The Euthyphro dilemma

John W. Loftus said:

“When it comes to the Euthyphro Dilemma, I've already answered both your objections and Frame's objections here, even though what I wrote was before I looked at anything you wrote. What do you say in response to what I wrote? Come on. Give it a try. Your whole apologetical strategy is at stake.”

Several false opening moves:

i) TAG is not my “whole apologetic strategy.”

ii) Even if it were, TAG is primarily concerned with epistemology, not ethics. What precondition must obtain for knowledge to obtain? That’s the core argument.

Even if a Van Tilian had no answer to the Euthyphro dilemma, that would hardly scuttle the appeal to TAG.

It’s possible to mount a transcendental argument for ethics. But TAG is not dependent on that extension.

“I'll read your response and see where it goes from there, okay? But your attempts are already doomed to failure.”

Sounds like something the Borg would say: “Resistance is futile!”

Unfortunately for Loftus, the prospect of being assimilated to Seven-of-Nine in a cat-suit has compensatory benefits for which John Loftus is a sorry substitute.

So if Loftus wants to tempt me over to the dark side, Mephistopheles will need to sweeten the deal.

“Would you be willing to give up presuppositional apologetics if I can show you wrong here?”

Since I’ve never been a chemically pure Van Tilian, I don’t know which component of my apologetic apparatus he thinks is vulnerable.

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/02/transcendental-theism.html

“And if it's a stalemate between us, you still lose, because you can only be sure of your faith to the same degree as you can defend your position on the Euthyphro.”

This goes awry on several grounds:

i) Even if I had no answer to the Euthyphro dilemma, I can have many reasons for believing in God irrespective of the Euthyphro dilemma.

The better part of wisdom lies in learning to distinguish between the answers we can live without and the answers we cannot live without.

ii) You act as if I enjoy direct control over my level of certitude. As if I had a knob or dial that I could manipulate to raise or lower my level of certitude at will.

But my faith is not adjustable. It simply is. It doesn’t come to me in degrees. I can know more quantify my faith in God than I can quantify my belief in the external world, or other minds.

iii) In doing apologetics we try to analyze the rational grounds for our faith. To tease tacit knowledge out into the open.

And this can be done up to a point. But I agree with Cardinal Newman about the illative sense. We know more than we can ever say or ever prove.

Apologetics can only scratch the surface. There’s a whole dimension of religious experience that remains in reserve because it’s essentially private rather than public. Something accessible to an insider rather than an outsider.

As to what he wrote, most of it consists in a false dilemma which I already exposed in my critique of Russell. So I’ll confine myself to a mopping up operation:

“It does no good to step back behind the commands of God to God’s purported nature at all. For we’d still want to know whether or not God’s nature is good. God cannot be known to be good here either, without a standard of goodness that shows he is good. For unless there is standard that shows God is good beyond the mere fact that God declares that his nature is good, we still don’t know whether God is good.”

i) Notice how Loftus is shifting ground. This is not the Euthyphro dilemma. The Euthyphro dilemma is concerned with the ontological question of what makes something right or wrong, not the epistemic question of how we can know something is right or wrong.

ii) Loftus is diverting attention away from the order of being to the order of knowing. That’s a bait-and-switch tactic.

And it doesn’t even work at that level. Suppose we judge the goodness of God by our moral intuitions. Okay, but what’s the source and standard of our moral intuitions? All Loftus has done is to push the original question back a step.

“Furthermore, we usually call someone good when they make good choices. So an additional question here is whether or not God has ever made any good choices. To choose means there were alternatives to choose from. Did God at any point in the past ever choose his supposedly good nature?”

A moral agent doesn’t choose his moral character for the obvious reason that he chooses according to his moral character. His character is a precondition of choice, not a consequence of choice. Otherwise, he would be amoral.

“Besides, there are several ethical systems of thought that do not require a prior belief in God, like Social Contract Theories, Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics, Kantianism, and John Rawls’ theory of justice.”

That’s beside the point. The question at issue is not whether there are secular alternatives on the market, but whether these are successful alternatives to Christian ethics.

“Even Christian philosopher Thomas V. Morris admits that…”

We need to distinguish between opinion and argument. Even if Loftus could quote a Christian whose opinion agrees with his, that’s not the same thing an argument. The question at issue is what supporting argument underwrites the opinion.

Continuing with Morris:

“It has…been argued in various ways over the past century that the evolutionary process somehow provides a framework of moral reference. Basic human instincts could be cited as loci for the moral constraints needed in society. The physical, survival, functional needs of men in society or community could act as moral matrices for the guiding of moral motions…there are many possible bases or explanations for moral motions in an impersonal universe. They could easily have arisen from evolutionary or community survival needs, for example, and consequently, when identified as a human ‘aspiration,’ the practice of making moral distinctions could be said to be ‘fulfilled’ when it is successfully functional within those contexts.”

i) Notice that Morris is summarizing one version of secular ethics. That doesn’t mean he agrees with evolutionary ethics.

ii) The argument begs the question. If and only if the survival of the human species is good can you then mount a utilitarian argument for the common good.

But why would a secularist say the survival of our species is good? Appealing to instinct will hardly suffice, for that either begs the question or pushes the question back a step. Is this a good instinct or a bad instinct?

“Even if Christians did have objective moral standards, they cannot be objectively certain that they know them, or that they know how they apply to specific real life cases!”

i) Assuming that this is true, so what? This isn’t generated by the Euthyphro dilemma? This isn’t generating the Euthyphro dilemma.

ii) Why should this be a necessary condition of moral valuation? To quote something that Dr. Anderson said in another context: “Loftus seems to be assuming that S's knowing p entails that p is indubitable for S or incorrigible for S. But why think that? Why should Calvinists (or anyone else) be committed to such an implausible Cartesianism?

iii) Within Calvinism, God’s preceptive will doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Rather, his preceptive will works in conjunction with his general and special providence.

“Since Dr. Craig earlier mentioned Hitler, Auschwitz, and Dachau in his apologetics book, consider this response: Germany was a Christian nation—the heart of the Lutheran Protestant Reformation! How could a Christian people allow these evil deeds to happen and even be his willing executioners?”

Several things go wrong here:

i) This is irrelevant to the Euthyphro dilemma.

ii) It is also unresponsive to Craig’s reasoning: “If life ends at the grave, then it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint.…”

How does the failure of the church in Germany undermine the logic of Craig’s observation?

iii) Loftus fails to distinguish between Christian theology and Christian ethics. It’s perfectly consistent with Christian theology for Christians to be morally inconsistent. Christians are sinners. Christian theology consistently predicts that Christians will be inconsistent with their code of conduct.

iv) Luther was a notorious anti-Semite. That’s obviously unscriptural given the Jewish character of the Bible.

v) The Christian character of Germany was first eroded by the Enlightenment, and further eroded by Darwinism, higher criticism, and the like.

vi) In a country where you had mass infant baptism, whether Lutheran or Catholic, the room for nominal religious affiliation is enormous.

vii) Christians have prior social obligations and concentric social obligations. We should care for our neighbor, but a Christian father also has an obligation to care for his family, and, given a choice, his familial obligations take precedence over neighbor-love.

Finally, a couple of the Christian commenters over at DC scored direct hits:

At 12:53 AM, January 31, 2006, Genius said...

I think your approach the divine command theory involves a flawed approach to the world.

Lets say water is wet. Is it wet because it is water or is it water because it is wet? This is a nonsense question - furthermore it is a nonsense thought experiment to consider non-wet water (ok there might be wet stuff that is not water but that just points out the lack of perfection of the example).

From this perspective in a sense it is nonsense to propose, "if god was not benevolent would you support him" question has a practical implication because you believe it is fundamentally untrue.

I.e. the higher standard and God's standard are fundamentally the same neither is "created" by the other any more than water is created by wetness.

Or more clearly it is a bit like saying if 1+1=2 does the 2 create 1+1 or does 1+1 create 2?

At 9:57 AM, February 03, 2006, Jeremy Pierce said...

This last point is worth paying attention to. The problems raised in Euthyphro-like questions can be raised about any meta-ethical view. If morality is based, for instance, on whatever rational people would agree to follow if they were concerned only about self-interest (which many contemporary social contract theorists of morality believe), then we have to ask a Euthyphro-like question. Is it good merely because rationally self-interested people would prefer it, or would they prefer it because it's good? The same line of questioning could very easily be raised about any meta-ethical grounding for ethics.

Euthyphro Examined

In the comments on my Abortion and Reppert post, Jayman asked me a question regarding the grounding of morality which I would like to expand on here. I had originally stated in response to him:

I already alluded to this earlier when I said that human rights aren't arbitrary because they're rooted in Theism. That still applies. I'm a Divine Command Theorist, so what makes something moral or immoral is the command of God (which is formulated by His nature). But if you are a secularist, then I see no reason at all why you should believe in any morality whatsoever, let alone human rights.

Jayman responded:

I'm a Christian but do not subscribe to the notion that something is good SOLELY because God says it is good. Such a view of ethics seems to make good and evil nothing more than the arbitrary decision of God. But perhaps your cryptic remark about God's nature means you have something else in mind.

To clarify my “cryptic remark” as well as to show what kind of Divine Command Theorist I am, I would like to offer the following discussion on the Euthyphro dilemma. This was summed up on the Moral Philosophy site as follows (all italics in the original):

The most common argument against divine command theory is the Euthyphro dilemma. The argument gets its name from Plato’s Euthyphro dialogue, which contains the inspiration for it. The Euthyphro dilemma is introduced with the question Does God command the good because it is good, or is it good because it is commanded by God? Each of the two possibilities identified in this question are widely agreed to present intractable problems for divine command theory.

Suppose that the divine command theorist takes the first horn of the dilemma, asserting that God commands the good because it is good. If God commands the good because it is good, then he bases his decision what to command on what is already morally good. Moral goodness, then, must exist before God issues any commands, otherwise he wouldn’t command anything. If moral goodness exists before God issues any commands, though, then moral goodness is independent of God’s commands; God’s commands aren’t the source of morality, but merely a source of information about morality. Morality itself is not based in divine commands.

Suppose, then, that the divine commands theorist takes the second horn of the dilemma, asserting that the good is good because it is commanded by God. On this view, nothing is good until God commands it. This, though, raises a problem too: if nothing is good until God commands it, then what God commands is completely morally arbitrary; God has no moral reason for commanding as he does; morally speaking, he could just as well have commanded anything else. This problem is exacerbated when we consider that God, being omnipotent, could have commanded anything at all. He could, for example, have commanded polygamy, slavery, and the killing of the over-50s. If divine command theory is true, then had he done so then these things would be morally good. That doesn’t seem right, though; even if God had commanded these things they would still be morally bad. Divine command theory, then, must be false.

The flaw of this argument is telegraphed by the wishy-washy ending of the "second horn." While the first horn of the dilemma is matter-of-fact, the second horn must resort to “That doesn’t seem right” language. Obviously, the second horn of the problem is the weak point of the argument.

And we can see why when we consider any standard. If we say something must be the standard, then we must define what that standard is. For instance, we say that light at the wavelength of 620-750 nm and a frequency of 400-484 THz is “red.” The label “red” is not what is important, for it is called different things in different languages (e.g., rojo in Spanish); therefore, let us say that we have defined light that is at 620-750 nm and a frequency of 400-484 THz as X.

Suppose that we create a sensor that requires light to be X in order for a machine to work properly. Do the limits of how X is defined matter then? They very much do. If I build a machine expecting X to be a wavelength of 620-750 nm and someone sends a wavelength of 600 nm, my machine ought to do nothing. If it does do something, then clearly there is a malfunction of the sensor.

Is that arbitrary? It depends on how you look at it. Sure it’s possible to create the sensor to operate at different wavelengths than the one chosen; but once one is chosen, then the sensor must have that wavelength in order for the machine to properly work. One could argue that which wavelength is chosen is arbitrary, but it is a necessary function of the machine working that some wavelength be chosen.

However, further suppose that I am pleased with the color red and I want the machine to work when there is red light; so I design the sensor with that in mind. Is the fact that the machine runs on the color red arbitrary, or is it instead a reflection of my nature and my desires?

While we could in theory expect sensors to work at different colors, in actuality they never will because I like red that much. Is red therefore arbitrary? No, because I am who I am and that’s the way that I wanted it, and therefore red becomes necessary because of my nature.

In a similar way, we have morality. People ought to behave in a certain manner. But where did that standard come from? God’s commands, which are a reflection of His nature.

See, ultimately God is the standard of what is good. There is nothing higher than God that we could point to and say, “God, in order to be good, must be/do that.” He is, by definition, the highest possible good. Therefore, anything He does is by definition good.

Now one could argue, as the Moral Philosophy site did, that that means that God could command slavery, genocide, holocausts or any number of such things. However, God could not have done so, for then God would have a different nature then the one He has. A different God could have commanded those things and been morally good in doing so; this God (Who happens to be the real God) cannot do so.

And note that it is precisely because God is Who He is that it “doesn’t seem” like an alternate morality would be just.

For further takes on the dilemma, you can look at the following too:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/07/euthyphro-dilemma.html

http://www.frame-poythress.org/frame_articles/1993Euthyphro.htm

And a global search of T-blog for all references:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/search?q=euthyphro

Therefore, I must conclude: News of Divine Command Theory's demise has been vastly overstated.

The Euthyphro dilemma ricochets

I. A favorite atheist objection to Christianity in general, and the moral argument for God in particular, is the Euthyphro dilemma. For a brief exposition:

i) Is an action right (merely) because God wills it? 

Or

ii) Does God will an action because it is right?

As formulated, if the Christian (or theist) opts for the first horn of the dilemma, then that seems to make morality an arbitrary divine fiat. 

Conversely, if the Christian (or theist) opts for the second horn of the dilemma, then that seems to make morality independent of God by grounding morality in a higher standard, apart from and above God. In that case, God's will is superfluous to ground morality.

II. Now, I've addressed the Euthyphro dilemma on many occasions, so I won't repeat myself here. Instead, I'd like to flip the objection. For it's easy to generate Euthyphro dilemmas for secular ethics. For instance:

1. Evolutionary ethics

Is an action right because we're hardwired to deem it right, or does the rightness of the action determine the rightness of our hardwiring? 

Same conundrum for Neo-Aristotelian naturalism. 

2. Contractarianism

Is an action right because the social contract makes it right, or does the rightness of the action determine the rightness of the social contract?

3. Consequentialism

Is an action right because the consequences make it right, or does the rightness of the action determine the rightness of the consequences? 

III. Finally, atheists object that grounding morality is God is an arbitrary stopping point. But isn't the objection reversible? Why isn't grounding morality in evolutionary psychology, consequences, or the social contract an arbitrary stopping-point? 

Talking animals

***QUOTE***

John W. Loftus said:

My brief comments on the debate can be found here.


You see, it doesn't do presuppositionalists any good to say atheists don't have an objective standard for moral truth when we question whether that which they presuppose has any better objective standard for knowledge and truth. What Barker's analogy was getting at was the Euthyphro dilemma And the Euthyphro dilemma puts an end to this presuppositionalist nonsense. So I say to presuppositionalists, solve that dilemma before we go any further.

***END-QUOTE***

There are a couple of basic problems with this objection:

1.Loftus acts as if Christians had either never even heard of the Euthyphro dilemma before, or if they had, are speechless to deal with it.

But many of us are familiar with the dilemma, and we’ve already addressed it. I addressed it a long time ago in my critique of Bertrand Russell, and Frame has also engaged that objection.

http://www.frame-poythress.org/frame_articles/1993Euthyphro.htm

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2004/04/why-im-not-bertrand-russell.html

2.Even if the Euthyphro dilemma were unanswerable, that would not be an argument for secular ethics, but only an argument against Christian ethics.

Stalemate—not checkmate for the unbeliever.

Continuing with Loftus:

***QUOTE***

I also thought Barker did a fine job when he asked why Manata believes a snake talked. Barker suggested that the principle of induction stands as overwhelming evidence against the story told in Genesis 3, as well as other Biblical claims. For none of us have experienced a snake that really talks. The only reason Manata believes a snake talked was because "someone told a story." Manata uses that "story" to count as evidence against all of our inductive conclusions about snakes, rather than letteing his own inductive conclusions about snakes to count as evidence against the reliability of the story in Genesis 3, and that's just strange and muddled thinking. Does Manata believe any similar "stories" told today just because someone tells them? Barker told a story with tongue-in-cheek about a cat that spoke Spanish to him. Such a story goes against what the principle of induction tells us can happen, and so Manata inconsistently said he didn't believe it. Of course he doesn't. But he won't apply that same clear thinking to the story about a snake that talked. Snakes do not have vocal chords, nor the other things needed to talk!

***END-QUOTE***

This raises quite a few issues:

1.As I and others have pointed out, secularism is unable to ground the principle of induction.

http://www.ccir.ed.ac.uk/~jad/induction.html
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/cartwrig/Papers/NoGodNoLaws.pdf
http://www.frame-poythress.org/poythress_articles/2003Why.htm

Hence, it would be a simple matter for Manata to convert the Barker/Loftus objection into just so much grist for the TAG mill, this time using induction as his point of departure.

2.Barker/Loftus also act as if the absence of evidence were positive evidence against the existence of something. But that’s a non-sequitur.

Just as nonevidence isn’t evidence for anything, neither is nonevidence evidence against anything.

There are times when the argument from silence has some probative value if we have a reasonable expectation of evidence, but one must make a case for the argument from silence in any given deployment.

Both Barker and Loftus are committing what one writer dubbed “the fallacy of negative proof,” D. Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (Harper & Row 1970), 47-48.

3.Most of our knowledge of the world is based on testimony. The fact that Manata believes in the possibility of a talking snake because he read about one in a reliable source is hardly an argument against his belief in talking snakes.

4.Loftus likes to remind us that he used to be a Christian—a Christian with several seminary degrees.

When did he stumble upon the discovery that snakes lack vocal chords? Did he used to believe in Gen 3 because he didn’t know this fact about ophidian physiology?

5.Why did the author of Gen 3 believe in talking snakes? Is it because, unlike Barker or Loftus, the author had a personal experience with talking snakes?

Whatever date Loftus or Barker assign to Genesis, the author and his audience had no more experience of talking snakes than we do. So modernity is not the differential factor.

There are superstitious ancient writers as well as sceptical ancient writers; superstitions modern writers as well as sceptical modern writers.

6.Barker and Loftus apparently presume a uniform, acontextual criterion for judging the credibility of “stories.”

But they don’t explain or justify why we should apply the same abstract criterion without regard to time, place or circumstance.

For example, suppose we have several reported sightings of a Yeti rummaging through the dumpster in the back lot of the local Wal-Mart. And suppose we also have several reported sightings of a Yeti in the Himalayas.

Should we treat all these sightings as equally credible or incredible? Obviously not. The circumstances make quite a difference.

In the one case, witnesses claim to have seen a large, undiscovered animal in its natural habitat, and—what is more—a largely unexplored habitat.

In the other case, witnesses claim to have seen a large, undiscovered animal in an artificial and densely populated habitat.

Now, you may reasonably conclude that the evidence is insufficient in either case. But clearly the attendant circumstances make a difference in how we weigh the respective reports.

Likewise, if a neighbor tells me that he saw a broomstick levitate and smash into his kitchen window, then my initial reaction will be one of polite disbelief—assuming that I have nothing else to go on.

If, however, his home is reputed to be a haunted house, with a high rate of turnover because a series of former homeowners say they were drive out of the house by the same paranormal phenomena, then I’ll judge my neighbor’s report quite differently.

If, of course, you’re a doctrinaire unbeliever like Loftus or Barker, then no amount of eyewitness testimony would ever shake your dogmatic scepticism.

7.Likewise, Gen 3 isn’t describing an every-day event. Rather, the account is situated in a set of circumstances which no longer exist. In a garden specially prepared by God for the first human couple. In a garden populated by animals specially created by God. In a time and place before the Fall. Before the Flood.

Loftus and Barker would, of course, reject the preternatural underpinnings of the “story.”

But we need to judge the “story” by its narrative outlook, and not deem the “story” to be false by straining it through an extraneous filtering device like atheism or materialism. That’s an exercise in prejudice. The narrative was never meant to make sense from a secular viewpoint.

8.We also need to discuss the identity of the serpent. What are the exegetical options?

i) The serpent could be an articulate, intelligent creature, just like human beings are articulate, intelligent creatures.

The fact that you and I have never encountered a talking snake is due to the curse (3:14). We’re on the wrong side of history.

On this interpretation, Loftus and Barker are guilty of an anachronistic reading of the text.

ii) The serpent could be a fallen angel. It is called a “snake” because the Hebrew word is a pun. As one commentator explains:

“A more directly sinister nuance may be seen in Heb. Nahas if it is to be connected with the verb nahas, ‘to practice divination, observe signs’ (Gen 30:27; 44:5,15; Lev 19:26; Deut 18:10). This verb appears eleven times in the OT, always in the Piel. The related noun nahas means ‘divination’ (Num 23:23; 24:1),” V. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, 1:187.

a) This interpretation is attractive in several respects. It’s consonant with Pentateuchal usage. It resonates with certain intertextual motifs.

b) It has the irony of an accursed creature which is the source of our primal parents’ accursed state. It brings a curse upon Adam and Eve.

c) Note the parallel with the Balaam cycle, in which the false prophet attempts to hex Israel. Note Israel’s lapse into apostasy, like Adam and Eve before her.

If a reptile were in view we’d expect it to be classified with the creepy crawlers rather than the beasts of the field.

d) The syntax of 3:1 is ambiguous: it could either be partitive or comparative. If partitive, then the serpent is set in contrast to the animal kingdom. Cf. EBC 1:50.

e) It fits with the complex allusions to Gen 2-3 in Ezk 28.

iii) It could be a case of metamorphosis, in which an angel assumes a reptilian form.

a) At least on one interpretation, we have other cases of metamorphosis in the Pentateuch (e.g. Gen 3:14; Exod 4:3; 7:15).

b) The Pentateuch is studded with angelophanies. Indeed, we have a couple of angelophanies in the very account of the Fall. Cf. 3:8,24.

c) Angels can assume corporeal form (Gen 18).

d) On a traditional reading, Gen 6:1-4 is alluding to fallen angels.

iv) Or it could be a case of animal possession (cf. Mt 8:30-32). Its ability to speak and reason would be due to the incubus, not the host.

9.On a related note, we might consider Num 22. Two comments are in order:

i) The donkey’s capacity for speech is specifically attributed to divine agency (v8).

ii) The scene is meant to be incongruous and highly ironic. Balaam is a professional seer who is blind to the angel while his donkey, which would ordinarily be a dumb animal, is made more clairvoyant than he!

For a fine analysis, cf. I. Duguid, Numbers: God’s Presence in the Wilderness (Crossway Books 2006), chap. 27.

For an unbeliever, all of this is worse than silly. But it’s only silly because the existence and the presence of God is not a living reality for him.

I’d add that, for a believer, naturalistic evolution is every bit as “magical” and counterintuitive as anything in the Bible.

UFC: Exbrainer v. Van Til in the Octogon

Referee: Let's git it on!

Exbrainer: Just having “an answer” is not enough. It must be a good answer. Presuppositionalism doesn’t give a good answer.

Van Til: Define “presuppositionalism.”

Exbrainer: "Presuppositionalism: Assume all the most undemonstratable [sic.] and controversial aspects of our faith and we can answer all of the other questions by reference to these undemonstrable [sic.] and controversial aspects of our faith."

Van Til: Hmmm…sounds like a straw man argument to me. Suppose I were to defined secularism along the same lines:

"Assume all the most indemonstrable and controversial aspects of our secular fideism and we can answer all of the other questions by reference to these indemonstrable and controversial aspects of our secular fideism."

Exbrainer: Very well, then. You asked me to account for the laws of logic. What is your answer to this question?

Van Til: They are constituted by the infinite and timeless mind of God.

Exbrainer: But why should I believe a “god” exists?

Van Til: There are many reasons, but one reason is the transcendental argument for the existence of God (TAG). For an example of what I mean, consider the following exposition:

“If Knowledge, Then God: The Epistemological Theistic Arguments of Plantinga And Van Til.”

http://www.ccir.ed.ac.uk/~jad/papers/IfKnowledgeThenGod.pdf

Exbrainer: Gee, presupposing something so outside of my experience doesn't seem wise on my part.

Van Til: What makes you think that God is outside our experience? We can experience God in creation and providence, revelation and redemption, theophany, Incarnation, and saving grace.

Exbrainer: Define God.

Van Til: God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.

We can experience wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. We can experience an incorporeal substance, for our own finite minds are incorporeal.

Moreover, we can grasp some ideas for which we have no direct experience. We understand what is meant by an infinite number or a timeless number.

Exbrainer: Why should I believe the first premise that God is a precondition of logic or abstract objects generally?

Van Til: That depends on whether you want a short answer or a long answer. If you want a long answer, then I’d suggest that you brush up on modal metaphysics. If you’re up to it, you can read the following Christian treatments:

R. Davis, The Metaphysics of Theism & Modality (Peer Lang 2000).

W. Vallicella, A Paradigm Theory of Existence: Onto-Theology Vindicated (Kluwer 2002).

A. Pruss, Possible Worlds: What They Are Good for and What They Are.

http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ap85/papers/PhilThesis.html

Greg Welty,

“An Examination of Theistic Conceptual Realism as an Alternative to Theistic Activism.”

http://www.ccir.ed.ac.uk/~jad/welty/mphil.pdf

If you want even more, you can wait for Welty to post his doctoral dissertation or Brian Leftow to publish his book on Divine Ideas.

Given the material that’s already out there, as well as material in the pipeline, it would be quite dishonest to say that Christians have no answer to your question or never defend their operating premise.

Exbrainer: But referring to something undemonstratable [sic.] and controversial (like the non-corporal Christian God or the inerrancy of the Bible) doesn't seem like much of an “explanation.” I mean it doesn't hold a lot of power.

Van Til: Why are you changing the subject? What does the inerrancy of Scripture have to do with TAG?

As far as that’s concerned, there’s a vast body of literature in defense of Biblical inerrancy. But for you to introduce this issue in the middle of a debate over TAG is a diversionary tactic.

To say that God’s existence is “controversial” is not a salient objection to God’s existence.

To say that God existence is indemonstrable is tendentious when TAG is the very topic of conversation. Instead of scrutinizing TAG, you beg the question by merely reasserting that God’s existence is indemonstrable.

Exbrainer: Suppose Socrates and Euthyphro were having their dialogue when a bolt of lightening hit the tree beside them. Euthyphro says, “Aha, how do you explain lightening? My worldview says that Zeus throws those lightening bolts down from heaven. If you presuppose that Zeus exists, I have a worldview that accounts for lightening.” To this, Socrates responds, “I don't know how lightening works, but my worldview says the answer will somehow be something natural.” At the time, Euthyphro's worldview had more “explanatory power” than Socrates'. Would that make Euthyphro's worldview truer than Socrates'?

Van Til: That’s irrelevant to TAG. TAG is concerned with the source of global truth-conditions, not with the source local truth-claims like thunder and lightning.

Referee: And the winner is Van Til by submission.

Ethics, atheism, and the Euthyphro dilemma

I’m going to discuss the Euthyphro dilemma by comparing and contrasting two different atheists on morality. Let’s begin by outlining the nature of the so-called dilemma.

If, on the one hand, God commands or forbids something because it’s right or wrong, then it’s right and wrong apart God. God is not the ultimate source of morality. Rather, God himself is subject to a more ultimate standard.

If, on the other hand, God’s bare command or prohibition is what makes something right or wrong, then good and evil are arbitrary and vacuous. Arbitrary because there’s no underlying rationale for the command or prohibition. And that, in turn, renders good and evil meaningless, for they are consistent with any command or opposing command.

Here is how a prominent atheist states the alleged dilemma, with special emphasis on one horn of the alleged dilemma:

Translated into contemporary terms, the question Socrates is asking is this: Are morally good actions morally good simply in virtue of God’s favoring them? Or does God favor them because they are–independently of his favoring them–morally good?

Divine command theory says that what is good is good only because God has commanded it; there is nothing more to an act’s being good than that God command it.

[According to] divine independence theory, the goodness of an action is a feature that is independent of, and antecedent to God’s willing it.

The two theories differ on what accounts for this congruence. DCT says that it is God’s command that explains why the good acts are good, while DIT says that it is the goodness of the acts that explains why God commanded them.

The way to bring out the difference is to consider a case of an act that we’d all antecedently agree is morally wrong–say, torturing an innocent child. If DCT is correct, then the following counterfactual is true: If God had commanded us to torture innocent children, then it would have been morally right to do so. DIT, however, entails the following: If God had commanded us to torture innocent children, then God would not have been perfectly good.

Only the theorist who believes that right and wrong are independent of God’s commands could have any basis for thinking she or he knows in advance what God would or would not command. If, as DCT says, an act’s being good just consists in its being chosen by God, then there’s nothing about the action in advance of its being chosen or rejected that would enable us to determine what attitude God would take toward it in some other possible world. “Good” for the divine command theorist is synonymous with “commanded by God.” …there is nothing that is inherently good or bad, and thus nothing that explains God’s choosing which acts to endorse and which acts to prohibit.

I doubt that there are many people who really believe DCT. If there were, then there would be fewer interpretive difficulties surrounding those stores in the Bible that depict God commanding actions that we would ordinarily take to be moral atrocities.

The Bible is full of accounts of God’s killing, displacing, or otherwise seriously smiting presumably innocent people who had the misfortune of belonging to a tribe whose leaders had threatened to impede his ambitions for the Israelites…Sometimes, there’s not even a pretext that the doomed people are morally at fault: The only “crime” committed by the Canaanites was living in a land God wanted for his people.

The question can be asked, then, Why ought one to obey God? The fact that this question can be asked, that it’s comprehensible, that it makes sense, is sufficient proof that the mere existence of an all-powerful Creator is not enough to generate a realm of moral fact.

Louise Antony, “Atheist as Perfect Piety,” R. Garcia & N. King, Is Goodness Without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics (Rowman & Littlefield 2009), 71,72,73,79,80.

Before introducing the second atheist, I’m going to comment on these excerpts:

i) She says torturing an innocent child is something “we’d all antecedently agree is morally wrong.” But as an atheist, she’s in no position to posit that claim. For one thing, it seems to be empirically false. After all, there are people who torture innocent children. Do they think what they are doing is morally wrong?

ii) Furthermore, even if we think it’s morally wrong, that doesn’t make it morally wrong. From an atheistic standpoint, we might say natural selection brainwashed us into cherishing children because that sentiment promotes the survival of the species. But once you become aware of the fact that you were brainwashed, you no longer feel obliged to comply with your conditioning.

iii) In addition, there are secular utilitarians who could propose a scenario in which it’s morally permissible or even obligatory to torture a child. Take a variation on the ticking timebomb scenario. A terrorist won’t divulge the information needed to prevent nuking Chicago unless we torture, or threaten to torture, his child. The harm done to one child is offset by the harm done to thousands of children unless we torture his child. 

iv) She also cites biblical commands which she classifies as “moral atrocities.” But Bible writers didn’t think those were moral atrocities.

v) Furthermore, many cultures, both ancient and modern, commit similar “atrocities.” Do the perpetrators think they are committing “moral atrocities?

So it’s hard for her to come up with any cases “we’d all antecedently agree is morally wrong.”

I’m not being pedantic, here. She’s not entitled to systematically beg the question when illustrating her thesis. She needs to discharge her burden of proof.

vi) She says no pretext for executing the Canaanites is even given. But that’s willfully ignorant. The divine command is not a bare command. It supplies a rationale, implicating the Canaanites in idolatry and immorality.

vii) She also says “there’s nothing about the action in advance of its being chosen or rejected that would enable us to determine what attitude God would take toward it in some other possible world.”

But that confuses the epistemology of ethics with the ontology of ethics. Whether something is good or bad, and whether we know ahead of time whether it’s good or bad are separate issues.

viii) Finally, she makes the eccentric claim the mere ability to ask why we ought to obey God is sufficient proof that the mere existence of an all-powerful Creator is not enough to generate a realm of moral fact.

But that’s confused. At one level we can simply accept the morality of a divine command on the authority of a wise and benevolent God. That’s sufficient reason for us to accept it.

But that doesn’t make the command itself groundless. God can have good reason for what he commands. And knowing that God has a good reason is distinct from knowing what reason he has.

ix) There’s also a difference between moral imperatives and a moral obligation to obey a divine command. We can have a moral obligation to obey a divine command even if the command itself is not a moral imperative.

For instance, God commanding Abraham to leave Ur is not, itself a moral absolute. Rather, God commanded Abraham to leave Ur because Abraham leaving Ur is part of God’s long-range plan to redeem the world. His command is purposeful.

Abraham has a duty to obey God’s command, but not because leaving Ur is intrinsically obligatory. Rather, God has a good reason for command Abraham to leave Ur. And Abraham ought to trust God’s wisdom, even if God didn’t reveal his reason to Abraham.

x) Apropos (ix), that type of obligation sidesteps the Euthyphro dilemma. God’s command to Abraham isn’t arbitrary. Rather, God’s command is explicable in reference to God’s overarching plan (whether or not that explanation is available to Abraham). By the same token, it’s not independent of God.

Let’s now quote another atheist:

If value is tied to life, its content will depend on particular forms of life, and the most salient reasons it gives us will depend, even in a realist conception, on our own form of life. This is how a realist account can accommodate one of the things that make subjectivism seem most plausible, namely the fact that what we find self-evidently valuable is overwhelmingly contingent on the biological specifics of our form of life. Human good and bad depend in the first instance on our natural appetites, emotions, capacities, and interpersonal bonds, If we were more like bees or lions, what seems good to us would be very different, a point that Street emphasizes.

[Quoting Street]: “Imagine, for instance, that we had evolved more along the lines of lions, so that males in relatively frequent circumstances had a strong unreflective evaluative tendency to experience the killing of offspring that were not his own as “demanded” by the circumstances, and so that females, in turn, experienced no strong unreflective tendency to “hold it against” a male when he killed her offspring in such circumstances, on the contrary becoming receptive to his advances soon afterwards.”

T. Nagel, Mind and Cosmos (Oxford 2012), 119.

i) Now what’s striking about this argument is that it could easily be retrofitted to account for many Biblical commands and prohibitions. Instead of blind evolution, we have a Creator God who designed different types of creatures with corresponding appetites, emotions, capacities, and interpersonal bonds. Human obligations would be keyed to human nature–the nature with which God endowed us. Our duties would be engineered into us.

That sidesteps the Euthyphro dilemma, for commands and prohibitions of this kind aren’t good “only” because they are commanded. There is “more to it” than the bare command. Rather, you have an inherent obligation that’s inherent in the nature of the agent. Good for the creature because that’s how the creature was made.

Conversely, this isn’t good apart from God. Rather, it’s contingent on how God designed us.

ii) I’d add that this doesn’t exhaust all types of divine commands. For example, Scripture commands us to be holy because God is holy. What grounds that command is the nested relationship between the divine exemplar and its human exemplification. If God is good–indeed, the summum bonum–then it’s good to be an instance of God’s goodness.

That, too, sidesteps the Euthyphro dilemma. On the one hand this isn’t arbitrary or vacuous. It’s grounded in God’s own nature. But by the same token, it’s not something over and above God himself. 

iii) Likewise, we have a standing obligation to worship God–because God is intrinsically worthy of our worship. That also sidesteps the Euthyphro dilemma. It’s not a good command for the command’s sake. Rather, it’s imbedded in something ultimately greater. We should love the good because it’s good. And God’s goodness is exemplary goodness. There is no higher good, be it possible or actual.

Defending exclusivism

I'm reposting some comments I left at Kevin DeYoung's blog:

steve hays March 31, 2011 at 4:38 pm

Paul:

“Unfortunately, Kevin’s points 3 and 4 are offensive, repulsive, illogical, unbiblical nonsense. Kevin apparently believes that babies from Christian households go to heaven and ones from non-Christian households don’t.”

That’s a malicious distortion of what he actually said. He was silent on the fate of babies from non-Christian households. He doesn’t say what he doesn’t know.

"This opinion is also illogical and repulsive in stating that a still-born baby in Michigan has a chance to go to heaven but a still-born baby in Saudi Arabia has no chance. Those two babies are identical in their sin-nature (or lack thereof) and there’s no reason to say one goes to heaven and the other doesn’t except that Kevin knows people who would be really angry if didn’t make an exception for babies from Christian households.”

In the nature of the case, mercy may just discriminate between equally guilty individuals.

“Kevin’s point 4 is frankly just stupid. Kevin tries to distinguish the results from the grounds of punishment. This is merely typical reformed playing with words.”

Your objection is frankly just stupid. The default conditions of sinners is to be lost. Disbelieving in Jesus is not what damns someone. That’s an aggravating factor. But sin is suffient.

“The reality is that Kevin thinks that all people (leaving to one side the babies and mentally disabled issue) who have never heard of Jesus automatically go to hell to be tortured for eternity and there’s nothing they can do about that.”

What makes you equate eternal punishment with “torture”?

“Whatever playing with words Kevin wants to do about grounds and results, that’s what Kevin believes. So that makes Kevin’s God morally far worse than, say, Stalin or Hitler: at least both of those guys didn’t torture people for eternity for something they couldn’t not do.”

Ted Bundy hated women. He was so evil that he couldn’t not hate women. Is that exculpatory? No. That’s culpable.

“And to cap it all, Kevin doesn’t seem to understand that some people find this God of his utterly repulsive.”

And you don’t seem to understand that some people find you utterly repulsive. Cuts both ways.

“It’s hardly surprising there are militant atheists (or for that matter, people like Brian McLaren) around when Kevin and his friends write this stuff.”

Militant atheists like…yourself?

The ontological argument redux

Since this thread disappeared into the archive before it ran its course, some readers may have missed it.

What we see here is an all-too-typical exchange between a believer and an unbeliever. The unbeliever raises an intellectual objection to some aspect of Christian theism or Christian apologetics.

The Christian rises to the challenge and patiently answers the objection.

At this point our militant atheist suddenly plays the anti-intellectual card, expressing his boredom at the technicality of the reply.

**********************************

Monday, August 07, 2006


Ontological arguments

According to Exbrainer, “Ontological arguments suck…Theists assert that a god does exist in the actual world. It is their responsibility, then, to demonstrate this.”

To which a friend sent me the following:

Here's the version from Alvin Plantinga’s God, Freedom, and Evil:

i) Key assumption: "There is a possible world in which maximal
greatness is instantiated"

(1) That is, possibly, maximal greatness is exemplified.
(2) Maximal excellence: depends on the properties it has in a given
world. Entails omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection.
(3) Maximal greatness: depends on what the being is like in other worlds.
(4) Maximal greatness entails maximum excellence in every world.
(5) Thus, "a being has the maximal degree of greatness in a given
world W only if it has maximal excellence in every possible world".


ii) The argument:

(1) Possibly, maximal greatness is exemplified (say, in W').
(2) Thus, "had W' been actual, there would have been a being with
maximal greatness."
(3) Thus, "if W' had been actual, there would have existed a being who was omniscient and omnipotent and morally perfect and who would have had these properties in every possible world."
(4) Thus, "if W' had been actual, it would have been impossible that there be no omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect being."
(5) "But… while contingent truths vary from world to world, what is logically impossible does not."
(6) "Therefore, in every possible world W it is impossible that there be no such being."
(7) Therefore, "it is impossible in the actual world (which is one of
the possible worlds) that there be no omniscient, omnipotent, and
morally perfect being."
(8) Thus, "there really does exist a being who is omniscient,
omnipotent, and morally perfect and who exists and has these
properties in every possible world."

posted by steve at 10:07 AM


14 comment(s):
Daniel Morgan said:

Daniel Morgan's variation of Plantinga --

i) Key assumption: "There is a possible world in which purple winged unicorns are instantiated"

(1) That is, possibly, purple winged unicorns are exemplified.
(2) Purple winged unicorn: depends on the properties it has in a given
world. Entail: is horse-like, is the color purple, has wings, and a horn in the center of its forehead.
(3) Purple winged unicorns: depends on what the being is like in other worlds.
(4) Purple winged unicorns entail the qualities: horse-like, is the color purple, has wings, and a horn in the center of its forehead in every world.
(5) Thus, "a being has the qualities: horse-like, is the color purple, has wings, and a horn in the center of its forehead in a given
world W only if it has purple winged unicorns in every possible world".


ii) The argument:

(1) Possibly, purple winged unicorns are exemplified (say, in W').
(2) Thus, "had W' been actual, there would have been a being who is a purple winged unicorn" (190).
(3) Thus, "if W' had been actual, there would have existed a being who is horse-like, is the color purple, has wings, and a horn in the center of its forehead and who would have had these properties in every possible world."
(4) Thus, "if W' had been actual, it would have been impossible that there be no beings which are horse-like, the color purple, have wings, and a horn in the center of the forehead."
(5) "But… while contingent truths vary from world to world, what is logically impossible does not."
(6) "Therefore, in every possible world W it is impossible that there be no such being."
(7) Therefore, "it is impossible in the actual world (which is one of the possible worlds) that there be no being who is horse-like, is the color purple, has wings, and a horn in the center of its forehead."
(8) Thus, "there really does exist a being who is horse-like, is the color purple, has wings, and a horn in the center of its forehead, and who exists and has these properties in every possible world."

Do you believe...? I do!
8/07/2006 10:46 AM
aquascum said:

Hi Daniel,

A couple of problems with your reply here.

First, you failed to notice the distinction between maximal excellence and maximal greatness, in the original presentation. In Plantinga's version of the argument, the first gets defined in i.(2) and the second gets defined in i.(3)-(4). Unfortunately, in your subsequent parody, you use the same term ("purple-winged unicorns") to define what were two different concepts in Plantinga's presentation.

But no matter. There's a way to patch up your parody so that this infelicity of terminology gets removed.

Second, and more importantly, you're failing to register the difference between Plantinga's definition of "maximal excellence," and your definition of "purple-winged unicorn". Your ii.(3) speaks of a purple-winged unicorn that exists "in every possible world." But that seems incoherent. As Craig and Moreland put it, in discussing the "necessarily existent lion" objection which is formally similar to yours: "For as a *necessary being* such a beast would have to exist in every possible world we can conceive. But any animal that could exist in a possible world in which the universe is comprised wholly of a singularity of infinite density just is not a lion [or a unicorn]. In contrast, a maximally excellent being could transcend such physical limitations and so be conceived as necessarily existent" (p. 497 of J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, _Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview_ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003)).

So, how about it? Could your purple-winged unicorn exist in a world without oxygen? Without matter? I think that the more you Chisholm your original concept of a purple-winged unicorn, in order to deal with the Craig/Moreland response, the more your beast will come to resemble what Plantinga calls a maximally great being. And so, in the end, your objection just provides us more roundabout way to confirm Plantinga's conclusion.
8/07/2006 11:22 AM
aquascum said:

Err, that should have been, "provides us *a* more roundabout way..."
8/07/2006 11:24 AM
John W. Loftus said:

Did you know that John Hick is known as the most influential philosopher of religion of the last half of the last century, and did you know that he did what Daniel Morgan just did to refute Plantinga's ontological argument too? Hick used equivalent terms that Plantinga used and concluded that "therefore there is an omniscient, omnipotent, and absolutely depraved being." But since two such opposite beings cannot exist, and since both arguments lead to contradictory conclusions, that therefore Plantinga's argument is wrong.

See Hick's An Interpretation of Religion, p. 78
8/07/2006 11:43 AM
steve said:

In other words, Daniel Morgan is reproducing the same flawed argument as John Hick. Thanks for pointing that out to us, John.

So Aquascum just killed two Dodo birds with one stone.
8/07/2006 12:45 PM
John W. Loftus said:

Steve, are you serious here? Duh. Do you even understand what's being said? Duh.
8/07/2006 1:48 PM
aquascum said:

Hi John,

One very general objection to all ontological arguments is that the concept of God employed -- "maximal greatness," "greatest conceivable being," etc. -- is incoherent. That would be the quickest way to block the central assumption that maximal greatness is possibly exemplified. Any defender of an ontological argument must recognize that the argument rises and falls on this coherence question.

But, of course, the same stricture would apply to any parodies of the ontological argument, such as the one Hick gives. On Hick's view, "maximal malignness" involves having "omniscience, omnipotence and absolute moral depravity" (78). And being "maximally evil" involves having "maximal malignness in every world" (78)

The problem here is that it's quite implausible to say that maximal malignness is possibly exemplified. Upon examination the idea looks incoherent, though for a reason which is different from why a necessarily-existing purple-winged unicorn looks incoherent. Could there really be a being who is omniscient, omnipotent, and absolutely morally depraved? If we're objectivists about morality, then morally good actions just are those actions we have the most reason to do. And if a being is omniscient, then he knows which actions he has the most reason to do. And if he's omnipotent, then -- being perfectly free, and subject to no non-rational causal factors influencing his choices -- he will always do those actions he has overriding reason to do. (In particular, he'll do a morally best action [if there is one] and no morally bad action.) And so, as Swinburne argues at length in ch. 11 of _The Coherence of Theism_, "it is logically necessary that an omniscient and perfectly free being be perfectly good" (188, rev. ed.). The first two attributes imply the third. So, contra Hick, maximal malignness is not possibly instantiated, although maximal greatness is.

I grant that this response assumes moral objectivism. It also assumes that omniscience and omnipotence entail perfect goodness. Disputing those assumptions might prove interesting. But the arguments for both are given in the chapter just referenced. If you think the arguments there fail, that would be the next logical step, but the arguments are there to be engaged.
8/07/2006 2:22 PM
Daniel Morgan said:

I thought no omnipotent being could be viewed by a standard of parallel or equivalent morality, since any standard would be contingent upon something the being has created [a lower standard]? The Being can either be evil or good from the perspective of a lesser being, but as the presups like to say, that's "just an opinion" (or something).

I thought this was why God escapes [supposedly] the Euthyphro Dilemma? I thought the standard defense is, from the Being's perspective: How is there a "good" or "bad" action for an omniscient, omnipotent creature? It just acts. Its creations could view its actions as "bad" for them and towards them (which is obvious, since I think the problem of evil is a valid argument). In that sense, the malignancy of Hick's creature must be relative to its actions as they affect its creations. How can a god-figure hurt itself, or act as to lessen itself? It cannot.

I'd never heard of John Hick, nor his counterargument. I had, however, heard of the ontological argument, and as soon as I heard it, the same sort of response came to my head as Hick says in p.77 of An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent, Second Edition -- that it is an attempt to prove God by definitional fiat:

"As in the case of other formulations of the ontological argument, the reasoning looks suspiciously like an attempt to prove divine existence by definitional fiat...This is perhaps fortunate; for Plantinga's argument for a maximally excellent being, if valid, would also work for a maximally evil being."

He goes on to basically replace "excellent" with "evil" in all of Plantinga's argument, as I did "purple unicorns". Will someone please explain why what Hick did was invalid? [given that the above attempt at nullifying the counterargument fails, since omnipotent beings may do what is good or bad for their creations?] According to Hick, Plantinga admits that this is indeed a valid refutation of this form of the argument (Plantinga, 1977, 110). I'm supposing the reference is to: "Actualism and Possible Worlds," Theoria (1977).

Perhaps more interesting than this specific case of the argument is Hick's assessment of the general issue of divining (no pun intended) the ontological necessity from necessary existence. Perhaps someone will fill me in more on how the following doesn't invalidate any attempt to "create" something by showing that it follows from definitional properties (that if it exists, it exists in X way)?

On p.76 he says,
"In assessing this argument [the ontological argument for God's existence] a distinction has to be drawn between logical and factual or ontological necessity. Logical necessity is the property that some propositions have of being true in virtue of the meanings of the terms composing them. But existential propositions, declaring that x exists, cannot have the kind of necessary or analytic truth because, as we noted above, existence does not name a defining property but is a term used to assert that a certain concept is instantiated. Thus whilst it may be necessarily true, not only that 'triangles have three sides,' but also that 'God is good', it cannot be necessarily true that there exist any objects with the properties of a triangle or any entity with the characteristics that would constitute it God. For logical necessity has no purchase on matters of fact and existence. There cannot be a logically necessary existent being. Nor indeed has classical theism generally supposed that there should." (emphasis mine)

How do we go from there to "proof" of existence?
8/07/2006 3:54 PM
John W. Loftus said:

aquascum, I think I could reason with you. I like how you argue, and yes, you allow for me to deny certain assumptions. I look forward to more of your comments.
8/08/2006 6:31 AM
John W. Loftus said:

Daniel can do research "on the spot." I like it!
8/08/2006 6:32 AM
Anonymous said:

i) Key assumption: "There is a possible world in which maximal greatness is NOT instantiated."

ii) The argument:

(1) Possibly, maximal greatness is NOT exemplified (say, in Y').
(2) Thus, had Y' been actual, there would NOT have been a being with maximal greatness.
(3) Thus, if Y' had been actual, there would NOT have existed a being who was omniscient and omnipotent and morally perfect and who would have had these properties in every possible world (e.g. this being would not exist in possible world Y').
(4) Thus, if Y'had been actual, it would have been POSSIBLE that there be no omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect being.
(5) Therefore, in ANY possible world Y it is POSSIBLE that there be no such being.
(6) Therefore, "it is POSSIBLE in the actual world (which is one of the possible worlds) that there be no omniscient, omnipotent, and
morally perfect being."
(7) Thus, IT IS POSSIBLE THAT a being who is omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect DOES NOT EXIST and DOES NOT HAVE these properties in every possible World (e.g. in World Y').

Let's continue:

(i) Key assumption: "a being has the maximal degree of greatness in a given world W only if it has maximal excellence in every possible world".

(1) A godless world (say, Y') is a world without a being with the maximal degree of greatness.
(2) If a godless world is possible, then a being who has a maximal degree of greatness does not exist (i.e. because a being with a maximal degree of greatness has a maximal degree of excellence in EVERY possible world).
(3) A godless world is possible.
(4) Therefore a being who has a maximal degree of greatness does not exist.
8/08/2006 9:33 AM
aquascum said:

Hi Daniel,

Re: your comment above, I don't quite follow the reasoning in your first two paragraphs. You seem to be relying on some assumptions about God and morality that I don't endorse. But it could be that I've misunderstood your point. Could you rephrase? For instance, I don't know what is meant by "a standard of parallel or equivalent morality". As far as I can tell, what you're saying is that objective morality can't apply to an omnipotent being. But that's just to dispute moral objectivism, a possible move I already noted in my final paragraph. Notice, though, that if you say that objective morality can't apply to an omnipotent being, then we've been given even *more* reason to think that Hick's parody-premise is implausible, for it claims that an omnipotent and absolutely morally depraved being is possible. This clearly involves the claim that it's coherent to apply moral categories to an omnipotent being. So I don't think you can defend Hick's parody-argument by disputing its premise :-)

The Euthyphro Dilemma is not solved by making morality relative, but by making God's nature the truthmaker for objective moral truths. That solution is quite compatible, I think, with the defense of the ontological argument I offered above.

You refer to Plantinga's "Actualism and Possible Worlds," but (i) that was published in 1976, not 1977, and (ii) it contains no mention of the ontological argument, apart from a brief mention in section II.2 that "If the ontological argument is correct, the property of knowing that God does not exist is necessarily coextensive with that of being a square circle; but surely these are not the same property, even if that argument is correct." No concession to Hick there! So, what is Hick referring to? Is he citing a Plantinga paper which he doesn't bother to name?

Indeed, as of 1998, Plantinga continues to endorse his modal ontological argument. Cf. his entry in the _Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy_, under "God, arguments for the existence of". In section 4 he outlines the argument and defends its central premise. Here's his closing paragraph, FWIW:

"So stated, the ontological argument breaches no laws of logic, commits no confusions and is entirely immune to Kant's criticism. The only remaining question of interest is whether its premise, that maximal greatness is possibly exemplified, is indeed true. That certainly seems to be a rational claim; but it is not one that cannot rationally be denied. A remaining problem with the argument, perhaps, is that it might be thought that the epistemic distance between premise and conclusion is insufficiently great. Once you see how the argument works, you may think that asserting or believing the premise is tantamount to asserting or believing the conclusion; the canny atheist will say that he does not believe it is possible that there be a maximally great being. But would not a similar criticism hold of any valid argument? Take any valid argument: once you see how it works, you may think that asserting or believing the premise is tantamount to asserting or believing the conclusion. The ontological argument remains as intriguing as ever."

Finally, it's quite true that -- in the material you cite, and elsewhere -- Hick distinguishes between logical and factual necessity. His writing on this point is widely anthologized. But his argument that no existential proposition can have logical necessity is flawed.

First, as with most analytic philosophers writing in a pre-Kripkean context, Hick conflates logical necessity with analyticity. Notice how he uses the terms "necessary" and "analytic" interchangeably. He says that "Logical necessity is the property that some propositions have of being true in virtue of the meanings of the terms composing them." But defining (as he does here) logical necessity in terms of analyticity isn't what *Plantinga* means by the term (existing in all possible worlds). Indeed, Plantinga *critiques* that notion of necessity-as-analyticity in ch. 1 of _The Nature of Necessity_. Surely it's clear that, in the version of the modal ontological argument posted above from _God, Freedom and Evil_, when Plantinga says that the being with "maximal greatness" necessarily exists, he means that it "exists in all possible worlds". That has nothing to do with analyticity.

In the post-Kripkean era of analytic philosophy, philosophers regularly distinguish the semantic notion of analyticity from the metaphysical notion of logical necessity, and distinguish both from the epistemological notion of a prioricity. In his writings on this subject, Hick regularly conflates the first two categories.

Now, it may be that all analytic statements are logically necessary. That is, being analytic is *sufficient* for logical necessity. But it doesn't follow that *only* analytic statements are logically necessary (that is, that being analytic is *necessary* for logical necessity). The necessary is a larger category than the analytic, such that there are other ways to be a logically necessary statement besides "being true in virtue of the meanings of the terms".

For instance, "There is a prime number between fifty and fifty-five" is not analytic (to give an example from Plantinga), because being "between fifty and fifty-five" is not part of the *meaning* of "prime number". But its necessarily true all the same. Ditto for "Everything that has a shape has a size," "Everything green has some spatial property," and (I say) "It is wrong to torture babies for fun." None of these statements are analytic, but they are all necessarily true if true at all. So Hick is wrong to identify the logically necessary with the analytic.

Second, even if we accepted Hick's conflation here, it doesn't follow that that's a reason to reject the ontological argument. For perhaps "God exists" *is* analytic, and therefore (ex hypothesi) logically necessary. According to Brian Leftow (who has written a book defending divine simplicity), if divine simplicity is essential to deity (perhaps by way of perfect being theology), then God is identical with his own existence. But that means that God = God's existence, and so the subject and predicate of "God exists" have the same reference. So it's analytic, and therefore (even on Hick's assumption about logical necessity as analyticity) would be logically necessary.

Third, Hick is mistaken to think that no "existential proposition" can be logically necessary. As Norman Malcolm puts it, "Is the Euclidean theorem in number theory, 'There exists an infinite number of prime numbers,' an 'existential proposition'? Do we not want to say that in some sense it asserts the existence of something?" Likewise, it's an analytic truth that "No bachelors are married." But that also tells me something about existence in the actual world. I can deduce from it that there are no married bachelors. Given this, it would be fairly arbitrary to say that logically necessary statements can only have existential implications for nonexistence, but not for *existence*.

So when Hick says that "logical necessity has no purchase on matters of fact and existence. There cannot be a logically necessary existent being," there's little reason to think this. If by "logical necessity" he just means "analyticity," then Plantinga could justly charge him with rebutting a definition of necessity which he isn't endorsing in the first place. But if by "logical necessity" he means "existence in all possible worlds," then *a fortiori* that concept *does* have "purchase on matters of fact and existence." That is its central characteristic: existence in worlds.

In short, Hick's objection looks like a non-starter to me.

Appendix on Anonymous's comment above. He's on the right track here, in a distant sort of way. But he needs to look at the Plantinga argument originally posted, and then compare it with his parallel. He's not in fact reducing Plantinga's argument to absurdity, because he's not in fact reproducing Plantinga's reasoning. In particular, his inference from (3) to (4) doesn't match Plantinga's reasoning, and so he doesn't get Plantinga's consequences. What Plantinga gets in his premise (4) is an "impossibility" which, in virtue of the fact that impossibilities do not change from world to world, gets you an impossibility in the actual world. (Cf. the top of this post.) And that gets you the existence of God. But in Anonymous's parallel, what he gets in his premise (4) is a "possibility". All that gets him is a possibility in the actual world, that is, it's possible that a being with maximal greatness doesn't exist. But not only is that his original assumption (and so the argument goes nowhere), it doesn't establish the nonexistence of God in the actual world. At best, all you get with "possibly, maximal greatness is not exemplified" is that God doesn't have necessary existence. But you certainly don't get the nonexistence of God.

So I think he needs to Chisholm this a bit to make it work.
8/08/2006 11:34 AM
Daniel Morgan said:

Aquascum,

The problem here is that it's quite implausible to say that maximal malignness is possibly exemplified. Upon examination the idea looks incoherent, though for a reason which is different from why a necessarily-existing purple-winged unicorn looks incoherent. Could there really be a being who is omniscient, omnipotent, and absolutely morally depraved? If we're objectivists about morality, then morally good actions just are those actions we have the most reason to do.

To which I replied,
I thought no omnipotent being could be viewed by a standard of parallel or equivalent morality, since any standard would be contingent upon something the being has created [a lower standard]? The Being can either be evil or good from the perspective of a lesser being, but as the presups like to say, that's "just an opinion" (or something).

Now, I was specifically focused upon, If we're objectivists about morality, then morally good actions just are those actions we have the most reason to do.

I phrased myself carelessly. What I mean to ask, and honestly ask (rather than argue) is: How can we establish what "the most reason to do" is if we do not establish some context (make it relative)? Don't we have to say, "the most reason to do, if the Being wants to make its creations happier and healthier," or "the most reason to do, if the Being wants to bring its own nature about in its creations," or something similar?

In this sense, I quoted the Euthyphro dilemma only because I thought the typical attribution of morality to God as an objective construct failed in this regard. You further reinforce this notion in your reply that,
The Euthyphro Dilemma is not solved by making morality relative, but by making God's nature the truthmaker for objective moral truths. That solution is quite compatible, I think, with the defense of the ontological argument I offered above.

But if we simply use definitional fiat to make God's nature "good" or "malignant", why is one valid but not the other?

As to Hick's reference, I don't know which paper he cites, but it is in the Bibliography under Plantinga, 1977, 110.

At best, all you get with "possibly, maximal greatness is not exemplified" is that God doesn't have necessary existence. But you certainly don't get the nonexistence of God.
And I suppose this was all I was pointing to by quoting p.76 of Hick at length. Whether anonymous or Hick said it properly, it still appears invalid to "create" something by definitional fiat, rather than provide for its possibility.

I was too busy picking my nose and having my eyes glaze over to follow much of the obscurantism in analytic philosophy. Sorry. I'm not saying you're wrong (or right), it just doesn't terribly interest me (or bother me).

Thanks for the fruitful dialogue, though. Interesting thoughts.
8/09/2006 6:26 AM
aquascum said:

Hi Daniel,

Four main points here.

[1]
Re: morally good actions being "those actions we have the most reason to do," all I can do at this point is again refer you to ch. 11 of Swinburne's _The Coherence of Theism_, where he defends this conception at length. The argument is also given in Part I of his _Responsibility and Atonement_ (pp. 9-18). In particular, he rebuts the notion that objective moral principles are context-relative (good relative to humans, or relative to purposes, etc.).

You ask: "How can we establish what 'the most reason to do' is if we do not establish some context (make it relative)?" Well, defending moral objectivism is to defend a meta-ethical theory about morality. It does not involve, in addition, identifying *which* particular putative actions are moral and which are immoral. That would be doing moral epistemology, not meta-ethics. Even if we couldn't settle the issue of moral epistemology, much less judgment of specific cases as right or wrong, that wouldn't have any bearing on the general defense of an objectivist meta-ethic. An analogy: someone could defend a theory of justification as internalist, without having to pass judgment as to whether a person P in situation S was in fact justified in believing p on that occasion. Or someone could hold that natural science is always the best route to truth, without knowing whether or not -- in some particular case -- good science or bad science was being performed. There could be agreement about the former, but disagreement about particular cases re: the latter.

More importantly, defining morality as what you have the *most* reason to do (because it is of overriding importance that you should do it) will settle the kinds of contextual questions you've raised. Sure, we can ask: given that person P wants to make others "happier and healthier," what does he have most reason to do? And wouldn't that be different from what he would have reason to do if he had *another* purpose in mind? Sure. But we can also ask: what reason do we have to make others happier and healthier in the first place? In the end, you will reach a bedrock principle that is context-independent. It's morally right to make others happier and healthier, and there's an end on it. The judgments about what we have most reason to do will involve, in any context, the invoking of principles that are not context-dependent.

(This isn't a full defense of the view, you understand. I'm just sketching out what the theory is in fact claiming about morality, and why these contextual questions don't undermine the theory, but rather provide opportunity for illustrating it.)

[2]
I had proposed that "The Euthyphro Dilemma is not solved by making morality relative, but by making God's nature the truthmaker for objective moral truths." You reply: "But if we simply use definitional fiat to make God's nature 'good' or 'malignant', why is one valid but not the other?" Again, I think you're continuing to confuse (perhaps?) meta-ethical and epistemological issues. *If in fact* God's nature is (the truth-maker for) the standard for the good, then the Euthyphro Dilemma has been avoided, for on this view morality is neither arbitrary nor more ultimate than God. Now, *why* is it the case that God's nature has the content that it has? That's an interesting question. *How do we know* that God's nature is in fact good, rather than evil? Another good question. But neither of these are the Euthyphro Dilemma.

In the end, the whole reason for making the divine nature the truth-maker for objective moral truths is to *clearly eschew* the view that morality is a matter of "definitional fiat". On the theory in question, morality *isn't* defined by way of definitional fiat. It's not defined by any act of choosing whatsoever, much less by an act of choosing how we are to use certain words. Rather, morality is *constituted* by some aspect of God's nature ('definitions' be damned). So either you've radically misunderstood the Euthyphro-response I've proposed, or I've radically misunderstood your question. From my vantage point, my answer is about as far from "definitional fiat" as can be imagined.

The Euthyphro Dilemma has consequences more far-reaching than may at first appear. I agree with Paul Helm: "In the opinion of many philosophers, when in the Euthyphro Plato asked the question 'whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods' he was in effect raising one crucial difficulty for any Divine Command Theory of ethics. (If he was, he was also raising a difficulty for the relation of morality to any authority whatsoever.)" ("Introduction" to Paul Helm (ed.), _Divine Commands and Morality_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 2). In other words, if the Dilemma works, it works at underming moral objectivism *simpliciter* (theistic or not). Even an atheistic advocate of objective ethics faces the Euthyphro-style question: "Given the objective standard for morality you propose, are actions moral because the standard says they are moral, or does the standard say they're moral because they're moral (independent of the standard)?" If the former, then morality looks arbitrary; if the latter, then the 'standard' looks superfluous and irrelevant. That's why I made clear, in my initial reply to John above, that the real issue here is moral objectivism, not theistic moral objectivism in particular.

[3]
You say that "it still appears invalid to 'create' something by definitional fiat, rather than provide for its possibility." But this isn't what's going on in the ontological argument (whether Anselm's original version or Plantinga's modal version). If either author were 'creating' God by definitional fiat, the presentation would most likely go something like this: "I define 'God' as an existing being. Therefore, God exists." Clearly, this *isn't* what's going on in the ontological argument. For starters, although the argument employs definitions, it doesn't employ them like *that*! Rather, an *argument* is being given. One starts with a definition of "maximal greatness" (which definition does *not* involve the claim that God actually exists), and then one *argues*, by way of the relevant modal principles of S5 logic, that if we grant that maximal greatness is possibily exemplified, we get the actual exemplification of maximal greatness; i.e., the existence of God. This isn't "creating something by definitional fiat." It's arguing to a conclusion on the basis of premises. One can dispute the premises, or dispute the inferences, but one can't deny that the premises and inferences are there to be disputed. That's because what we have here is an actual argument, and not a "definitional fiat".

Again, you say that "it still appears invalid to 'create' something by definitional fiat, rather than provide for its possibility." I don't understand the force of the "rather than". "Providing for the possibility" of God's existence is precisely what's going on in the argument, nothing more. If you think Anselm or Plantinga start with something more than this, I'd like to see the evidence.

In the end, what you're proposing here looks like what Stephen T. Davis calls the "Boy Scout objection" to the ontological argument. (Cf. p. 26 of his _God, Reason, and Theistic Proofs_.) Even as an initiate to the Boy Scouts, on his first campout, might express disbelief that you can rub two sticks together and get something like fire (isn't fire radically different from wood?), so the objector to Anselm's/Plantinga's argument might express disbelief that you can rub concepts together and get something like the actual existence of God (isn't God radically different from mere concepts)?

If that's the objection, then the reply is twofold. First, the claim is straightforwardly false. As Davis puts it, surely "we *can* use purely a priori procedures to show some things about reality, for example, that certain things do not exist in it" (26). This is how we know there are no married bachelors or square circles; not by looking around us! We simply reflect upon the associated concepts, and we see that they couldn't be instantiated in reality. So we come to conclusions about reality on the basis of concepts alone. And, as I stated last time, it's arbitrary to say we can go one way with a priori procedures (show nonexistence) but not the other way (show existence).

Second, the claim looks to be question-begging. You can't just say, at the outset, that no one *can* prove anything this way. (A paraphrase of Hick: "It's invalid to start with mere concepts and reason your way to substantive claims about existence!") Rather, you'll have to examine the offered proof and see if it works! Maybe this is the first time such a proof *does* succeed. Who knows? Rather than rule out the cogency of such a proof at the outset, on the basis of an *a priori* philosophical prejudice that such proofs can't work in general, what's needed is a response to the proof itself.

[4]
Finally, you seem to imply that my interaction with the Hick citation you provided was just so much "obscurantism in analytic philosophy," and that "it just doesn't terribly interest" you. Well, OK, but I posted the material above for a reason. If you recall, you were the one who said that "Hick's assessment of the general issue" was "more interesting," and who said that "Perhaps someone will fill me in more on how the following [paragraph from Hick] doesn't invalidate any attempt to 'create' something by showing that it follows from definitional properties (that if it exists, it exists in X way)?"

That clearly looked like a request to interact with Hick's criticism. As far as I can tell, that's what I did. I'm sorry if your eyes glazed over :-) but I can't just respond to Hick by dismissing him. Thoughtful challenges require thoughtful replies. The stuff about necessity and analyticity was, well, necessary, because that's how *Hick* chose to frame the issue. He's the one who offered a rebuttal by using "analytic" and "necessary" interchangeably. And as I argued, that's the Achilles' Heel of his response (along with several other observations I made).
8/09/2006 3:18 PM