In responding to William Lane Craig’s advocacy of a Divine Command Theory (DCT) Walter Sinnott-Armstrong makes the objection that,“The divine command theory makes morality unknowable.”

He makes the following argument for this:

To see why, consider whether or not it is immoral to eat pork. If the divine command theory is correct, we cannot answer this question simply by pointing out that eating pork causes harm to pigs or to us, unless we already know that God commanded us to avoid such harm. We also cannot know wether it is immoral to eat pork on the basis of other’s testimony or our own moral intuitions if we have no reason to think their testimony or our intuitions map onto divine commands, and we cannot have any such reason without knowing what God commanded. Thus, on Craig’s theory we cannot know what is morally wrong, if we cannot know what God commanded. Unfortunately, however we have no sound way to determine what God commanded.1

Sinnott-Armstrong’s argument here is as follows:

[1] If DCT is correct then we cannot know an action is wrong unless we know God prohibited it.

[2] We have no sound way to determine what God has commanded or prohibited.

From these it is concluded that

[3] If DCT is correct we cannot know an action is wrong.

In support of [1] he offers two premises,

[1a] If DCT is correct then we cannot know an action a is wrong because it has property p, unless we know that God prohibits p

[1b] If DCT is correct, then we cannot know an action a is wrong, on grounds g, unless we know that g “maps on to divine commands”.

One serious problem with this argument is that [1] is false, as are the supporting premises [1a] and [1b]. According, to the DCT of Adams, Alston, and Evans, which Craig appropriates, the property of being wrong is constituted by the property of being contrary to Gods commands in the same way that the property of being water is constituted by the property of being H20. Sinnott-Armstrong thinks holding that moral duties are constituted by Gods commands, means, one cannot know if an action is wrong unless one knows it was forbidden by God. This seems to presuppose the following inference :

I1: If A is constituted by B, then one cannot know if something is an A unless one knows it is a B.

However, I1 is false. Consider the following counter example; water is constituted by H20. Yet people for thousands of years could perceive water, drink it, detect it, and use it etc without knowing anything about atomic theory. This example shows people can know something is an A (water), A can be constituted by something B (H20) and people not know A is a B.

The same is true for [1a], the DCT claims that wrongness is constituted by God’s prohibition, Armstrong seems to think this means we cannot know if an action is wrong on the basis of some feature of that action unless we know that feature is prohibited by God. This seems to presuppose a similar inference

I2: If A is constituted by B then we cannot know something is an A on the basis of it possessing p, unless we know that B has p.

But again there are obvious counter examples to I2. Water is constituted by H20, if I2 is true it would follow one cannot tell that the cup of liquid I am drinking is water because of its taste unless I know that H20 tastes that way. But this is clearly false. Medieval men could recognize by taste a cup of water as well as any modern person despite not knowing anything about H20.

[1b] faces similar difficulties, here Armstrong thinks, that if our duties are constituted by divine commands, this entails that we cannot know that an action is immoral on the basis of some ground, such as intuition or testimony, unless we have reasons for thinking that ground “maps onto divine commands”. But why think this? The argument seems to rely on the following inference

I3. If A constitutes B, then one cannot know B exists on ground g, unless one has reason for thinking g reliably tracks A.

But this is also false. Take the example I mentioned above. There are people do not know about atomic theory and yet know on the basis of perception that the glass in front of them contains water. These people do not need to have reasons for thinking that their eyesight tracts hydrogen and oxygen atoms before they can rationally trust their senses, they know about water quite independently of any knowledge about hydrogen or oxygen.

So [1], [1a] and [1b] are all false. The error in each instance is the same, Armstrong assumes that the metaphysical claim that our duties are constituted by God’s commands entails that we cannot recognize or know whether an action is wrong unless we know what God commanded. This however is to conflate moral ontology with moral epistemology.

Similar problems afflict Sinnott-Armstrong’s advocacy of [2] that “we have no sound way to determine what God commanded.” Immediately after making this claim Armstrong defends it by claiming the arguments from natural theology fail, he then states

Theists often tell us what God commands, as if they knew, and the commands they ascribe to God are often (though not always) plausible. However, what makes us and them accept that God commands those actions rather than others is that we already and independently had a reason to think that certain acts are immoral. Assuming God is good, of course God would command us not to rape. But the only way we know God would issue that command is that we already know rape is wrong. There is no way to know what God does or would command without already knowing what is right or wrong.2

Here Sinnott-Armstrong seems to contradict [2] when he contends that it’s plausible to claim God commands us not to rape and seems to countenance the conclusion that we can know what God would command on the basis of justified moral beliefs. But if this is true then [2] is false. Of course Sinnott-Armstrong contends such knowledge is dependent on moral beliefs and not revelation or natural theology. But, that is incompatible with [2], [2] does not state that we can’t know through revelation or natural theology it states we can’t gain such knowledge at all.

Some of what Sinnott-Armstrong states here suggests he may have a different argument in mind. In “Morality: Religious and Secular”, Patrick Nowell-Smith refers to an argument that is “familiar to philosophers but of which the force is not always appreciated” which Smith contends refutes a divine command theory, the argument is:

[We] must be persuaded independently of his goodness before we admit his right to command. We must judge for ourselves whether the Bible is the inspired word of a kind and benevolent God or a curious amalgam of profound wisdom and gross superstition. To judge this is to make a moral decision, so that in the end, so far from morality being based upon religion, religion is based upon morality.3

James Cornman and Keith Lehrer have expressed essentially the same line of critique.4 I think this critique is based on a failure to make an important distinction. Take the claim that right and wrong is independent of God’s commands. This claim is ambiguous; it could mean (a), that ones knowledge of right and wrong is independent of ones knowledge of what God commands or (b), that right and wrong exist independently of God’s commands. The first claim states that beliefs about right and wrong are epistemologically independent of beliefs about divine commands. The second is that the existence of moral properties such as right and wrong are ontologically independent of God’s commands.

Now the DCT denies (b). Divine command theorists claim that wrongness is constituted by the property of being contrary to God’s commands. Hence it postulates an ontological dependence between divine commands and moral properties such as wrongness. The arguments of Nowell-Smith above however do not refute this claim. If they show anything, they show not that (b) is the case but that (a) is the case. Nowell-Smith and Sinnott-Armstrong show that we can know what is right and wrong independently of knowing or believing in the existence of divine commands. Hence they show at most an epistemological independence.

Showing that beliefs about right and wrong are epistemologically independent of beliefs about God’s commands does not show that right and wrong are ontologically independent of God’s commands unless epistemological independence entails ontological independence. The objector here assumes that if my knowledge of something does not depend upon my knowledge of something else then the two things can exist independently of each other.

Again this assumption is false. The property of being water is constituted by the property of being H20; as such H20 and water are not ontologically independent. Yet, as noted, for thousands of years people could perceive water, drink it, detect it, and use it etc without knowing anything about atomic theory. Hence, our knowledge of water is independent of our knowledge of H20. Yet this fact does not mean that water is not constituted by H20. Sinnott-Armstrong’s objection therefore fails; it is hard to avoid Craig’s assessment that Sinnott-Armstrong’s critique is “pervaded by the conflation of moral ontology with moral epistemology.”5

1. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 109.
2. Ibid 110.
3. Patrick H. Nowell-Smith, “Morality: Religious and Secular,” in Christian Ethics and Contemporary Philosophy, ed. Ian T. Ramsey (London: SCM Press, 1966) 97.
4. James W Cornman & Keith Lehrer, Philosophical Problems and Arguments (New York: MacMillan, 1979) 429.
5. William Lane Craig “This Most Gruesome Guests” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, Eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 168.

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Tooley, Plantinga and the Deontological Argument from Evil Part II
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Tags:   Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · James Cornman · Keith Lehrer · Patrick Nowell Smith · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong · William Lane Craig9 Comments