The Moral Argument for Theism

[_EAllusion]

There are no shortage of philosophers of religion who will defend a moral argument for the existence of God. What I was asserting was that divine command theory is rare in metaethical theory - on par with moral relativism - and therefore rhetorically framing it as some evident, established position atheists struggle to find an alternative to is dubious. What William Lane Craig or Paul Copan thinks about metaethics is about as representative of that field as what Stephen Meyer thinks about evolution is of evolutionary biology.

[_CaliforniaKid]

But it seems kind of ridiculous to me to talk about moral prescriptions as if they are universal things

Very common

that exist in some reified form.

Uncommon.

Here's a moral fact, if I ever saw one: Societies throughout history have prescribed a wide range of different behaviors, and the particular behaviors prescribed have depended in large measure on the environmental and social circumstances.

There mere existence of moral disagreement no more argues against universal moral facts than differences of opinion in cosmology or any other subject we normally consider factual demonstrate lack of a consistent, universal truth. People are imperfect in nonidentical ways in their apprehension of facts; hence disagreement.

That what the right thing to do varies a across circumstance isn't a problem for moral universalism so long as the statement is true for all agents in the same set of circumstances. Nobody thinks the morality of pushing you is the same if I want to throw you into the mud or if I want to get you out of the way of a speeding bus.

[_EAllusion]

Aw heck. I accidentally edited your post rather than quote it Cal. I'm very sorry. I'll attempt to retrieve it.

[_MrStakhanovite]

By "he" I mean Dr. People's.

Okay, that comment was directed at Kevin, and what I had in mind is the concept of a God with a human body, living on a planet somewhere in this universe.

When I speak of what is natural, I’m speaking of things that are subject to physical laws. By non-natural, I speak of abstract things that don’t exist in spatiotemporally and have no causal interaction with what is natural, like universals for instance. When I speak of what is supernatural, what I have in mind is entities that are not subject to physical laws, but can causally interact with what is natural.

Now some badly needed qualifications…

I take naturalism to be a worldview that gives a great deal of ground to scientific thinking. A conservative naturalist would be something like physicalism, where everything can be reduced to some physical law or what have you. A liberal naturalist would be someone who leaves room for some non-natural entities that can be studied, like sets, properties, possible worlds, what have you. Since these non-natural entities don’t interact with the universe, empirical sciences don’t have much to say on them.

Supernaturalism would be a worldview that there exists some kind of force or agent that is or can be transcendent from the universe, but can enter into the immanent to alter or interact with it.

To illustrate what I mean by supernaturalism, take the brain in a vat scenario. The brain stuck in a vat is receiving data from a computer that is creating a simulated world that is, for all intents and purposes, real for whoever is experiencing them. To the person within the simulated world, they experience oak trees just like those in the actual world, but when they talk about oak trees, they are speaking only about simulated trees, not trees in the actual world.

So the supernatural is like the scientists programming events into the simulated world of the brain stuck in a vat. Now, you can call my understanding of the supernatural just plain old natural per your definition, just some higher order of reality that acts ‘according to some coherent, internal nature’, I’d be fine with that.

[_CaliforniaKid]

EA,

I wasn't referring to moral "disagreement" due to misapprehension so much as moral difference under different conditions: differently structured "games" and different preferred outcomes call for different strategies. I guess it could be a "fact" that "if you desire X outcome under Y circumstances, you should always do Z because Z is the most effective strategy". But that's rather more conditional and less metaphysical than what springs to mind when I hear the phrase "universal moral fact," especially in the context of Dr. People's blog where moral facts are assumed to be non-natural.

Peace,

-Chris

[_MrStakhanovite]

EA,

I wasn't referring to moral "disagreement" due to misapprehension so much as moral difference under different conditions: differently structured "games" and different preferred outcomes call for different strategies. I guess it could be a "fact" that "if you desire X outcome under Y circumstances, you should always do Z because Z is the most effective strategy". But that's rather more conditional and less metaphysical than what springs to mind when I hear the phrase "universal moral fact," especially in the context of Dr. People's blog where moral facts are assumed to be non-natural.

Peace,

-Chris

Yes, that is an accurate observation. The moral argument for theism is about the ontology of moral facts and if they are real or not, but a lot of people construe the argument as something more epistemological, like how we come to know what is moral or not.

[_CaliforniaKid]

Yes, that is an accurate observation. The moral argument for theism is about the ontology of moral facts and if they are real or not, but a lot of people construe the argument as something more epistemological, like how we come to know what is moral or not.

What would it even mean for a "fact" to be "real"? Would a statement be "real" if it was predictively true? Namely, "If you desire X outcome under Y circumstances, you should always do Z because Z is the most effective strategy"?

Or are moral realists committed to some kind of realist theory of language, where moral propositions exist metaphysically as Aristotelian universals or Platonic forms? If so, why would any modern philosopher take such nonsense seriously?

[_MrStakhanovite]

What would it even mean for a "fact" to be "real"?

You’ve sort of hit on another layer of the onion here, but it all depends on what someone’s theory of truth is. Thankfully, the Correspondence view dominates and will make this easier.

A general understanding is that a proposition is true if it corresponds with a state of affairs in a mind independent reality. The proposition “Chris is crossing main street” is true (or a fact, if you like) if Chris is actually crossing main street.

Would a statement be "real" if it was predictively true?

You’ve hit another layer, dealing with tense logic and metaphysical theories of time! To use myself as an example, I affirm modern physics and adhere to a B-theory of time, which makes me a determinist.

So when I use the predict, I typically mean it as we humans just don’t know the outcome, but if the prediction turns out to be correct, then that prediction was always true. For others who hold an A-theory of time (William Lane Craig for example), a prediction isn’t true or false until the event it was predicting actualizes.

Or are moral realists committed to some kind of realist theory of language, where moral propositions exist metaphysically as Aristotelian universals or Platonic forms? If so, why would any modern philosopher take such nonsense seriously?

They can be, but it isn’t required. Take for example this proposition:

“ It is objectively wrong to torture infants for the express purposes of pleasure.”

A moral realist would say, this statement is either true or false. If it has a truth value to it, then it must correspond with something to make it true, but what? An anti-realist would say that statement doesn’t have any truth value to it.

I’m oversimplifying a bit, but that is the jist of it.

[_EAllusion]

Sorry again Cal.

As long as a moral statement is true for all people in the exact same conditions, then moral facts are universal. When people think about trying to understand what qualities moral statements have, the vast majority of philosophers would agree that the seem to try to express universally applicable things. When I say, "X is wrong" I mean "X is wrong for all people and should be viewed by all people similarly." X can have all sorts of qualifiers and conditionals, but the basic expression is universal.

Moral statements are factual if they express propositions and at least one of those propositions is true. You know they are true if they reference some state of affairs that is the case or not. Moral naturalists think those moral statements are referent of some state of affairs that are natural. For instance, I think "goodness" and "badness" is referent of desire fulfillment and thwarting and moral language is a particular kind of language for talking about that in a collective context. Desires are mental states, which are natural things.

What you are expressing is a form of contractarianism that has gained popularity recently. Most of its adherents are anti-realists. They don't think moral statements are strictly true or false, but rather talk about non-propositional mental states.

What Dr. People's is getting at is moral statements seem to have built into them oughtness. They tell you that you are obligated to act that way. But where does the property of obligation come from? Some anti-realists think the oughtness moral statements carry is just a way for a person to express their personal preference for others to behave a certain way. That's what I got from your post. I think oughtness is a way of saying, "If you cared about being moral, and I think you do, then this is the correct course of action." This likely does not satisfy Dr. People's, but divine command doesn't solve this problem in the way he wants either.

[_CaliforniaKid]

Hmm... Well, I tend to think of morality primarily in terms of strategy rather than obligation, though obligation is part of it. Simply put, the best strategy for achieving generally-shared ends is to establish and follow a set of cooperative social obligations that maximize the likelihood of success for the largest number of people.

Under this model, I wouldn't quite be willing to say anything is "wrong" for all people, because while nearly everyone can be assumed to share certain objectives (particularly lasting happiness), it's possible that there will be exceptions. And if someone doesn't share those objectives, then their incentives will be structured differently. For example, someone's highest goal might be to kill someone and be killed by the police, in which case cooperation is not their best strategy. What we ordinarily think of as "morality" would have little or no meaning for such a person, just as it has little or no meaning for animals who aren't capable of participating in a contractarian social structure.

So I guess I'd be an anti-realist, if realism means morality must be conceived as a set of obligations that exists independently of one's objectives.