11/20/2025

 

11/20/2025

[Philosophy Club every Tuesday at 5:00pm in CAS 436 ("The Cave")]

[Challenge for today: Try to think of (and possibly ask) at least one question.]

 

Is there anything you think God would not command?

Suppose I ask you why it would be wrong to kick a puppy.

You answer that it would needlessly cause the puppy pain.

I respond, “So?”

There is something wrong with someone who doesn’t understand that needlessly causing pain is bad.

(Would it still be wrong to kick puppies if God doesn’t exist?)

 

Now suppose someone makes the following argument:

1.          Experiences of pain are subjective.

2.          If anything is subjective, then it can’t be objectively wrong to cause it.

3.          Therefore, it can’t be objectively wrong to cause pain.

 

Premise 1 is (largely) true.

Premise 2 is false, or at least unsupported by any convincing argument.

 

I say premise 1 is LARGELY true, because whether or not, and how much, someone is pain is a matter of FACT (not mere opinion or belief). Experiences of pain are real. The physical causes/correlates/bases of pain are OBJECTIVE.

 

So, kicking puppies can be objectively bad.

 

This can easily fit in with a religious or theistic ethics.

 

Biblical literalist creationism holds that God created animals by simply willing them into existence (special creation).  But theistic evolutionists hold both that God created organic life and that organic life came about by evolution. (The choice “God or evolution” is not a forced option.)

 

Similarly, it is possible to hold that morality derives from properties such as the positive and negative qualities of experience, fulfillment or frustration of goals, etc. and also that all of these factors were created/intended by God. God has designed creatures to have affective states with positive and negative qualities.

 

The downside to this (if it is a downside) is that this view is seemingly equivalent to a purely naturalistic ethics.

 

But we still haven’t explained how real obligations can be possible on a naturalistic ethics.

 

Empiricism holds that all concepts ultimately derive from experience, and knowledge consists either of matching experiences to concepts (synthetic or a posteriori) or unpacking what is already contained in concepts (analytic or a priori).

 

But objective obligations can’t be known in either way. Therefore, obligations are only subjective (they FEEL binding). They can’t actually BE objectively binding.

 

 

Kant’s solution is to reject the view that all concepts derive from experience.

 

There are certain innate forms of thought (‘Categories’) that provide a priori structure for experiences.

Included in these categories is the concept of necessity.

This makes it possible to THINK of necessity without observing it in things, actions, or events.

More things are thinkable than are KNOWABLE, including both causal and moral necessity, God, the soul, and immortality.

 

(Few people today accept Kant’s theory of categories. This leaves naturalism with the problem of accounting for moral obligations.

 

But it isn’t clear that theism helps. Why are we obligated to obey God’s commands? Because he commands that we do?)

 

For Kant, God’s existence can’t be known through experience, or inference. (Cosmological, teleological and ontological proofs are all impossible.)

 

BUT:

 

God’s existence must be presupposed IF one is to think of a morally just world.

 

Roughly:

1. If there is no God, then many things happen that are unjust.

2. It is intolerable to accept that many things happen that are unjust.

3. Therefore, it is intolerable to accept that there is no God.

 

 

George Mavrodes “Queerness” argument:

 

Russellian benefit: A benefit that one can experience in a world where there is no afterlife.

 

1. If there is no God, then the only benefits that exist are Russellian.

2. If the only benefits that exist are Russellian, then people are sometimes morally obligated to act in ways that confer no benefits.

3. It is weird to accept that one can be obligated to act in ways that confer no benefits (morality is ‘queer’).

4. If there is no God, then morality is queer.

5. If there is a God, then morality is less queer.

6. Therefore, theism provides a less queer account of morality than naturalism (theism is more ‘intellectually satisfying’).

 

Mavrodes’ argument bears similarity to Kant’s and James’.

 

James could claim that the choice between a world where final justice exists and a world where it does not is a genuine option (for some). This is undecidable on evidential grounds and is therefore decidable on passional grounds.

 

Neither Mavrodes nor James would say they offer a ‘moral proof’ of God (it is more of a defense).

Some think Kant’s argument is intended to be a proof (my own view is that it isn’t).

 

Some proponents of the argument from objective morality present it as more of a defense, while others (e.g., Craig) treat it more as a proof.

 

 

Kant said, “I have found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.”

 

Next Tuesday I want to look a bit into the question, “What, exactly, is faith?”