Tuesday 2/5

Tuesday 2/5

Moral Theology I: Divine Command Theory (a)

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Synopsis

Today we finished our discussion of Simple Ethical Subjectivism by considering in more detail the novelty of Hume's approach. Specifically, Hume invites us to ask, on what grounds could a moral judgment be true (or false, as the case may be)?

While a full discussion of the nature of truth is far beyond the scope of this course, we can at least get a handle on different kinds of truths. Recall from class (and also in the handout Ethical Objectivism) the possible kinds of truth conditions:

1. Objective Truth Conditions

a. A Priori --> Moral Rationalism--i.e., moral judgments are truths of reason.v

b. A Posteriori --> Moral Realism--i.e., moral judgments are truths of fact.

2. Subjective Truth Conditions --> SES--i.e., moral judgments are truths of subjective experience.

But there is yet another possibility. It could be that there simply are no truth conditions on ethical statements.

3. No Truth Conditions --> ?

In an important sense, philosophers who hold that ethical statements have no truth conditions are really holding that there is no point to studying ethics. When we argue over abortion, for example, we are not saying anything that can be either true or false. Philosophers call the thesis that there are no truth conditions on ethical statements "Emotivism" (EMO, for short.)

Now, we have rejected (2), since we have rejected SES. The truth conditions on moral judgments cannot be subjective. But rejecting (2) still leaves two possibilities. Either the truth conditions on moral judgments are objective--as in (1)--or there simply are no truth conditions on moral judgments--as in (3)--so that moral judgments are not properly judgments at all. We can put this into an argument.

  1. Either truth conditions on moral judgments are objective or truth conditions on moral judgments are subjective or there are no truth conditions on moral judgments.
  2. If truth conditions on moral judgments are subjective, then SES is true.
  3. SES is not true.
  4. Therefore, it is not the case that truth conditions on moral judgments are subjective. (2&3)
  5. Therefore, either truth conditions on moral judgments are objective or there are no truth conditions on moral judgments. (1&4)
  6. If truth conditions on moral judgments are objective, then it is possible to show that some moral beliefs are true and others are false.
  7. It is not possible to show that some moral beliefs are true and others are false.
  8. Therefore, it is not the case that truth conditions on moral judgments are objective. (6&7)
  9. Therefore, there are no truth conditions on moral judgments (5&8)

The argument is valid in the sense that its premises entail its conclusion and, so far as I can tell, it has all true premises with the single possible exception of premise (7). Thus the conclusion is true if premise (7) is true.

Let us suppose, just for the sake of argument, that (7) is true. Then what would ethics be like? Making a moral judgment could no longer be counted as saying something which is true or false. Instead, moral judgments like 'lying is morally wrong', which have the same grammatical form as 'grass is green', would not be a judgment at all. So what could it be? We have lots of examples of sentences that do not have truth conditions: "What time is it?", "Go Islanders!", "Sit down!", etc. Perhaps moral judgments are not statements--even though they resemble statements--but are, rather, verbalizations of emotion. EMO claims that statements like 'abortion is morally wrong' and 'keeping your promises is morally right' are the speakers expressions of emotion. What the speaker says is 'abortion is morally wrong', but the only way we can understand this is as if the speaker had said 'boo abortion'. Similarly, when the speaker says 'keeping your promises is morally right', we must understand the speaker as saying the equivalent of 'yeah, promise-keeping!'.

EMO may sound like an odd theory, if we can call it a theory, but a number of philosophers have taken it very seriously. EMO presents the most serious skeptical challenge to ethical discourse and debate possible. It even has an interesting argument in its favor (in the form of the above argument.)

The key, then is whether or not it is possible to show that some moral beliefs are true and others are false.

I think there is a way to respond to the Emotivists' challenge.

According to Plato, ethics is about how we ought to live our lives. Ethics is about all the decisions we make day-to-day in choosing what we believe to be the best course of action. What, in other words, is the right thing to do in a given situation?

Now, ask yourself this question: What is it that differentiates a human being from, say, a goose? It seems to me that although the goose may have some rudimentary reasoning abilities, it is mostly under the control of instinctual processes about which it has no input.

A human being is, presumably, different. Our most basic assumption about ourselves--an assumption which has certainly not been proven true, by the way-is that we are not under the control of instinctual processes like the goose or the lemming. Rather, we make decisions for ourselves. We reason about what is best to do; we reason about what is the right thing to do. But the very possibility of reasoning about what is right or wrong presupposes that EMO, and with it premise 7 in the above argument, is false. If 7 is true, and EMO is true, then we cannot reason about our actions, in much the same way that the goose cannot reason about its actions. I find this implication intolerable. Although I think there is less light between goose and human behavior than most people would be comfortable admitting, I also think that there is a difference - a difference which contradicts EMO.

Having explored and dismissed the skeptical challenges to the possibility of studying ethics represented by Culture Ethical Relativism, Simple Ethical Subjectivism, and (now) Emotivism, we next turned to the one firm bedrock ethics traditionally has been thought to enjoy. That is, thus far we have discussed two theories which adopt the fundamental assumption that there is no universal moral truth. There are instead at most relative moral truths. The first, Cultural Ethical Relativism, did poorly against our Standards. The second, Simple Ethical Subjectivism, did better, but we still ended up rejecting it as a possibly true theory. Of course, morality could still turn out to be relative in some way or other, but the prospects aren't good. So if there is universal moral truth, how do we establish it? What could justify universal moral truths?

Ethics is traditionally thought to be the province of religion. If we want to understand what is morally right or morally wrong, we need only consult one or more sacred texts or take up the matter with a privileged religious leader whose job it is to make moral pronouncements. Let us call this view moral theology. Only by invoking God's authority can we make sense of universal moral truth. Thus moral theology is popularly viewed as the only alternative to moral relativism.

We will consider two ethical theories that emerge from moral theology. The first, Divine Command Theory, supposes that morality is dependent on God's will. An action is morally obligatory just in case it was commanded by God. An action is morally wrong just in case it was forbidden by God. And, presumably, an action is otherwise morally permissible.

DCT is especially interesting because a great many of the people in the world believe something like DCT, even if they have never explicitly formulated it as we have. So it seems important to find out whether or not DCT has a chance of being true. We turn to that problem next time.

Today we spelled out the principles of DCT and discussed how we might discern what God commands, forbids, or permits as the case may be. We then discussed a Standard of Clarity challenge to the theory about the nature of God typically assumed by proponents of the theory: The Traditional Problem of Evil. We had time to lay out the problem, but we didn't have time to discuss it, so we'll begin there next Tuesday.

This Thursday we take the first of three in-class examinations. Topics will include:

  1. Moral Dilemmas,
  2. Basic Logic Terminology,
  3. Standards of Evaluation,
  4. Cultural Ethical Relativism,
  5. Simple Ethical Subjectivism,
  6. Ethical Objectivism and Emotivism

Note that you need to understand the arguments we gave for and against each theory, which of course requires also knowing our Standards of Evaluation. Count on taking the entire class time for the examination, and please be sure to get to class on time.

Note also that none of our discussion today of moral theology appears on this examination.