D-1c-ii. God’s Moral Nature Depends on Non-divine MTMs
- God’s moral status as good, granter of moral
requirements, etc. would solely depend on its possession of properties borrowed
from moral naturalism or other non-theism moral positions.
- The natural properties borrowed could support
the truth of moral realism even if God did not exist.
- All the following positions (among many
others) remain more plausible than God-based ethics, can critique God-based
ethics in unique ways, and imply the truth of moral realism even if God does not
exist:
A) Moral naturalism
B) Moral non-naturalism
C) Virtue ethics, Moral rationalism, + Ideal
Observer theory
D) God-as-useful atheistic moral realism
IV-D-2. Dependency
and Necessity
The God-grounded
proponent can either accept or deny that moral properties supervene on
non-divine natural properties. The results are as follows:
Denial:
1) For MF proponents: denies the central tenet
of their argument
2) Leads to paradoxes regarding blame and moral
responsibility
3) Undercuts our ability to morally plan for the
future
4) Contradicts the evidence provided by the
moral faculty
5) Undermines the moral epistemology necessary
to support the moral realism the God-grounded proponents needs for their
argument
6) Many
of the same problems borne by skeptical theism (including being an ad hoc
avoidance of an uncomfortable truth)
7) Results
in a dialectical shift where non-theistic moral realism becomes more plausible
than God-based moral realism
Acceptance:
The
problems discussed in section IV-D-1c-ii (i.e. they cannot
adequately account for moral necessity without borrowing from other worldviews).
The Necessity/subjectivity test: If one encounters a theist who advocates a moral argument for God’s existence,
then this should be one of the first questions one asks to see if the theist’s ethical
position is even plausible, or if it denies the necessity thesis and amounts to
moral subjectivism:
“Say I know all the non-divine natural properties of a
situation/action. Would those properties of that action/situation be sufficient
to fix its moral properties regardless of any mind’s view on the matter? Would
I need to know anything about God in order to correctly infer that action was
morally good/bad, required/forbidden, etc.?”
·
If the theist answers “no”, then
they accept moral realism could be true and known to be true without God
existing. So they can now retract their moral argument for God’s existence.
·
If they answer “yes”, then they
now advocate moral subjectivism and have all the problems discussed in section
I-B-1b-i, I-B-1b-ii, IV-D-2, and the rest of section IV. One can view their
position the same way one would view other implausible varieties of moral subjectivism,
including subjectivist cultural relativism and individual subjectivism.
·
If they attempt to avoid the
question without answering it (this usually involves reference to God’s
necessarily good nature or attempts to define God as omnibenevolent), then I
sketch out how to address these evasions in sections
IV-D-1c-i, IV-D-1c-ii, and IV-D-3c-ii.
IV-D-3. Our
Tracking of Morality Properties
- Moral
property tracking involves our physical cognitive apparatus focusing on the
properties which serve to make moral statements true; focusing on the MTMs.
- Moral
property tracking argues for moral naturalism over other moral realist options,
including God-based ethics, since moral naturalism best meets the following
criteria:
1) Ontological
parsimony
2) An
empirically supported causal explanation for moral tracking
3) Best
explains our moral experience and how the appropriate moral judgments
historically arose
4) A sound moral epistemology compatible with
and supported by the empirical evidence regarding moral property tracking
5) A
plausible account of how moral statements refer to the properties tracked by
one’s moral faculties, as in other referential contexts
6) A
sound account of appropriate moral motivation and how most people attain
success at it
IV-D-3a. Metaphysical,
Causal, and Explanatory Arguments for Moral Naturalism
Moral
non-naturalism suffers from ontological, causal, and explanatory failings that
moral naturalism does not, while God-based ethics is crippled by these
problems. This provides an argument for moral naturalism over other moral
realist options
IV-D-3a-i. The Metaphysical Failings of Moral Non-naturalism
- Moral non-naturalism adds to our ontology and
thus is under pressure from Occam’s Razor to justify this addition. Since it is
non-natural, it cannot take advantage of science’s causal and explanatory power
to explain moral property tracking.
- The moral non-naturalist cannot seek a
“partners-in-innocence” defense with property dualism since:
1) The
arguments which support and motivate property dualism do not work for moral
non-naturalism
2) Physicalism
could very well turn out to be correct, at which point the moral
non-naturalist’s strategy fails
IV-D-3a-ii. A God-grounded Metaphysical Mess
The God of
traditional theism makes God-based ethics metaphysically ludicrous:
1) As a non-physical entity, it cannot take
advantage of science’s causal and explanatory power in explaining moral
property tracking.
2) It posits an unnecessary and extravagant
addition to our ontology and so falls to Occam’s razor.
3) Evidence-driven substance dualism lends no
support to the existence of the God of traditional theism; in fact, substance dualists have abundant arguments
against the God of traditional theism. As do physicalists and property
dualists.
4) It overturns very well-supported empirical
generalizations regarding minds without sufficient evidence for doing this.
A
God-based meta-ethical theory thus becomes more implausible the more features
of God (the one of traditional theism) it includes.
IV-D-3b. More
Explanatory Flaws of God-grounded Meta-ethics
All
explanations involving an existent God, including explanations of moral
experience, may suffer from the first flaw, but always suffer from the second:
1) God-of-the-gaps reasoning
2) Being worse than every other explanation
(except [possibly] explanations logically or metaphysically impossible
explanations)
IV-D-3b-i. Vacuous God-of-the-Gaps Reasoning
God-of-the-gaps
reasoning suffers from at least the following flaws:
1) They
are typically ad hoc explanations meant to avoid uncomfortable conclusions and
should not be taken any more seriously than the Flying Spaghetti Monster and
the like.
2) They evade disconfirmation in a way that
prevents any empirical evidence from supporting them unlike other scientific
and historical explanations.
3) They suffer from the metaphysical, causal,
and explanatory deficiencies discussed in section IV-D-3a-ii.
4) Including God in a causal explanation makes
the explanation worse, not better (argued for more in next sub-section).
IV-D-3b-ii. The Substantive RR Argument and God’s Explanatory
Impotence in Ethics
God fails
as an explanation for moral experience and MTMs, as shown by the deficiencies
in the substantive RR:
1) If including God does not improve an
explanation, mention of God should be cut out via Occam’s Razor. So any attempt
to show God “could have caused that” (as opposed to showing that include
God improves the explanation), immediately falls to Occam’s razor.
2) Naturalistic non-emotionism, or Projectivism +
Humean Emotionism, can explain the feeling of moral requirement. Including God
in these explanations do not make them better, so God’s existence can be cut
out of them via Occam’s razor.
3) People’s
views on what God is like and the moral information God “communicates” to them
are caused by that person’s mental states and likely not by God.
4) Moral experience and the feeling of moral
requirements co-varies with things God can (and should want to) overcome. Since
God does not bother to overcome them, including God in the explanation actually
makes it worse; it adds a component that causes the explanation to make less
sense.
5) All of the following serve as better
explanations of moral experience than the God of traditional theism:
a) Scientists
simulating our world
b) My monotheistic deities: Fran and Kengo
c) Aliens
d) A polytheistic cabal of disagreeing deities
of roughly equally-power
e) A powerful
punishing mind that lacks either omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, or
omnibenevolence [this includes cruel, morally evil deities]
f) the Flying Spaghetti Monster
6) We can investigate the cognitive systems underlying
people’s acceptance of God as a good explanation for phenomena, and thus
provide an undercutting defeator for that belief. This does not commit the
genetic fallacy.
7) The argument from religious experience cannot
overcome any of these alternative causal explanations and arguments, especially
since the pattern of religious experience argues for Fran over the God of
traditional theism.
8) The
idea that “God gives cultures (say the ancient Israelites) moral knowledge that
they then disseminate to others” fails as an explanation and should thus be
rejected.
IV-D-3c. Epistemic
Issues Resulting from Tracking
Based on the
moral tracking data from section III-E-1, God-grounded ethicists must either:
A) Attribute massive moral error to the vast
majority of people (i.e. adopt de facto moral skepticism and lose the ability
to say their position represents the plausible, common-sense alternative to
moral realism) or,
B) Deny God-grounded ethics by saying people
track the correct MTMs (i.e. non-divine natural facts)
The moral
naturalist offers a better internalistic and externalistic epistemology than
the moral non-naturalist or God-grounded proponent. This supplies another
argument for moral naturalism over other realist options.
IV-D-3c-i. The Regress Problem
Introduction
to epistemic internalism (knowledge
requires conscious awareness of one’s justification and evidence) and epistemic externalism (knowledge does
not require conscious awareness of one’s justification and evidence).
IV-D-3c-ii. The Failures of Internalist God-grounded
Meta-ethics
Evidence
from moral tracking and moral psychology suggests many, if not most, people
remain unaware of facts regarding God when making moral judgments. The
internalist God-grounded ethicist must therefore either:
A) Claim most people lack moral knowledge since
they were not aware of the MTMs that justified their moral judgments (a claim
the moral naturalist can easily avoid).
B) Accept that most people track the relevant
MTMs (natural properties) and thus deny God-grounded meta-ethics.
IV-D-3c-iii. The
Failures of Externalist God-grounded Meta-ethics
The externalist
has two options:
1) Take moral and theistic beliefs as
appropriate starting points based on Christian epistemic standards.
a) Does
not obviate the need to address opposing evidence and arguments, and thus bringing
up “properly basic belief” is useless when one is presented with such evidence
and arguments (such as those I’ve presented).
b) Abuse
of this claim to serve as knee-jerk response to all countervailing evidence results
in lack of proper functioning and failure to meet Christianity’s epistemic
standards.
2) Take moral and theistic beliefs as
appropriate due to their being produced by a properly functioning cognitive
system (basically: “warrant”).
a) For
this not to be an ad hoc dodge, the theist needs to be open to evidence
regarding the functioning of their moral cognitive system, including my
evidence that it tracks non-divine natural facts. This leaves the externalist
God-grounded proponent with the same “skepticism or deny God-grounded ethics”
dilemma as their internalist counterpart.
b) Abuse
of this claim results in lack of proper functioning and failure to meet
Christianity’s epistemic standards.
IV-D-3c-iv. Epistemic
Problems for Moral Non-naturalism
The moral
non-naturalist’s moral epistemology suffers from the following problems:
1) They face the same dilemma as the
God-grounded proponent: attribute massive moral error to people by saying they
do not track the MTMs when making their moral statements, or say people do
track the MTMs and thus adopt moral naturalism.
2) Unlike the moral naturalist, they lack a
clear causal account of how moral properties interact with our cognitive
apparatus such that we know about them (as per section IV-D-3a-i).
The moral
intuitionism many moral non-naturalists advocate suffers from the following
problems:
1) The phenomenology it associates with
non-natural intuitions also shows up in our knowledge of natural properties and
forms the bedrock on which a posteriori investigation rests. So a prioricity
does not count as an argument for non-natural intuition.
2) Most of its support comes from the weak,
defeasible evidence provided by introspection of how one forms one’s judgments.
Scientific investigation can easily overrule this evidence. And this
introspective evidence still supports the moral naturalist’s epistemology.
3) Unconscious processing of experience and
empirical data more plausibly explains our moral judgments as opposed
non-natural, a priori intuition.
IV-D-3d. Referential
Issues Resulting from Tracking
- When making correct statements regarding the
external world:
1) We assume ourselves to be referring the
properties our cognitive systems track (in the appropriate contexts), unless we
take ourselves to be in massive error.
2) The referenced property serves as the
truth-maker for the uttered statement.
So the God-grounded proponent again has a
choice: attribute massive error to people for tracking the property instead of
the divine facts to which their moral statements actually refer, or say natural
facts serve as the MTMs + that to which moral statements refer and thus deny
God-grounded ethics.
- The moral naturalist can offer a better
supported account of tracking that is compatible with the tracked property
serving as the truth-maker. So this offers another argument for moral
naturalism over other moral realist options.
IV-D-3d-i. Addressing non-God-grounded Objections
- The “appropriate contexts” can be easily
elaborated via a causal theory of reference or using some standard examples of
tracking external properties while making statements regarding them.
- Non-naturalists will need to present empirical
evidence for how one tracks non-natural MTMs or risk saying we do not track the
MTMs when making moral statements (i.e. de facto moral skepticism).
IV-D-3d-ii. Addressing God-grounded Objections
- God-grounded proponents will need to present
empirical evidence for how one tracks divine MTMs or risk saying we do not
track the MTMs when moral statements (i.e. de facto moral skepticism)
- The God-grounded reply that moral concepts (or
properties) represent relational predicates (or properties) that link behaviors
or agents to God fails for at least three reasons:
1) I already argued for more plausible
conceptions of moral concepts (or properties) that make no relational reference
to God.
2) Even if moral concepts were relational, this
would fail to show God exist since the concepts could lack a referent in the
actual world.
3) One still needs to track both (or all)
members involved in the relational predicate/property. Same applies to moral
predicates linked to God. So the God-grounded ethicists still needs to provide
their empirical account of how we track divine facts.
IV-D-3e. Motivational
Issues Resulting from Tracking
Please read
the relevant sections in order and in full
IV-D-3e-i. Some Motivational Thought Experiments
Please
read this sub-section in order and in full
IV-D-3e-ii. The Appropriate Motivation Argument against
God-grounded Meta-ethics
Please
read this sub-section in order and in full
IV-E. Some
Closing Remarks
- The New Atheist Movement (outside of Dennett
and possibly Harris) did not make great intellectual strides for atheist
philosophy; but it did not need to. That was the job of the professional
philosophers. And the four Horseman had already done very well for themselves
in their own fields, anyway (ex: people forget that Dawkins is a damn fine
philosopher of biology and puts Craig’s Intelligent-Design-advocating
shenanigans to shame). Instead, what Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, Dennett,
managed to do (and this was even more
important than the work done by professional philosophers) was help
give many people the courage to point out the obvious deficiencies they saw in
religion, especially the ludicrous moral subjectivism advocated by William Lane
Craig, while knowing there would be a community there to support them. Let’s
continue the tradition.
- The
claim “morality requires God” or “morality serves as an argument for God’s
existence” remains ludicrously implausible in all its forms, as argued in this
paper.
V. Common Internet Objections
V-A. A
Common Theistic Objection
- Atheists do not beg
the question when they use their moral faculty to argue for moral claims
anymore than when everyone else uses their perceptual experiences as evidence
for what’s going on in the external world.
- Gone are the days when apologists could
act as if “harm, suffering preference satisfaction, the virtues, etc.” did not
suffice for morality, but bland claims regarding God’s nature, commands… would.
If theists want to run an OQA, atheists will run one right back. And
when theists run towards a posteriori, metaphysical identities to save them,
section IV of this paper will be there waiting to close the door. And when they
look to analytic moral realism, section I will close that door. So to those
apologists who insist on offering moral arguments for God’s existence even as
they advocate moral subjectivism: moral realism, and normativity in general,
does not require God. Please move on.
V-B. A
Common Nihilist or Relativist Response
- Employing Hume’s
is/ought divide as an argument for moral nihilism or moral anti-realism is
unsound and misses the point, especially given the prevalence of other, more
plausible moral anti-realist arguments.
- Moral
anti-realism/subjectivism/relativism is not the default position, so those
atheists on the internet who sit back, offer no arguments, and apply absurd
burdens of proof to moral realism display incorrect and evasive reasoning.
VII. Appendix
Synthetic moral
naturalism and moral nihilism represent the only two plausible meta-ethical
options, thought moral rationalism based on “real” externalistic reasons and
moral non-cognitivism still have some fight left in them.
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