The Moral Argument
The moral argument is a popular argument in favor of theism and against atheism and it has 2 premises:
P1: Moral realism can only be true if some form of theism is true.
P2: Moral realism is true
C: Thus, some form of theism is true and by extension atheism is false.
Like most arguments, theists and atheists tend to debate the soundness of this argument by talking about whether or not the premises of the argument are likely to be true. I tend to think that the argument has a fundamental problem which makes the argument a kind of red herring even if the argument was sound and all the premises of the argument happen to be true.
The reason why I would regard this argument as a kind of red herring is because I don’t see how any reasonable person could be persuaded to think that theism is more plausible after accepting any additional premise of the argument. For example, suppose you have an atheist who accepts P2 but rejects P1 until a particular theist philosopher persuades him that P1 is true. Well, the atheist philosopher presumably has a reason for believing that P2 is true. If he does not have a reason for believing that P2 is true then he shouldn’t really be too confident in the truthfulness of P2 since it would seem more reasonable to have a mere leaning towards thinking that P2 is true if you have not a single decent argument to support P2. In that case, the atheist shouldn’t really change his stance on the theism/atheism debate because his arguments against theism are probably more convincing to him than his arguments in favor of moral realism. Thus, it would be more reasonable for him to just reject moral realism to maintain a consistent belief system as he really wasn’t strongly convinced about the truthfulness of moral realism in the first place.
But, let’s suppose that the atheist does have a sophisticated reason or argument for why he believes in moral realism and we shall refer to this hypothetical strong reason to believe in moral realism as Reason X. Presumably, the atheist believes that Reason X shows that P2 is true despite the fact that Reason X doesn’t require theism to be true. Given this, Reason X seems to be in conflict with P1. If Reason X is a good reason to accept P2, then we have pretty good reason to doubt P1 because Reason X doesn’t require any form of theism to be true. Thus, it would imply that you don’t need theism to be true for moral realism to be true. Similarly, if we know that P1 is definitely true then that seems to give us a good reason to doubt that Reason X could be used to effectively defend P2 because any reason used to defend P2 must appeal to theism being true if P1 is true.
The defenders of the moral argument might argue in response that the argument wasn’t designed for atheists but rather for theists that are starting to doubt theism. Unfortunately, this argument would do nothing to convince a reasonable theist to have more confidence that theism is true. This is because P1 implies that theism must be true or else you should reject P2. Thus, if a theist thinks that it’s obvious that P2 is true then he would seemingly either just be begging the question against his growing doubts about theism by implying that P2 is obviously true because theism is obviously true or he would have to appeal to secular reasoning for accepting P2 which would seemingly either undermine P1 or get undermined by P1.
I hope this argument was reasonably easy to follow but feel free to ask questions and I always appreciate comments and critiques of the argument.
P1: Moral realism can only be true if some form of theism is true.
P2: Moral realism is true
C: Thus, some form of theism is true and by extension atheism is false.
Like most arguments, theists and atheists tend to debate the soundness of this argument by talking about whether or not the premises of the argument are likely to be true. I tend to think that the argument has a fundamental problem which makes the argument a kind of red herring even if the argument was sound and all the premises of the argument happen to be true.
The reason why I would regard this argument as a kind of red herring is because I don’t see how any reasonable person could be persuaded to think that theism is more plausible after accepting any additional premise of the argument. For example, suppose you have an atheist who accepts P2 but rejects P1 until a particular theist philosopher persuades him that P1 is true. Well, the atheist philosopher presumably has a reason for believing that P2 is true. If he does not have a reason for believing that P2 is true then he shouldn’t really be too confident in the truthfulness of P2 since it would seem more reasonable to have a mere leaning towards thinking that P2 is true if you have not a single decent argument to support P2. In that case, the atheist shouldn’t really change his stance on the theism/atheism debate because his arguments against theism are probably more convincing to him than his arguments in favor of moral realism. Thus, it would be more reasonable for him to just reject moral realism to maintain a consistent belief system as he really wasn’t strongly convinced about the truthfulness of moral realism in the first place.
But, let’s suppose that the atheist does have a sophisticated reason or argument for why he believes in moral realism and we shall refer to this hypothetical strong reason to believe in moral realism as Reason X. Presumably, the atheist believes that Reason X shows that P2 is true despite the fact that Reason X doesn’t require theism to be true. Given this, Reason X seems to be in conflict with P1. If Reason X is a good reason to accept P2, then we have pretty good reason to doubt P1 because Reason X doesn’t require any form of theism to be true. Thus, it would imply that you don’t need theism to be true for moral realism to be true. Similarly, if we know that P1 is definitely true then that seems to give us a good reason to doubt that Reason X could be used to effectively defend P2 because any reason used to defend P2 must appeal to theism being true if P1 is true.
The defenders of the moral argument might argue in response that the argument wasn’t designed for atheists but rather for theists that are starting to doubt theism. Unfortunately, this argument would do nothing to convince a reasonable theist to have more confidence that theism is true. This is because P1 implies that theism must be true or else you should reject P2. Thus, if a theist thinks that it’s obvious that P2 is true then he would seemingly either just be begging the question against his growing doubts about theism by implying that P2 is obviously true because theism is obviously true or he would have to appeal to secular reasoning for accepting P2 which would seemingly either undermine P1 or get undermined by P1.
I hope this argument was reasonably easy to follow but feel free to ask questions and I always appreciate comments and critiques of the argument.
Comments (34)
Given that the moral argument for god completely depends on god as an authority on morals which, as it turns out above, is untenable, we have no choice but to reject premise P1.
I mostly agree with your analysis but...
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
It may be more reasonable to reject moral realism, but I don't think it's about reason for most people. They feel like and assume moral realism must be true.... and so presumably if they already hold that belief, they are susceptible to P1.
I don’t know if I would say that the moral argument even depends on God existing. You could imagine a godless form of theism that believes that there are supernatural forces that make moral realism true and that without these supernatural forces we would have no reason to think that murder is wrong. Of course, many theists might also argue that if God commanded people to murder then murder would be right and they just don’t see this as an arbitrary form of morality like the way that atheists typically do. Theists might think it’s more arbitrary to base morality of an abstract concept with seemingly no authority like the concept of maximizing happiness for sentient creatures.
The Kalam Cosmological Argument:
P1: Everything that isn’t infinite must have a cause
P2: The Universe isn’t infinite
C: Therefore, the universe must have a cause
Let’s say someone accepts P2 because they reject the existence of actual infinities and they point to various thought experiments to illuminate their intuitions. P1 does not conflict with the reasons that they have for accepting P2 and neither premise of the argument implies that the other premise is less likely to be true than the conclusion that the argument is trying to provide evidence for. In contrast, P1 in the moral argument implies that the conclusion of the argument is more likely to be true than P2 of the argument. This kinda just brings up the question about what the whole point of the argument is supposed to be if one premise of the argument just handicaps the reasons your intended audience had for accepting the other premise of the argument.
I agree that the argument can be persuasive to some people. But, my point is that no atheist would be persuaded by this argument for the right reasons. Atheists should realize that if they have no good reason to accept moral realism then they shouldn’t be too devoted to defending this position as they can only justify believing that moral realism is slightly more likely to be true on raw intuition alone.
"...that are supernatural forces that make moral realism true..." is just a variation on the theme of divine morality. You're deferring moral authority to a being, god or "...supernatural forces..." rather than some set of moral principles that are true independent of such "forces".
In my humble opinion, the moral argument for god is critically dependent on god's authority on moral matters and this not in the sense that god knows moral truths, truths which we too can, in principle, know but that good is what god commands.
Otherwise, the moral argument wouldn't make sense, right?
If god refers to a set of moral doctrines like judges refer to the constitution before god issues commands of a moral nature, then god becomes redundant to the moral cause and the moral argument is blown clean out of the water.
I would say that it’s a fair critique that theists who use the moral argument think that morality has to grounded in something concrete rather than a set of abstract principles. Though, that concrete entity could be anything supernatural rather than something that necessarily has intelligence like a god. I can understand that many atheists find that way of thinking about morality counterintuitive and I find it counterintuitive as well. Nonetheless, I don’t really have an argument to give to a theist of why it makes more sense to ground morality within a set of abstract moral principles rather than a concrete entity like a god or a spiritual force.
Yes, I agree that it would be more reasonable, but I don't think there is a moral obligation that they should. Because it's not merely about defending an abstract philosophical position, it is their whole way of relating to the world that is at stake here. One shouldn't underestimate the importance moral convictions play in the human psyche, in the words of Nietzsche :
"It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of—namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown."
Well, if I were to offer an option it would have to do with the intuition that actions can't be moral just because god commands it. There's a reflexive resistance to the notion of god's commands being good no matter what the commands are and that points to a vague idea, in the depths of our psyche, that morality must be based on, as you said, "...abstract principles..." Nevertheless, you're right, there's a conspicuous absence of arguments in favor of basing morality on "...abstract principles..." unless, of course, you put stock in Euthyphro's dilemma and what that points to in terms of our gut feelings on the matter.
Deductive arguments, especially simple ones, are all subject to this seeming challenge: if you had good reasons to accept all the premises, then you should have accepted the conclusion at the same time. Conversely, if you had good reasons to reject the conclusion, you must have had good reasons to reject at least some of the premises (or if you didn't, then you will surely find them when your more certain commitments are threatened).
Abstracting from the specifics, let's consider a general case:
P1
P2
C
You say, in the first place, that if you didn't have good reasons to accept P2, but seemed to have good reasons to reject C, then it should be easy for you to dump P2 when ¬C is threatened. On the other hand, if you had good reasons to both accept P2 and reject C, that can only mean that you have good reasons to reject P1. Note that I didn't even say anything about what the premises and the conclusion were, and yet I came to the same conclusions that you did.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
You are right in that the premises in the Moral argument are more tightly linked than in the Cosmological argument. P1 in the Cosmological argument makes a a general statement that happens to include P2, whereas P1 in the Moral argument makes a statement specifically about P2. But this is a difference in degree, not kind. The three propositions in a syllogism are like communicating vessels: if you apply pressure to one, it is immediately transmitted to the other two.
The fact is that when such arguments succeed, they don't succeed in stages. It is not like you are first persuaded to accept the premises, and then - oh dear, I guess I have no choice but to accept the conclusion, like it or not! No, if the argument succeeds, then by the time you are ready to accept the premises, you are just as ready to accept the conclusion. That is because the logical connection between the premises and the conclusion is so transparent that you cannot help but be aware of it, even as you consider one proposition at a time.
This is an assumption, not a proof. In fact, I've argued elsewhere that this is actually impossible. Any time you start with an unproven statement, it is open to these kinds of attacks. I don't think the cosmological argument is any better.
There is a way, HedoMinimalist, to make this "work": It would require a serious reconstrual of theism, not a popular frivolous one. It can be reasonably argued that religion's essence lies in material foundation from whence it springs, which is the moral dimension of existence. It is questions like, why are we born to suffer and die? and, what is the nature of the ethical good and bad? as opposed to contingent good and bad, as in, "My what a good couch" where in the goodness can be discussed, issues from context. Ethical good and bad (see Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics. He is right on this) turns to metaethical good and bad: the badness and goodness that issues directly from the pains and joys of Being. This latter, W says, cannot be discussed, metavalue cannot be discussed, for the rub lies in the nature of language and logic's delimitations. But this is the source of a defensible moral realism and it is, as well, the authentic basis of religion.
Well, it’s possible for one to simply fail to see the connection between the premises and how they necessarily lead to the conclusion. Sometimes, seeing that connection may just give them reason to reject one of the premises of the argument but sometimes someone may reasonably just accept the conclusion. The problem with the moral argument is that seeing the connection between P1 and P2 implies that P2 can only be defended by reasons that assume C. Thus, it seems no reasonable philosopher could just accept C after acknowledging the connection between the premises. I don’t think that’s necessarily true for other arguments.
Quoting SophistiCat
Not necessarily, there are plenty of atheists that might have some arguments against theism but they don’t have any arguments or reasons for rejecting P1 or P2 of any given theistic argument. For example, I don’t have an argument for any of the premises of the Kalam Cosmological argument but I’m just not necessarily convinced the premises of the argument are true either and I have arguments against the existence of specific kinds of gods like the Judeo-Christian god. Of course, it’s unlikely that I would become a theist if accepted the Kalam argument but it would make think that theism is more plausible. The conflict between the reasons supporting P1 and having secular reasons for supporting P2 is what I think makes the moral argument inferior to the other arguments for theism. Other arguments for theism might not be immediately persuasive because an atheist might have other reasons for being an atheist but they can at the very least make the atheist view theism as a more plausible viewpoint. I don’t see how the moral argument can make a reasonable atheist see theism as any more plausible than it was before.
Quoting SophistiCat
I would disagree, if you just reject P1 because you disagree with the conclusion of the argument then I think you would just be begging the question that the conclusion is wrong. If a particular philosopher doesn’t have good reasons to accept P1 and doesn’t have an argument against P1 then the argument should still give that philosopher slightly more confidence that C is true but he obviously wouldn’t have to think that C being true is more probable than C being false. This is because he isn’t entirely convinced by P1 yet.
Quoting SophistiCat
But do all syllogism have this problem to an equal extent? My whole point is that the moral argument is especially vulnerable to these conflicts and thus it should be regarded as inferior to other theistic argument.
Well, you can’t prove that any philosophical claim is true. The best you can do is provide additional evidence for that claim. The reasons for supporting any philosophical conclusion require some assumptions on the deepest level of analysis and those assumptions are usually just defended with raw intuition. Hence why there is so much disagreement in philosophy.
Well, the atheist could simply pretend that moral realism is true to make themselves feel better. I pretend to believe something that I don’t actually believe all the time to make myself feel better and this doesn’t really require me to actually be deluded. For example, I sometimes pretend that I was sexually intimate with a particular woman even if I actually wasn’t ever sexually intimate with that particular woman. I also sometimes pretend that I have singing skills that I don’t actually have. I think it’s instrumentally rational to make yourself believe some things for a temporary period of time to make yourself feel better and it doesn’t actually require you to sacrifice your epistemic rationality. On another note, the atheist could also just believe for emotional reasons that P1 of the moral argument is false and so there’s no reason to prefer accepting P2 and the conclusion of the argument for emotional reasons over accepting P2 and then rejecting P1 of the argument and thus also rejecting the conclusion of the argument.
The argument that you are presenting is not the moral argument that I am referring to. Of course, you might choose to refer to your argument as the moral argument as well but my thread is discussing the particular argument that is frequently made for theism and I wasn’t trying to suggest that all arguments for theism fail.
That's what I think a lot of atheist do to some extend, i.e. P1 is false because there is some other nebulous non-specified reason why moral realism is true. And that probably works ok until you actively try to find that reason, and find out that it isn't that easy. It think it would be harder to knowingly hold contradicting beliefs, because generally we dislike cognitive dissonance.
Edit: That's what Kant tried to do, if not God then morality flows straight out of pure reason.
I guess I don't understand this. The whole idea here rests with theism, but it is not open to a discussion to what this can meaningfully be about? Doesn't this trivialize the argument down to a simple logical play?
That is certainly true with more complex arguments (or else mathematics would start and end with setting out axioms).
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Or the other way around, depending on which of the premises moves you most. Those who reject moral realism, especially former theists, sometimes associate it with theism, thereby acknowledging P1. But yes, if you already accept one of the two premises, acceptance of the other premise will go in lockstep with accepting the conclusion. Not saying that this cannot happen, but it's really a two-step process, not three.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
I would agree that the argument, as presented in the OP, is weaker than others. It is a structural weakness. I actually mislabeled it as a syllogism above; a classical syllogism includes a general proposition (major premise) together with a specific proposition (minor premise), while this argument has just two minor premises.
Well, let me ask you a question. Why do theist always seem to think that the existence of a god or a supernatural force gives them reason to think that moral realism is true? I personally don’t understand how grounding morality in a concrete entity is necessarily more intuitive than grounding morality in some abstract concept. I actually believe that some forms of theism are pretty plausible but I’m not a moral realist so I just don’t understand how theistic moral realism is any more plausible than atheistic moral realism.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Well, I don’t think one should necessarily think of this as holding contradictory beliefs but rather as temporarily suspending judgement and pretending to believe something for an instrumental benefit. For example, when there’s music playing inside of a movie, you don’t think about where the music is coming from or how the music is made. You just let the music move you as you watch the movie scene. Similarly, maybe people can just stop thinking about where morality comes from or how morality came about and just enjoy moral pursuits simply because it gives psychological satisfaction like the movie soundtrack does.
Well, the anti-realist version of this argument seems much more sturdy to me. It goes something like this:
P1: Moral realism is false if theism is false.
P2: Theism is false.
C: Therefore, moral realism is false
In this argument, P1 does not imply that the conclusion of the argument is more likely to be true than P2. This means that the reasons that an atheistic moral realist has for rejecting theism doesn’t require them to believe that moral anti-realism is true ahead of time. This means that if they are convinced by P1, then they have a pretty good reason to reject their moral realism. In contrast, P1 of the moral argument implies that you must accept the conclusion of the argument before you can accept P2. This means that the reasons that an atheistic moral realist has to accept moral realism are only sound if they appeal to the truthfulness of theism ahead of time. Thus, it’s not clear why any atheistic moral realist would have more reason to reject their atheism than the reasons they would have to reject their moral realism if they accepted P1 of the moral argument. It seems like they would much more rational to abandon their moral realism given P1 of the moral argument
Well, maybe I was too quick to limit this discussion to just the argument that I had originally intended to discuss. Let me ask you some questions about your views on this topic....
Quoting Constance
Are you implying that one cannot talk about questions like the question of why are we born to suffer and die if we don’t hold theistic views? That’s my best guess as to what this passage that you wrote would be implying so I’d like to know if I’m understanding your point correctly here.
Quoting Constance
You seem to be implying that morality stems from pleasure and pain. Doesn’t this assume a hedonic view of morality? Should we just exclude talking about non-hedonic foundations for morality?
Quoting Constance
What are you referring to when you speak of metavalue? Are you talking about the debate surrounding value realism and value anti-realism? It’s seems like plenty of philosophers have discussed that sort of metavalue in the numerous philosophy journals that I have read on this topic. I don’t see how that requires theism or how that is even remotely related to theism
Because theism allows for a purposeful being having created the universe. And if you have that, you have meaning from the start, fused into the descriptive, because a purposeful being presumably creates something with a purpose. An objective, a 'true' morality can directly flow from what 'is'. And that is the important part for moral realism, not the label or idea, but the fact that it can be derived from the descriptive, that it can be true (and the same for everybody).
The problem for the atheist moral realist is that we came to be by non-teleological processes, physical mechanical processes and evolution. If no meaning can be found in the universe itself, we are the ones that bring it into the world, that create it. Grounding it in some abstract concept just pushes the problem one step further, there's no way of verifying or proving whether we should accept that abstract principle as a basis for morality.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Yeah I'm not saying it can't be done, just that we tend to want to avoid cognitive dissonance. Forgetting about the whole idea of grounding morality, would be another way of avoiding it. I will say that pretending to believe something for instrumental benefit, is maybe easier said than done, because typically moral ideas hang together in a complex of ideas about identity, meaning and the like. Hanging your whole raison d'etre on suspension of disbelief seems rather fragile... then again a lot of people seem to do exactly that, so maybe it works.
Well, let me ask you another question. Why does the whole universe have to be created for a particular purpose in order for us to have meaning from the start? After all, if one’s biological parents have created them for a particular purpose such as the purpose of making the aforementioned parents happier, then why wouldn’t this kind of purpose give the same sort of meaning as the meaning that would be granted by a purpose that started from the beginning of the universe? How is a meaning-granting purpose that occurs on a cosmological level more important than a purpose that might occur at a more local level like the level of the purpose that your parents had for creating you? Of course, just as one might reasonably reject the purpose that one’s parents had for creating them, couldn’t one reasonably reject the purpose that a divine entity had for them? Does a belief in a divine entity actually strongly imply that you should just go along with any purpose that they might have for you regardless of how arbitrary that purpose might seem to be?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Couldn’t you have descriptive statements about abstract concepts as well though. For example, I think one could reasonably argue that “it is” the case that suffering is harms people and “it is” the case that we have moral reasons to avoid causing harm to people unless it would prevent more harm or provide enough benefit to justify the harm. It’s still not clear to me why morality has to be grounded in something that is concrete when it seems like the abstract can be just as factual and just as descriptive and “real” as concrete phenomena.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
On a macro level, that may be the case but your parents might have had very clear teleological reasons for deciding to conceive you nonetheless. For example, they might have wanted to conceive you in order to have an heir to an antique shop that they worked hard to establish. Nonetheless, the fact that one might have been conceived for the purpose of becoming a future antique shop owner does not imply that one has any reason to actually take over one’s family’s antique business once they pass away much less have a moral obligation to do so. So, why does one have more moral reason to follow a purpose given to them by a divine entity than a purpose given to them by their biological parents if your biological parents are also responsible for your creation and they also may have teleological reasons for creating you.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
That seems to be the key assumption made by most existentialist philosophers and I tend to disagree with that assumption. One could also believe that meaning is derived from a certain kind of abstract understanding like the understanding that suffering harms people and the understanding that harming people is bad. One could also believe that meaning is derived from the intentions that their parents had for conceiving them. This view is pretty unpopular in Western cultures but it has a decent acceptance in Asian Neo-Confucian cultures like China, Japan, and Korea. Ancestor worship is still a pretty big thing in many cultures and many people say that they derive meaning from that as well even though their ancestor worship does not require them to believe that their ancestors were actually supernatural in any way or were responsible for creating the universe.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Well, it’s impossible to verify and prove anything even well established scientific theories cannot be proven. It’s also impossible to prove that we can ground morality in a god or a spiritual force(even if such entities exist.). I can always just question why I should care what some god thinks or why I should care about what purpose the universe has or why I should regard the purpose that the universe has for my species as more important than the purpose I have created for myself. So, I don’t understand how this shows that morality predicated on abstract principles is less plausible.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
First let me say, I'm not a theist and not necessarily committed to the idea that it is all that convincing. I can see some reasons though why it would be convincing, and this is not a matter of black or white either, but more a matter of degree to which it would be convincing.
Your parents may have a purpose in mind, but as a matter of fact they don't have that much agency in how the creation will go, other than making it possible. Parents are also essentially equal to you when you grow up and when the question of meaning starts to become relevant. God is different in that he, having attributes like ominipotence and omniscience, has a lot more agency over his creation... and probably more important, he is on an entirely different level compared to human beings. It's easier to accept something from a being infinitely more powerful than you than from a being that is equally flawed as you. And then you also have heaven and hell if all of this wouldn't be enough...
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
The idea that harming people is bad is not an understanding or something we 'discover', but a valuation is the problem. There is no basis for the ought in the descriptive. And people do disagree about this, not necessarily avout harming people being bad by itself, but more whether that should be the only criterium for morality.... I don't see how you could objectively settle such a disagreement.
But to be clear I don't have a particular problem with it not being grounded either, so maybe i'm not the best person to answer that question.
The idea of ancestor worship is interesting, haven't put much thought into it, but the general consensus among historians is that this was the basis for most religions, right? I wouldn't know exactly why it wasn't enough anymore at some point...
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
The epistemic difference is that God is per definition outside of the universe and so unprovable and unverifiable. There is nothing that can even in principle shed light on it, so it's a matter of believing in him or not... faith. For other things we typically would expect some kind of evidence because they are within the empirical realm.
And you should care because God is awesome and powerful, and you go to hell suffering for all eternity if you don't... Other than that I agree with you.
Well, I don’t think that God’s power would be relevant here as being powerful has nothing to do with holding the objectively correct moral opinions. I also don’t think that omniscience is possible as I don’t see how God could know for sure that he really knows everything or what it would actually mean for God to know that he knows everything for sure. Nonetheless, God can be pretty smart and knowledgeable. The fact that God may be much smarter than us does seem to matter as that would make it more likely that he holds the correct moral opinions. Though, he wouldn’t really be responsible for making moral realism true through his power then. Rather, he would just happen to have a very well-educated belief that moral realism is true and moral realism would actually be grounded in something abstract. One might think that God could use his omnipotence to make moral realism true but I think that would be as absurd as God being able to create a stone so big that he cannot lift it. Presumably, God’s omnipotence is still bound by logic and he cannot do what is logically impossible. Given that moral realism is an abstract theory, it’s not clear how having more power could alter its truth status. It seems to me that moral realism is either necessarily true or necessarily false and it cannot be contingent on the existence of God just like a simple mathematical claim like “2+2=5” cannot have its truth status altered with omnipotence.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Do we really need to discover something for it to be a kind of understanding? It seems like we have plenty of things that we understand that no one has discovered per se. For example, I can have an understanding of various philosophical theories and philosophical movements even if these things were constructed rather than discovered. I can also have an understanding of characteristics and motives of fictional characters. I can also have an understanding of how to read sheet music and so on.
Also, why not think that ought statements are just another type of descriptive statements? Are they not describing something like the nature of oughtness? If it just seems weird to think that harming people is bad can be descriptive then it’s worth pointing out that there are a lot of weird types of descriptive statements that do not seem to predicated on anything obviously concrete. For example, in music theory, you will likely be taught that the key of C Major doesn’t have any sharp or flat notes. This seems to be a descriptive statement but it’s obviously predicated on a purely abstract understanding. If that statement about music theory can be descriptive then it’s not clear why normative statements can’t just be considered as another type of a descriptive statement.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Yes and religious people also disagree about what God thinks is morally right and wrong as well. 2 Christians might disagree about whether or not the Christian God condemns suicide or abortion. 2 Muslims might disagree about whether or not the Muslim God condemns women driving or walking the streets without their husbands and so on. Unless God could come from the sky and settle all the moral disagreements among religious people, it seems like they have the same problem when it comes to settling moral disagreements in any meaningful way.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
If there’s nothing that can shed light about the existence of God then why are there so many arguments made by theists in favor of God’s existence like The Kalam Cosmological Argument and The Fine Tuning argument? Those arguments seem to provide evidence for God’s existence even if they don’t prove it outright. I would still call that shedding a light on the issue of God’s existence. It seems to me like a lot of theists believe in God because they think it’s the most plausible worldview. At least that would be the most charitable way of thinking about theism. I also have come up with some arguments against the existence of a God that is eternal, omnipresent, and omniscient as I think those aforementioned features seem to be logically impossible.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Regarding the issue of hell, that would only give me prudential reasons to obey God but it wouldn’t entail that moral realism is true because God exists. I do think that I have normative reasons to improve my own welfare but I wouldn’t go as far as calling myself a moral realist because I’m not convinced that I have reason to avoid harming others if there’s no conceivable way that harming others would make me worse off. I don’t think I would consider my ethical egoism as a moral theory per se. I think only prudential normative reasons seems to exist objectively. Though, realistically I do think that being a kind person and having a good moral reputation is beneficial to you like 99% of the time.
It seems rather strange to me that you would make a distinction between Gods idea of morality and objectively correct moral opinions. God having created the universe with a purpose is the reason we would have moral realism in the first place. Wouldn't Gods idea just be what is objectively correct then? To what other objective standard would we be evaluating Gods idea of morality then?
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
I didn't want to imply that you need to discover something to be able to understand it. My point was just that I think there needs to be some value-judgement at base of moral judgments which isn't found or discovered, but that we bring to it or create... because of certain affects we have. Understanding is certainly possible in that you can derive all kinds of logical ramifications from these value judgments. Even the value judgement themselves can be subject to logical analysis and empirical testing, but there is still some affect we have to bring to it that isn't found or discovered i'd say.
I don't quite understand how it can make sense to say that normative statements are another type of descriptive statements, considering that distinction presumably was made precisely to separate those different kinds of statements. Wouldn't that then just collapse the whole distinction, and we'd left with just 'statements'... if normative statements are another type of descriptive statements then there would be no need for the distinction, right? I mean, sure, I'm open to the idea that there is some fundamental problem with the distinction from the start, but I'm not sure where that would lead us.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Yeah I think all those efforts are misguided, my maybe too simple take on it is that concerning God you either have faith or you don't.... because it's outside of the realm of empirical verification. And I think empirical verification is the only way to knowledge. Logic on its own cannot yield new knowledge, you need some data to test your theories to.
Take the fine tuning argument for instance. We have no access to another set of universes to compare our universe to, and so we just don't know what a typical universe would look like or what the likelihood of certain parameters being a certain value would be. It all seems purely speculative if you lack any data.
People did and do try to prove or provide evidence for it, but that is mostly for rhetorical purposes it seems to me.... to convince people or post hoc rationalization of something already believed.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Normative reasons are not objective I'd say. Even the most apparently evident and basic principles, like say "harm to myself is bad", already implies some value judgement. Take sports as an example, you literally damage the cells in your muscles in the process of sporting and you feel pain, yet most people would say that sport is good for you. So either you would have to conclude that not all harm is bad for you, or you would have to define harm in such a way that it doesn't include physical damage and pain from sports. And if you do define it in such a way, you have to already make the value-judgement in deciding what constitutes harm and what doesn't. I don't see how you get around this.
I forgot this one...
I mostly agree with you here, that in practice it does have some of the same problems... but you do have revelation, and popes and imams. Disagreements are more a matter of difference in interpretation of an objective morality, an imperfect understanding, than a lack of objective morality.
This reasoning is tailored after Christian theism. But there are other theisms apart from Christianity (and other Abrahamic religions), for example in Hinduism. In those other theisms, atheism is conceived of differently than in Christianity, and the requirements put forward in favor of theism are different.
In discussions of God and atheism, why give supremacy to Christianity, as if it would have monopoly over theism and all things related to it?
As I have stated earlier, I’m not sure why a universe created with a purpose could change the truth status of something abstract like the truth status of moral realism. The way I see it is if creating something really big like the universe with a purpose can make moral realism true then why couldn’t creating something small with a purpose like another human being wouldn’t make moral realism true at all. Even if creating a human being isn’t as grandiose, you would think that it could make moral realism true if creating the universe with a purpose would, only that morality just wouldn’t matter as much as it would if God created the universe with a purpose. Though, I tend to think that a parent creating a child with a purpose creates zero meaning and it doesn’t make moral realism true at all. If a parent creating a child with a purpose creates zero meaning, then God creating the universe with a purpose would also give us zero meaning. This is because God creating the universe is just a much larger scale version of a parent creating a child. I don’t think it matters how much larger the scale of these sorts of acts are. Mathematically speaking, a larger number multiplied by zero is still zero. So, it’s not clear to me how you could create meaning and make moral realism true with any amount of power.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Well, if moral realism is false then we couldn’t evaluate God’s morality objectively. It’s possible that a smart God would recognize that his morality is only subjective but he may still care about it as it may just be something he likes to dictate for fun.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Yes, my whole point is that the descriptive/normative distinction just seems arbitrary. The so-called “descriptive statements” in that distinction just refer to statements that describe everything besides things related to value and oughtness. Why should you only single out descriptions regarding value and oughtness from the definition of a descriptive statement? That would be like if I decided to make a distinction between descriptive statements and psychological statements where descriptive statements describe everything except things related to the human mind and psychological statements describe the human mind. I don’t understand how a claim can be non-descriptive. All claims seem to be describing something. I think it would make more sense to have sub-categories of descriptive claims rather than trying to claim that some claims are not descriptive.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Well, it seems to me like the implication of your viewpoint here is that knowledge is impossible. This is because everything is outside the realm of empirical verification. Even if you test your theories, you cannot verify that those theories are true. For example, suppose that I have a theory that water will freeze at -20 degrees Celsius. I test this theory by putting water at -20 degrees Celsius and I notice that it appears to have frozen. By doing this experiment, I have only provided additional evidence to my theory that water will freeze at -20 degrees Celsius. I haven’t verified that my theory is true. This is because there are plenty of alternative explanations for why the water appeared to have been frozen after I put it under -20 degrees Celsius temperature. For example, there could be a secret intergalactic society of wizards that are actually the ones responsible for freezing all the water in the universe that will be seen by humans once it reaches 0 degrees Celsius. In reality, water stored in much colder temperatures like -20 degrees Celsius will still remain a liquid without the interference of this wizard society. Sometimes, the wizards will decide to keep some water stored at 20 degrees Celsius unfrozen if they know that it won’t be seen by humans for sure.
You can never empirically verify that this alternative theory about the wizards that I have proposed is false and thus you can never empirically verify that water freezes at -20 degrees Celsius. If you reject the wizard theory because you believe that the wizard theory is just ridiculous, then you aren’t using empirical evidence to determine that the wizard theory is wrong. Rather, you are simply relying on your intuition. You might make some interesting non-empirical arguments against the wizard theory though. You might argue that it would strange for someone to have a motivation to elicit a false belief onto humans about the freezing of water. Why would the wizards want to do such a thing exactly? It seems like it’s more likely that water just freezes on its own because of that. The argument above is not an empirical argument though but it doesn’t strike me that this argument should just be dismissed for being non-empirical.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Yes, but some forms of speculation are better than others. For example, all financial investment is predicated on speculation. Nonetheless, some people are better investors than others because they are better at speculating about the future. Of course, it’s hard to know for sure which forms of speculation happen to be best but we can make educated guesses about that.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Well, I wouldn’t say that “harm to myself is bad” is the most evident normative principle. Rather, I would say that the most evident normative claim is the claim about the existence of hedonic reactions. These hedonic reactions are typically provoked by stimuli from the outside world and they feel unambiguously and undeniably good or bad. Hedonic reactions that feel unambiguously and undeniably good are what we usually call pleasure while hedonic reactions that are the opposite of that are what we usually call suffering. If suffering can be said to exist objectively then reactions to stimuli from the outside world that feel unambiguously and undeniably bad can be said exist objectively. Otherwise, it’s not clear what we are talking about when we speak of suffering. How else would you define suffering? It’s seems to me that the existence of suffering itself implies the existence of objective value judgements about the way that you might be feeling at times. If you are suffering then you are compelled to make a value judgement that the stimuli that caused the suffering contains a bad aspect to it. Though, this doesn’t mean that the stimuli is bad overall as that stimuli may cause pleasure in the future or the prevention or alleviation of future suffering. This is why you can think that playing sports is usually good overall. Nonetheless, if playing a sport cause some suffering then it’s pretty intuitive to think that the sport in question has some bad aspect to it as well. As an analogy, you can think about a dress that is mostly green but contains a red outline as well. We would normally just say that this is a green dress because that’s the primary color of the dress but technically the dress also has some red in it. Similarly, we would normally say that playing sports is good because we think it’s mostly good but it does have some objectively bad aspects to it nonetheless.
Parents don't 'create you' like they directly create a tool with a purpose. They only make it possible by having sex. For the rest they don't have any agency over how you will turn out, that is largely predefined by evolution. Furthermore the purpose they have in mind wouldn't be objective to begin with, it's just an idea they have.
God not only creates us, but the whole universe with a purpose. That's what would make things objective, the fact that the outside world is not inherently meaningless, but part of the grand plan. Being moral is not only a matter of upholding a convention we created, without the rest of the universe caring if we are moral or not, God is watching you and there will be a judgment day and you will go to hell or heaven... it presumably has material consequences outside of man-made ways we invent to enforce morality.
Anyway I'm not saying I buy any of this either, but at least I can see how the idea of moral realism could make sense in such a universe.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
I'm not sure how to respond to this, it seems evident to me that a claim like "You ought to x" is different from a claim like "there's a wall over there". The wall is there no matter your particular opinion on the matter, and the world settles the issue in that no matter what you believe you cannot walk through it. People can and do have different ideas about what you ought to do. Oughtness is not something that can directly be observed in the world, which is what description means it seems to me.
Maybe you could say that it is objectively true that person X values X and person Y values Y, i.e. that person X valuing X is a description of his beliefs.... a description of an individual persons beliefs which are part of the 'objective' world. But even if we forget about distinctions like subjective/objective and normative/descriptive, it is still the case that there is a plurality of beliefs concerning what we ought to do, that cannot be settled by pointing at some state of affairs in the world. And ultimately that is the issue, no matter the labels we would want to slab on it.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Yeah I already regret using the word verification there. I didn't mean to refer to some sophisticated theory of knowledge. I also don't think certainty is possible or something we should aim for. What I do believe is that data about the world renders some theories more plausible than others. If you don't have any data, you don't have a way to assign probabilities... everything is possible.
The intergalactic wizard is I think actually a good example of why this doesn't really work. For you to sensibly infer something from the thought experiment, you already have to assume the wizards are a certain kind of being with certain kinds of motivations... you bring your knowledge of sentient beings motivations to the thought experiment. We don't know what kind of beings they are or what motivations they would have, unless we assume it and bring the knowledge we have of sentient beings to it.
And I'd say we don't think water freezes because of intergalactic wizards, not because it wouldn't make sense for them to have those motivations, but because we have never seen intergalactic wizards and so have no reason to assume they exist.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Financial speculation is not the kind of speculation I was talking about. Even if financial investments are uncertain, we do have some data and so there is something we can use to begin sensibly assigning probabilities.
Quoting TheHedoMinimalist
Subjective or objective is a matter of perspective. We would call the same thing subjective from a first person perspective and objective from a third person perspective. It's a bit of a flawed distinction.
But again, what we are really after is whether there is one and the same morality for everybody, like there is that wall for everybody. And that doesn't seem to be the case for suffering (from which we would derive that morality) because it very much depends on the person and what they individually believe. One person may for instance suffer because he wanted to be a successful musician and failed, because he identified so much with it. While another person may not care at all because he didn't identify with it. I don't agree suffering directly and unambiguously flows from hedonic reactions or pain, there definitely seem to be a mental and belief components to it. Pain and suffering are not the same, nor directly reducible to/derivable from each other it seems to me.
That is also why we don't particularly care about mild pain from sports or think that kind of damage to muscles is bad. In fact, it is precisely because your muscles get damaged that they get stronger. If we were to say that sport is good overall, but that particular part is objectively bad, we would want to avoid that particular part because it is bad... but we can't because it is that supposedly objectively bad part that is directly related to what makes it good.
I think parents could create you like a tool with a purpose if they could alter your genes with technology which will likely be a real possibility in the future.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Wouldn’t the purpose that a hypothetical God would have for creating the universe also just be an idea that he has?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
I don’t think many theists care that God creates the whole universe for a purpose. For example, suppose that the universe wasn’t created by God but God only created the human race for a purpose. Wouldn’t most theists derive just as much meaning from that? Why couldn’t this also be used to ground morality? Why does it have to be the whole universe that must be created for a purpose?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
What exactly counts as “the outside world” though? Couldn’t the phrase “the outside world” refer to just the planet Earth or the galaxy or maybe even something larger than the universe like a multiverse. It’s not clear to me why the demarcation of moral significance should be at the level of the universe and not some other level of analysis.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Yes but what objective normative reason do I have to care about God’s judgement day and to care about going to Heaven or Hell? Doesn’t this require me to have objective normative reasons to increase the amount of pleasure that I experience and reduce the amount of suffering that I experience? If so, do I really need God to exist to have those kinds of objective normative reasons? If I don’t need God to exist to have objective reasons to avoid eternal torment then wouldn’t this imply that some limited form of ethical egoism could be objectively true without there being God that created the universe with a purpose? In addition, I must add that the punishments that are involved in Hell wouldn’t seem to give me any selfless reason to obey God’s morality. So, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to reject ethical egoism if God exists.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Yes and people have different ideas regarding just about everything. Scientists studying observable phenomena also sometimes can’t settle their disagreements. In addition, there are plenty of ought claims that have pretty much never been disputed. For example, almost no one in history has disputed the claim that one ought to cause themselves to experience suffering for no apparent reason. In contrast, scientists often strongly disagree on topics involving what causes certain illnesses or whether or not aliens exist and so on.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Well, the human mind cannot be directly observed in the world either but aren’t claims about human psychology also descriptive?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Yes but those intergalactic wizards in my theory are supposed to be good at hiding from humans or else those humans might find out about how they have been freezing water all this time. In addition, you have stated earlier that whether or not we believe in God is merely a matter of faith. If I have never seen God then wouldn’t I have as much reason to reject his existence as I would the existence of intergalactic wizards whose existence is also inaccessible to our empirical methods?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Well yes, there’s some assumptions made in my theory that I cannot defend but this is true of all theories and beliefs that one can hold. Even a very simple belief like the belief that your bed exists requires you to make some assumptions. It requires you to assume that your senses can give you accurate information about the existence of everyday objects. You have to assume that your perception of your bed tells you something about it’s objective existence and that you are not just hallucinating when you think that you see and feel your bed. So, I don’t see how we can escape having assumptions in our theories.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
But, couldn’t you also say that we have data in the form of our personal experiences of pleasure and suffering that inform us about normative matters and wouldn’t this allow us to assign probabilities to at least some normative claims? How exactly should we define data here?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Yes, but couldn’t we say that there are objective facts about subjective experiences such that they can at least occasionally inform us regarding what is the objectively correct course of action to take? For example, suppose that you have to escape your home country and you either have to move to Denmark or to North Korea. Let’s say that you reasonably believe that you would have more pleasure and less suffering if you chose to live in Denmark then if you lived in North Korea and you agree with me that those are the only welfare considerations that you need to take into account. Given this, wouldn’t deciding to live in Denmark be the objectively correct decision to make here given your circumstances?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Well, I don’t think very many people care about normative reasons in general being universal for everybody. For example, I’m perfectly cool with the idea that it might be more rational for me to make certain decisions in life that might be irrational for you to make. For example, I think it would be pretty rational for me to refuse chemotherapy treatment if I get cancer under almost any circumstance. This is because I’ve received data from my everyday experiences of life that behoove me to make a hypothesis that the suffering involved in chemotherapy will feel so objectively bad that I’m better off depriving myself of future pleasure and allowing myself to die. You might be receiving different data from your everyday experiences and you might have an equally reasonable hypothesis that the suffering caused by chemotherapy will be worth it for you. Both of us could have chosen the objectively correct decision option given our circumstances even if we chose the opposite decision options. What I think matters in this discussion regarding realism about ought claims is that there are sometimes objectively right and wrong decisions that we can make in our life. It doesn’t really have to be the same for everyone. I agree with you that people typically care about “morality” being somewhat universal and I also agree with you that moral realism is false. But, you also said that you think that normative realism is false and this is where I disagree with you.
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Well, I agree with you about the difference between pain and suffering. There is indeed a mental component to suffering but I don’t see how this implies that my understanding that suffering is an unambiguously and undeniably bad experience is flawed in any way. If you are mentally provoked to experience a feeling that just obviously feels bad to you, wouldn’t it make sense to call that feeling unambiguously and undeniably bad? Wouldn’t it also just makes sense to say that this feeling is bad objectively or bad in some important or “real” manner?
Quoting ChatteringMonkey
Ok, I was wrong to assume that the pain in sports would always cause you to suffer. You could make the case that sports do not always have a bad aspect to them as they don’t always cause you to suffer even if they cause pain. Though, I don’t think that the personal suffering that I get from exercising is matter of me having a negative opinion about the pain of exercising. Rather, I think that the stimuli involved in exercising provokes me to suffer even if it doesn’t always make others suffer. It might even be possible to condition my mind in a such a way that I no longer suffer while exercising and this might even change the objective truth status of the claim that it would be good for me exercise. I don’t think that normative realism implies that the rationality of various decision options cannot change with changing circumstances surrounding the provocation of suffering by a particular stimuli. You can also have objective normative reasons perhaps to condition yourself towards having certain reactions towards stimuli as well. For example, I could have objectively normative reasons to try to train my mind to not react negatively to exercise.
Moral realism follows when this argument is considered in relation to the Anthropic Principle. From the general idea that "scientific observation of the universe would not be possible if the laws of the universe had been incompatible with the development of sentient life" it can be argued that the universe is moral; in that a moral sense is necessary to the survival of sentient life, fostered in organisms evolving in relation to a causal reality.
Consequently, theism is not necessary to moral realism. Nietzsche was wrong. Nihilism is a mistake that occurs as a consequence of failing to understand that morality is a sense, and not an objective set of God given rules, disproven by undermining religion with science. Rather, religion is an expression of the innate moral sense, and no-one knows if God exists or not.