Yesterday, I had a long and enjoyable public discussion with Jason Thibodeau on the topic of The Euthyphro dilemma.
Jason is a writer for the Secular Outpost and teaches philosophy at Cypress college in California. He also is the author of a recent article entitled “God’s Love is Irrelevant to the Euthyphro Problem” published in Sophia The team at Real Atheology recently interviewed Jason about his paper a couple of weeks prompting Cameron Bertuzzi from Capturing Christianity to have both of us discuss the matter further on his youtube channel.
Those who follow MandM regularly will know, Jason and I have been engaging in written exchanges on this issue for several years and he has always been a thoughtful and intelligent dialogue partner. Jason has raised some challenging responses to my arguments and yesterday’s two-hour discussion/ debate was no different. It was one of the better dialogues I have had on religion and morality in a long time. Hopefully, the dialogue generates more light than heat.
The whole dialogue is available on YouTube here:
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Euthyphro Dilemma · Jason Thibodeau4 Comments
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
This is an outstanding exchange. I think you’ve pushed me into the Divine Comand camp.
Can you PLEASE write a book devoted to this issue and tie it to the problem of evil?
Hi Matt.
Thank you for your kind comments. I also very much enjoyed the conversation. Despite the fact that we talked for over 2 hours, I think that there is still more that can be said. I am sure you agree. So, by way of extending the conversation just a bit, I have a (somewhat longish) set of comments that concern the Asura argument and the question of why it is that Asura’s commands do not and cannot constitute moral obligations. I hope that you find them interesting.
At about the 53:30 mark, we begin an exchange that is focused on the following question: “Why think that it is only the property of being commanded by God that is identical to the property of obligatoriness? Why think that it can’t be the property of being commanded by Asura that is the property of obligatoriness?” In your response to this question you pointed out that the question can be interpreted in two different ways. As I understand your comments, you are saying that on one interpretation the question is metaphysical and on the other interpretation the question is epistemological. The metaphysical question is, on your view, incoherent. On the other hand, if we interpret the question to be epistemological, we are asking why it is that we believe that God’s commands (rather than Asura’s) are identical to moral properties. And this question we can answer by pointing to our knowledge of the content of moral obligations.
The question that I asked certainly has an epistemic flavor to it and so I would not fault anyone for treating it as such. However, the point that I was trying to make is a metaphysical one; and I do think that it is a coherent metaphysical question. I’ve given it some thought and I want to see if I can articulate the metaphysical question a little better.
To explain why the metaphysical question is incoherent you offered an analogy with the questions, “Why is that when I stand up, I make it the case that Matthew Flannagan stands up?” and “What makes it the case that two identical things are identical to each other?” But these questions concern the identity of individuals whereas the identity claim at the center of the divine command theory concerns the identity of properties. I would suggest that when it comes to property identity, the metaphysical question is perfectly coherent. Let me try to defend that.
Suppose we have some surface level properties of type PS. Take some theory, T, that asserts that PS are identical to some micro-level features of type FM. Suppose further that there is some other type of micro-level feature, FN, that is very similar to FM, similar in almost every relevant respect. It seems we can ask the following questions about T: Why think that PS are identical to FM rather than FN? Why not think that PS features are identical both FM and FN features (i.e., that PS are multiply realizable)?
Now, these might be epistemological questions, that is, they might be requests for factors that give us reason to believe that it is FM rather than FN that PS are identical to. However, they might also be metaphysical questions. We might be asking what it is about FM features that would account for their identity with PS.
My point, of course, is about the meaning and significance of my question about Asura’s commands and their failure to constitute moral obligations. In the above example, it is possible that there is some further fact about FM that explains why it is that these features, rather than FN, are identical with PS. And it is therefore perfectly coherent to ask for an account of this/these fact(s) about FM that would explain this. Similarly, it is coherent to ask what it is about God and/or his commands that explain why it is that his commands and not Asura’s constitute moral obligations.
Consider, by way of analogy, a theory according to which mental properties are identical to features of a biological brain (let’s call this the Mind-Brain Identity theory (MBI)). Suppose that, in the future, engineers are capable of producing artificial androids that behave in ways similar to humans. Such androids can carry on a conversation, perform complex tasks, read text and answer questions about it, etc. They also react to damage in ways similar to how humans react to bodily harm; they grimace, shout, wince, etc. when their artificial bodies are damaged. These androids, however, have brains that are composed of silicon rather than neurons. According to MBI, these androids do not have mental states because mental states are identical to brain states and the androids do not have biological brains. About MBI, we can ask, why think that mental features can only be identical to brain features? Why not think that the features of these artificial silicon brains are identical to mental features? Why not think that mental features are multiply realizable?
Such questions are best interpreted as metaphysical rather than epistemic. And these metaphysical questions have content because of the fact that there are two possible candidates for filling in the identity relation. If we are going to accept MBI, then we need to understand what it is about the features of biological brains that explain why it is that only they (and not features of silicon brains) are the micro-level features that mental features are identical to. If we don’t have any explanation for this, then we have no reason to believe that mental features cannot be identical to features of silicon brains in addition to being features of biological brains (i.e., we have no reason to believe that mental properties are not multiply realizable). Proponents of MBI would need, therefore, to point to something about biological properties of brains (call it X) that silicon brains do not have and plausibly suggest that the presence of X accounts for the fact that mental properties are identical to (some) biological brain properties but not identical to silicon brain properties.
In the same way, I would assert that if we are to believe that moral obligatoriness is identical to the property of being commanded by God (and not the property of being commanded by Asura), we need to understand what it is about God’s commands that accounts for the fact that they (and not Asura’s commands) are identical to moral properties. What is it about God’s commands that accounts for this?
Jason, thank for your comment:
Interesting, I am not sure that the relationship in the first example is the identity of individuals. My suggestion was supposed to be about the identity not of individuals as such but actions performed by individuals. The action of me standing up is identical with the action of Matthew standing up, and as I see it DCM involves a relationship a lot like this. It states that the property of being morally obligated is identical with the property of being commanded by God. If commands are actions, which I think is plausible, then it seems to me something like the same kind of relationship is in play.
But if you want to stress properties, then perhaps I should have been more precise. Let’s modify the situation to make it closer. When I stand up on a chair, this means the chair has the property of being stood on by Matthew.
Now suppose someone approached me and said to me that, there was a mystery here they asked: “How come you have the power to make it the case that when you stand on a chair, the chair has the property of being stood on by Matthew?”They asked “Jason doesn’t have that power, he can only make it the case that when he stands on a chair that chair has the property of being stood on by Jason” and then pressed me for some kind of causal explanation for this asking if I have some special powers or causal power that Jason doesn’t.
My instinct is that a person simply hasn’t really grasped the fact that the action of my standing on a chair and Matthew standing on a chair are the same action? Or he hasn’t grasped what an identity relationship is. They can, of course, dispute the claim of identity, but I really don’t see sense in granting it and then asking what makes it the case something identical with my actions aren’t the same as actions done by a distinct individual. They seem to be asking for an explanation for why two identical actions are the same thing.
I must admit I am inclined to interpret this in terms of what I called the epistemological question. You have a theory that states PS=FM. However, any feature of FM that is similar to PS you might plausibly appeal to justify this theory is a feature shared by FN. The problem here seems to be one of rational justification. I have the same reasons for saying that PS=FM and saying that PS=FN, so there is an inconsistency in my epistemic stance.
Let me say that a question like this could make sense with DCT. Suppose, a divine command theorist argues that the property of being morally required is identical with the property of being commanded by God. To justify this claim he points to important features of moral requirements which are shared with divine commands, and the divine command theories would account for.
He notes for example moral requirements are objective, that they are categorical, they provide overriding reasons for action, they supervene upon certain types of actions, those actions a loving just impartial person would endorse, they have Darwall like “second person demand” type features and so on. If a critic of DCT could point to the existence of some other objective categorical authoritative, commandment that had these second personal features and supervened upon the same kinds of natural properties, then it would be legitimate to ask what reasons we have for identifying moral requirements with Gods commands. But this isn’t asking me to explain what makes it the case that when a person performs some action P, this action is identical to actions he performs and not those of someone else. It’s a question about what reasons there are two endorse one theory over another.
Again I am inclined to see this as a loose way of making an epistemic question, your not asking what makes it the case that FN is identical with PS. But rather what features of FN has that FM doesn’t which makes the theory that FN is PS plausible, while the theory that FN and FM are both PS isn’t plausible. And with Asura it seems to me there are reasons I spelt out in our talk that explain this. Asura’s commands have different content, and they supervene on the wrong non-moral properties for it to be plausible to claim that they are identical to moral requirements.
The claim that the property of moral obligatoriness is identical to the property of being commanded by God is a reductionist account of moral properties. Consider a non-reductionist version of DCT:
nrDCT: The property of moral obligatoriness is not identical to the property of being commanded by God; these are distinct properties. The property of being morally obligatory is an irreducibly normative property. While these properties are not identical, that an action has the property of being commanded by God is what makes it the case that an action has the property of being morally obligatory.
We can distinguish three aspects of any divine command: (i) the content of the command, (ii) the fact that the content is commanded, (the feature identified in (ii) is the illocutionary force of the speech act), and (iii) the identity of the commander. We can now ask which of the three features listed above make it the case that an action has the normative property of being morally obligatory.
Consider now the Asura argument: We know that Asura’s commands cannot make it the case that an action has any moral properties. Since he can issue commands, we know that feature (ii) (the commandedness of divine commands) cannot be what makes it the case that an action has moral properties. Nor can it be feature (iii). If (iii) were the feature that makes it the case that actions have moral properties, then the fact that a command is issued by God is what makes it the case that the commanded action has moral properties. But, this cannot be so. It could be so if we could identify a feature that God has that would enable him, and him alone, to create moral properties. But Asura has all of the powers that God has. So, if God has the power to make it the case that an action is morally obligatory by commanding it, then Asura has this property as well.
That leaves us with feature (i): the content of the command. But the content of a divine command is (with modified illocutionary force) equivalent to the claim that we should/should not perform some act. But then the claim that it is the content of the command that makes it the case that the action is morally obligatory is indistinguishable from the claim that the fact that the action is one that we should perform makes it the case that the action is morally obligatory. In this case, the fact that the act is commanded makes no difference. Thus, nrDCT is untenable.
Reductive versions of DCT get out of this problem by denying that there is a distinction between the property of obligatoriness and the property of being commanded by God. On this theory it is not that divine commands have some property in virtue of which the actions commanded have moral properties. So, we cannot sensibly ask, as we could with nrDCT, which feature of divine commands this is. But we can sensibly ask a similar epistemological question: Why think that it is the property of being commanded by God that is identical to the property of moral obligatoriness?
Given that Asura’s commands are not be identical to the property or moral obligatoriness, this should cause some doubt on the claim that moral obligatoriness is identical to the commands of any supernatural being. However, this is not a conclusive consideration.
When we answer the epistemological question, as you have done, what we point to is the content of moral obligations. We say that, given the content of moral obligations, it is likely that the commands of God are identical to our moral obligations. After all, Asura’s commands share the formal features of God’s commands, they differ only in their content. If God’s commands involve overriding reasons for action, it must be in virtue of the content of those commands. But now it looks like we are identifying moral obligations not with the property of being commanded by God but rather with the content of God’s commands. But if this is correct, the identify claim offered by DCT fails. It is not that the property of being morally obligatory is the property of being commanded by God. Rather it is that the property of being commanded by God is co-extensive with the property of being morally obligatory because God commands us to do only what we are morally obligated to do.