Saturday, March 24, 2012

Why Atheists Might Wish God to be a Dictator

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Some atheists view God as an oppressive dictator, but I think if atheists realized who and what God is, they would if anything be upset that he wasn’t more of a dictator if it turned out that he existed. Let me explain. My conception of God is that he is the supreme authority in the universe, and so I believe that as the divine commander, what is morally wrong is one and the same property as that which God forbids; ergo doing evil is going against the will of God, and God gives creatures the power to defy his will and therefore to do evil. Every time we sin, God submits to our will over his. Even if one doesn’t believe that God is the transcendent authority behind moral duties (though I think it’s fairly clear that he would be if God existed), clearly one ought to recognize that humans doing evil would be against what God wills if he exists, and yet God gives humanity the power to defy his will. Indeed, as the sustainer of the universe God even continuously gives godless people the breath to blaspheme him. This is hardly the description of an oppressive dictator.

What about hell? Wouldn’t God be a tyrant for sending people to that horrible prison? I don’t pretend to know what hell is like, but I think it’s conceivable that this is again a case of God allowing human freedom to go where he’d rather not have it go, and that the doors of hell are (to borrow from C.S. Lewis) locked on the inside. C.S. Lewis doesn’t believe that the damned souls might not desire to come out of hell, “in the vague fashion wherein an envious man ‘wishes’ to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good.” Lewis also says, “I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully ‘All will be saved.’ But my reason retorts ‘Without their will or with it?’” In effect, God says to those who reject them, “thy will be done.” When separated from the locus of goodness itself, the result is hell. God is not a dictator, and the consequences of this are precisely why an atheist might wish him to be one.

Friday, March 23, 2012

The Euthyphro Dilemma

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This blog entry is part 4 in a series on the moral argument. The entries in the series:
  1. The Moral Argument for God Part 1: Going from Morality’s Existence to God’s Existence
  2. The Moral Argument for God Part 2: Does Objective Morality Exist If God Does Not Exist?
  3. The Moral Argument for God Part 3: Does Objective Morality Exist?
  4. The Euthyphro Dilemma
  5. Epilogue: Awakening the Sensus Divinitatis
To sum it up so far I’ve basically argued that God is the basis of objective morality, and that objective morality is evidence for God’s existence. That brings us to the famous Euthyphro argument against God grounding morality.

The Euthyphro Dilemma

The name of the Euthyphro dilemma goes back to Plato’s Euthyphro in which Socrates asks Euthyphro if the gods love something because it is holy, or if it is holy because the gods love it. Applied here, the Euthyphro dilemma goes something like this: for any X that is good, “Does God will it because X is good, or is X good because God wills it?” On the first horn of the dilemma (God wills X because it is good), what goodness is becomes external to God, and therefore isn’t grounded in God. God simply recognizes what is good and then wills it. On the second horn of the dilemma (X is good because God wills it) God arbitrarily creates what goodness is in the sense that it could have been anything; God could have created goodness in such a way that it is good to torture infants just for fun, for example. So no matter which horn of the dilemma the theist picks, it doesn’t look plausible that God is the foundation of morality.

So the objection goes. One problem with the Euthyphro dilemma is that it is a false dilemma. It is not an “A or not-A” type dichotomy (e.g. “it is raining or it is not raining”) but rather an “A or B” type dichotomy (e.g. “the ball is green or the ball is red”) that does not exhaust all the options. A third option to the false dilemma is that what God wills is good because he is good. One view is that God is what Plato called the Good (the paradigm or model of what goodness is). God’s perfectly holy nature is the standard of moral goodness; e.g. God is by nature loving and just, and these attributes become moral virtues for us. As an analogy, the fidelity of an audio recording of a symphony is measured against how closely it matches the actual, original performance; the original performance sets the standard for audio fidelity. Similarly, God’s perfectly holy nature sets the standard of what moral goodness is.

If the conception of God we’re using includes God being the Good, applying a Euthyphro style dilemma becomes problematic. It doesn’t seem sensible to ask, “Is the Good good because it creates the Good (the paradigm/model of what goodness is), or is the Good good because the Good is external to it and it recognizes the Good?” If there were an answer to this question it would be something like, “Neither.” The Good does not (arbitrarily or otherwise) create the Good, the Good is the Good. It’s also not true that the Good is external to the Good; the Good is the Good. Or to make it more explicit for the Euthyphro dilemma: it isn’t true that God creates the Good (the paradigm/model of what goodness is), God is the Good; it’s also not true that the Good is external to God, because God is the Good.

Still, let’s ignore the problem of the false dilemma and consider the objection that if morality is grounded in God in any way, morality becomes arbitrary in the sense that God could (via divine commands or via his nature or via some other mechanism) make anything morally wrong/right/good/bad/etc.; e.g. God could have made torturing infants just for fun ethical. We can follow this train of thought with the following deductive argument:
  1. If God is the basis of morality, then it is possible for God to make torturing infants just for fun ethical.
  2. If it is possible for God to make torturing infants just for fun ethical, then it is possible for torturing infants just for fun to be ethical.
  3. It is not possible for torturing infants just for fun to be ethical.
  4. Therefore, God is not the basis of morality.
The above argument is valid, but there’s a problem. If torturing infants just for fun cannot possibly be ethical, then it also cannot be possible for the basis of morality—whatever that is—to make such torture ethical. But then why on earth believe that if God is the basis of morality that he could make it ethical?

Perhaps because God is omnipotent, but God’s omnipotence as accepted by modern theists is more limited than the ability to do literally anything. Rather, God’s omnipotence is more accurately understood as being “maximally powerful” since most theists recognize that there are some things that even God cannot do, like create a married bachelor. The theist could also posit other limits on God’s behavior, which incidentally is nothing new. For example, the idea that God cannot lie goes at least as far back as early Christianity.[1] Similarly, many theists believe there is no possible world where God creates another deity and worships it. We can also conceive of God as being necessarily loving and just, which would therefore prevent any divine commands from being arbitrary.

If it is impossible for torturing infants just for fun to be ethical, then it is equally impossible for the basis of morality—whatever that is—to make it ethical. It follows logically and inescapably then that if God is the basis of morality then he cannot make it ethical either.[2] If it is impossible for the basis of morality to make such torture ethical, we might reason that the basis of morality has some type of immutable, necessary nature such that it can never make it ethical. There doesn’t appear to be any reason to think that God does not or cannot have that nature if he were the basis of morality. All things considered then, the objection that grounding morality in God would make morality arbitrary doesn’t work.



[1] See Hebrews 6:18 and Titus 1:2.

[2] The conception of God I’m using is that as the supreme authority in the universe he grounds moral obligations essentially, i.e. that he is the source of moral obligation in all those possible worlds that he exists. Even if I wasn’t using that conception of God though, it’s still an important thing to keep in mind is that in all possible worlds where God does ground moral obligations, he cannot command people to torture infants just for fun if it is impossible for such an act to be ethical.



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Thursday, March 22, 2012

Does Objective Morality Exist? (p. 3)

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Does Objective Morality Exist?
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Considering Alternatives

Another way to justify moral objectivism is to note how badly the alternatives work. One might balk at accepting “there is nothing morally wrong with knowingly torturing infants just for fun,” but to maintain that there is something morally wrong with torturing infants just for fun without accepting moral objectivism, one would have to accept some form of ethical relativism. Ethical relativism (or moral relativism) agrees with moral objectivism that morality exists but unlike moral objectivism says that moral truths are relative to human opinion. For example, a belief called cultural relativism (which goes by various other names, such as conventional ethical relativism and conventionalism) says that morality is relative to cultural opinion in such a way that the culture believing that a certain action is morally right/wrong/good/bad/etc. makes that action morally right/wrong/good/bad/etc. for that culture. If for instance a culture believed it was wrong to walk naked in the streets, it would be morally wrong for people in that culture to do that, whereas in a nudist community it wouldn’t be.

The problem with ethical relativism however is that it doesn’t seem to work. For starters, let’s take another look at cultural relativism. One might be tempted to advocate cultural relativism in the name of tolerance, but if a culture believed it was morally right to practice intolerance, then according to cultural relativism people in that culture ought to be intolerant. If for instance a culture believed violent anti-Semitism to be morally right, then it becomes morally right for that culture. Someone else might think the culture is doing something morally wrong, but on cultural relativism such a person would be mistaken because the culture thinks it is morally right and that is enough to make it morally right for that culture. Cultural relativism is clearly implausible.

A version of moral relativism called ethical subjectivism (which also goes by various names, e.g. subjective ethical relativism) says that the individual believing an action to be morally right/wrong/good/bad/etc. makes that action morally right/wrong/good/bad/etc. for that person. So if Adolph thinks that torturing infants just for fun is morally obligatory and not morally wrong, then it is morally right for Adolph to do it. If Oskar believes torturing infants just for fun is morally wrong, then it is wrong for Oskar to do it. Under ethical subjectivism, Oskar can believe it is wrong for Adolph to torture infants just for fun, but that belief would be mistaken because Adolph thinks otherwise, and so on ethical subjectivism Adolph has a moral duty to torture infants just for fun. Ethical subjectivism is likewise implausible.

Examples of this sort could be multiplied, and we can symbolize the structure of the sort of argument used thus far to refute alternatives to moral objectivism. First, some quick symbolic logic stuff (I promise it’s painless):

EnglishSymbolic Logic
 
If p is true, then q is truep → q
If p were true, then q would be truep □→ q
Not-p (p is false)¬p


That there is a difference between “If p is true, then q is true” and “If p were true, then q would true” can be revealed by observing that one can believe “If Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy, someone else did” without believing “If Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy, someone else would have.” A useful rule of logic called modus tollens goes like this:

modus tollens
 
In English In Symbolic Logic
If p then q
Not-q

Therefore, not-p
p → q
¬q

∴ ¬p


The above arguments against the alternatives to moral objectivism take the following form, where P is some challenged proposition (e.g. “ethical subjectivism is true”), T denotes a thought experiment (e.g. a man torturing infants just for fun and never believing there’s anything wrong with it), and R denotes the questionable result of the thought experiment (e.g. the man torturing infants just for fun isn’t doing anything morally wrong):
  1. P → (T □→ R)
  2. ¬(T □→ R)

  1. ¬P 1, 2, modus tollens
The conclusion (line 3) follows logically and necessarily from the premises (lines 1 and 2) by the rules of logic, and thus for the conclusion to be false a premise must be false. Putting the argument in symbolic logic also helps see why certain objections don’t work. One could object saying that the state of affairs described in T (e.g. the man torturing infants just for fun believing it to be morally right) has never happened and will never happen. That may be true, but such an objection doesn’t attack either premise of the argument, and if both premises are true the conclusion follows whether one likes it or not. One could also criticize the argument by noting that the state of affairs described in T is an extreme and contrived example. Maybe that’s true, but again that doesn’t attack any premise of the argument.

Consequently, it’s difficult to convincingly attack “If a man believed it was morally right to torture infants just for fun…” type arguments. One wants to avoid promoting an alternative with unacceptable consequences. One also wants to avoid the apparently unacceptable consequences of denying moral objectivism. For example, a quick case for moral objectivism could go like this:
Consider this hypothetical scenario. The only humans who ever existed are a community of men and infants, both of which are grown in a lab (we might additionally posit that an improbable convergence of undirected natural processes created the first human-growing lab, or else that the process of growing humans in a lab has been going on eternally). To replace the men who die, the community creates fully grown men in the lab. Throughout all time, every human who has ever lived has agreed that torturing infants just fun and killing them are morally right. The community of men grow infants in the lab and then torture them to death just for fun. As these men sadistically torture infants for the sheer fun of it, would this action be morally wrong in spite of their opinion to the contrary? Would that action be morally wrong independently of their opinion?
If the answer to both questions is “Yes” that would seem to suggest that there is at least one objective moral truth. To see why, first we can ask ourselves this question: would moral objectivism be true in that scenario? If the scenario were actualized, every existing human’s opinion would be that the act of torturing infants just for fun is morally right, and so for that action to be morally wrong regardless of their opinion, it would have to be morally wrong regardless of any human opinion that exists (bear in mind we are talking about human opinions that exist in this scenario). But if in that scenario the action’s moral wrongness would hold independently of any existing human opinion, the only way to prevent the action’s moral wrongness from holding independently of all human opinion in that scenario is if the action’s moral wrongness were somehow dependent on nonexistent human opinion, which doesn’t seem very plausible. Since in that scenario the action’s moral wrongness would hold independently of human opinion, moral objectivism (a moral property existing independently of human opinion) would be true in that scenario. Yet if in this scenario the moral wrongness of torturing infants just for fun would exist independently of human opinion, it seems that the moral wrongness of such torture would hold independently of human opinion in the real world also.

In spite of the above argument, one might still be tempted to say that if this community actually existed alongside dissenting opinion like ours, the action would be morally wrong relative to our opinion, but it would be morally right relative to the hypothetical community of baby torturers. But that sort of relativism runs the risk of incoherency, and we must distinguish between coherent and incoherent forms of ethical relativism. As mentioned in part 1 on the moral argument, an action is morally wrong for subject S only if S ought not to do it, and an action is morally right for S only if S ought do it. Ethical subjectivism says that if Adolph thinks that torturing infants just for fun is morally right, then it is morally right for Adolph to do it. If Oskar believes torturing infants just for fun is morally wrong, then it is wrong for Oskar to do it. Whether ethical subjectivism is correct, it at least produces a non-contradictory answer to the question “Should Adolph torture infants just for fun?” In this way ethical subjectivism is a coherent form of ethical relativism. But what is not coherent is the belief (which I’ll call “pseudo-relativism”) that right and wrong do exist, where Adolph thinks its morally right for him torture infants just for fun and Oskar thinks it is morally wrong for Adolph to torture infants just for fun and have them both be right. Pseudo-relativism cannot give a coherent answer to question “Should Adolph torture infants just for fun?” It might be able to reiterate the beliefs of people about whether Adolph should torture infants just for fun but it cannot answer the question. Pseudo-relativism is not a coherent ethical system, so it would not be a good way to reject moral objectivism while maintaining the moral wrongness of torturing infants just for fun.

To drive the point home further, imagine that Oskar is a pseudo-relativist who is incapable of lying. Adolph comes to believe that pseudo-relativism is true but isn’t quite sure he understands it, so Adolph asks Oskar, “I believe I am morally obligated to torture infants just for fun, but should I do it?” What can Oskar as an honest pseudo-relativist say? Oskar can’t say “Yes” because he believes Adolph shouldn’t do it, but Oskar can’t say “No” because Adolph believes Adolph should do it. On pseudo-relativism, there doesn’t appear to be any coherent answer to Adolph’s question and thus no coherent fact of the matter as to what Adolph should do here. When it comes to moral obligations, pseudo-relativism is an incoherent mess. In contrast, both cultural relativism and ethical subjectivism handle the “moral obligation is relative to a given framework” notion in a coherent manner.

For the atheist, a better move than accepting pseudo-relativism would be to reject moral oughtness altogether, but then this would lead to moral nihilism (a view that denies the existence of moral properties like rightness and wrongness), since an action is morally wrong for subject S only if S ought not to do it. Indeed, moral nihilism is the best atheist position I can think of. Accepting moral nihilism allows the atheist to reject moral objectivism, avoid the incoherency of pseudo-relativism, and escape the absurdity of possible worlds where people are morally obligated to knowingly torture infants just for fun. Moral nihilists can still disapprove of things like torturing infants just for fun, but if moral nihilists are to be consistent, they would have to believe that their loathing for sadistically torturing infants is akin to me disliking sauerkraut in that it’s just a matter of personal taste and nothing’s really wrong with it. So although moral nihilism may be the best atheist position with respect to the moral argument, the intellectual price is high: the consistent moral nihilist would also have to believe that nothing at all is morally wrong, not even torturing infants just for fun!

Closing Thoughts

If a religion taught that there is nothing morally wrong with torturing infidels to death, we would rightfully label that religion as an irrational blind faith. If an atheistic worldview entails that there is nothing morally wrong with torturing theists to death, shouldn’t we conclude that this worldview is, if not irrational, at least probably false?

Still, many atheists are willing to bite the bullet and accept what I think atheism most reasonably implies: moral nihilism. For such atheists, their faith in atheism is greater than their conviction that something is morally wrong with torturing infants just for fun. If that’s what takes for me to embrace atheism, then I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.

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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Does Objective Morality Exist? (p. 2)

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Does Objective Morality Exist?
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The Evolution Objection

Another objection is that evolution somehow undercuts our moral intuition. Evolution is aimed more at advantageous behavior than true beliefs, and moral beliefs (that we ought to have limitations on killing and thievery for example) are advantageous for our species. When there’s a conflict between having true beliefs and having advantageous behavior, natural selection selects for advantageous behavior over having true beliefs. So, evolution gives us a reason to doubt our moral intuitions.

At least without further explanation, the appeal to evolution seems to be begging the question in favor of atheism. On theism, it’s likely that evolution was a process superintended by God that gave us at least somewhat reliable moral intuitions (e.g. about morality existing), in which case God used evolution to select for true beliefs, not just advantageous behavior. On atheism, I agree it is unlikely that evolution has given us reliable intuitions about morality existing (indeed, I think it’s likely on atheism that morality doesn’t exist at all) and that natural selection probably selected for advantageous behavior over true beliefs here, but then it’s clear that knowledge of evolution itself isn’t sufficient to serve as a defeater for the reliability of our moral intuitions. Theism + evolution = one’s intuition is probably right about morality existing; atheism + evolution = one’s intuition is probably wrong about morality existing. Evolution by itself isn’t enough to doubt moral objectivism.

One could finesse the appeal to evolution this way:

    (1)  If evolution is true, then we would come to have the same moral beliefs we do whether morality existed or not.
    (2)  If (1), then we aren’t justified (and thus we don’t know) that objective morality exists.
    (3)  Therefore, we aren’t justified (and thus we don’t know) that objective morality exists.


One way to at least partly justify premise (1) is to note that certain moral beliefs (e.g. moral prohibitions on stealing and killing) would benefit our species even if morality didn’t exist. Basically, the idea is that premise (1) undercuts our justification for our belief in objective morality. But there are several problems with this argument. First, it’s worth considering whether evolution really needs us to believe in objective morality. Even if evolution needs to drive us to behave in certain ways for our species to survive, it need not result in us accepting the existence of morality. If I were a moral nihilist (someone who believes nothing is morally wrong) I would still detest things like rape and genocide even if I no longer recognized such actions having a moral dimension to them. I would also strongly prefer not to do such actions, and this sort of attitude is not at all uncommon among those who would deny objective morality. Us having the right sort of strong preferences would be sufficient for us to behave in survival-conducive ways even without us accepting morality. This doesn’t by itself show that premise (1) or (2) is false, but it does show that our belief in morality isn’t a necessary consequence of evolution, and that should make us a bit more suspicious about the soundness of the argument. With that in mind, let’s address those premises.

Premise (1)

So given that we need not believe in morality for evolution to drive us to behave in the right ways, would we really come to have the same moral beliefs we do whether morality existed or not? As I mentioned in part 2 of the moral argument, that wouldn’t hold for the theist who believes God is both essentially good and the creator of the universe because if this theistic belief were true, then if morality didn’t exist neither would God (being morally good is an essential attribute of God, thus no morality means no God) and if God didn’t exist then he wouldn’t have created the universe, in which case (according to theism) none of us would be here to believe anything. So on theism if morality did not exist then we would not believe in morality.

What about atheism? On atheism, is it true that would we have the same moral beliefs if morality did not exist? Not necessarily. If I were an atheist moral objectivist, I would believe that we humans have a sort of supernatural clairvoyance that detects the existence of invisible, nonphysical moral properties like moral wrongness. That may sound far-fetched, but on atheism it’s difficult to find a more plausible relevant connection between these invisible, nonphysical, causally inert moral properties and our belief in them that would confer warrant upon those beliefs (for more on this sort of thing, see the warrant problem discussed in part 2 of the moral argument). An atheist who accepts that this is how we know moral properties exist can easily believe that if moral properties did not exist our clairvoyance wouldn’t have told us they existed and thus we would not believe they existed, similar to how we would no longer believe we had toes if we looked and saw that our toes were gone. And don’t forget, evolution can still drive us to behave in survival-conducive ways without our species accepting morality’s existence.

So it seems that all things considered, about the only way “If evolution is true, then we would come to have the same moral beliefs we do whether morality existed or not” would be convincing is if one already believed that we do not have knowledge of objective morality. But if the only reason one has for believing “If evolution is true, then we would come to have the same moral beliefs we do whether morality existed or not” is that one already believes we don’t know that objective morality exists, then this evolution objection is a pretty lousy argument for the claim of us not knowing that objective morality exists.

Premise (2)

The argument’s failure with premise (1) is enough to reject this argument, but the truth of premise (2) is also worth considering. Would us having the beliefs we do whether morality existed or not destroy our justification for it? If so, why? Perhaps the general idea is if that if we would believe some proposition p even if p were false, then we are not justified in believing p. But this doesn’t always hold especially for properly basic beliefs (beliefs we are justified in believing even if they are not believed on the evidential basis of other beliefs; e.g. belief in the reality of the external world as opposed to our perception of it being merely a lifelong dream). For example, “It is not the case that I am a brain in a vat of chemicals hooked up to electrodes with a supercomputer generating all the sensations and intuitions I have had my entire life” is a sort of belief that even if it were false, we would still believe it is false. Yet we are still rational in believing that the external world is real and not a computer-generated illusion. Belief in objective morality is properly basic, and we have no more reason to doubt it than we do to doubt the reality of the external world. (Though as discussed in part 2 of the moral argument, on naturalism nobody has any warrant for objective morality, and so arguably on naturalism one’s belief in objective morality is not properly basic.)

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Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Does Objective Morality Exist?

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This blog entry is part 3 in a series on the moral argument. The blog entries:
  1. The Moral Argument for God Part 1: Going from Morality’s Existence to God’s Existence
  2. The Moral Argument for God Part 2: Does Objective Morality Exist If God Does Not Exist?
  3. The Moral Argument for God Part 3: Does Objective Morality Exist?
  4. The Euthyphro Dilemma
  5. Epilogue: Awakening the Sensus Divinitatis

Does Objective Morality Exist?
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Although this is part of a series on the moral argument, for the most part this article works as a standalone entry on arguing for objective morality. In part 2 of my series on the moral argument I mentioned the following deductively valid moral argument for God’s existence:
  1. If God does not exist, then objective morality does not exist.
  2. Objective morality does exist.
  3. Therefore, God exists.
This blog entry will largely be about justifying premise 2 (in the previous blog entry, I argued for premise 1). But sometimes one person’s modus tollens is another’s modus ponens; an atheist could accept the first premise but conclude that, since God does not exist, then objective morality does not exist either, and thus such an atheist would reject the second premise. So what about the second premise? Why not accept moral nihilism in light of everything mentioned in part 2 of the moral argument? At least, why not leave it as a live option?

The Argument from Example

Do we really know that objective moral properties exist? I think the answer is clearly yes. When it comes to flagrantly morally wrong behavior like impaling babies with bayonets just for fun, most of us intuitively recognize that there is something in reality, transcending our opinion, that says people shouldn’t behave that way. It seems that raping children and committing genocide would remain morally atrocious regardless of what we believed. Even for many who don’t believe that God is the source of moral obligation (as I didn’t at one time), there just seems to be some component of reality beyond us, even if we can’t identify what it is, that says we should not do such things. So there appear to be clear examples of at least some things that are morally wrong independently of human opinion.  If we know examples of things that are objectively morally wrong, then we have grounds for believing that moral objectivism is true.

Beliefs like there being something morally wrong with torturing innocent sentient life (as infants) just for fun arise from moral intuition, but here I’m using “intuition” in the philosophical sense, as opposed to e.g. a guess based on a hunch. In philosophy, intuition refers to what the consciousness immediately apprehends and what is directly present one’s consciousness. Examples of intuition include sensory experiences and various intuitive perceptions like a person mentally “seeing” that 2 + 1 = 3. Another example is the intuition that the external world is real, as opposed to (for example) being merely a lifelong dream. It is logically possible (in the sense of not being self-contradictory) that our intuitions about morality existing are wrong, but it’s also logically possible that the external world you perceive is a computer-generated illusion and that you are really just a brain in a vat of chemicals hooked up to a supercomputer. At the end of the day we have no more reason to doubt the reality of objective moral properties than we do to doubt our intuition of the external world existing.

I’ve seen some criticize the appeal to examples like “There is something morally wrong with torturing infants just for fun” as emotional appeals, but I find that objection to be off the mark. It’s not as if the appeal to example is saying, “Torture makes one feel sad, therefore it is morally wrong.” It’s true that emotions are often tied up with moral beliefs, but if we were somehow rendered emotionless, it seems we could still rationally believe that there is something morally wrong with torturing infants just for fun. If certain atheists believe otherwise, the onus is on them to provide some sort of argument.

One could point out that not all moral beliefs are agreed upon, and argue that if moral objectivism were true moral disagreements would not be so widespread. But it’s unclear why anybody should believe that. At one point there was disagreement about whether the earth was flat, but clearly there’s an objective truth of the matter; the earth wasn’t flat millennia ago simply by people believing it to be so. A fact being objectively true does not (unfortunately) entail that it will be agreed upon by most people; indeed it is the very nature of an objective fact to be true independently of human disagreement. And while the truth of some moral issues may not be clear (just as some truths about the physical world may not be clear) that isn’t enough for us to reject what seem to be clear moral truths. For example, the existence of disagreement on some moral issues doesn’t provide adequate grounds for rejecting the idea that the morally wrongness of impaling infants with bayonets just for fun holds independently of human opinion.

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Monday, March 19, 2012

Does Objective Morality Exist If God Does Not Exist? (p. 3)

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Does Objective Morality Exist If God Does Not Exist?
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The Argument from the Unbiased Atheist



To support the claim that the evidence suggests the first premise of the moral argument is probably true, consider what I’ll call the Argument from the Unbiased Atheist (AftUA), where the Unbiased Atheist is someone who has no intuitions of moral oughtness existing or not existing, including not intuiting propositions that have moral oughtness’s existence implicit in them (e.g. the Unbiased Atheist wouldn’t have the intuition that Something is morally wrong is true or probably true), and she has no preconceived opinions about whether morality exists.[2] With the following symbolization key:

M = Moral oughtness exists.
A = Atheism is true.
K = The relevant background data.
Pr(not-M|A&K) = The probability of M being false given A&K, i.e. the probability of moral oughtness not existing given atheism and the relevant background data.


Presumably, there are objective probability facts regarding the evidential relationship between data and belief, e.g. “On the basis of the scientific data, quarks probably exist” is objectively true, and this is the sort of probability I have in mind when I say, “Given atheism, moral oughtness probably doesn’t exist” (viz. the objective evidential relationship between “atheism + background data” and “moral oughtness exists”). Because of the Unbiased Atheist’s neutral and unbiased nature, I think she provides a good vantage point to evaluate the objective evidential relation between the data (A&K) and the belief (M). The Unbiased Atheist starts out believing A&K but because of her neutral and unbiased nature, K doesn’t itself include propositions like M is probably true or M is false.

My overall argument can summarized thusly:

(P1) If the Unbiased Atheist would be justified in believing Pr(not-M|A&K) is high, then Pr(not-M|A&K) is high.
(P2) The Unbiased Atheist would be justified in believing Pr(not-M|A&K) is high.
(C1) Therefore, Pr(not-M|A&K) is high.
(P3) If Pr(not-M|A&K) is high, then Given atheism, moral oughtness probably doesn't exist is true.
(P4) If Given atheism, moral oughtness probably doesn't exist, then the first premise of the moral argument is probably true.
(C2) Therefore, the first premise of the moral argument is probably true.


Lines (P1), (P2), and (C1) are more or less the Argument from the Unbiased Atheist (AftUA). The main purpose of the AftUA is to show that on atheism, people’s intuitions of moral oughtness existing are probably delusory and not veridical, which of course implies Pr(not-M|A&K).

(P1) seems true due to what K can and can’t include, and the fact that Pr(not-M|A&K) is about the objective evidential relation between not-M and A&K. To see my point of view on why I think the Unbiased Atheist provides a good vantage point for this sort of probability, suppose an atheist proposes a probabilistic argument from evil, arguing that Pr(not-God|Evil&K) is high where K is some appropriate background knowledge (including e.g. free will for the theist who attempts a free will theodicy).[3] Suppose I argue that since belief in God is a rational intuition, we should include it in K, and when we do we effectively get Pr(not-God|Evil&God) which of course is extremely low, and thus Pr(not-God|Evil&K) is low. Therefore, I argue, the probabilistic argument from evil fails. Even though I think the intuition that God exists is a rational intuition, this maneuver does not seem philosophically appropriate. The intuition of God’s existence, while perhaps rational, is a subjectively experienced intuition, and the objective evidence would still be strongly against theism if Pr(not-M|Evil&K) were high when propositions like God exists are excluded from K. Similarly, I’m offering a sort of “probabilistic argument from atheism” against moral objectivism, arguing that atheism makes moral objectivism unlikely, and that Pr(not-M|A&K) is high when K doesn’t include propositions like Morality exists, though K would include propositions like People have intuitions of morality existing.

Line (P3) is true by definition, since what I mean by Given atheism, moral oughtness probably doesn't exist just is Pr(not-M|A&K) is high. Line (P4) is supported by a mathematical theorem.

My support for (P2) is the following inductive argument (with each premise predicated with, “If atheism is true, this is true:”), where objective moral oughtness is abbreviated as OMO.
  1. There is zero empirical evidence for objective moral properties. This supports the idea that the Unbiased Atheist has no good reason to accept M.
  2. It’d be a remarkable coincidence if moral intuitions happened to line up with what these invisible, causally inert moral properties are really like. Such reliance on remarkable coincidence suggests that we wouldn’t have real knowledge of objective moral truths; at best we’d have coincidentally true beliefs.
  3. OMO properties are suspiciously queer, akin to invisible and nonphysical gods.  To illustrate the general idea behind the Argument from Queerness (AfQ), suppose someone claims there is an invisible unicorn floating above my head. This claim is possible, but not plausible. I would be justified in disbelieving in this unicorn. The unicorn is “queer” enough to be prima facia implausible, and we are prima facia justified in rejecting its existence. Moral oughtness is invisible, nonphysical, empirically detectable, and causally inert. To the Unbiased Atheist, moral oughtness likewise seems “queer,” giving her prima facia justification for disbelieving its existence.
  4. Evolution occasionally gives false beliefs (e.g. gods).  So there’s precedent for evolution giving humans delusory intuitions for invisible nonphysical things. And belief in gods potentially serves some evolutionary purpose: “Don’t do stuff that harms the group even if we’re not watching because the gods are watching and they’ll punish you for doing bad stuff.”
  5. Moral oughtness beliefs have evolutionary value whether true or not.  Suspiciously enough, belief in moral oughtness is kind of like the false belief in gods in potentially serving some evolutionary purpose: to get us to behave in the right ways. Such beliefs have evolutionary value regardless of whether moral oughtness exists.
  6. Our best theory for why we believe in moral oughtness doesn’t require its existence.  Moral oughtness is causally inert; its presence or absence would have no effect on whether we’d get moral intuitions, and so the processes that gave us moral intuitions would do so regardless of whether morality existed. Consequently, we don’t need to posit something so extravagant as these invisible and highly metaphysical moral properties to explain moral beliefs; we can just say it’s a trick of evolution to get us to behave in certain ways.
Therefore: (probably) premise (P2) is true; the Unbiased Atheist would be justified in thinking that, like people’s intuitions of gods existing, people’s intuitions of moral oughtness existing are probably delusory and not veridical.

Note: I am not claiming that any single premise by itself is enough to justify the conclusion, but I do think the combination of all six premises justifies the conclusion.

One of my key claims that the AftUA illustrates is that on atheism the objective evidence suggests that people’s intuitions of M are probably delusory. In some cases our justification for beliefs comes from non-evidential grounds. For example, consider for example the following brain-in-vat (BIV) hypothesis: you are recently created (say, within the past five years) brain in a vat hooked up to a supercomputer feeding you all the memories, sense experiences, and intuitions you know have. We can’t justify our belief that BIV is false based on evidence, because there can’t be any evidence against it.[4] Instead it’s our intuition of its falsity that justifies our belief that BIV is false and that this perceived reality is real. The atheist moral objectivist (AMO) could similarly argue that he’s justified in believing OMO based on non-evidential intuition grounds, even if Pr(not-M|A&K) is high. But a crucial disanalogy is that in the case of BIV we don’t have any objective evidence suggesting BIV is true, whereas on atheism the objective evidence suggests that people’s intuitions of moral oughtness existing are probably delusory. This makes the a priori intuition option much less viable for the atheist.


Objections



Objection: moral intuition should affect our assessment of Pr(not-M|A&K)



One could say that although we shouldn’t include a proposition like Morality exists in K, moral intuition gives us nonpropositional support for morality’s existence, i.e. actually experiencing the intuition justifies our belief more than the mere fact that People have the intuition that morality exists (similar to how our intuition of the external world justifies our rejection of the BIV hypothesis). This a priori moral intuition makes us inclined to believe in morality, and this intuition needs to, for lack of a better term, bias our evaluation Pr(not-M|A&K) compared to a more neutral vantage point.

The problem is while that while a priori subjectively experienced intuitions about whether a theory is true might be appropriate for subjective probability assessments, the type of probability the AftUA is using is the objective evidential relation between the belief (moral objectivism) and the data (A&K). To illustrate, suppose that prior to examining the relevant scientific data, Smith has an overpowering intuition that creationism is true, and Jones has an overpowering intuition that evolution is true. Smith and Jones might come away with different subjective probability assessments of how likely evolution is after examining the scientific data, but to correctly evaluate the objective evidential relation between data and theory a more neutral vantage point seems appropriate. Hence the Unbiased Atheist.

In response, one could say that when a person’s intuition is a rational one, that person should use the intuition when evaluating the probability of a theory given the data if she is to assess the overall rationality of the belief. The problem is that even a rational subjectively experienced intuition is still subjectively experienced, and the type of probability the argument is using is nothing more than the objective evidential relation between theory and data, and not the overall rationality of a person’s belief.

To illustrate the difference between the two, suppose Smith and Jones know that in a particular factory 2% of all widgets shaped like a cube contain metal. Let T represent The widget from the factory contains metal and let D be The widget from the factory is shaped like a cube. The objective evidential relation between T and D is such that Pr(T|D) = 0.02, and Pr(not-T|D) = 0.98. Smith is a cyborg who knows she has a metal-detecting implant that gives her the intuition that a widget contains metal whenever a metal-containing widget is in her hand. Unbeknownst to Jones, Smith’s intuition tells her the cube-shaped widget contains metal and she is rational to believe it contains metal, but this does not change the objective evidential relation between T and D, which is still Pr(T|D) = 0.02, since Pr(T|D) represents the probability of the widget containing metal given just the shape of the widget. The overall rationality of cyborg Smith’s belief is such that she is rational in thinking the widget contains metal despite Pr(not-T|D) being high. In contrast, Jones (who is akin to the Unbiased Atheist) would be justified in thinking the widget does not contain metal because he doesn't have Smith's intuition, and is wholly reliant on the objective evidential relation between T and D.

In some cases it is possible for rational intuition to be relevant in evaluating the objective evidential relation between data and theory, e.g. intuiting principles of inductive inference. But the a priori intuition that moral oughtness is associated with certain natural properties is no more a rule of inductive inference than the a priori intuition that God’s existence is currently associated with the universe’s existence. The subjectively experienced intuition of morality’s existence, while perhaps a rational intuition, does not seem like it should affect our evaluation of Pr(not-M|A&K) when it’s the objective evidential relation between not-M and A&K that we’re trying to determine, and not the overall rationality of the belief.

Objection: even with Pr(not-M|A&K) being high, moral intuition still justifies moral objectivism for the atheist



A more promising approach is to bite the bullet and say that Pr(not-M|A&K) is high but only in the sense of an objective evidential relationship between not-M and A&K, and not the overall rationality of the belief. Consider the case of cyborg Smith. Although Pr(not-T|D) is high in the objective evidential relation sense, cyborg Smith’s intuition nonetheless makes it rational for her to believe the widget probably contains metal. Similarly, even though Pr(not-M|A&K) is high in the objective evidential relation sense, moral intuition still justifies an atheist’s belief that objective morality probably exists. Pr(not-M|A&K) as an objective evidential relation between theory and data ultimately becomes irrelevant, and the atheist moral objectivist is still justified in rejecting the moral argument’s first premise.

The problem comes when A&K encompasses all the relevant data, including the existence of moral intuition, and when this objective evidence suggests that the moral intuition is likely delusory. To illustrate, let’s modify the cyborg Smith scenario as follows: Jones shows Smith objective evidence suggesting that Smith’s metal-detecting implant would give Smith the intuition that the widget contains metal even if the widget did not contain metal, making Pr(not-T|D&K) high. Cyborg Smith’s intuition would no longer provide adequate justification, and Pr(not-T|D&K) being high gives her strong rational grounds to believe the widget does not contain metal. Similarly, on atheism the objective evidence suggests we would have the moral intuition even if morality did not exist. As mentioned earlier, moral oughtness is causally inert; its presence or absence would have no effect on what intuitions our brains would give us, nor would it have any effect on the evolutionary and environmental processes that gave us our brains. On atheism, this would seem to undercut our moral intuition as a source of adequate justification, and Pr(not-M|A&K) being high does seem to strongly justify the moral argument’s first premise.


Conclusion



Moral oughtness is invisible, nonphysical, causally inert, and empirically undetectable. So if atheism is true, why shouldn’t the consistent atheist reject the existence of this invisible nonphysical thing that cannot be empirically detected, if the atheist is to reject the existence of invisible nonphysical deities that have (allegedly) not been empirically detected? Given atheism, it seems more likely that people’s belief in moral oughtness is a delusion brought about by evolution to get us to behave in certain ways and help our species survive. Given atheism, objective morality probably doesn’t exist, which suggests that the moral argument’s first premise is probably true.

In providing a neutral, unbiased vantage point from which to evaluate the objective evidential relation between not-M and A&K, the Argument from the Unbiased Atheist helps show that given atheism, objective moral oughtness probably doesn’t exist, thereby suggesting that the first premise of the moral argument is probably true. We have a sort of “probabilistic argument from atheism” against moral objectivism to support the moral argument’s first premise, and I don’t see good way to refute it.

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[2] Wade A. Tisthammer created the Argument from the Unbiased Atheist (I mention this because I have been asked who came up with it).

[3] For the record, I do not believe that Pr(not-God|Evil&K) is high, but the hypothetical scenario of it being high does serve as a useful illustration.

[4] This can be shown with the help of mathematics (given that the sort of “evidence” we have in mind is something that makes a hypothesis more or less likely); see p. 2 of Why evidentialism sucks.




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Sunday, March 18, 2012

Does Objective Morality Exist If God Does Not Exist? (p. 2)

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Does Objective Morality Exist If God Does Not Exist?
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The Best Atheistic Alternative for Grounding Objective Morality



As I promised in my previous blog entry, I’ll address what I think is the best atheist ontological explanation for objective morality. While I had thought the atheist could accept a “brute fact” position, I later realized that “morality just exists” is inadequate because as I explained earlier either moral naturalism or moral non-naturalism is true (if you have trouble wrapping your mind about moral properties being natural or non-natural, moral properties being physical or nonphysical will be close enough for our purposes) and an atheist ontological explanation for objective morality ought to tell us at least whether moral properties are natural or non-natural. Given the nature of the prescriptive ought (recall that any ought that has no properties besides purely descriptive ones is a descriptive ought and not a prescriptive ought, and natural properties are purely descriptive in nature) and the dog kicker scenario, it seems clear that if objective moral properties like moral wrongness exist they are non-natural (if you found that argument unconvincing or unclear, thinking of moral properties as nonphysical will again be close enough for present purposes). So here’s the best atheist ontological explanation I can think of: objective moral properties “just exist” as non-natural properties that are attached to certain states of affairs, e.g. the nonphysical property of moral wrongness attaches itself to murder, and the nonphysical property of moral rightness attaches itself to a parent loving her child; no deity or any other entity is responsible for why these moral properties exist. Human beings and their actions are sufficient for moral properties to exist. If I were an atheist moral objectivist, this is the ontological view I would subscribe to. For the purposes of having a handy label, let’s call this view simple moral non-naturalism.

Is this ontological view simpler than the view I discussed in the argument from ontological simplicity? Perhaps it depends on the details of how instances of objective moral properties like moral wrongness exist. Personally, when I think of “nonphysical moral properties like moral wrongness just exist independently of our belief and perception of them” I think of nonphysical moral wrongness as an ectoplasmic gooey cloud attached to some morally wrong action, like stealing a television. If the innumerable instances of the objective moral wrongness property exist as a massive multitude of these invisibly gooey clouds (or whatever) that are somehow attached to certain actions, it seems simpler to me for objective moral properties to be grounded in a single entity, e.g. moral wrongness being that which God forbids. Even so however, I don’t think simplicity is the biggest problem here.

Even though simple moral non-naturalism is the best atheist ontological explanation I can think of, this view is deeply problematic to the point where I doubt I would accept it even if I were an atheist. To see why let’s first note some epistemological problems atheism has with morality.

The Warrant Problem



On theism, it makes perfect sense that there’d be some component of reality transcending our opinion that says people shouldn’t do certain things, but on atheism objective moral oughtness is rather strange when you think about it; it’s invisible, nonphysical, causally inert, and empirically undetectable. A theistic worldview allows for a God using superintended evolution to design our cognitive faculties such that when they function properly we intuitively apprehend basic moral truths, but what about atheism? Since objective moral properties are invisible and empirically undetectable, how is it on atheism we know objective morality exists?

The problem of how on atheism we can know that objective moral properties exist is what I’ll call the warrant problem. In philosophy, warrant is that quality (or quantity) such that enough of it added to true belief yields knowledge; so in some cases the warrant for a belief might be some type of justification or evidence for that belief. There are two issues that spell trouble for how on atheism we could be warranted in accepting objective moral oughtness.

The first is that if atheism is true it would be a remarkable coincidence if moral intuitions happened to line up with what these nonphysical moral oughtness properties are really like. Moral oughtness is causally inert; it’s presence or absence would have no effect on what intuitions our brains would give us, nor would it have any effect on the evolutionary and environmental processes that gave us our brains. On atheism, which moral intuitions we’d get from sociobiological evolution is unguided and random—random in the sense that it could have been otherwise, there’s no external intelligence like God directing which intuitions we’d get, and the processes that give us our intuitions are completely blind and indifferent to what moral properties are really like, such that even the very existence of moral properties has no effect on which moral intuitions we’d get. On atheism we could have had very different moral codes, even more different from the variations we’ve seen in human history, because moral intuitions would likely track adaptive behavior (behavior conducive for survival and reproductive fitness) rather than truth. Evolution could even have evolved a species where adaptive behavior would be to kill one’s own sibling, and we know this because it’s already happened (the Nazca booby bird). So all things considered, it would be a remarkable coincidence that the moral intuitions we’ve received happen to coincide with what these invisible and causally inert moral properties are really like.

The second issue, related to the first, is that because moral oughtness is causally inert, the best atheistic explanation for why we believe morality exists does not require morality’s existence. Ultimately, we believe morality exists because our brains deliver the intuition that it exists; e.g. it just seems true to us that there’s something morally wrong with torturing innocent sentient life (like infants) just for fun. Barring the supernatural however (like God-guided evolution or supernatural clairvoyance), moral oughtness is causally inert such that even the presence or absence of moral oughtness would have no effect on which intuitions our brains give us, nor would it have any effect on the evolutionary and environmental processes that gave us our brains. To illustrate why this is a problem, suppose a cyborg knows she has a metal-detecting implant installed in her brain that’s designed so that when a widget is in her hand, the implant delivers a strong intuition that the widget contains metal if it contains metal. Suppose however the metal-detecting implant isn’t working as designed and it would deliver the intuition that the widget contains metal even if the widget did not contain metal. Then even if the widget in her hand did contain metal and she believed it contained metal on the basis of her intuition, her belief wouldn’t count as knowledge. Moreover, if she learned the metal-detecting implant would give her the intuition that the widget contains metal even if the widget contained no metal, she would no longer have adequate grounds to believe the widget contains metal. Similarly, if atheism is true we would have the intuition of morality’s existence even if morality did not exist, and this this would seem to undercut our moral intuition as a source of warrant for morality’s existence.

Theoretically, the atheist could avoid this problem by saying we have supernatural clairvoyance of these nonphysical moral properties, such that if morality did not exist our supernatural clairvoyant powers would not deliver the intuition of morality’s existence—but an idea like this seems awfully far-fetched. If atheism is true, it seems very likely that we don’t have warrant for believing that objective moral oughtness is real.

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