Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Sorry for the late reply; I've had a busy couple days. Thanks for the through response!
You're right, of course, that if morality had some basis more authoritative than God, then God would be a mere "middle man" and would not be necessary to the determination of moral truths. But I don't agree that "it would still be wrong to kill even if God said it was right, or that God wouldn't/couldn't say killing is right because he had a reason for saying killing is wrong." I believe God's nature is the source of goodness; you can't appeal to some standard of goodness higher than God. But it also isn't true to say that God could arbitrarily change good to evil or vice versa; God--being perfect--has no reason to change his nature, and--being omnipotent--his nature can't be changed by anything else. An actions is "good" insofar as it conforms to the immutable will of God.Your "witchcraft" example conflates a factual dispute for a moral dispute: science can tell us whether or not the village witch is guilty of destroying the crops (a factual question), but it can't tell us whether or not people who destroy crops deserve to be punished (a moral question). I think you acknowledge this, since you agree that science can't derive an "ought" from an "is."
Reason can justify an "ought" statement, but only by presupposing a condition: "you ought to exercise if you want to be healthy; you ought to punish criminals if you want to deter crime" etc. So I don't think your examples work:
Plenty of powerful people can say, with a high degree of confidence, that they will*not* be killed tomorrow by a bigger man or a larger mob. Genghis Khan killed and pillaged to his heart's content, and he lived well into his sixties and, by most accounts, died by falling off his horse and/or contracting an illness. Meanwhile, plenty of moral people end up getting killed or pillaged *in spite of* always behaving as if killing and pillaging are wrong. If morality has no better basis than this sort of social-contract-theory, then the Genghis Khans of the world have no use for it.Earlier, you (correctly) pointed out that, if God is a middle man between humans and morality, we can just skip God and go straight to morality. But your own view of morality seems to treat it as a "middle man" for rational self-interest. If Genghis Khan says, "Why don't I skip the morality, and go straight for my own rational self-interest (i.e. killing and pillaging with impunity, because I enjoy it and I'm powerful enough to get away with it)?", how could you dissuade him?
Similarly, while I agree humans generally have evolved a "moral intuition," I don't agree with you that it's "universal." Psychopaths seem to be lacking the moral compunctions that are innate in ordinary humans. And while plenty of psychopaths end up dead or in prison, intelligent and capable psychopaths often become wildly successful. It seems like, above a certain level of intelligence, psychopathy is a very useful trait (which might explain why it hasn't been selected out of existence). So, if you can't appeal to Genghis Khan's moral intuitions, because he wasn't born with them--and if you can't appeal to his rational or game-theoretic self-interest--how do you convince him not to kill and pillage?
The only way I can think of is to convince him that killing and pillaging are not desirable because they are not good. And we know they are not good, because God is good and God is opposed to killing and pillaging. If Genghis Khan continues to kill and pillage, his life will be unfulfilling because he has not followed what is good, and after his death he will be punished by God for disobeying his will.
Now, you may not believe these things, and Genghis Khan may not believe them either. In that case, we're no better off than we would be under your system. But we're no worse off, either. And, at the margins, there are some rare instances where religious appeals appear to have moved otherwise implacable pillagers and conquerors; we'll never know what Pope Leo said during his meeting with Attila the Hun, but we do know the latter subsequently called off the invasion of Rome.
But my arguments about the religious basis of moral truths are, obviously, less relevant to moral non-realists like you than to, say, atheists who still believe in objective morality, like a lot of utilitarians (Scott Alexander's Utilitarian FAQ, for example, never actually explains why anyone should assign value to other people; this seems like it's kind of the entire crux of utilitarianism, but Scott brushes it off as a "basic moral intuition" (section 3.1)). If you're willing to bite the bullet that morality is just a spook, then you have no reason to be troubled by materialism's failure to establish an objective basis for morality. But you also don't have much room to criticize people who are convinced of objective morality, if their convictions turn them away from a materialism that's inadequate to justify moral truths.
More options
Context Copy link