Claiming that morality is what an objectively real deity objectively commands is all very well, but without a way of knowing which deity is objectively real, it gets us no further forrarder.
Could a theist who claims that theistic morality is objective explain how we can objectively discern which theistic morality is the objective one?
Since I’ve never made such a claim, I don’t think I’m included in this question.
You have claimed that there is an objective morality, William.
True, but Murray’s line of reasoning is not
but rather
This is why he takes issue with anyone who either (a) denies objective morality, since Murray thinks it is self-evidently true that certain moral principles are as objectively valid as are the principles of logic and mathematics or (b) affirms objective morality but denies that objective morality is logically connected to a reasoned belief in God.
To emphasize: Murray does not think that the objectivity of morality depends upon theism; he treats the objectivity of morality as self-evident, but that the objectivity of morality licenses or warrants theism. I think he’s made this clear enough, often enough, that there’s no excuse for attributing to him a view that he doesn’t hold.
Also, it’s worth pointing out that Murray’s argument hinges on his version of natural law theory, not divine command theory. So it’s not vulnerable to the sorts of objections that are commonly wielded against divine command theory, such as the Euthyphro problem or the “how do you know you’re really hearing God’s voice and that you’re not schizophrenic?” problem.
Yes, I do realise that. William’s beef with atheists doesn’t seem to be that we can’t figure out a morality, but that we don’t have any reason to pay any attention to it, which I find incoherent (what is an “ought” without an imperative?)
To me it’s like saying: atheists and theists both know what they ought to do but only theists know they ought to do it.
More precisely, his view is
Nor is Murray unique in holding this view — one hears this a lot from most of the participants at Uncommon Descent. It’s only a small (though vocal) minority who deny that atheists can be moral at all. Most of them recognize that we can (and do) act morally — they just think that we have no reason to.
From what I can tell, they are unable to imagine how empathy and imagination could play a role in our moral psychology analogous to the role that theism plays in theirs.
I think there is another angle as well. Since WJM claims he has a direct line to this “objective morality” then of course he is the supreme arbiter of what is and is not moral. We should all be bent in awe of him. It strikes me as almost a power issue, though that is perhaps overstating it.
Mostly accurate. The case I make is that IF you accept that there self-evident moral truths as I have outlined (valid regardless of culture, personal beliefs, whether one agrees with them or not, irrespective of consensus, etc.), AND you would like your views to be rationally consistent and reconcilable with your worldview premises, THEN you must believe that a god of some sort exists. I have no problem with people who deny objective morality exists (the kind I’ve repeatedly explained) AND agree that this makes morality entirely subjective.
What I have a problem with are those that attempt to have their cake and eat it too – they don’t want to admit that under atheism, “morality” is necessarily subjective. So, they redefine what “objective” or “morality” means to give them self-deceptive wiggle room. Obviously, this also lets off the hook those that don’t require that their views on morality comport with any fundamental worldview premises they hold.
Thank you, KN. I respect that you offered this intellectually honest appraisal even in light of our disagreements. Maybe they’ll actually read it and try to comprehend it if it comes from someone other than me.
I can easily imagine how empathy and imagination can play a role that is analogous to theism; that’s not the issue. These things can give you a reason to act morally, but they do not rationally justify it in terms of worldview premises.
Also, empathy and imagination are not, IMO, a sound foundation for morality. They are good in a general guideline sense, but can easily lead one into the moral and logical woods.
No, it’s like saying that atheists and theists both know what they ought to do but only theists can rationally justify the existence of such knowledge according to worldview premises.
Oh, I comprehend, it William. It wasn’t your position I was challenging – it was the position of people like Chris Doyle, or William Lane Craig.
But my objection to yours remains. It makes no sense to me to say that it is possible to discern that X is what we ought to do and Y is what we ought not to do and yet to claim that nonetheless it doesn’t matter if we don’t do X and do do Y.
How would anyone, theist or atheist, have a concept that there was something we “ought” to do that was separate from the concept that “therefore we ought to do it”?
And if they are the same thing (as I would say they are) – why posit a God to do the second bit?
In that case it’s the “rationally justify” part I don’t get. If “we ought not to do X” is self-evident, what other rationale for not doing it do we need?
You don’t need any other rationale for not doing it. You need a rationale (reconcilable worldview premise) to explain the existence of self-evident objective moral truths.
No, Liz. It is obvious that you do NOT comprehend what my argument is about.
No, KN is right, as William confirms. WJM, to his credit IMO, is not a Divine Command theorist. He thinks it is obvious (“self-evident”) what we ought not to do, and I agree.
He therefore, I think, concludes that there must be some reason we find it obvious, possibly because there is a God who will bring down adverse consequences if we do it, and that therefore atheists are being irrational in paying any attention to the “obvious” wrongness of certain behaviour, because we don’t believe in the necessary adverse consequences of such behaviour.
If we did, it would be rational to avoid such acts because we’d ultimately be the sufferers. But because we don’t believe in such “necessary consequences” ignoring the “wrongness” of certain behaviours is “irrational”.
Something like that. William will tell me I’ve got it wrong I expect, shortly.
Tell me how you know that something that is “self-evidently” true is “objectively” true.
No, no, no. IF one accepts that there exist self-evidently true, objective moral statements, and IF they wish that view to rationally comport with fundamental worldview premises, THEN they must believe that a creator god of some sort exists (see more detailed arguments in the other threads). You can’t get such a morality from anything other than theism.
Regardless of any consequences, such a morality requires a creator god with a purpose in mind.
Atheists and theists alike are able to recognize such self-evident moral truths and feel obligated to act on them whether or not they had any good worldview rationale for doing so.
I wasn’t making a general claim about those commodities. I don’t understand what you mean by “how do I know”.
I hold that the statement “it is wrong to torture children for personal pleasure” is self-evidently true – meaning, it requires no further argument or evidence. If you disagree with that, then my argument doesn’t apply to you.
I also hold that it is true that regardless of personal feelings, beliefs, perspective, society, law, culture, consensus, etc. – that it is always wrong, for anyone, anytime, any place. I also hold that it is everyone’s moral right and everyone’s obligation to intervene if we see this kind of thing happening – again, regardless of culture, law, personal feeling, etc. If you disagree with that, then once again, my argument doesn’t apply to you.
This makes the self-evidently true statement in question objective by definition. That’s what “objective” means.
Just read the right holy book.
Why do you have to make things so complicated?
Glen Davidson
William,
It’s possible for something to seem self-evident and yet be false.
How do you get from “X seems self-evident to me” to “X is objectively true”?
I don’t disagree with it. I’m not asking why it is “self-evidently” true. I’m asking how you know it is “objectively” true.
Or do those two terms mean the same thing in your usage?
Again, I ask: why does this mean that these things are objectively true?
It is certainly the case that the vast majority of people would agree with you. But you have rejected “consensus” as a reason to think something is “objectively true”.
This makes the self-evidently true statement in question objective by definition.That’s what “objective” means.
I’d actually like to know what William means by “self-evident”.
Merriam-Webster gives “evident without proof or reasoning”, and for “evident”, gives “clear to the vision or understanding”.
I suggest that many things are “clear to the vision or understanding” without “proof or reasoning” and yet turn out to be false.
Again, I answer:
William,
That doesn’t answer the question:
I’m not making a general case argument. I’m making a specified argument. Is it in any sense reasonably possible (not hyperskeptically “possible”) that the statement “it is always wrong for anyone, regardless of culture, consensus, law, decree, authority, personal feeling, etc. to torture children for personal pleasure” is false?
If you think it is reasonably possible that the statement is false, then you don’t consider it self-evidently true in the sense of the dictionary definition I have provided before, and which Liz has apparently forgotten that I’ve provided and has offered the same definition that I have given before.
And thus the argument wouldn’t apply to you.
You don’t get from one to the other. They are independently commodities both held as being true in this case of the statement in question.
That’s because I wasn’t answering that question at that time.
That’s silly, William. You say that because you think there is a consensus on the subject, not because it is objective.
There is a near consensus because it offends most people’s feelings. It certainly offends mine.
But there are hypothetical scenarios in which I can bet it would be done. For example, to gain information that could save thousands of lives. In which case, the authorities cursed with making this decision would likely send in someone who enjoys torturing.
Every war, including the current endless “war against terror,” involves harming children and exposing ten to pain. We vote for the people who authorize this.
I just recently watched “Hunger Games” and was reminded that back in 1967 I had a “winning” lottery number, was drafted and sent to Vietnam. In a spooky bit of irony, I had a summer job tossing hundred pound flour sacks, not unlike one of the main characters.
Hurting children is not rare, and in most cases it is both legal and instigated by government.
If they are independent, then the “self-evident” part is irrelevant to the “true” part.
If so, then what justifies the “true” part? How do you know that any particular moral intuition is objectively true, if not by the fact that it is “self-evident”?
As I have tried and failed to persuade, WJM’s sense of ‘self-evident truth’ could readily be attributed to a shared and in principle universal (among the human species) restraint which comes courtesy of the genetic facts of brain development to a common ‘plan’ (commonly inherited, according to evolutionary theory).
If everyone, at all times etc etc, agrees that it is ‘immoral to torture babies’, this does not make it self-evident, but simply commonly agreed. WJM has attempted to argue that “there are no 4-sided triangles” and “it is immoral to torture babies” are equivalent – which I take to intend that they are both analytic statements. But only one of them is.
Morality is experienced. The sense of ‘ought’, which may, according to the action, come from genetics or environment, applies to the fundamental ‘owners’ of behaviour – individuals – and influences (along with a lot else) what that behaviour will be. Even if one believes in ‘objective’ morality (by definition: a morality not influenced by personal feelings or opinions), it makes little sense if it has no influence on behaviour. But it is fundamentally impossible to divorce ‘moral-sense’ from personal feelings or opinions. Though it may be received from outside the self, as soon as one has the sense that this is what one ‘ought’ to do, it is one’s ‘personal feeling or opinion’. Thinking that you ought to do this, but disagreeing that it is your opinion that this is what you ought to do is something someone may claim they can do, but I doubt they can.
It is not analytically true that it is immoral to torture babies. The ‘self’ in ‘self-evident’ cannot be the proposition, but the people evaluating it.
So while my disagreeing with the ‘self-evident moral truths exist’ part means that WJM’s argument doesn’t apply to me, it’s hard to see who it does apply to. If it is agreed by all to be always wrong, who needs putting straight? If it is not agreed by all that it is self-evidently wrong, then what’s self-evident about it? Are we talking Declaration of Independence-style self-evidence, or analytic propositions?
It’s more of a redundancy than irrelevant; a self-evident statement would mean the statement is taken as true without evidence, proof, argument, etc.
I haven’t been making a case about general moral intuitions, but rather a specific argument about a specific statement. If I hold the position that the statement is always true for anyone, regardless of culture, consensus, law, decree, authority, personal feeling, etc., then that position is necessarily, by definition, one of holding it to be objectively true. That’s what “objective” means.
If you don’t hold that the statement is always true (as per above), then you do not hold it as an objectively true statement, and likely do not hold that there are any objectively true moral statements.
I have no argument against anyone that holds that morality is essentially subjective in nature. My argument is only with those who agree to the self-evident, objectively true nature of the particular statement in question. It’s not a question of “knowing” it, whatever that might mean, but rather of holding to the presumed nature of the statement as outlined.
So, in your opinion, it’s reasonably possible that the statement “it’s morally wrong for anyone, at any time, to torture babies for personal pleasure” is false?
Probably. Can you give it again?
OMFG!
I would say so.
Moral questions are not “true/false” questions. I see it as confusing the issue, to insist on applying “true” or “false” to moral questions.
William,
No, the case you’ve been making has been general. For example:
The question is how you get from a moral intuition that most of us share — “I feel strongly that it is wrong to torture infants for personal pleasure” — to the conclusion that “it is objectively wrong, always, to torture infants for personal pleasure.”
I am not obligated to respond to mischaracterizations of my argument, especially after correcting those mischaracterizations several times.
Is that a general principle? are we relieved of the necessity to respond to mischaracterization of atheists, materialists, Darwinists?
I consider this to be quite simple.
That it’s morally wrong for anyone, at any time, to torture babies for personal pleasure depends on something specific. Us. Some people don’t see it that way. Unfortunately. Pick up the paper William.
At some point there will be no more human beings. So at some point there will be a last person alive. If that person happens to think, as many do right now today, that torturing babies for personal pleasure is perfectly ok for them to do then at that point it time it will be morally right. How can it be otherwise?
Likewise, when there are two people left then what they agree on will be called “self evident truth” by both of them and the rest they’ll have to agree to differ on.
When there are no more people there is no morality. When there is only one person left, they *are* morality. Your “objective” morality, if you will. But I don’t think that’s quite what you mean.
p.s. You could almost imagine an example where the horrible people in the word were collected together and allowed to get on with it. As they’d be torturing all the babies they’d naturally die out but of course they can’t see that far ahead. So they carry on and wipe themselves out. Whereas this other group of people found that if they don’t eat each other then they thrived and those traits spread wider and wider. I wonder what the end result of such a process over many years of evolution and cultural development might be?
pah.
I am not obligated to respond to mischaracterizations of my argument, especially after correcting those mischaracterizations several times.
“Mischaracterization”? I quoted you, William.
Do you stand behind your statement?
William,
Are all the moral statements you might affirm objectively true, or just some?
This last person on earth is gonna be quite pissed off there are no babies to torture 😉
I think there’s a distinction between thinking it’s ‘OK’ to do X, and thinking it is moral. The bugaboo relentlessly trotted out in these debates is the mythical individual who thinks it a personal moral imperative to torture babies. Whereas most, probably all, who do either think it’s wrong and don’t care (enough), or don’t think it’s wrong (but fall short of thinking it a moral duty).
One must arm oneself with the supposedly ‘rational’ view of morality on the off-chance one met one of those who felt torturing babies was a moral duty. To them, you can say “self-evidently, it isn’t”.
You mischaracterized what you quoted, and in addition, I’ve already pointed out that your question is erroneous.
Just the ones I affirm on a Monday, because Monday is “objective truths” day. Tuesday is opposites day.
Assuming I interpreted your answer correctly,
How do you know that all the moral statements you might affirm but have not affirmed yet will be objectively true?
I worry that expressions such as “it is self-evident that . . .”, “it is self-evidently true that . . “, “it is a self-evident objective truth that . . . ” can lead into confusion and sterile debate, unless handled with some care.
Here’s an example: we can distinguish between noninferential knowledge and presuppositionless knowledge. For example, P is noninferentially known if P is not the conclusion of an inference. To know that I’m looking at a coffee-cup, I don’t need to posit the existence of a coffee-cup in order to explain my sense-data — I just see that the thing that I’m looking at is a coffee-cup. There’s no inference, and certainly not an inference from sense-data.
But is my noninferential knowledge presuppositionless? No — for my observation-report presupposes that I know how to use the concept of “coffee-cup”, and a great many other concepts as well! There’s a lot of know-how (implicit, tacit, pragmatic) at work behind the scenes that enables me to form the explicit judgment that this is a coffee-cup.
Now, one might concede that this is true (perhaps even trivially true) with respect to perceptual knowledge of physical objects, but that my introspective knowledge of my states of consciousness, or knowledge of logic and mathematics, or knowledge of moral truths, are all somehow different. But I do not think that that is so.
On the contrary, they are all in basically the same class: they are noninferential truths that all presuppose a great deal of background knowledge. I know, noninferentially, that this is a coffee-cup, because I have successfully acquired the conceptual framework of how to make perceptual reports about physical objects.
I know, noninferentially, that there aren’t any four-sided triangles, because I have successfully acquired the conceptual framework of geometry. Likewise, I know, noninferentially, that torture is wrong, because I have successfully acquired the conceptual framework of Enlightenment liberalism.
In other words, just being able to identify certain truths as “self-evident,” in the sense of not inferring those truths from other truths — not having those truths serve as conclusions to arguments — doesn’t tell us that they are presuppositionless, and it also doesn’t solve the problem of relativism.
William,
I can see why you’re avoiding the question. It exposes yet another logical hole at the very center of your moral “system”.
I’m still waiting for you to fill these holes:
After you’ve done that, you can tackle this one:
Assuming that you are correct and that we are morally obligated to conform to God’s morality, how do you know that what is “self-evidently” immoral to you is also immoral to God?
We already know that people can disagree over supposedly self-evident truths. How then do you justify this statement?
Allan Miller
I suppose I was more thinking of someone who’s desire for personal ‘satisfaction’ counted more for them then the suffering they had to impose to get it. In that schema it’s moral for them to do that because, well, for whatever reason they have however understandable it might be to everyone else.
And anyway, what is it with the tortured babies anyway? There’s a perfect good set of questions that can be used to determine if their “objective “morality really is (you’d expect the same answers, right? :P).
Perhaps the obviousness of the example is like a guess the card game but with the answer printed on both sides. If you give the “wrong” answer then you rule yourself out of the game. But it’s crassness is an attempt to sneak in the “objective” therefore “god given” (which one?) aspect of it. Everyone (apart from the mad people who do it) says it’s wrong to torture a baby, therefore ID.
Yet I seem to remember equally horrible things happening on various deity’s orders, including the one favored as the designer at UD, but just let Darwin wack a dog as a child once and he’s the devil! 😛
A politician’s answer.
Is there a list of self evident truths?
Why on earth not? There’s more than one definition of “self-evident” – what on earth is the problem with telling me which one you are actually using? I do not – cannot – memorise your posts William.