MandM: Divine Command Theory

Showing posts with label Divine Command Theory. Show all posts

Friday, 17 July 2009

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on God, Morality and Arbitrariness

Is morality independent of religion? One common argument for this position is that denying it makes God’s commands arbitrary.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues,

Let’s assume that God commanded us not to rape. Did God have any reason to command this? If not, his command was arbitrary, and then it can’t make anything morally wrong. On the other hand, if God did have a reason to command us not to rape, then that reason is what makes rape morally wrong. The command itself is superfluous. Either way, morality cannot depend on God’s commands.[1]

The conclusion of this argument is that morality cannot “depend” upon God, and that, God’s commands cannot “make” anything morally wrong. It is clear from what Armstrong says earlier in the same paper that he has in mind a relationship of constitution,[2] his target is the claim that moral obligations depend on divine commands in a manner analogous to the way the property of being water depends upon the property of being H20. His conclusion is that morality, which in this context refers to deontic properties such as being prohibited, being permitted or being required, is not constituted by divine commands.[3]

The premises of the argument can be summarised as follows,

[1] Either, (i) there is a reason, r, why God prohibits rape; or, (ii) there is no reason, r, why God prohibits rape.

[2] If there is no reason, r, why God prohibits rape then Gods commands are arbitrary.

[3] If there is a reason, r, why God prohibits rape then, r, is what constitutes the wrongness of rape.

The point is that either a person must admit that God’s commands are arbitrary or deny that his commands constitute moral obligation.

I think this argument is problematic; the problem is that the word “reason” is ambiguous. William Wrainwright notes that the word reason can be used in two different senses. The first is a constitutive sense; one affirms that the reason water has certain phenomenological properties is because it is H20. In this sense, the use of the word “reason” denotes a special kind of ontological relationship. The second sense is a motivational reason; as in, when I state that the reason I feed my daughter is because I love her. This sense is more psychological or epistemological.[4]

It is important to note that these two senses are not the same as the following illustration demonstrates. Noah fills a glass with water. If we ask what the constitutive reason was for his action, the answer would be that he filled the glass with water because he filled the glass with H20. If we ask what the motivational reason was for his action, the answer would be that he wanted a drink. Yet, his wanting a drink does not constitute water, likewise water being H20 is not the motivational reason he wants the drink.

When Armstrong states, “Let’s assume that God commanded us not to rape. Did God have any reason to command this?” he could be asking if there is a motivating reason as to why God prohibits rape or he could be asking if there is a constitutive reason as to why God prohibits rape. Either way, however, his argument fails.

Turning to the first option, if Armstrong means to ask, did God have a motivating reason for prohibiting rape? then r refers to a motivating reason and premise [2] is correct. If God has no motivational reasons for prohibiting rape then God's commands are arbitrary. To avoid the conclusion that God’s commands are arbitrary one would have to concede that God has motivating reasons for issuing them.

The problem is that on this sense of “reason,” premise [3] is false. If r refers to a motivating reason then it does not follow that because r exists, r constitutes the wrongness of rape. I noted this in the example I gave above; the fact that Noah has a motivating reason to pour water into a glass does not mean that these motivations constitute him pouring water into the glass. What constitutes water are H20 molecules, not his motivations.

Armstrong could avoid this by denying that he means r to refer to a motivating reason, that he meant r to refer to some kind of constitutive reason. This might enable him to affirm that [3] is true. The problem is that if this is what is meant by r then [2] is false. Even if God does not have constitutive reasons for prohibiting rape, he could still have motivating reasons and if he does then [2] is false. If God has motivational reasons, such as concern for the welfare of others for issuing the commands he does, then God's commands are not arbitrary.

Armstrong’s argument therefore commits the fallacy of equivocation.

[1] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics eds Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 108.
[2] Ibid 106.
[3] Ibid 105; where he turns to the question of whether Theism is an adequate foundation for objective moral duties.
[4] William Wrainwright Religion and Morality (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, 2005) 91.

Saturday, 4 July 2009

The Theology of the Declaration of Independence

As I write this it is probably just beginning to be the 4th of July in the United States now, though its been 4th July for some time here in New Zealand.

The 4th of July is, of course, Independence Day. Typically in New Zealand, those members of the secular blogosphere, who consider themselves to be classical liberals, have an annual rave on the 4th of July about the Declaration of Independence, praising the philosophy expounded in this document.

Not PC, for example, states that it is “With the exception of just a few words, the words could hardly be bettered today;” the declaration is, “A wonderful, wonderful anthem to freedom that rings down through the years. If only the real meaning of those words could be heard and understood.” A few years ago David Farrar made similar claims, he stated he would often “marvel at those marvellous words, written in the heat of oppression…Marvellous, absolutely marvellous.” I agree. I would simply point out to my secular, liberal, country-men what the words in this document actually say, and some of the philosophical ideas they expound.

First, the declaration refers to God; it does so four times. Maverick Philosopher has an excellent analysis of the theological content;

In the initial paragraph, we find the phrase “...Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God....” This phrase rules out pantheism: God is distinct from Nature. In the second paragraph, there is the phrase, “...endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights....” Putting these two references together, we may infer that the God being referred to is not merely a deistic initiator of the temporally first segment of the physical universe, but a being involved in the creation of the human race. For if God endowed human beings with rights, this endowment had to occur at the time of the creation of human beings, which of course occurred later than the beginning of the physical universe. In traditional jargon, God is a creator continuans rather than a mere creator originans. He is not a mere cosmic starter-upper, but a being who is continuously involved in maintaining the universe in existence.
…
The other two references are in the final paragraph. There we find the phrase, “...Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions....” near the beginning of the paragraph, and near the end, “...a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence....” Now if God is the Supreme Judge, then he is more than a mere metaphysical cause responsible for the universe’s beginning to exist; he is also the supreme moral arbiter. And since he endows human beings with rights, as opposed to being merely a judge of rights antecedently possessed, then it seems we may infer that God is the source of moral distinctions (as opposed to a mere judge of them).

The reference to divine providence is further evidence that the conception of God in the Declaration is non-deistic. For if God provides and protects, then God has an ongoing involvement with the world and its inhabitants such as would be ruled out by a deistic view. It should also be obvious that talk of providence (from the Latin, pro-videre) implies divine foreknowledge which implies intelligence and perhaps omniscience on the part of the deity. The God of the Declaration is not a blind metaphysical cause posited to explain why the universe began to exist, but a being with such attributes as moral goodness and intelligence…. So if by 'deism' is meant the doctrine that God is a mere metaphysical cause of the universe's beginning to exist who is thereafter uninvolved in its continuing to exist, then the God of the Declaration is non-deistic.

Second, the declaration claims that belief in a creator is self-evident; that is, it is a properly basic belief, which is rationally acceptable to hold in the absence of any proof.

Third, the declaration makes political pronouncements about public policy on the basis of these theological claims and expects these pronouncements to be taken seriously.

Fourth, the declaration says that various rights, such as the right to life and liberty, are unalienable. That is, a person cannot alienate one’s life or freedom as they can legally alienate a piece of property. You can’t take my property if I do not consent to you having it but if I do consent, you can take it; property is alienable, life and liberty are not. The argument of the declaration reflects John Locke’s argument in the Second Treatise of Civil Government;

TO understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.[1]

…

But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though man in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; all the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another's pleasure[2]

...

This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man's preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together: for a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he pleases. No body can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it.[3]

The point here is that because your right to life and liberty are from God, no one can legitimately enslave or kill you, even if you consent to it. This was not a mere incidental addendum idea, it was central to Lockean political philosophy, which maintained (as the declaration does) that the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed. If a person can consent to be killed or enslaved then they can consent to the government enslaving them also to having the arbitrary power to kill them and hence tyranny can be legitimate. The reason tyranny is illegitimate is because, “No body can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it.”

The declaration then makes a metaphysical claim: God exists. It makes an epistemological claim about faith and reason: that belief in God is rational independent of proof. It makes an implicit claim of political philosophy: religion is not a private thing that should not influence public life but rather, theological claims should influence public life. Finally it makes a moral claim; that consenting adults do not have a right to do whatever they like with their own bodies, rather there are “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” that bind all human beings, that they are compelled to follow even if all parties consent otherwise. Governments are legitimate to the extent in which they respect these laws.

I agree with PC, it is hard to improve on this philosophy; I have defended it in several places on this blog.

Ironically, however, the militant secular liberals in NZ who parrot the declaration seem committed to attacking these ideas and rejecting them on every point. They argue that belief in God is irrational because it cannot be empirically proven, they claim that the public square should be secular, that religion should be private and not influence public policy and they argue that liberty means consenting adults can do whatever they like with their own bodies and lives. Far from being unalienable, a person’s life and freedom is his property to alienate as that person sees fit.

It is also hard to disagree with PC’s sentiments that the declaration is “A wonderful, wonderful anthem to freedom that rings down through the years. If only the real meaning of those words could be heard and understood.” Indeed, if only.

[1] John Locke Second Treatise of Civil Government Section II 4.
[2] Ibid II6.
[3] Ibid IV 23.

Wednesday, 27 May 2009

Tooley, Plantinga and the Deontological Argument from Evil Part II

In my last post, Tooley, Plantinga and the Deontological Argument from Evil Part I, I sketched Tooley's distinction between a deontological and an axiological argument from evil and argued that Tooley rejects the axiological version because it rests on controversial ethical claims that are likely to be rejected by many theists. I outlined Tooley's deontological version and explored the moral assumptions it is based on and Plantinga's criticism of these.

"God can do wrong only if he commands himself to do something and then proceeds to disobey his own command."In this post, I will argue that Plantinga's criticisms can be reformulated by appealing to a divine command theory of ethics and when they are, it can be shown that Tooley's argument relies on controversial moral assumptions that many theists do, in fact, reject. Finally I will look at two objections to this line of argument; the claim that, even on a divine command theory, God has obligations and Tooley's critique of the divine command theory. I will argue both objections fail.

To save you having to click back repeatedly to the previous post, I will first re-cite step one of Tooley’s argument,

(12) The property of choosing not to prevent an event that will cause the death of more than 50,000 ordinary people is a wrongmaking property of actions, and very serious one.
(13) The Lisbon earthquake killed approximately 60,000 ordinary people.

Therefore, from (12) and (13):

(14) Any action of choosing not to prevent the Lisbon earthquake has a very serious wrongmaking property.

Tooley then adds as an additional premise,

(15) No rightmaking properties that we know of are such that we are justified in believing both that an action of choosing not to prevent the Lisbon earthquake would have had those rightmaking properties, and that those properties are sufficiently serious to counterbalance the relevant wrongmaking property.[1]

III. Modifying Plantinga's Response : The Divine Command Theory
In a more recent paper, Naturalism, Theism, Obligation and Supervenience, Plantinga makes a comment that suggests he could formulate his objection so that “permitted by God” was taken in the second sense mentioned above. Plantinga writes,

Theists typically think ethical properties are intimately related to what God approves or values or commands. Thus they will often think of moral obligation as a matter of what God commands. What is obligatory are those actions God commands or wills; what is wrong are those actions God prohibits; what is permissible are those actions God does not prohibit.[2]

Plantinga here refers to what has been called the divine command theory of ethics[3]; the position that, “an action or kind of action is right or wrong if and only if and because it is commanded or forbidden by God.”[4] According to a divine command theory of ethics, being permitted by God is a right-making property; actions are right, if and only if, and because, they are permitted by God. I am inclined to think that any theist who accepts a divine command theory of ethics will deny (15) whether or not they “offer a theodicy.” They will also have reasons for denying (12).

This is because, if the divine command theory of ethics is true then (12) is false. Tooley affirms that, “the property of choosing not to prevent an event that will cause the death of more than 50,000 ordinary people is a wrongmaking property of actions, and very serious one.” According to a divine command theory of ethics this is false; there is only one ultimate wrong-making property, that of being contrary to God’s commands. Given that the property of “choosing not to prevent an event that will cause the death of more than 50,000” is not the same property as “being permitted by God,” it follows that the former property is not a right-making property of actions and, as such, (12) is false.

Even if one puts this point to one side, if a divine command theory of ethics is true, there is a further problem with (12); it is ambiguous compare:

[12 a] The property of choosing not to prevent an event that will cause the deaths of more than 50,000 ordinary people is a serious wrongmaking property of actions performed by human beings (or rational creatures relevantly like human beings).

and

[12b] The property of choosing not to prevent an event that will cause the deaths of more than 50,000 ordinary people is a serious wrongmaking property of actions performed by (including God).

For Tooley's argument to be successful he must mean for (12) to be taken as [12b]. Tooley is arguing for the conclusion that if God exists then he has performed actions that it would be wrong for God to perform; which, given that God is good, is an impossible state of affairs.

However, what is an “uncontroversial moral claim” that “does not seem very problematic” is [12a]. If a divine command theory of ethics is true then [12b] is false. This is because one implication of a divine command theory of ethics is that God does not have obligations and hence, strictly speaking, nothing he does can be right or wrong.[5] Craig notes “nor, plausibly, is God bound by moral duties since he does not issue commands to himself.”[6] Similarly Alston, in an article defending the claim that God has no obligations, states “we can hardly suppose that God is obliged to love his creatures because he commands himself to do so.”[7]

Craig and Alston's arguments seem sound. If the divine command theory of ethics is true then a person p is required to do an action a, if and only if, God commands p to do a. It follows then, that God is required to do a, if and only if, God issues commands to himself. Moreover, if divine command theory of ethics is true then a person engages in wrongdoing, if and only if, they disobey a command that God issues to them. Hence, if divine command theory of ethics is true then God can do wrong only if he commands himself to do something and then proceeds to disobey his own command.

Neither of these conditions seems very likely. It seems unlikely that God issues commands to himself. Why would he need to? If he wanted to do something wouldn't he just do it? Moreover, it seems absurd to suggest that even if God issues commands to himself that he would then disobey them. That would suggest that God displays some form of weakness of the will and it is not clear that weakness of the will is compatible with a supremely excellent being such as God.[8]

The divine command theorist will take a similar stance towards (15). If a divine command theory of ethics is true then the property of “being permitted by God” is a right-making property. If God permits an action, in the sense of refraining from prohibiting it, then that makes the action morally permissible. Consider then, “[God's] action of choosing not to prevent the Lisbon earthquake.” For the reasons spelt out above, God did not forbid himself from doing this; hence, this action has a right-making property that a theist, who embraces divine command theory of ethics, knows about.

Similarly, this right-making property outweighs any wrong-making property that the action has. As I mentioned previously, according to a divine command theory of ethics, there is only one ultimate wrong-making property, the property of being contrary to God’s commands. Given that God did not command himself to stop the Lisbon earth quake, the action of allowing the Lisbon earthquake to occur does not have any wrong-making properties and so there can be none that outweigh it.

Consequently, if a divine command theory of ethics is true then both (12) and (15) are false. It is not just theists who offer a theodicy then who would reject (15).

The Significance of this Conclusion
I think this conclusion is significant for two reasons. First, a significant number of contemporary theists embrace and defend the divine command theory of ethics. Those who have defended it include, Robert Adams,[9] John Hare,[10] William Alston,[11] William Lane Craig,[12] Stephen C Evans,[13] Philip Quinn,[14] Edward Wierenga,[15] Janine Marie Idziak,[16] William Wanwright,[17] William Mann,[18] Thomas Carson[19] and more recently Alvin Plantinga.[20] These people are not obscure, marginal representatives of theism; these names include some of the leading defenders of theism in the literature today. Tooley's argument then contains a premise that would be, and in fact is, rejected by many leading theists.

Second, this fact introduces a significant incoherence into Tooley's discussion of the argument from evil. In “Does God Exist?” Tooley rejects an axiological argument from evil on the grounds that it rests on a moral claim that was “within ethical theory deeply controversial, and likely to be rejected by many theists and others.” Tooley's own argument, however, presupposes the denial of a divine command theory of ethics. This is a controversial moral claim and one that is rejected by many theists. His own deontological argument then seems to be no better than the axiological version he rejects.

Finally, it seems in light of these conclusions that Tooley's deontological argument from evil is incomplete. It is not enough for Tooley to simply ask “what rightmaking properties can one point to that one has good reason to believe would be present in the case of an action allowing the Lisbon earthquake and that would be sufficiently serious to counterbalance the property of allowing more than 50,000 to be killed?”[21] The theist can point to such a property. Tooley needs to supplement his argument with a refutation of the divine command theory; specifically, he needs to argue that even if theism is true then this theory is implausible and problematic. Until the divine command theory can be shown to be a rationally untenable option for theists, theists can avoid Tooley's deontological argument from evil.

IV Objections
In this last section I want to anticipate and criticise two lines of argument that Tooley or a defender of Tooley, might make against the above line of critique.

Tooley's Critique of Divine Command Theory
In III I suggested that Tooley's argument was incomplete until he provides the theist with some reason why a divine command theory of ethics cannot be accepted then the theist can reject two crucial premises of his argument. (A defender of Tooley could object here that he has argued for this conclusion. In a debate with William Lane Craig at the University of Colorado Tooley addressed the divine command theory and offered a Euthyphro style argument against it. I agree that a complete defence of my position requires a response to this argument, regular readers, however, will note that I have addressed this argument previously in Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands.)

Divine Commands and Divine Obligations
My argument in III depended on the claim, made by Craig and Alston, that if a divine command theory is true then God does not have duties. Linda Zagzebski has called this claim into question. In “More Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists,” Zagzebski proposes an account of divine obligations which is compatible with a divine command theory. Zagzebski starts by offering an account of the meaning of obligation, “What we mean by ‘obligation,’ is essentially this: there is no other option compatible with moral goodness.”[22] From this definition she argues that “the metaphysical source of divine obligation” and “the metaphysical source of human obligation are distinct.”[23]

The metaphysical source of the property of an act of a human being which makes it the case that there is no alternative act compatible with goodness is that it is commanded by God. The metaphysical source of the property of an act of God that makes it the case that there is no alternative act compatible with goodness is that that any alternative is incompatible with Gods nature.[24]

Hence, she concludes that it is “metaphysically necessary that an act X is an obligation for a human if and only if X is commanded by God” and “it is metaphysically necessary that an act X is an obligation for God if and only if X is compatible with Gods nature.”[25]

While I am not convinced by Zagzebski's account of divine obligations, even if one grants them for the sake of argument it is clear that it cannot be used to defend Tooley's deontological argument from evil. Consider,

(15) No rightmaking properties that we know of are such that we are justified in believing both that an action of choosing not to prevent the Lisbon earthquake would have had those rightmaking properties, and that those properties are sufficiently serious to counterbalance the relevant wrongmaking property.[26]

If Zagzebski's account of divine obligation is correct then (15) is false. Plantinga's original unreformulated response is rehabilitated. As Plantinga pointed out “God exists and is a perfectly good being. If this is true, then any action that God has in fact performed has the property of being performed by a perfectly good being.”[27] Moreover, “theists believe that God performed the action of permitting the Lisbon earthquake. They therefore believe that the action of performing the Lisbon earthquake has the property of being performed by God, who is a perfectly good person.”[28] But if the Lisbon earthquake was performed by a perfectly good person, performing it must be compatible with the divine nature and hence it has the very right-making property that Zagzebski identifies in her account of divine obligation.

The same is true for (12). Tooley contends,

(12) The property of choosing not to prevent an event that will cause the death of more than 50,000 ordinary people is a wrongmaking property of actions, and very serious one.

On Zagzebski's account (12) is false. There are only two right-making properties that exist. The property of being compatible with God's nature, which is what makes God's actions right, and the property of being permitted by God, which is what makes human actions right. Now the property of “choosing not to prevent an event that will cause the deaths of more than 50,000 people” is neither of these properties and hence, is not a right-making property.

[1] Michael Tooley “Does God Exist?” in The Knowledge of God eds Michael Tooley and Alvin Plantinga (Malden, M A: Blackwell Publishers, 2008) 119; I am following Tooley's enumeration.
[2] Alvin Plantinga “Naturalism, Theism, Obligation and Supervenience” 31 available at http://www.ammonius.org/grant_topics.php#0708 accessed 4 April 2009.
[3] The position is perhaps more correctly known as ethical voluntarism as some proponents of it emphasise the divine will as opposed to divine commands. However, because of the widespread use of the term 'divine command theory' in the literature I will stick with the term.
[4] W K Frankena Ethics 2nd ed (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973) 28.
[5] It should also be noted that the claim that God does not have obligations has been defended on grounds other than a divine command theory. See, for example, William Alston, “Some Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists” in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy ed. Michael Beaty (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990). Hence, even if one dismisses a divine command theory of ethics it still follows that [12a] is not the obviously uncontroversial statement Tooley thinks it is.
[6] William Lane Craig Philosphical Foundations of a Christian World View (Downers Grover Il: Intervarsity Press, 2003) 529.
[7] William Alston “Response to Zagzebski” Perspectives on the Philosophy of William P. Alston eds Heather D Battaly, Michael P Lynch, William P Alston, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005) 204.
[8] It is worth noting the definition of God that Tooley works with in formulating his argument. For the purposes of his argument, Tooley is defining God as “an appropriate object of worship” as well as an appropriate object of other human concerns such as the desire that good will triumph over evil, and that justice will be done” etc.
[9] Robert Adams “Divine Command Meta-Ethics Modified Again” Journal of Religious Ethics 7:1 (1979); Finite and Infinite Goods (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
[10] John Hare God's Call: Moral Realism, God's Commands and Human Autonomy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001); God and Morality: A Philosophical History (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007).
[11] William Alston “Some Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists” in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy ed Michael Beaty (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990).
[12] William Lane Craig “This most Gruesome of Guests” in Is Goodness Without God Good Enough? A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics eds Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanthan: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers Inc, 2009) 172; also Philosphical Foundations of a Christian World View (Downers Grover Il: Intervarsity Press, 2003) 529-532.
[13] C Stephen Evans Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
[14] Philip L Quinn Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); “An Argument for Divine Command Theory” in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy ed Michael Beaty (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990) 289-302; “The Recent Revival of Divine Command Ethics” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (Fall 1990) 345-365; “The Primacy of God's Will in Christian Ethics” Philosophical Perspectives 6 (1992) 493-513; “Divine Command Theory” in Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory ed Hugh Lafollette (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 2000) 53-73; “Theological Voluntarism” The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) 63-90.
[15] Edward Weirenga The Nature of God: An Inquiry into the Divine Attributes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989) 215-27. See also, “Utilitarianism and the Divine Command Theory” American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984) 311-318; and “A Defensible Divine Command Theory” Nous 17 (1983) 387-408.
[16] Janine Marie Idziak “Divine Commands Are the Foundation of Morality” Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion (Malden, MA:Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2004) 290-298.
[17] William Wrainwright Religion and Morality (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, 2005).
[18] William Mann “Theism and the Foundations of Ethics” in The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Religion ed William Mann (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005).
[19] Thomas Carson Value and the Good Life (Notre Dame IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2000).
[20] Alvin Plantinga “Naturalism, Theism, Obligation and Supervenience”available at

http://www.ammonius.org/grant_topics.php#0708 accessed 4 April 2009.
[21] Michael Tooley “Does God Exist?” in The Knowledge of God eds Michael Tooley and Alvin Plantinga (Malden, M A: Blackwell Publishers, 2008), 122
[22] Linda Zagzebski “More Suggestions for Divine Command Theories” in Perspectives on the Philosophy of William P. Alston eds Heather D Battaly, Michael P Lynch, William P Alston, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005) 189.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Tooley “Does God Exist?” 119.
[27] Alvin Plantinga "Reply to Tooley's Opening Statement" in The Knowledge of God eds Michael Tooley and Alvin Plantinga (Malden, M A: Blackwell Publishers, 2008), 170
[28] Ibid.

Wednesday, 13 May 2009

Tooley, Plantinga and the Deontological Argument from Evil Part I

This article criticises the deontological argument from evil proposed by Micheal Tooley in The Knowledge of God, the print debate between him and Alvin Plantinga.1 My critique proceeds in four parts. In I I will sketch Tooley's distinction between a deontological and an axiological argument from evil and will argue that Tooley rejects the axiological version because it rests on “controversial ethical claims;”2 claims that are “likely to be rejected by many theists.”3 In II I will outline Tooley's deontological version and focus on the moral assumptions upon which it is based and Plantinga's criticism of these. This will conclude Part I of the series.

In my next post I will argue III, that Plantinga's criticisms can be reformulated by appealing to a divine command theory of ethics and when they are it can be shown that Tooley's argument relies on controversial moral assumptions that many theists do, in fact, reject. Finally IV will look at two objections to this line of argument; the claim that, even on a divine command theory, God has obligations and Tooley's critique of the divine command theory. I will argue both objections fail.

I. Deontological and Axiological Arguments from Evil
Tooley distinguishes axiological versions of the argument from evil from deontological versions. The former, "are formulated in terms of axiological concepts—specifically, in terms of the goodness or badness, the desirability or undesirability of states of affairs."4 [Emphasis original] The latter, "uses concepts that focus upon the rightness and wrongness of actions, and upon the--rightmaking or wrongmaking--properties that determine whether an action is one that ought to be performed."5

Tooley suggests that axiological versions are problematic. He takes as a paradigm the version proposed by William Rowe. Central to Rowe's argument is the following conceptual claim about a perfectly good being.

(2) Any omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect person would prevent the existence of any state of affairs that is both (a) intrinsically bad, or undesirable, and (b) such that he could prevent its existence without either allowing an equal or greater evil, or preventing an equal or greater good.6

Rowe applies (2) to concrete evils in the world. He identifies various concrete evil states of affairs and contends that these concrete cases meet the criteria (a) and (b) specified in (2).

There are well rehearsed problems with Rowe's attempt to do this.7 While Rowe can maintain that there are cases where we do not know of any greater good lost or greater evil prevented by the allowance of these evils, this is insufficient to show that the cases meet the specified criteria. His argument requires that we know that there are no greater goods lost or evils prevented known to an omniscient being. Tooley notes that the step from “we don't know” to the claim that an “omniscient being does not know” is difficult to bridge and Rowe's attempts to do so have been unsucessful.8

Tooley's most important objection is to contest (2) itself. Tooley notes that (2) appears to rely on a,

common consquentialist claim ... namely, the claim that an action is morally wrong if it fails to maximise the balance of good states of affairs over bad states of affairs. But the difficulty then is that "such a claim is, within ethical theory, deeply controversial, and likely to be rejected by many theists, and others.9

In response, Tooley develops and defends an argument from evil which does not rely on “controversial ethical claims,”10 one that focuses “upon the rightness and wrongness of actions.”

II. Tooley's Deontological Argument
Tooley summarises his argument succinctly,

The basic idea involved in a deontological formulation of the argument from evil is then as follows. First, it is claimed that the world contains certain states of affairs such that any action of allowing any of those states of affairs to obtain would involve one or more known wrongmaking characteristics that would outweigh the sum total of known rightmaking characteristics that the action would have. If this is right, then any such action is prima facie wrong, relative to the total information that one presently has concerning the action's rightmaking and wrongmaking characteristics. Secondly, the crucial question is then whether there is any sound inductive argument that will take one from the conclusion that such an action is prima facie wrong to the further conclusion that the action is probably wrong all things considered. If there is, one will then have an 'inductively sound' version of the evidential argument from evil.11 [Emphasis original]

As Tooley notes the argument has two crucial steps. The first is the claim that an argument that allows a certain states of affairs to occur is prima facie wrong. The second is an inductive argument from the conclusion that such an action is prima facie wrong to the claim that it is ultra facie wrong; that is, wrong all things considered.

It is clear that Tooley considers the second step to be the ‘crucial question’ and he spends most of his article defending the inductive inference he draws. Tooley appears to think that the first step is fairly straight-forward and uncontroversial. His defence of it consists of a few paragraphs.

1. Tooley’s Argument for Step One
Tooley’s argument for the first step consists of three premises,

(12) The property of choosing not to prevent an event that will cause the death of more than 50,000 .ordinary people is a wrongmaking property of actions, and very serious one.
(13) The Lisbon earthquake killed approximately 60,000 ordinary people.
Therefore, from (12) and (13):
(14) Any action of choosing not to prevent the Lisbon earthquake has a very serious wrongmaking property.

Tooley then adds as an additional premise,

(15) No rightmaking properties that we know of are such that we are justified in believing both that an action of choosing not to prevent the Lisbon earthquake would have had those rightmaking properties, and that those properties are sufficiently serious to counterbalance the relevant wrongmaking property.12

Tooley believes that (12)-(15) are uncontroversial “(12) makes a moral claim, but one that does not seem at all problematic while statement (13) makes a historical claim for which there is, I believe, very good evidence."13 Tooley appears to think that the only potentially controversial premise is (15) but that this would be denied only by philosophers who offer a theodicy.14 Tooley maintains that (15) is,

[V]ery reasonable, given the relevant facts about the world, together with the moral knowledge that we possess. For what rightmaking properties can one point to that one has good reason to believe would be present in the case of an action of allowing the Lisbon earthquake, and that would be sufficiently serious to counterbalance the wrongmaking property of allowing more than 50,000 to be killed.15

Tooley concludes that, in the absence of a defensible theodicy, there are compelling arguments for concluding that allowing the Lisbon earthquake to occur is prima facie wrong. This is not an insignificant conclusion. Many contemporary theists discuss the argument from evil by conceding that there are no defensible theodicies and then arguing that even in the absence of such a theodicy, belief in God is not rendered improbable by the existence of evil. If Tooley is correct, this line of argument is mistaken. The burden of proof is clearly on the theist to provide a theodicy; if he or she cannot then God’s action of permitting the Lisbon earthquake to occur is prima facie wrong. Moreover, if Tooley's inductive arguments hold, the God's actions will be ultra facie wrong.

2. Plantinga's Response
Plantinga responds to Tooley’s argument by calling into question (15).

Christians and other theists believe that God exists and is a perfectly good being. If this is true, then any action that God has in fact performed has the property of having been performed by a perfectly good being. Furthermore, Christians and other theists believe that God performed the action of permitting the Lisbon earthquake. They therefore believe that the action of permitting the Lisbon earthquake has the property of having been performed by God, who is a perfectly good person. This is a rightmaking property that clearly outweighs and counterbalances any wrongmaking properties that action has.16

In this citation, Plantinga denies that only theists who offer a theodicy would contest [15]. Plantinga suggests that theists will typically believe that there is a right making property of which they know of; the property of being permitted by God. This property overrides all others and the action of allowing the Lisbon earthquake has this property. Hence, the Theist has good reasons for rejecting [15] even if he or she cannot offer an adequate theodicy.

Tooley’s response is to deny that being permitted by God is a right making property,

Suppose that God exists, and, thus permitted the Lisbon earthquake. One can ask “What property did the action of permitting the Lisbon earthquake have that made it morally permissible for God to permit it?” The response that it had the property of having been permitted by God, who is perfectly good, is not a satisfactory answer to that question: there must be some other property that made it permissible for God to permit the Lisbon earthquake. The property of having been permitted by God, while it entails that there must have been a rightmaking property, is not itself a rightmaking property.17 [Emphasis original]

The phrase “having been permitted by God” is ambiguous. In one sense it could refer to God allowing an event to occur; if he does not stop it occurring then God permits the Lisbon earthquake. In another sense, however, it can refer to God refraining from forbidding an action. God permits drinking alcohol, for example. If God refrains from issuing a command to abstain from drinking alcohol then it is clear, I think, that Plantinga means the former and Tooley seems18 correct in suggesting that in this sense it is clear that being permitted by God is not a right making property but this leaves an important question hanging; couldn't Plantinga's critique be reformulated in terms of the “second sense” of the phrase “having been permitted by God.”

In my next post I will propose a Plantingan reformulation and address some objections.

1 Michael Tooley “Does God Exist?” in The Knowledge of God eds Michael Tooley and Alvin Plantinga (Malden, M A: Blackwell Publishers, 2008) 70-147.
2 Tooley “Does God Exist?”105.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid, 106.
6 William Rowe “Evil and Theodicy” Philosophical Topics 16: 119-32. I am following Rowe's enumeration.
7 Stephen John Wykstra “Rowe's Noseeum Arguments from Evil;” Peter van Inwagen “The Problem of Evil, the Problem of Air, and the Problem of Silence” and “Reflections on the Chapters by Draper, Russell, and Gale;” William P Alston “The Inductive Argument from Evil and the Human Cognitive Condition” and “Some (Temporarily) Final Thoughts on Evidential Arguments from Evil;” Daniel Howard-Snyder “The Argument from Inscrutable Evil” in The Evidential Argument from Evil ed Daniel Howard-Snyder (Bloomington, Indiana University Press: 1996). See also, Alvin Plantinga Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
8 Tooley “Does God Exist” 104.
9 Ibid, 105.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid, 116.
12 Ibid, 119; I am following Tooley's enumeration.
13 Ibid, 122.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Alvin Plantinga “Reply to Tooley's Opening Statement” in The Knowledge of God eds Michael Tooley and Alvin Plantinga (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2008) 170-71.
17 Michael Tooley “Closing Statement and Reply to Plantinga's Comments” in The Knowledge of God eds Michael Tooley and Alvin Plantinga (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2008) 238.
18 I say seems because Linda Zagzebski's account of divine obligations would challenge this contention as I will argue in part IV.

RELATED POSTS:
Tooley, Plantinga and the Deontological Argument from Evil Part II

Friday, 8 May 2009

John W. Loftus on The Christian Illusion of Moral Superiority Part II

In my previous post, John W. Loftus on The Christian Illusion of Moral Superiority Part I, I argued that Loftus' position was based on a confusion between ontological and epistemological foundations. I will now address his arguments against divine command theory.

II Loftus' Arguments Against a Divine Command Theory
After misconstruing the divine command theory as an epistemological theory, Loftus offers a series of fairly standard criticisms of divine command theories. Here I will focus on the two most important,

1. The contention that acceptance of a divine command theory makes it impossible to coherently attribute goodness to God; and,
2. The claim that a divine command theory makes God's commands and hence, moral obligations, arbitrary.

1. The emptiness of God is Good
To support the first contention Loftus offers two reasons which I term the Empty Tautology Objection and the Arbitrariness Objection. I will address each in turn.

A. Empty Tautology Objection
The first is that on a divine command theory claiming God is good becomes an empty tautology as seen in this statement, “If we think that the commands of God are good merely because he commands them, then his commands are….well….just his commands.”

Here we see Loftus mistakenly assuming that a divine command theory is an account of “goodness.” As I argued above it is not, it is an account of deontological properties such as right and wrong. Suppose, however, we recast the objection in terms of deontological properties, the objection still fails. Loftus contends that if something is right because God commands it then God's commands become right by definition; and hence, the claim ‘God commands what is right’ becomes a tautology, it is just the assertion that “his commands are….well….just his commands.”

This argument is mistaken. It rests on the assumption that if something (in this case an action) has a property (in this case the property of being right) because it has another property Q (in this case the property of being commanded by God). Then the claim that Q is P is a tautology with no substantive content. However, this assumption is mistaken.

Consider the claim that water is H20. This is a statement that one property is constituted by and hence cannot exist independently of, another property. Yet one who makes the claim ‘water is H20’ is uttering a substantive, non-tautological statement. Claiming ontological dependence between two properties does not entail that a statement attributing such a relationship is a tautology.

B. Independent Standard
The second and perhaps major argument Loftus offers is that we cannot call God's commands good unless we appeal to a standard independent of him. He expresses different versions of this objection in several places in his argument. He writes,

We cannot call them good, for to call them good we’d have to have a standard above them to proclaim that they are indeed good commands. But on this theory they are just God’s commands. God doesn’t command us to do good things, he just commands us to do things. “All that could mean is that God wants us to do what he wants us to do.

Responding to Moreland he makes the same argument,

But think of what Moreland is saying here. He’s saying that morality is grounded in God’s nature, not in his commands. But this is a difference that makes no difference. It does no good to step back behind the commands of God to God’s purported nature at all. For we’d still want to know whether or not God’s nature is good. God cannot be known to be good here either, without a standard of goodness that shows he is good. For unless there is standard that shows God is good beyond the mere fact that God declares that his nature is good, we still don’t know whether God is good.

Elsewhere he makes essentially the same point,

[T]he modified divine command theory becomes equivalent to the autonomy thesis: the Good (or right) is not good (or right) simply because God commands it. Furthermore, if this is correct, then we can discover our ethical duties through reason, independent of God’s command. For what is good for his creatures is so objectively. We do not need God to tell us that it is bad to cause unnecessary suffering or that it is good to ameliorate suffering; reason can do that. It begins to look like the true version of ethics is what we called ‘secular ethics.’

Loftus goes on to summarises his point as follows,

The bottom line here is that if there is no moral standard for us to appeal to when we’re assessing the claim that God is good, and all we have to go on is the fact that God said he was good, then we cannot asses whether or not God is good. We still haven’t been given as answer to what he means by the word good.

Much can be said about these arguments. First, Loftus again construes divine command theories as offering an account of axiological properties such as goodness. I have already noted this is mistaken.

Second, Loftus again confuses ontology with epistemology. He affirms that “God cannot be known to be good … without a standard of goodness that shows he is good.” if there is no moral standard for us to appeal to when we’re assessing the claim that God is good, ... we cannot assess whether or not God is good.” Also, “we can discover our ethical duties through reason, independent of God’s command.” These are all statements about epistemological independence of our beliefs about right and wrong. They show that one can know right and wrong independently and prior to any beliefs one has about what God commands. The problem is that divine command theorists do not deny this. They do not claim that one needs to believe in the existence of divine commands to be able to tell what is right and wrong. They claim that the property of being wrong is ontologically dependent on the property of being contrary to God's commands.

Turning again to the analogy regarding H20 and water, most people throughout history have known what water is without knowing water is H20. In fact, one cannot determine whether H20 really is water unless we have an independent standard of some sort in our minds as to what water is. It does not follow from this, however, that water is not H20 and given that something cannot exist apart from itself, it does not follow that water and H20 are ontologically independent. The same is true of divine commands; people can know what is right and wrong without believing in God. Further, to know whether God's commands are right, one will have to have some standard of what things are right and wrong. It does not follow from any of this that right and wrong can exist independently of divine commands.

Loftus’ arguments for the claim that one cannot coherently attribute goodness to God then fail. These arguments rely on the conflation of ontological and epistemological dependence I mentioned above.

2. Arbitrariness Objection
The second argument Loftus appeals to is the claim that a divine command theory makes God's commands arbitrary. Again, he offers two versions of this.

A. No Reasons for Commanding
Loftus claims that a divine command theory means that God cannot have reasons for his commands and hence, they are arbitrary,

If we say, on the one hand, that something is right because God commands it, then the only reason why we should do something is that God commands it. It makes God’s commands arbitrary, because there is no reason why God commanded something other than the fact that he did.

This argument is again based on a failure to distinguish epistemic and ontological questions. Loftus argues,

[1] According to a divine command theory the only reason an action is wrong is because God commands it.

He infers from this that,

[2] Therefore there can be no reason why God issued the commands he did; hence,
[3] God's commands are arbitrary.

This argument equivocates on the word “reason”. William Wrainwright notes that the word reason can be used in two different senses; the “constitutive” sense, one affirms that the reason water has certain phenomenological properties is because it is H20. This use of the word “reason” denotes a special kind of ontological relationship. The second sense is a “motivational” reason, as in when I state that the reason I feed my daughter is because I love her. This sense is more psychological or epistemological.[19]

It is important to note that these two senses are not the same. Suppose my son pours water into a glass. If we ask what the constitutive reason is for him to pour water into the glass, the answer is not that he poured water into the glass because he poured H20 into the glass. This was not the motivational reason for him pouring water into the glass; the answer will be that he wanted a drink. His wanting a drink does not constitute water and water being H20 is not the motivational reason he wants the drink.

Turning to Loftus’ argument, when Loftus states in [2] that God has no reason for commanding as he does, he clearly means that he has no motivating reason; this is why he can draw the conclusion that God's commands are arbitrary. If God has motivational reasons, such as concern for the welfare of others for issuing the commands he does then God's commands are not arbitrary.

The problem is that [2] follows from [1] only if one interprets [1] as affirming that a divine command theory contends that the only motivating reason an action is wrong is because God commands it. But this is false. As noted, when divine command theorists claim that the only reason an action is wrong is because God commands it, they have in mind constitutive reasons. The only constitutive reason an action is wrong is that God prohibits it; it does not claim anything about motivating reasons. Hence, Loftus’ argument commits the equivocation fallacy.

B. Abhorrent Commands Objection
The second version of the arbitrariness objection Loftus cites is the claim that a divine command theory entails that abhorrently evil acts could be morally required.

God could’ve commanded something else, or even something contrary, or something horribly evil and simply declared it good. If God is the creator of morality like he’s purportedly the creator of the universe, then he could have simply declared any act good, and there would be no moral reason to distinguish such a God from the Devil. This presents us with the “seemingly absurd position that even the greatest atrocities might be not only acceptable but morally required if God were to command them.

Turning to the second version, Loftus proposes two premises;

[1]If a divine command theory is true then it follows that if God commanded something abhorrently evil it would be required.
[2] It is possible for God to command something that is abhorrently evil.

From this it follows that it is possible for abhorrently evil actions to be required.

I agree with [1]; it is an implication of divine command theory that if God commands an abhorrently evil action then the action is required. This is not as significant as it seems for two reasons. First, any meta-ethical theory, whether secular or religious, that contends that some property P is equivalent to moral obligation will entail an analogous conditional; it will be the case that if an abhorrently evil action has P, the abhorrent action will be required. Hence, [1] by itself does not render a divine command theory implausible unless any and every account of obligation is implausible.

Second, according to the standard account of counterfactual conditionals, a conditional, such as “if God commanded something abhorrently evil it would be required,” is true if the antecedent is impossible. If the antecedent is impossible, the conditional is on par with claims such as “if there were a round square, its area would equal the square of one of its sides”[20] or “if there were no prime numbers, all numbers would have been Prime.”[21] The real issue then is [2]; is it possible for God to command abhorrently evil actions?

The problem is that [2] is false. Divine command theorists contend that an action is right, if and only if, God commands it. God here is used to refer to a personal being that is omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good. Hence, for [2] to be possible, there needs to be a possible world in which a perfectly good being would command an action which is gratuitously abhorrently evil. This is an incoherent notion.

I think Loftus does have a response to this; it can be seen in his reply to essentially the same line of argument proposed by Robert Adams,

If Adams wants to claim that it is goodness plus God’s command that determines what is right,” Pojman rightly asked, “what does God add to rightness that is not there simply with goodness…If love or goodness prescribes act A, what does A gain by being commanded by God? Materially, nothing at all.” It is at this point where both a modified divine command ethic and a secular ethic share the exact same grounding.

Loftus here asks, if the commands of a good and loving God constitute right and wrong, why can't a secular ethicist simply appeal to goodness and love to ground ethics and bypass an appeal to divine commands? What do divine commands add to love and goodness that is not “simply there with goodness?” Loftus seems to think Adams is refuted by the mere raising of this question.

This is rather puzzling because in an article Loftus cites, Adams himself raises this question and answers it. Adams notes,

It may be objected that the advantages of the divine command theory can be obtained without an entailment of God's existence. For the rightness of an action might be said to consist in the fact that the action would agree with the commands of a loving God if one existed, or does so agree if a loving God exists. This modification transforms the divine command theory into a nonnaturalistic form of the ideal observer theory of the nature of right and wrong. It has the advantage of identifying rightness and wrongness with properties that actions could have even if God does not exist. And of course it takes away the basis of my metaethical argument for theism.

The flaw in this theory is that it is difficult to see what is supposed to be the force of the counterfactual conditional that is centrally involved in it. If there is no loving God, what makes it the case if there were one, he would command this rather than that? Without an answer to this question, the crucial counterfactual lacks a clear sense I can see only two possible answers: either that what any possible loving God would command is logically determined by the concept of a loving God, or that it is determined by a causal law. Neither answer seems likely to work without depriving the theory of some part of the advantages of divine command metaethics.

No doubt some conclusions about what he would not command follow logically or analytically from the concept of a loving God. He would not command us to practice cruelty for its own sake, for example. But in some cases, at least, in which we believe the act is wrong, it seems only contingent that a loving God does or would frown on increasing the happiness of other people by the painless and undetected killing of a person who wants to live but will almost certainly not live happily.6 Very diverse preferences about what things are to be treated as personal rights seem compatible with love and certainly with deity.[22]

Adams’ point is that “the essential features of a loving and omniscient creator would seem to underdetermine the creator’s preference.”[23] God is not required, by the facts of the world or by his own nature, to issue the exact commands he does. Of course there are some things a loving good God will not command, such as cruelty for it own sake but once these options are eliminated, there is still no one set of commands that a loving being in a world like ours must command. There are possible worlds like ours where a loving being would issue one set of commands and there are other possible worlds like ours in all other respects in which a loving being would issues other commands. Hence, if we ask what a perfectly good and loving being would endorse, no correct answer can be ascertained. As such, one cannot ground moral obligations in the notion of lovingness or goodness alone. One needs to ground these things in the commands of an actually existing, loving and omniscient being.

III Conclusion
My conclusion, then, is that Loftus’ critique fails. Loftus mistakenly construes defenders of divine command theories as claiming an epistemological dependence of goodness upon belief in God. It, in fact, claims that right and wrong ontologically depends upon God's commands. Loftus’ major objections fail as a result. He fails to show that the idea of a good God is incompatible with a divine command theory and he fails to show that God's commands are arbitrary. Finally his critique of Adams consists merely of a rhetorical question and ignores the responses actually made to this question by Thomas Carson and Robert Adams himself.

[19] William Wrainwright Religion and Morality.
[20] Craig “This Most Gruesome of Guests” 172.
[21] Plantinga “Naturalism, Theism, Obligation and Supervenience” 32.
[22]Robert Adams “Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief” 3

http://philosophy.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/Courses/ADAMS1phil1reading.pdf.
[23] Thomas Carson Value and The Good Life (Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 2000) 243. Carson defends the idea of under determination in more detail in his The Status of Morality (Dordrect: Reidel, 1984).

RELATED POSTS:
John W. Loftus on The Christian Illusion of Moral Superiority Part I

Thursday, 7 May 2009

John W. Loftus on The Christian Illusion of Moral Superiority Part I

Several Christian thinkers, most notably, C S Lewis, John Hare, Robert Adams and William Lane Craig have argued that Theism provides a superior foundation for moral obligation than Naturalism does. Most of these thinkers defend this notion by developing and defending a divine command theory.[1] John W Loftus is aware of this and in The Christian Illusion of Moral Superiority, he offers a refutation of divine command theory. I will argue that Loftus is mistaken; his arguments are based on a confusion between ontological and epistemological foundations.

I Avoiding Strawmen
Before turning to Loftus’ arguments, it is necessary to spell out exactly what a divine command theory of ethics is. It is the thesis that “an action or kind of action is right or wrong if and only if and because it is commanded or forbidden by God.”[2] two things are noteworthy about this definition.

1. What is a Divine Command Theory?
First, the thesis is limited to deontological properties. Philip Quinn defines deontological properties as follows, “I mean to refer to whether it has such properties as being morally permitted, being morally forbidden or prohibited, and being morally obligatory or required.”[3] Deontological properties are contrasted with axiological properties such as goodness and badness. Evans notes, “it does not appear that the concept of obligation is identical to the concept of what it is ‘good to do’ … It might be good, even saintly, for me to give a kidney to benefit a stranger, but it not an act I am obliged to do.”[4]

Despite frequently being portrayed this way in common critiques, divine command theories do not offer accounts of broader axiological properties. This is evident from the writings of those who defend such theories. Quinn, after defining deontological properties in the aforementioned way, affirms he is not offering a divine command theory of axiological properties. In this he is followed by Adams, Alston, Craig, Wierenga, Hare and Plantinga and, even to some extent, Thomas Carson. This is not something unique to modern divine command theories; older divine command theorists such as Paley, Locke, Berkley and Suarez typically limited divine command theories to accounts of deontological properties and not to broader axiological properties such as goodness in general.

The second point is to note is that the word “because” in English is ambiguous. When a divine command theorist claims that “an action or kind of action is right or wrong if and only if and because it is commanded or forbidden by God.”[5] The theorist could mean either, that one cannot know what is right and wrong unless one believes in divine commands; or that right and wrong cannot exist independently of Gods commands. The first claim states that beliefs about right and wrong are epistemologically dependent on beliefs about divine commands. The second is that the existence of moral properties, such as right and wrong, are ontologically dependent on God’s commands.

It is important to note that epistemological dependence and ontological dependence are not the same thing. Take a straightforward example of identity; the property of being water is identical with (or constituted by) the property of being H20. As such, H20 and water are not ontologically independent. Yet people for thousands of years could perceive water, drink it, detect it and use it without knowing anything about atomic theory. Hence, our knowledge of the existence water is not dependent on our knowledge of H20.

When divine command theorists state that an action or kind of action is right or wrong if and only if and because it is commanded or forbidden by God they are using “because” in an ontological sense. The locus classicus for contemporary defences of divine command theory is the work of Robert Adams who affirms that “ethical wrongness is [identical with] the property of being contrary to the commands of a loving God.”[6] Adams here states that the relationship between the property of being contrary to God's commands and wrongness is the ontological relationship of identity.

Elsewhere in the article he is explicit about this; he suggests that wrongness is identical with or constituted by being contrary to divine commands in the same way that water is constituted by (or identical with) H20. Other divine command theorists explicitly follow Adam's lead on this. Stephen Evans and William Alston both affirm that divine commands are constitutive of deontological properties and note Adams’ identity claim as a paradigm of the type of relationship he is defending.[7] Craig cites Alston [8] as the inspiration for his position and contends that “commands constitute our moral duties”[9] he explains that by this he means to make divine commands an ontological foundation, and in particular, the concept of “informative identity”[10] analogous to the way “we explain the nature of water by identifying it with H20 or explain the nature of heat by identifying it with molecular motion.”[11] Craig is explicit that he is not offering divine commands as an epistemological foundation, “It would, indeed, be arrogant and ignorant to claim that people cannot be good without belief in God. But that was not the question.”[12]Also, “My concern here is with moral ontology not moral epistemology ... to repeat, my concern is with an ontological foundation for morality, not with epistemological foundations.”[13]

The other leading defenders of divine command theory are equally clear that they are proposing a theory of the ontological and not the epistemological foundations of moral obligation. Quinn,[14] Weirenga,[15] Hare [16] and Plantinga[17] all offer accounts of the ontological foundations of deontological properties. Janine Marie Idziak notes that, historically, divine command theories were usually understood as ontological theories and not epistemological theories about how one knows what is right and wrong.[18]

2. John Loftus’ Mischaracterisation of Divine Command Theories
These observations lead into my main criticism of Loftus’ discussion. Loftus mistakenly understands divine command theories as signifying epistemological dependence. At the beginning of his article Loftus refers to the view that “[moral] standards are grounded in the commands of a good creator God, and these commands come from God’s very nature” and infers from this that “the Christian claims to have absolute and objective ethical standards for knowing right from wrong, which is something they claim atheists don’t have” ( emphasis mine) here Loftus suggests that the claim that right and wrong depend on God's commands is the claim that knowledge of right and wrong depends on belief in divine commands.

The same interpretation is seen elsewhere in his chapter when he defines a divine command theory Loftus states Morality is based upon what God commands. “No other reasons are needed but that God so commanded it. If God commanded it, then it is right. If God forbids it, then it is wrong.” and citing the Divine Command theory of William Lane Craig he states “Many Christians will maintain they have a superior foundation for knowing and for choosing to do what is good. They claim to have objective ethical standards for being good, based in a morally good creator God, and that the atheist has no ultimate justification for being moral.” Despite the fact that Craig and other divine command theorists have repeatedly stated they claim no such thing.

Another problem with Loftus’ characterisation is that in several places he suggests that divine command theories claim that axiological properties such as goodness depend on God's commands. He states, for example, that divine command theory entails that “God could’ve commanded something else, or even something contrary, or something horribly evil and simply declared it good” or that “If we think that the commands of God are good merely because he commands them, then his commands are….well….just his commands.” Examples could be multiplied; the problem is, as I have noted, divine command theorists typically do not offer their theories as foundations for axiological properties, they limit their theories to deontological properties.

These misconstruals undermine many of the criticisms Loftus makes. As I will show, many of his objections are based on a conflation between epistemology and ontology.

In my next post, John W. Loftus on The Christian Illusion of Moral Superiority Part II, I will address Loftus' arguments against a divine command theory, the emptiness of God is good and his arbitrariness objection.

[1] C S Lewis rejected a divine command theory; I believe, however, that Lewis' dismissal is based on unsound arguments and the divine command theory coheres better with his argument in Mere Christianity as I argued in my paper “God and the Moral Law in C. S. Lewis” Theological Perspectives on C S Lewis Conference Carey Baptist College, Auckland, 1 July 2008.
[2] W K Frankena Ethics 2nd edn (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973) 28.
[3] Phillip Quinn “An Argument for Divine Command Theory” in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy ed. Michael Beaty (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990) 291.
[4] C Stephen Evans Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) 16.
[5] Frankena Ethics 28.
[6] Robert Adams “Divine Command Meta-Ethics Modified Again” Journal of Religious Ethics 7:1 (1979) 76.
[7] William Alston “Some Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists” in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy ed. Michael Beaty (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990) 303-304.
[8] William Lane Craig “This Most Gruesome of Guests” eds Robert K Garcia and Nathan King Is Goodness Without God Good Enough? A Debate on Faith Secularism and Ethics (Lanhan: Rowan and Littlefield, 2009) 186.
[9] William Lane Craig “The Craig/Kurtz Debate: Is Goodness Without God Good Enough” Eds Robert K Garcia and Nathan King Is Goodness Without God Good Enough? A Debate on Faith Secularism and Ethics (Lanhan: Rowan and Littlefield, 2009) 30.
[10] Mark C Murphy "Theism, Atheism and the Explanation of Moral Value” eds Robert K Garcia and Nathan King Is Goodness Without God Good Enough? A Debate on Faith Secularism and Ethics (Lanhan: Rowan and Littlefield, 2009) 127.
[11] Ibid.
[12] William Lane Craig “The Indefensibility of Theistic Meta-Ethical Foundations for Morality” Foundations 5 (1997) 9.
[13] Craig “This Most Gruesome of Guests” 168.
[14] Ibid, 293.
[15] Edward Weirenga The Nature of God: An Inquiry into the Divine Attributes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989) 215-27. See also “Utilitarianism and the Divine Command Theory” American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984) 311-318; and “A Defensible Divine Command Theory” Nous 17 (1983) 387-408.
[16] John Hare God's Call: Moral Realism, God's Commands and Human Autonomy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001) 49.
[17] Alvin Plantinga “Naturalism, Theism, Obligation and Supervenience”
www.ammonius.org/assets/pdfs/plantinga.pdf.
[18] Janine Maree Idziak “In Search of Good Positive Reasons for an Ethics of Divine Commands: A Catalogue of Arguments,” Faith and Philosophy 6:1 (1989) 60.

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John W. Loftus on The Christian Illusion of Moral Superiority Part II

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