Saturday, January 27, 2007
Euthyphro Debate
Just a little announcement to let everyone know that an old intellectual "adversary" of mine (I use that term to mean a friendly debate opponent) has posted some comments about my Euthphro article that appears on the Ten Minas site. His name is Jason Hatherly, also known as "Nihlo" for those who are familiar with his screen name. His blog is titled "Nihloisms" and is at http://nihloisms.blogspot.com/. Jason is an atheist, and at least as of the last time we spoke a moral nihilist (i.e., he believes that there are no objective/universal moral rules). He has more information about himself on his blog. If you are interested in reading a pretty in-depth philosphical discussion, please feel free to join us.
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11 comments:
I have what some will think a strange, even stupid, question concerning the objective/subjective morality debate:
Does it really matter?
Let me put it this way. If it were proven to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no objective basis for morality I would not find love and compassion any less intrinsically valuable. I value them for their own intrinsic qualities....not for whether they have some ultimate, objective or transcendent basis. The same goes for anything else I value: a society where people acted with concern and sympathy for each other is one that I find intrinsically preferable to one where people are generally callous, selfish and cruel. Friendship seems intrinsically preferable to being alone---even to the capacity to live an entirely solitary life without loneliness. Etc. Etc.
I really don't see that saying these things have an "objective" basis adds anything to their nature which makes them more worth pursuing or valuing.
The whole debate over objective vs subjective in morality seems little more a category error to me.
I may not be entirely understanding your point, so if I get it wrong, please correct me. Nobody is saying that people who do not believe in God cannot behave morally or personally value moral behavior quite highly. It seems that you are saying that you find your own reasons to value moral behavior, and all your reasons are perfectly legitimate. The importance of the objective vs. relative discussion, though, lies in the implications of each proposition. The key question is, "Where does morality come from?"
If morality is relative, then we don't need to look any farther than ourselves to answer this question. After all, there really is no such thing as "morality" except for each person's individual perspective. There is no universal definition for "morality". Each person determines what is and is not moral on their own, and no one person is any more "right" than another. It is my position (as I have argued on many blogs and in several articles on the Ten Minas site) that this position cannot represent reality.
The only other alternative is that morality is objective, meaning there is some set of moral rules to which everyone is subject. Think of it like the civil law. If you murder someone, you may claim that you were legally justified. I may claim that you were not. We each have our own subjective beliefs on the matter. But one of us is right and one of us is wrong. So how do we decide? We pull out a law book and see what it says. There is an objective legal standard (i.e., the civil law) to which we both are subject, regardless of what we each may personally believe about the matter.
If such a universal moral law exists, it must reside somewhere. In other words, where do we look to find it? From where does it originate? With the civil law, it resided in the law book. How about the moral law? If it is objective, it must come from somewhere. It cannot just be "out there."
The theist claims that the only logical source for objective morality is God. Other possible explanations have been tried (such as natural selection), but they have all failed. The only consistent answer is that objective morality comes from God.
Now many people obviously disagree with me on this point, and you can see the Philosophy section on the Ten Minas site to see this argument fleshed out a bit more. But that is the importance of the distinction. If morality is objective, God exists. If it is relative, we need to look elsewhere to determine whether He exists. Morality is no help to us.
So it is not so much an argument for putting value into moral rules. We can personally value them whether they are objective or not. But if they are objective, then God must exist. That is why we spend so much time debating it.
Thank you for your comments.
What I'm saying is very simple. I don't think the existence of "objective" morals particularly matters.
And, I should point out, you've changed the terms I mentioned from objective vs subjective to objective vs relative.
That changes the issue to one of whether every possible moral system is just as good as any other (which I would say it isnt). Here's where the whole issue of the category error comes in. It seems to me that in asking whether morality is objective or subjective we are treating morality in the same way we would treat a stone. Does the stone exist objectively (independent of my observations). One in the real world does. A stone in a dream I have does not.
But morality (aesthetic perceptions too, though we rarely hear the "argument from objective aesthetic truths for the existence of God" for some reason) is a whole different kettle of fish. There can be no morality without beings with the capacity for subjective states---beings who have experiences. Of pain, pleasure, love, hate, joy, sadness and all the rest. Morality is intimately bound up with the capacity for subjectivity. The existence or nonexistence of stones is not. And yet we tend to talk about them in just the same way.
Which is why meta-ethics tends to be such a muddled mess.
I'll put my position this way. I think there are objective facts about subjective experience. It's intrinsically better to be happy than to be in agony. Its intrinsically better to be caring, empathetic and sociable than to be cold, uncaring and unsociable. Its intrinsically better to live in a society made up of beings who care for each other than in one where everyone is selfish.
And this has nothing to do with the reason you give:
The theist claims that the only logical source for objective morality is God. Other possible explanations have been tried (such as natural selection), but they have all failed. The only consistent answer is that objective morality comes from God.
In fact, I think, the only reasonable basis for why certain attitudes, characteristics, behaviors etc are better than others is their own intrinsic nature.
Take love for example. Love is not of value because God exists. Love is of value because of the nature of the experience of love. It would be no less intrinsically worthwhile if no Divine Being existed. The same is true of friendship. Of the bonds of fellowship within a just and well-adjusted community.
The existence or nonexistence of a deity is simply irrelevent to this fact.
Let me put it another way. To say that love only has value if X exists is to say that love has no intrinsic value.....that it only draws its value from an external source. That seems fundamentally wrong-headed to me.
As a preliminary matter, wouldn't you agree that if morality is by definition subjective, then it is also relative? How can you have something that is subjective and yet not relative. For the purposes of this discussion it makes no difference which term we use. "Relative" has nothing to do with the value of a moral system (i.e., whether one system is superior to another). It simply means, in this context, that we all arrive at our own concepts of morality with no overarching objective standard. In other words, morality is determined solely by our relation to our environment and personal attributes.
I think you are confusing what we call ontology and what we call epistemology. Ontology refers to what is actually true. For example, the rock is, in fact, hard. Epistemology refers to what we believe. For example, we believe that the rock is hard. Epistemological beliefs can be mistaken. Ontological truths cannot. The rock may or may not be hard in reality, but that does not change the fact that I believe it to be so. Similarly, the mere fact that I believe the rock to be hard does
not necessarily mean that it is so.
You say, "There can be no morality without beings with the capacity for subjective states---beings who have experiences." But if morality is objective, this is not necessarily true. When you speak of our capacity to have experiences, you are talking about how we arrive at our epistemological beliefs about morality. But that is precisely the point of the debate. Is that all there is? Is the sum total of the concept of morality simply what we believe it to be, or is there some objective standard that exists independent of our beliefs?
You say, "Morality is intimately bound up with the capacity for subjectivity." Actually, our PERCEPTION of morality is intimately bound up
with the capacity for subjectivity, but that does not necessarily mean that morality itself is subjective. Our perception of whether or not that rock is hard is intimately bound up with the capacity for subjectivity, but that does not mean that there is not an absolute truth in existence about whether or not that rock is in fact hard, regardless of our
perceptions.
You also stated, "It's intrinsically better to be happy than to be in agony. Its intrinsically better to be caring, empathetic and sociable than to be cold, uncaring and unsociable. Its intrinsically better to live in a society made up of beings who care for each other than in one where everyone is selfish."
Why?
Don't get me wrong. I agree with you that all of these things are desirable, but why are they desirable? By simply saying they are "intrinsically" better you are begging the question. You are assuming what it is you are trying to prove without evidence. What is it that makes one thing "intrinsically" valuable and another not? We all may believe that goodness has value, but that does not rescue us from examining why it is that we believe this and whether or not it is actually true. And if it is true, WHY is it true? Simply saying it is "intrinsically" true, I believe is dodging the question.
I believe that love has value, but we still have to ask why that is. I believe the answer is because love is derived from God's character, which (because we were designed in God's image) was originally mankind's character before we fell. We value love because it is our true self that we have fallen from.
There is a much more detailed explanation of my position in the Euthyphro article on the website when I explain to a greater degree what I call "Divine Character Theory." I guess I just don't have as much of a problem as you saying that love does not have intrinsic value because if we take God out of the picture, we cannot answer the question of why it has value.
So we agree that the value is there, but you seem to believe that you do not need to look for a source for that value whereas I believe we must.
Thank you again for your comments.
As a preliminary matter, wouldn't you agree that if morality is by definition subjective, then it is also relative?
Remember, I am inclined to think the objective/subjective debate is a poor way of thinking about morality. That it is probably a category error. It seems to me to partake of both and can easily be interpreted as either but is best not thought of along those lines.
The problem is similar to the question "do numbers exist"? Well, yes, in a sense. But we usually use the word "exist" in reference to objects with a physical basis and so the question, and either answer, yes OR no, can lead to confusion.
Which is why I think its probably a poor question and it would be better to ask "what are numbers". Its a question less likely to lead to the confusing tendency to treat numbers in the same way as physical objects and therefore lead to philosophical confusion.
In much the same way I think, rather than asking "is morality objective or subjective" its better to ask "what values lead to richer, more fulfilling lives for individuals, families, communities, societies and our world as a whole".
It really doesn't matter whether you answer "objective" or "subjective" to the first question. There are still sets of values that lead to more fulfilling lives.....and that's why I DON'T think subjective (if that was your answer to the first question---which was, in my opinion, pointless to ask in the first place) necessarily implies moral relativity. Morality relativity implies that one set of values is as good as any other. But not all sets of values lead to richly lived lives. So no, even if morality is viewed as subjective not all values are "as good" as any other.
"Relative" has nothing to do with the value of a moral system (i.e., whether one system is superior to another). It simply means, in this context, that we all arrive at our own concepts of morality with no overarching objective standard.
Ah, you were operating under a different definition of the term. I define moral relativity as the idea that what is "good" is simply what a particular society calls good. That a thing is good is for one society if defined as good by that society. Thats a common definition of the term but if you want to use another then OK. By the definition you used subjective and relative are pretty much interchangeable. Semantics.
Don't get me wrong. I agree with you that all of these things are desirable, but why are they desirable? By simply saying they are "intrinsically" better you are begging the question.
No, by saying they are intrinsically valuable I am saying that their value resides in the nature of the experience itself. Agony is a "bad thing" because of the nature of the experience of agony. Love and friendship are "good things" because of the nature of the experience of love and friendship.
A thing is of intrinsic worth if it doesn't have to draw its value from an external source. If it resides in the nature of the thing itself. To say these things only have value if there is a God is to say they only get their value from an external source. That, in and of themselves, they have no value.
And I don't think you can honestly say you believe you don't find love of intrinsic worth.
I believe that love has value, but we still have to ask why that is. I believe the answer is because love is derived from God's character, which (because we were designed in God's image) was originally mankind's character before we fell.
And here we arrive at the Euthyphro Dilemma:
if Gods character had been cruel instead of loving would cruelty then be valuable/good/right?
If yes, then then love is of value only if its in God's character. Had God's character been different it would not have been of value.
If no, then you must really think, as I do, that love is of value in and of itself.
Divine Character Theory doesn't solve the Euthyphro Dilemma any better than Divine Command Theory.
I will read your article on the topic though.
The intellectual problem I have with what you are saying, though, is that you are using qualitative statements in your definition. How do you determine if something is "fulfilling"? Your definitions beg further definition. Inevitably, you keep coming back to the same question of whether there is some objective truth by which these concepts have a definition.
You say, "Agony is a 'bad thing' because of the nature of the experience of agony", but this is not always true. I may suffer a severe burn by placing my hand on the hot stove, but in doing so I will learn not to do it again (and I will learn to warn others against it so they can be spared that pain). So things that you label as negative are not always negative in context. But if they truly have (or lack) intrinsic worth, then their worth should not be subject to their context. So their worth must come from somewhere else that takes into account the context.
As for your comment about love, any worth I find in love is because God is Love. Without God, you have no foundation for value in anything. It is not sufficient to just say, "Love has worth because I think it has worth." Why does it have worth? "Because I feel it" or "Because it just seems to make sense to me that it should" is not a reason. WHY do you say love has intrinsic worth INDEPENDENT of an objective source for morality? That is the question you need to answer.
Finally, what you have defined as the Euthyphro dilemma is not actually the Euthyphro dilemma. The dilemma asked if something is right because God CHOOSES it. It was the nature of choice that made it arbitrary. With morality residing in God's character, there is no choice to be made, hence no arbitrariness.
Your question about if God's chartacter had been different is an irrelevant one. It isn't different. It never could have been different because it is eternal and unchanging. You are posing an impossible hypothetical. When evalutating morality, we only need to examine the possible alternatives, not the impossible.
Thanks again.
The intellectual problem I have with what you are saying, though, is that you are using qualitative statements in your definition. How do you determine if something is "fulfilling"?
Again, this tendency to treat values as a "thing" in the same way as a stone. Something that can be quantitatively measured and observed.
The qualitative is of the essence of valuation. It MUST be central to our thinking on values.
Inevitably, you keep coming back to the same question of whether there is some objective truth by which these concepts have a definition.
One thing I have noticed in your comments here and your essay is that you seem to think that values must have some EXTERNAL standard of judgement. But its exactly in the "internal", qualitative nature of the experiences of living beings themselves that valuation is meaningful.
You say, "Agony is a 'bad thing' because of the nature of the experience of agony", but this is not always true. I may suffer a severe burn by placing my hand on the hot stove, but in doing so I will learn not to do it again (and I will learn to warn others against it so they can be spared that pain).
In the above it is not the agony which is a good thing but the avoidance of more severe agony and injury. One thing that is, in and of itself, as an experience, a bad thing can under certain circumstance be necessary to prevent something even worse.
That doesn't make the agony a good thing.....rather a necessary evil.
But if they truly have (or lack) intrinsic worth, then their worth should not be subject to their context.
The worth of the agony in your example isn't intrinsic to the nature of the experience of agony but rather derived from the consequence of preventing even worse damage.
Lets take a similar example: the agony of surgery prior to anesthetics. It was necessary for a long term good but was not, in and of itself, a good and as soon as we discovered/invented effective anesthetics we didnt hesitate to eliminate this agony.....because it WASNT the agony which was a good but the healing brought about by the surgery. THAT was what was of value. The attendant agony was a necessary evil. Not a good in and of itself.
As for your comment about love, any worth I find in love is because God is Love. Without God, you have no foundation for value in anything. It is not sufficient to just say, "Love has worth because I think it has worth."
I did not say that. I said love has worth because of the nature of the experience of love.
You claim "without God you have no foundation for valuing anything".
That is simply untrue. I have the best of foundations. I have the nature of experiences as experiences. Of love as the experience of love. Of friendship as the experience of friendship. Of the bonds of community as the bonds of community. There is no more fundamental foundation.
WHY do you say love has intrinsic worth INDEPENDENT of an objective source for morality?
You have not defined the term "objective source of morality". Objective means "existing independently of observers". A stone exists objectively. It exists whether anyone is there to see it. But values are by their nature tied to our subjectivity. To our capacity to have experiences. Values MUST, by their nature, incorporate the nature of subjective experiences. There is no value without beings having experiences.....without subjects.
The standard which forms the real basis of values is internal but non-arbitrary---its is the structure of experience itself. The nature of subjective experiences. Love. Joy. Agony. Wonder. Empathy. Hate. Cruely. Sympathy. And all the rest.
WHY do you say love has intrinsic worth INDEPENDENT of an objective source for morality?
To reiterate. The source of the worth of love is internal but non-arbitrary. It is due to the very structure of experience itself....NOT some external/independently existing something.
Thats what I mean by "intrinsic" worth. The worth lies in the nature of the thing itself. You, on the other hand, insist that it must come from something external. And, as a consequence, it follows that the thing itself, love, has no worth in and of itself.
This seems a blatant falsehood to me.
Finally, what you have defined as the Euthyphro dilemma is not actually the Euthyphro dilemma. The dilemma asked if something is right because God CHOOSES it.
The Euthyphro dilemma, as I demonstrated, can be slightly altered so as to be equally applicable to divine character as to divine commands.
Your question about if God's chartacter had been different is an irrelevant one. It isn't different. It never could have been different because it is eternal and unchanging.
Again, what if it had been eternally and unchangingly cruel rather than kind?
Would it not then follow, at least from your system in which all values derive from the character of God, that cruelty was right and good?
If you object to this I think its probably because, in fact, you find love to be of intrinsic worth. Just as I do. That, in fact, your real underlying source of value is the same as mine. The nature of love itself which you value in and of itself.
When evalutating morality, we only need to examine the possible alternatives, not the impossible.
The idea of an omnipotent, omniscient being who created the universe but whose character is eternally and unchangingly cruel IS a logical possibility.
So, again, I ask the question:
What if the character of God had been unchangingly and eternally cruel?
Would cruelty be right?
Unfortunately due to other commitments in my life right now, I cannot give everyone the attention their comments deserve. But I will try to make three general statements that I think address pretty much every point you have raised.
(1) Yes, in some hypothetical alternate reality, if God's character had been cruel, cruelty would be right. But so what? That's not the reality we live in, nor was it ever a possibility in our reality. So you are still putting up an impossible alternative that is and always will be fiction rather than arguing from within the framework of the reality in which we live.
(2) I think your definition of "objective" is incorrect. That is not how anyone discussing the objective vs. subjective debate uses the term. Your ability to "see" something is irrelevant. A good definition for "objective", for the purposes of this philosophical debate, can be found in the Microsoft Word dictionary, for example.
"1. free of any bias or prejudice caused by personal feelings.
2. based on facts rather than thoughts or opinions."
In other words, something is objective if it finds its source in reality separate from an individual's personal feelings or opinions on the matter. It is equally true for everyone, regardless of their opinions.
(3) In reply to one of my comments you stated (first quoting my comment):
"As for your comment about love, any worth I find in love is because God is Love. Without God, you have no foundation for value in anything. It is not sufficient to just say, 'Love has worth because I think it has worth.'
I did not say that. I said love has worth because of the nature of the experience of love.
You claim 'without God you have no foundation for valuing anything'.
That is simply untrue. I have the best of foundations. I have the nature of experiences as experiences. Of love as the experience of love. Of friendship as the experience of friendship. Of the bonds of community as the bonds of community. There is no more fundamental foundation."
Look at what you said:
"I have the nature of experiences as experience."
Yes, YOU have your personal experiences. Your experiences are not the same as anyone else's. Yet it is from those personal and unique experiences that you derive the value of love. How is that any different from my evaluation of your argument when I stated that you are claiming "Love has worth because I think it has worth"? That is precisely what you are claiming, albeit in more convoluted form. Does everyone have the same experiences? If not, and if you base the intrinsic value of love on your personal experiences, then what you are arguing is precisely that the "intrinsic" value of love comes from your personal experiences. It has value because your experiences have led you to believe that it has value.
Does everyone love the same things? Does everyone take pleasure in the same things? If we follow your argument to its logical conclusion, it leads to advocation of hedonism, with contradiction upon contradiction and a world in which moral judgments are impossible. One person may love kissing someone. Another may love eating them. Is one person right and the other wrong? If the value of love is derived from our experiences, then the second person could point to their love of cannibalism and claim that their love has intrinsic worth, so who are you to judge them? Unless there is an objective standard (as defined above) to tell us who is right and who is wrong, you can never judge anyone for moral wrongdoing.
Thank you again.
Yes, in some hypothetical alternate reality, if God's character had been cruel, cruelty would be right. But so what? That's not the reality we live in, nor was it ever a possibility in our reality.
That's a pretty remarkable admission. I would point out that on a meta-ethical position like mine, if correct, where love is of value in and of itself, the idea of cruelty being good isn't even a logical possibility.
I think your definition of "objective" is incorrect.
Objective has two quite distinct usages:
the first refers to ontological status, that it exists of itself and not simply within the mind of a person (as a stone exists objectively but my love for my mother exists only as a state of mind).
the second refers to a way of thinking, to be unbiased.
You seem to be taking the second definition now though your earlier comments imply the first.
On the second definition one cannot speak of "objective" morality except in the sense of values formed by an unbiased mind---but then how would the existence of God be necessary to the existence of objective morality in this sense....there can be unbiased thinking without the existence of a diety. I think you are illegitimately mixing two very distinct usages of the word "objective". This does not make for a clear and coherent position.
Look at what you said:
"I have the nature of experiences as experience."
Yes, YOU have your personal experiences. Your experiences are not the same as anyone else's
I am not referring to simply my own experience but to the nature of a particular class of experience. To its intrinsic properties. The experience of love and of compassion and empathy are of a particular nature regardless of the individual having the experience---that's why we can use a single word to describe the experience regardless of the particular individual having it.
How is that any different from my evaluation of your argument when I stated that you are claiming "Love has worth because I think it has worth"? That is precisely what you are claiming, albeit in more convoluted form.
No, I am saying it is of worth because of the inherent properties of the experience we name "love/compassion/empathy" regardless of the individual having that experience.
I think I can make my point with a simple question that shows that, fundamentally, you probably hold the same meta-ethical position as I even if you are for theological reasons unwilling to admit it:
You say that "That's not the reality we live in, nor was it ever a possibility in our reality" in reference to the idea of a reality where God's nature is unchangingly and eternally cruel rather than loving.
Of these two logical possibilities is one better than the other?
I think it almost certain that you would that you consider a reality where God is benevolent fundamentally, intrinsically better than one where he is cruel.
But this position is impossible to take from within the framework of the meta-ethical position you have chosen to defend. If God's character is the only thing making anything right or wrong then there is no basis for saying one of the two logical possibilities intrinsically superior to the other.
Actually, I am using the first definition of "objective". That's the key question here. You say love exists only in your mind. We are talking about morality. You seem to take as a given that morality exists only in your mind. But I am arguing that this is not necessarily so. This seems to be an assumption in your argument. You assume morality only exists in our minds. I am asking you to question that assumption.
You say, "The experience of love and of compassion and empathy are of a particular nature regardless of the individual having the experience---that's why we can use a single word to describe the experience regardless of the particular individual having it." Perhaps, but the cause of those experiences is different in different people, such that the same sensation (as you describe it) is sometimes a desirable thing and sometimes an undesirable thing. One person may get pleasure from helping others whereas another gets pleasure from killing others. Both, according to your argument, have the same experience. But this experience cannot have intrinsic value if in one context we say it is morally right whereas in the other it is morally wrong.
In response to your last question, I do not think one set of affairs is "intrinsically" better than the other because I believe that the state of affairs only gets its value from God. Think about this for a minute. We all have spent our entire existence in one universe with one set of rules. That set of rules forms our entire frame of reference. Of course we are going to perceive that this state of affairs has intrinsic value becuase it is all we have ever known. It is similar to someone from one culture suddenly being thrust into another. They struggle to understand it because it is so foreign to them. Did you know that in some Eskimo cultures it is considered morally acceptbale to murder a newborn baby? Coming from our cuture we would be appalled by this. But had we existed in an Eskimo culture we would have seen the devastating scarcity of food and the fact that more mouths to feed mean certain death for a greater number of people. I do not say this to excuse this practice (Christianity teaches that all life is sacred), but merely to illustrate the fallacy in your argument.
Keep in mind we are having a purely intellectual exercise here because God is NOT cruel, nor could He ever have been because He is eternal and His character does not change. However, as long as we are engaging in a purely fun logical exercise, from a purely logical standpoint how can you possibly say that we would NOT value cruelty in some other reality where that formed our entire frame of reference? It is a logical possibility, and therefore I do not discount it. However, because God's character is what it is, it is not a practical possibility.
Thank you again.
Ken
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