* My notes from my presentation at the Glendale Community College panel discussion "God & Truth V: God, Morality, and the Euthyphro Challenge. For more resources related to this presentation see HERE.
**Note: a cleaner copy of these notes can be found at my Academia.edu page.
“What’s Your Problem?”: How Euthyphro Challenges Us
All
Richard Klaus
October 24, 2017
Glendale Community
College’s “God and Truth V:
God, Morality, and
the Euthyphro Challenge”
1. Everyone has a worldview:
metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics
2. What happens when worldviews
come into conflict? At least three
things are attempted…
a. Proof:
the positive demonstration of one’s worldview using reasons and evidence
b. Defense: answering and defending against objections
c. Offense: critical probing of the weaknesses of alternative worldviews
·
This is nothing new. Think
of “debates” about what the best movie is or where the best pizza place is—we
offer reasons for our choice, defend against criticisms, and attempt to
undermine the reasoning offered for alternatives.
3. Euthyphro dilemma has been
used to challenge either:
a. the coherence of the
conception of God or
b. the need for a theistic
basis for morality since if the “good” exists independently of God then God is
not needed to ground moral value
4. As such the Euthyphro
challenge is usually seen as challenge to which the Christian theistic
worldview must provide some defense.
5. I want to step-back and look
at the actual dialogue that Plato gives us in the piece Euthyphro. Here we see that it is about the
concept of moral value.
* In particular… about justifying
the basis for moral value.
6. Every worldview faces the challenge of moral value!
a. Defining its nature
b. Explaining its basis or
grounding (or lack thereof)
7. My presentation … go on the offense and probe some other worldviews
as to how they deal with the issue of moral value.
a. Not necessarily a moral
argument for God’s existence
b. Rather, a critical exercise
that will clear away some intellectual debris
·
Will make space for a consideration (or reconsideration) for a theistic
alternative as the proper grounding for moral value and obligation.
8. Focus: Naturalism—(naturalism can be difficult to define)
a. “Naturalism denies that
there are any spiritual or supernatural realities transcendent to the world or
at least we have no good ground for believing that there could be such
realities… It is the view that anything that exists is ultimately composed of
physical components.”
b. By all accounts naturalism
is the reigning philosophy influencing higher education today.
9. How are naturalism and moral
value related?
a. Naturalism does not comport
well with moral realism.
b. Moral realism:
·
objective moral values exist; moral values are discovered—not created
·
these moral values are valid and binding whether anybody believes in
them or not
10.
Quotations regarding the difficulty of reconciling naturalism/atheism
with moral realism.
a. Jean-Paul Sartre
“The
existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does
not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in
an intelligible heaven. There can
no longer be any good a priori, since
there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it.”
b. Julian Baggini
“If there is no
single moral authority [i.e., no God] we have to in some sense ‘create’ values
for ourselves… [and] that means that moral claims are not true or false… you
may disagree with me but you cannot say I have made a factual error.”
c. Friedrich Nietzsche
“There are
altogether no moral facts”; indeed, morality “has truth only if God is the
truth—it stands or falls with faith in God.”
d. Tamler Sommers and Alex
Rosenberg—“Darwin’s Nihilistic Idea: Evolution and the Meaninglessness of Life”
(2003)
“Darwinism thus puts the capstone on a process which since
Newton’s time has driven teleology to the explanatory sidelines. In short it
has made Darwinians into metaphysical Nihilists denying that there is any
meaning or purpose to the universe its contents and its cosmic history. But in
making Darwinians into metaphysical nihilists, the solvent algorithm [random variation acted on by natural
selection] should have made them into ethical nihilists too. For intrinsic
values and obligations make sense only against the background of purposes,
goals, and ends which are not merely instrumental.”
“…morality is at most an instrumentally useful illusion.”
“But when we combine an evolutionary account of ethical
beliefs with the conception of Darwinian theory as a ‘universal acid’… the
result is moral nihilism.
If all apparently purposive processes, states, events, and conditions
are in reality the operation of a purely mechanical substrate neutral
algorithm, then as far [as] explanatory tasks go, the only values we need
attribute to biological systems are instrumental ones. An evolutionary account of moral belief will
not only explain ethics but it will explain it away.”
11.
This leads Christian philosopher Mitch Stokes to conclude:
“If naturalism
is true, there’s no morality apart from what humans value, want, or prefer. Morality is purely a matter of
taste. In short, naturalism
implies moral nihilism, the view that there are no human-independent moral
rules.”
12.
How can the naturalist respond to this charge of moral nihilism?
a. Accept moral nihilism—but this has problems
·
Violates our fundamental moral intuitions (e.g., “Torturing babies for
fun is wrong” is not reducible to relatativism)
“Like sense
perception, we have certain moral intuitions or instincts that are basic to
properly functioning humans. If we
don’t have them, something’s wrong with us. And in the absence of strong reasons to overturn these
intuitions, they should be taken seriously.”
·
Lose the objective basis for human rights
·
Lose the objective basis for condemning morally abhorrent people and
practices
-Hitler, Bin Laden
-Rape, torture
·
Lose the objective basis for moral motivation—“Why uphold some
arbitrarily chosen moral standard; especially if such a standard puts unwanted
restrictions on me?”
Note: Four observations
about moral facts and explaining them
1.
Moral facts are not physical in nature; they
don’t have physical properties.
2.
Moral facts are a kind of communication; a
proposition which is a command.
Commands only make sense with two minds involved.
3.
Moral facts have a force of feeling—a feeling of
“oughtness.”
4.
Moral facts can be violated and this produces a
certain kind of discomfort—a sense of guilt.
How to explain—moral rules
are…
1.
an Illusion
2.
an Accident
3.
a product of Intelligence
b. The other option a
naturalist might try: reject moral nihilism and attempt to ground moral realism
on a naturalistic basis.
13.
Some attempts to ground moral realism in naturalism
a. Evolutionary accounts—evolutionary mechanisms simply produce moral realism
·
Stuart Kauffman Reinventing the
Sacred (2008)
·
Kauffman attempts to show how moral norms evolved:
“A wonderful experiment was carried out with
Capuchin monkeys. The experiment
consists of two monkeys in two cages facing one another but separated by a
partition so neither can see the other.
Adjacent to these two cages is a third cage in which a third monkey can
observe both of the other two. The
experimenter feeds one of these two apples, bananas, and so forth. The second monkey receives scraps. At some point, the observer monkey,
well fed himself, is given extra food.
What does this animal do?
It gives the extra food to the monkey who received the scraps. These monkeys have evolved a sense of
fairness.” (Kauffman, 2008, p.
260)
·
Problem: Kauffman begs the question!
“…two questions
will illustrate the fallacy. 1) Is
fairness ethical simply because monkeys evolved it? 2) Or did monkeys evolve towards an ethical standard that is
independent of themselves?” (a
Euthyphro-like dilemma!)
--can’t
be second option since this takes us out of the range
of naturalism
--If
(1) then what about other behaviors that have evolved
among
animals: male lions hoarding female harems, some
animals
eat their young
“Clearly,
Kauffman presupposes ‘fairness’ is ethical, and then
goes looking for an example to support his
conclusion. But if evolution is
the source of our moral norms he cannot appeal to a standard external to
evolution to discriminate between naturally evolving behaviors. Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer’s
book, A Natural History of Rape
(2000) defends rape as a normal reproductive strategy developed to guarantee
the survival of one’s genes. Few
evolutionists will sympathize with their thesis. But how can an evolutionist condemn the evolution of rape
and condone the evolution of fairness without presupposing an ontologically,
transcendent standard of behavior?”
·
Problem: Reduces morality to conduct and neglects non-behavioral
components such as motive and intentions.
“We can’t infer
actual moral obligations from the mere fact of a chimp’s conduct. We can observe that chimps in community
share food and that when they do they survive better. But we cannot conclude from this that Bongo ought to share his bananas or else he’ll
be immoral because he hasn’t contributed to the survival of his community.”
“Motive and
intent cannot be determined simply by looking at behavior. In fact, some good behavior might turn
out to be tainted, depending on the motive and intent: giving to the poor when
one wants to be well thought of, instead of having a genuine concern for the
recipients. Indeed, it seems one
can be immoral without any behavior at all, such as plotting an evil deed that
one is never able to carry out.
“Morality
informs behavior, judging it either good or bad; it’s not identical to
behavior. Rather it is something
deeper than habitual patterns of interaction. Therefore we can’t draw conclusions about animal morality
simply based on what we observe in their conduct.”
·
Problem: Kauffman concedes his arguments are insufficient
“Still ethical
and moral reasoning goes far beyond what can be accounted for by evolutionary
arguments.” (Kauffman, 2008, p. 262)
b. Sam Harris:
grounding objective value in scientifically demonstrated well-being
·
Problem: reduces moral value to prudential value
-prudential
goods: good for a subject
-moral good:
good, period.
·
“In other words, he [Harris] seems to be in danger of changing the
subject and not giving us a theory of morality at all. Well-being alone seems to be a prudential good, something that is merely good for the subject experiencing it. Another way of stating the problem with
Harris’s view is that the concepts of morality and well-being can come apart.”
·
“At the end of the day Harris is not really talking about moral values. He is just talking about what’s conducive to the flourishing
of sentient life on this planet.”
c. Erik Wielenberg’s non-theistic moral realism. Paul Copan summarizes key components of Weilenberg’s view:
“Atheist
Erik Wielenberg claims that objective morality’s foundation consists of certain
brute ethical facts: they “have no
explanation outside of themselves; no further facts make them true” (the
ontological claim), and we can know these brute ethical facts immediately
without inferring them from other known facts (the epistemological claim).
Necessary moral truths didn’t evolve with humanity but are “part of the
furniture of the universe,” he claims. They “constitute the ethical background
of every possible universe,” creating the framework for assessing the actions
of any moral agent (whether human or divine).”
·
Problem: Arbitrary and unwarranted assumption that objective value has
emerged from valuelessness.
“But to assert is not to justify, and this claim hangs on a mere metaphysical wish that
maybe value could emerge from valueless matter; the claim is not anchored in
ontological realities.”
·
Problem: massive cosmic coincidence (“lucky coincidence objection”)
“Earlier he
admitted that if ‘there is no God, then it is in some sense an accident that we
have the moral properties that we do.’
He also acknowledged that his ‘view undoubtedly entails that certain
elements of the universe (the actual laws of nature and basic ethical facts)
fit together in a nifty and perhaps amazing way.’”
“An example may
help to illustrate: One evening in the middle of a Scrabble game you notice the
phrase ‘do not go’ formed in the random spray of letter tiles on the
table. Is this a command that
ought to be obeyed? Of course
not. It’s just a random collection
of letters.”
“The
non-naturalistic moral realist in this case holds that (a) certain necessary
moral facts exist and (b) self-reflective, morally responsible and
intrinsically valuable beings eventually appear on the scene (through unguided,
highly contingent evolutionary steps) who both can recognize these pre-existing
facts and are duty-bound to them. This Platonic-like moral realm, it appears,
was anticipating our emergence, just waiting for us to comply with it—a
remarkable cosmic accident! A far simpler, less ad hoc explanation is
available, however: a good, personal God—the very locus of objective moral
values— created human beings with dignity and worth. Moral fact-hood and moral
worth have always existed since both applied to God before his creation of
human beings. Theism affords a far more elegant and natural explanation.”
d. Impersonal Transcendent
Source of moral value (Platonic and Platonic-like views): see appendix
14.
What I’ve attempted to show (in a quick fashion)… naturalism cannot
provide the preconditions for moral realism.
15.
In contrast… Christian theism does provide a worldview that more
readily comports with moral realism.
a. God is the standard of moral
value—he is himself “the good”
b. God’s commands provide a
basis for our moral duties
c. God as a personal, righteous
Judge ensures moral accountability—evil will be punished appropriately and
justice vindicated
Excursus: More fully developed thoughts on the above by
William Craig
·
William Craig offers the following three points
that are illustrative of Christian-theistic ethics and compatible with the
teaching of Jesus.
·
(1) “First, if theism is true, we have a sound
basis for objective moral values. To say that there are objective moral values is to say that
something is good or evil independently of whether anybody believes it to be
so. It is to say, for example,
that the Holocaust was morally evil even though the Nazis who carried out the
Holocaust thought it was good.
“On the theistic view, objective
moral values are rooted in God. He
is the locus and source of moral value.
God’s own holy and loving nature supplies the absolute standard against
which all actions are measured. He
is by nature loving, generous, just, faithful, kind, and so forth. Thus, if God exists, objective moral
values exist.”
·
(2) “Second, if
theism is true, we have a sound basis for objective moral duties. To say that we have objective moral duties is to say that we
have certain moral obligations regardless of whether we think so or not.
“On the theistic view, God’s moral nature is expressed toward us in the
form of divine commands that constitute our moral duties. Far from being arbitrary, these
commands flow necessarily from his moral nature. On this foundation we can affirm the objective goodness and
rightness of love, generosity, self-sacrifice, and equality, and condemn as
objectively evil and wrong selfishness, hatred, abuse, discrimination, and
oppression.”
·
(3)
“Third,
if theism is true, we have
a sound basis for moral
accountability.
On the
theistic view, God holds all persons morally accountable for their
actions.
Evil and wrong will be
punished; righteousness will be vindicated.
Despite the inequalities of this life, in the end the scales
of God’s justice will be balanced.
We can even undertake acts of extreme self-sacrifice that run contrary
to our self-interest, knowing that such acts are not empty and ultimately
meaningless gestures.
Thus, the
moral choices we make in this life are infused with an eternal significance.”
16.
Proof, Defense, & Offense… again!
a. My primary goal has been to
be on the offense—critically probing the internal consistency of naturalism as
a foundation for moral realism.
b. This does not prove
Christian theism
c. But it does provide a
ground-clearing function so that a fresh hearing for Christian theism and its
philosophical resources for undergirding moral realism may be heard.
d. And that is what I would
commend to you!
Appendix: Impersonal
Transcendent Source for Moral Value
Perhaps moral value is simply a brute given—a primal reality
without explanation. This seemed
to be Plato’s view of the form of the Good. We can call this the impersonal transcendent source
view (ITS).
Some might attempt to argue that the ITS view is simply a species of naturalism but this
seems to be too quick and facile.
Naturalism, as defined above with the illustrative quotations, is a
different sort of philosophy than ITS.
George Mavrodes draws attention to the contrast between a Platonic world
and a “Russellian” world. By
“Russellian” world he is drawing on Bertrand Russell’s ideas of naturalism in
which all of life is an “accidental collocation of atoms” as noted in the
following quotation:
“That man is the product of causes
which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his
growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of
accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of
thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all
the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness
of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar
system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be
buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite
beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them
can hope to stand.
Only within the
scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair,
can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”
In light of
Russell’s view, Mavrodes notes:
Perhaps, Plato did think that
goodness, or some such thing related to morality, was an ultimate fact about
the world.
But a Platonic world is
not very close to a Russellian world.
Plato was not a Christian, of course, but his world view has very often
been taken to be congenial (especially congenial compared to some other
philosophical views) to a religious understanding of the world.
Mitch Stokes outright denies that Platonism is a form of
naturalism. He argues:
You might reasonably think that a
view like Plato’s is a way to support moral realism on the assumption of
naturalism.
On the Platonic view,
moral reality is ultimately dependent on eternal forms that exist independently
not only of humans but also of the cosmos itself.
Although the issues surrounding Platonism are deep and
perplexing, the fact that this independent moral reality—if such there be—is
outside the natural world immediately renders naturalism false.
Platonic forms, strictly speaking,
would be
supernatural.
So ITS seems more metaphysically robust than naturalism but
it can still be atheistic since it denies a personal nature to the transcendent
source.
Perhaps it can be
considered “quasi-atheistic.”
There are, however, problems for a view that posits an impersonal
transcendent source for moral value.
Remember that for ITS there is no subjectively aware being with causal
powers that has teleological intentionality (i.e., no personal deity). Consider the following problems and
tensions:
1.
The issue of the origination of humans with the
requisite reasoning capacity to perceive the moral value derived from ITS seems
problematic—especially if conjoined with the naturalistic accounts of
evolution. The standard
neo-Darwinian model of evolution gives no reason to think that its
non-teleological process will sufficiently ground the needed reason which is a
precondition for understanding and engaging with moral value. J. P. Moreland, in a short essay
analyzing Thomas Nagel’s recent work Mind
and Cosmos, draws attention to Nagel’s critique of naturalistic evolution
and the mind in this way:
Since
our natures/capacities are contingent (they didn’t have to be this way), how is
it that they are able to gain contact with the realm of necessary truths of,
for example, logic and mathematics, when we can easily imagine worlds in which
they fail to have this ability?
How can we explain creatures with these abilities, especially when they
go far beyond what is needed in the struggle for survival?
Moreland goes on to summarize
Nagel’s objections to naturalistic evolution as the source for reason.
But there are several problems
Nagel mentions with the naturalist attempt to account for the faculty of reason
itself:
(a) Reason
isn’t just pragmatically useful; indeed it is self-refuting and circular to
assert that it is.
(b) Reason
isn’t a contingent, local, perspectivalist feature of our evolved nature. It has universal applicability. Evolution produces local, contingent
dispositions, not universal, necessary ones.
(c) Reason
is intrinsically normative.
(d) Reason
takes us beyond appearances to the hidden, intelligible structure of the world.
(e) In
contrast to the senses, which put in contact with objects via causal chains,
reason is not mediated by mechanisms that could be selected by evolutionary
processes; rather, reason puts us in immediate, direct contact with the
rational order.
(f) Reason
is active and involves agency (for example, it isn’t Sphexish); sensation is
passive.
2.
Apart from the issue of humans’ rational faculty
above there is also the problematic correlation between the impersonal
transcendent source of value and the contingently developed human being.
Naturalistic evolution is a contingent
process but the ITS view has to maintain that this process produced a being sufficiently
correlated to necessary moral facts.
Paul Copan notes that “This Platonic-like moral realm, it appears, was
anticipating our emergence, just waiting
for us to comply with it—a remarkable cosmic accident!”
Of course, one could attempt to circumvent
this objection by positing some teleological mechanism that guides the
evolutionary pathways in a purposeful manner.
But this runs into at least two problems.
One, this appears
ad hoc in that arbitrarily positing such a teleological mechanism
within a background of an impersonal transcendent source does not seem to fit
well.
One is ultimately alleging a
purposive process directed to some teleological end by a transcendent source
that is not subjectively aware, does not have causal power, and cannot engage
in teleological intentionality.
The second problem is that such a teleological mechanism places one at
odds with contemporary neo-Darwinian explanations of human evolution.
3.
Apart from the reason problem (#1 above) and the
contingently correlated problem (#2 above) there is the further difficulty of
explaining moral obligation. Even
granting the ad hoc notion of a
teleological mechanism that guides human evolution to be sufficiently
correlated with previously
existing objective moral properties, this does not explain why humans are
morally obligated to align themselves with this moral source of value. John Frame brings attention to this
issue:
The
fundamental question is whether any impersonal principle provides a sufficient
basis for morality. In my judgment, the answer is no.
Even if the universe were governed by an impersonal
principle, and even if it were possible for people to discern what kinds of
behavior that principle rewarded or punished, it would remain an open question
whether we ought to practice the rewarded behavior.
And I cannot imagine any reason why we should feel morally
bound by the dictates of any impersonal principle at all.
Impersonal principles, like gravity,
electromagnetism, and the like, have the power to push us around, but they
don’t have the power to tell what we
ought
to do.
To claim they do is to
commit the naturalistic fallacy.
