Notes for 11/18/2025
11/18/2025
[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.]
Do you think people with strong religious convictions are more likely to behave morally than people without such convictions?
What relation, if any, exists between morality and religion?
Answers vary from “you can’t have one without the other” to “none to speak of.”
Here is an influential version of the former (from William Craig):
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. It is false that objective moral values do not exist (objective moral values do exist).
3. Therefore, God exists.
Or alternatively:
1. If God does not exist, moral values are completely subjective.
2. Moral values are not completely subjective.
3. Therefore, God exists.
Most people (or at least ethicists) accept the 2nd premise.
Why think the 1st premise is true?
There are two versions of defense for Premise 1.
(A) God is the only possible basis for objective morality.
(B) God is the most compelling basis for objective morality.
Apologists often blur these together or shift from A to B when pressed. But the same question besets both:
Exactly how does God provide a basis for objective morality? Why is objective morality a problem if there is no God?
Objective: True or existing independently of what anyone wants, feels, believes, or hopes.
Subjective: True only relative to feelings or existing only as a property of one’s “interior” experience (what can be known only from a 1st-person point of view).
Or:
Assume the correspondence view of truth: A representation R is true if and only if R accurately represents the way things really are (W).
R is objectively true if and only if W is found outside everyone’s subjective experience.
R is subjectively true if and only if W is found only within someone’s subjective experience.
“Take any action allowed to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but it is the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it.” (David Hume)
If the moral properties of actions are objective, that means they have to be found “out there” in the world. But they aren’t which (seemingly) means they are subjective.
A similar argument seems to be behind Craig’s moral argument.
The only thing that could make morality objective is something that happens completely outside anyone’s interior experience.
“By ‘objective’ I mean valid and binding independently of whether anybody believes in it or not.” (W. Craig)
But also, whatever that is has to account for the OBLIGATORY character of moral directives.
(What Kant calls an “imperative” = moral necessity = a moral command.)
Some theists (including Craig) therefore think some form of Divine Command Theory (DCT) must be right: God establishes morality by commanding (and forbidding) actions.
Euthyphro problem: If what is right derives only from authority, then what guides the authority?
If x is only right because God commands it, then why does God command x and not y?
(Is morality arbitrary?)
Could God have made y right instead of x?
... I am far
from holding to the opinion of those who maintain that there are no rules of
goodness and perfection in the nature of things or in the ideas which God has
of them and who say that the works of God are good only for the formal reason
that God has made them. ...[W]hen we say that things are not good by any rule
of excellence but solely by the will of God, we unknowingly destroy, I think,
all the love of God and all his glory. For why praise him for what he has done if he would be equally praiseworthy in doing exactly the
opposite? Where will his justice and wisdom be found if nothing is left
but a certain despotic power, if will takes the place of reason, and if,
according to the definition of tyrants, that which is pleasing to the most
powerful is by that very fact just? Besides it seems that every act of will
implies some reason for willing [PSR] and that this reason naturally precedes
the act of will itself. (G.W. Leibniz)
Craig’s definition of ‘objective’ is ‘valid and binding independently of whether anybody believes in it or not.’
Does ‘anybody’ include God?
Is x valid and binding because God believes/commands it, or does God believe/command it because it is valid and binding?
If the former, it seems morality would not be objective given Craig’s definition.
But if the latter, it seems his DCT is incomplete (I won’t say wrong, for reasons to cover later).
Dependence thesis: Morality depends on God.
(In rejecting DCT, we don’t necessarily reject the dependence thesis, but an account is still owed.)
The dependence thesis seems an instance of this broader principle:
Action A has moral quality M if and only if A relates to God in way W.
Let’s come back to this.
Here are two other theses often associated with religious ethics:
Motivation thesis: Moral behavior requires belief in God (as motivation to behave morally) (Does this presuppose a reward/punishment model for moral motivation?)
Moral epistemology thesis: Religious doctrines are the only/best way to gain knowledge about morality.
Let’s start with the epistemology thesis.
How, exactly, does religion provide content for moral beliefs?
- Texts?
- Experiences?
- Upbringing?
What are the criteria of validation for religion-based moral beliefs? (How would one know that they are true?)
Are the justifications for these claims found only inside the tradition or are they ever found outside the religion? Exclusively or inclusively?
What determines the superiority of religious values (assuming there are values exclusive to the religion)?
The epistemology thesis is problematic because it runs up against the following principle:
S is justified in believing P2 on the basis of P1 only if S is justified in believing P1.
So:
S is justified in holding moral belief M on the basis of religious belief R only if S is justified in believing R.
This takes us into familiar territory, and especially the question of whether people can be equally justified in holding different religious beliefs.
The epistemology thesis is also problematic because it runs into the following questions:
a) If multiple interpretations of a religious text are possible that support different alternative moral viewpoints, how are such differences to be resolved?
b) How should ethical decisions be made where religious texts offer no clear guidance?
Most religious ethicists either reject the motivation thesis or hold only a weakened version of it. (Religious beliefs provide better motivation for moral behavior than non-religious beliefs.)
Empirical research is mixed here, but at best religious beliefs appear to provide only weak motivation for moral behavior.
Many people find these results very surprising, which is interesting in itself.
The motivation thesis is often associated with the concept of fear of punishment or desire for reward. (Egoistic or “carrot and stick” model of motivation (psychological egoism).)
It is possible, however, to reject egoistic views of motivation, including in religious ethics.
This takes us back to the dependency thesis.
If objective morality depends on God, how?
And why CAN’T objective morality depend on something other than God?
I want to make a connection here to a problem in Hume:
For Hume, all truths divide into only two sorts: Those learned from experience (a posteriori), and those true by analysis (by virtue of the meanings of concepts) (a priori).
Famously, this creates a problem for judgments of causal necessity (a necessary connection between cause and effect can’t be known either by experience or by analysis).
Suppose someone argued as follows:
1. If God does not exist, there is no causal necessity.
2. There is causal necessity.
3. Therefore, God exists.
Now take this argument:
1. If God does not exist, there is no moral necessity.
2. There is moral necessity.
3. Therefore, God exists.
I want to suggest that the parallel between these two arguments is very close.
Hume’s view seems to imply that neither causal nor moral necessity can be objective, and so must be subjective.
The moral argument suggests that an escape from this is possible, but only if moral necessity is grounded in God.
But almost no one accepts the causal variant.
Why not?
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