2700 - Week 3

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Feb 20, 2024

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WEEK 3 DIVINE COMMAND THEORY October 10, 2021: Divine Command Theory (Lesson 5) Readings Divine Command Theory, Waluchow pp. 95-103 EThical Theory, G & H pp. 114-129 Lectures Divine Command Theories of Morality A. Waluchow on Divine Command Theory B. G&H on Divine Command Theory C. The Euthyphro D. The (Biblical Story of Abraham ● Divine command theory allows for the possibility of objective moral truth ● Divine command theory in its simplest form says moral rules are a product of the commandment of god ● So whatever god says, is ○ God says don't kill so dont kill ● Skeptical because we need someone to tell us what these morals are but ofc god cannot, we need some sort of authority to tell us ○ Not independently knowable ○ Mind independent but not knowable Waluchow on Divine Command Theory - No philosopher accepts that morality is merely a function of the commands of a God - Most skeptical to least skeptical about the existence of/human ability to discern our freely chosen behaviour towards others - Non-cognitivism → relativism → DCT → ethical egoism → “The Ethical Theories” (utilitarianism, deontology, deontological pluralism, feminist ethics) - Note that non-cog to ethical egoism hold that there are no objective moral truths
- “The Ethical Theories” hold that there is an objective moral truth - Mind dependent vs. mind independent - DCT is the theory that the moral rules, norms, and principles are so because God said so - “Ethics depends on a being that is independent of any human and objective” - Why is it skeptical? - Is skeptical in an epistemological sense (episteme, knowledge; logo, study of) - “There are objective moral truths but humans cannot come to know them using their rational faculties; we must rely on an omnipotent/omniscient being in order to determine what the moral rules are” - Philosophers want to believe it is within human capabilities to come to know what the moral rules are independent of a divine authority - “The attractive aspect of DCT is that it has the potential to establish an objective morality– if morality is a set of commands issued by a divine authority, it follows that morality is both universal and objective” - According to Thomas Quinas, the rules in the bible are not the rules of morality - DRT can be seen a commonsensical view, a view that people arrive at without having to put too much thought into where moral rules come from - Live life based off of religious rules - There are 2 version of DCT; both provide the same objective motivation for being moral - “Why should I be good?” “Cause God said so” - The two versions differ in the source of morality - We are supposed to follow moral rules because God says so, but where do these rules come from? - Moral ground theory - “The morally right action is that action commanded by God.That is, the fact that God has commanded some act is the lone cause of the act being morally right: - So like, murder is wrong because God made the universe in such a way that murder is wrong - Some set of rules that have been commanded by god are the lone source of moral obligation - God is responsible for saying that this is the right action - Problems with this version - This version allows for the possibility that God is both omniscient and omnipotent because it leaves total control of morality in his hands; - There are two problems with his omnipotence: 1. There is no standard by which we can assess the choices of of God as “morally good” - His acts cannot be said to be morally good
- omniscient = god knows everything , science 2. God is all powerful/knowing/good; he only does the right thing ever. - Omnipotent: power , all powerful all knowing - If what God says is the right thing because he said it, there is now way you can evaluate the actual goodness of an action - When the metric system was first introduced it was based on a set of standard measures; they took a stick and made it a standard (a metre); it would be weird to say like is the standard metre bar really a metre? - A metre is a metre, because that is how long the stick was; so God is the standard metre bar (that which determines right and wrong) - So “is what God did good?” = “is the standard metre bar a metre?” - Morality is wholly arbitrary; if God said that torture was morally right, it would have to be - We can assess his actions by a standard which exists independently of him - We say morality is whatever god say it is - So if god just wakes up one day and says killing is good, we just abide by it without reason - Bc god is right ? - Divine index version - God commands us to do the morally right thing in all circumstances because it is the right thing to do; he is not causally responsible for the moral rightness of an act; rather, God just has privileged knowledge of morally right acts - God has privilege awareness and is not responsible for the rules of “don't kill” - God is interpreting these rules - God is not responsible for these rules but just know that these are the rules - So morality is legit objective truth in the sense that not even God could make murder permissible; he has privileged access to the
moral rules but he does not have the power to change these moral rules - Sustaining this theory requires that we be able to accurately identify and interpret God’s commands (at minimum); tasks that give rise to the central problems within this version of DCT - Problems with the moral index version of DCT - “Which God, which religious text, which prophet?” 1. There are so many interpretations of “God”; which one is meant to be the objective truthful one? 2. Example: what is the scope of the commitment that you are required to fulfil in the context of your mother and father? - Even if you identify God’s commands, how are they to be reliably interpreted and applied? 1. Even if this is the more plausible theory, we still have to engage in moral reasoning to interpret God’s commands, which means that we’ll need to turn to a moral theory independent of those commands - So it isn’t independently sufficient; there needs to be some kind of moral philosophy to back it ● So this leaves us with the Moral Index version, where morality is independent of God, but He has complete knowledge of its character. We might not always be able to grasp the reasons behind God's commands, but at least we know that He has directed us in the morally correct manner. ● Sustaining the Moral Index version of D.C.I. requires, at a minimum, that we be able to accurately identify and interpret God's commands, tasks that give rise to the central problems with this version of D.C.T. INTRO TO DIVINE COMMAND THEORY - GEIRSSON AND HOLMGREN Geirsson and Holmgren on Divine Command Theory - There are two claims that constitute DCT - “ God commands certain actions” - Which God do these commands come from? - Bible, new vs. old testament - old testament is very angry and bitter - New one is loving and forgiving - How do we interpret the Bible, and how accurate is it as a historical text?
- Reliable because its written by many authors ? - We question its accuracy - How do we explain the interpretive divisions within Christianity (or any religious tradition)? - Catholicism vs. Anglicism vs. whatever - The actions that god commands are morally required because they are commanded by god now? - Not a defensible view tho bc its hard to identify the sorts of arguments that allow any given scholar to explain the reasons of morality - “These actions are morally right because they are commanded by God” - Two general problems G&H maintain emerge from their understanding of D.C.T 1. D.C.T is likely not defensible 2. Even if it were defensible, it denies it supporters are morally responsible agents a. DCT is problematic bc it makes us not free, not free to make our own choices abt how we are going to behave in certain situations - Reasons to think DCT is not defensible: - Which God do these commands come from? - Reasons to think DCT undermines the status of its followers as responsible moral agents - “If morality is nothing more than a command, and the command always presents us with the right thing to do, it follows that morality consists of nothing more than blindly following commands, like a robot” - Why we don’t blame tigers for eating gazelle; because they are just doing what they do (it isn’t morally wrong because they don’t have a choice) - G and H argue that we are just like tigers, following orders blindly - But humans have free will and so we can attempt to investigate the reasons that underwrite any command - As soon as we start investigating “why God said so”, we stop following DCT because now we are questioning the validity of God’s commands using moral reasoning - It doesn't allow us to investigate why that is morally right - We are not responsible for the reasoning behind it - DRT says we have free will, freedom to choose whether we should listen to these commandments from god - Cant investigate why its correct - We are just following rules - G and H say we don't have free will - it's not that we are acting in the morally correct way, its that we are acting in the morally correct way bc we are capable of recognizing its the morally correct way - We can reason why its correct - Not just following rules, we can articulate why those are the rules Comment from the lecture Student: Hi Dr. Robb, before the 18-minute mark, you mention that the human ability to investigate the reasons behind God's commands is a direct contradiction of DCT, as for the DC
theorist, the reason is simply that God(s) commands it. But couldn't the DC theorist make the claim that the fact we have not been able to firmly establish a set of moral rules (although there has been progress, there is so far no hint of a finite, objective set of rules) serves as evidence that we cannot in fact conceptualize moral reasoning at the extent to which we may justify "objective" moral principles? I know this wouldn't save DCT from its other objections, but I feel like this is a relatively natural response to Geirsson and Holmgren's objection at that part of the video. (I also note that I know we use specific types of moral reasoning to attempt to investigate God's commands, but I'd argue that - along the lines of the last lectures on the different kinds of moral reasoning - there is a certain kind that allows us to justify God's commands which we are unable to use; so even though we are using some kind of moral reasoning, its not necessarily the kind that tells us that God's commands are morally right.) Ryan : Thanks for the insightful question. I see now that the point I was trying to make in those last few minutes was not made as clearly as I could've done it, so I'll try to clarify. I'm going to do so by relying heavily on Waluchow's distinction between the Moral Ground and Divine Index versions of DCT (so make sure you're familiar with those as you read my reply). The first point to make is that I altered the particular target of the critique G&H present at the end of their discussion in my video. They maintain the Divine Index version of DCT undermines our common understanding of moral agency because it implies we're just robots. Confusingly (I see now), I adjusted their target to the Moral Ground version of DCT without explicitly noting the adjustment I had made. The reason I made that adjustment is because the 'robot implication' seems to me to be really obvious in the case of the Moral Ground version... here's what I was trying to say: If God(s) was causally responsible for the status of moral truths as 'true' (as is the claim made by the Moral Ground version), then there would be no possible way of using reason to determine what the moral truth is; the only thing we could do would be to talk to God(s) and ask them, and even then we couldn't guess what they would say since, on this account, the omnipotence of God(s) would also imply that they could change the rules of logic and the rules of math (since He/They is/are ALL powerful). And if we can't use reason to guide our actions, and we should always do the right thing, we must just be like lions, or tigers, or bears (oh my!). Or more hyperbolically, according to G&H, the moral ground version of DCT implies we are, and can only be, robots (after writing it out, this might not be as obvious as I'd thought... but it was the point I was trying to make). If this was the claim you were asking about, then I think the response to your observation about our inability to identify objective moral principles would be a relatively straightforward: No. And the reason is, as Waluchow noted, according to the Moral Ground version, moral rules are entirely arbitrary and therefore are not the sorts of things that could ever be identified prior to their being articulated by God(s). So how, you might be asking, is G&H's claim that the Moral Index version of DCT leads to an understanding of moral agents as robots supposed to work? Their idea involves a narrow,
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