Last year, I presented a talk entitled “The Psychopath Objection to Divine Command Theory: Another Reply to Erik Wielenberg” to the New Zealand Association of Philosophers conference in Auckland. This was a follow up to interaction I have had with the work of Erik Wielenberg.
In 2017 I wrote a critical response to Wielenberg’s book Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism. Some, of my criticisms, were discussed in the dialogue between William Lane Craig and Erik Wielenberg at North Carolina State University in 2018 which was subsequently published by Routledge . Wielenberg has since responded to these criticisms. The talk at the NZAP was my thoughts on his latest paper.
Over 2020, I have revised the substance of this talk substantially, and a version of the paper will be published in The European Journal for Philosophy of Religion next year. In November has the opportunity to present the revised paper at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, which was held online in November. Below is a video of that paper.
Abstract: Recently, Erik Wielenberg has developed a novel objection to divine command metaethics (DCM). The objection is that DCM “has the implausible implication that psychopaths have no moral obligations and hence their evil acts, no matter how evil, are morally permissible”. This article criticizes Wielenberg’s argument. Section 1 expounds Wielenberg’s new “psychopath argument” in the context of the recent debate over the Reasonable Nonbelievers Objection. Section 2 discusses two ambiguities in the argument: in particular, Wielenberg’s formulation is ambiguous as to whether Wielenberg uses the word “obligation” in an objective or subjective sense. Section 3 argues that this ambiguity undercuts the argument. If Wielenberg is using the word obligation in a subjective sense, his arguments do not show that psychopaths “have no moral obligations”. By contrast, if Wielenberg is using the word obligation in an objective sense, his arguments do not show that divine command theorists are committed to denying that psychopaths have obligations.
Tags: Divine Command Theory · Erik Wielenberg · Psychopath Objection · Wes Morriston · William Lane CraigNo 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.
0 responses so far ↓
Comments on this entry are closed.