The basis of ethics: part 4 Does God Will Us To Do What Is Good?
Dialogs, Ethics August 1st, 2007There are three doctrines, which are held (generally) by Christianity, of which the first two are also shared with the other great Monotheistic faiths, Judaism and Islam.
1) God is good. 2) God wills us to do what is good. 3) God is the basis of ethics.
Le Poidevin points out that the first two are not implicit to the idea of a creator, however, the third premise can be used as the basis of the moral argument for the existence of God.
Plato, in his Euthyphro, identified a problem with the acceptance of all three premises; the third doctrine, namely that God is the basis of ethics, makes it difficult for us to understand the other two doctrines. He presents us with the question, “How are we to understand the idea that God wills us to do what is good?”. To which there are two possible answers, either (a) God wills us to do what is good because certain acts are of themselves good, and he wishes them to be performed, or (b) An act is good only because God wills it. As Le Poidevin states, neither of these answers are wholly satisfactory to the theist, for they both raise problems with theistic belief, as we understand it.
If we accept the first answer, that certain acts are good independent of God, and it is their natural goodness that makes God will them, then it follows that moral values are independent of God. Therefore if God did not exist, there would still be moral values, thus the moral argument for the existence of God is scuppered, and the basis for ethics has nothing to do with theism.
If on the other hand we accept the second answer, that an act is good solely by the virtue of God’s willing it, then we are confronted with another problem; namely that “God wills us to do what he wills us to do”. Therefore, returning to the three original doctrines that we considered, it would seem that God’s willing us to do what is good, is contrary, under a metaphysical interpretation, to the concept that God is the basis of ethics. There is also a contradiction between the notion of God being good and being the basis of ethics, for “if ascribing goodness to something just means that God wills it, then the assertion that God is good becomes the curious and morally empty assertion that God wills that he be as he is”
1/ If theism is true then ‘God is good’ is morally significant.
2/ If theism is true then God plays an explanatory role in ethics.
3/ If ‘God is good’ is morally significant, then moral goodness must be Independent of God.
4/ If God plays an explanatory role in ethics, moral goodness cannot be Independent of God.
5/ If theism is true then moral goodness must be independent of god.
But also 2 and 4 mutually considered imply 6:
6/ If theism is true then moral goodness cannot be independent of God.
What is needed is to distinguish between two elements in morality, descriptivity and prescriptivity.
Descriptive morality identifies acts that when done, would bring about a particular beneficial consequence. But there can also be an ‘ought’ statement in descriptive morality, which is of its nature conditional, so for example ‘one ought to eat, if one wants to stay alive’. (The ‘ought’ here is Hypothetical). Prescriptive morality, on the other hand, suggests an obligation in our actions, ie. If we wish to achieve x we ‘Must’ do y. Or to put it another way, a prescriptive sense of ‘good’ carries an unconditional ‘ought’: for example, “one ought to stop killing, full stop, and not merely to avoid censure”. In making this distinction and asserting that there are acts, which are prescriptively and unconditionally good, as well as the conditional descriptive acts, we are “assenting to a certain conception of morality”.
The final consideration that the theist needs to make is the concept that ‘God is good’. The meta-ethical argument suggests that either ‘God is good’ is morally insignificant, or moral goodness is independent of God. The approach to this dilemma that Le Poidevin adopts is that when we say ‘God is good’ what we are doing is applying an analogy of God’s goodness to a morally good member of the human race. For example morally good parents would take care of their children, in the same way that God can be said to take care of his creation. But also implied in the statement ‘God is good’ is that unlike humans, God is a source of moral value, his goodness consists of the fact that he is the origin of ethics. If he were the basis of ethics, then we would agree that such a role would not be insignificant, and comparatively, as Le Poidevin suggests, neither is the concept of ‘God is good’.
Therefore the theist can amend the third premise in the meta-ethical argument; so instead of reading:
If ‘God is good’ is morally significant, then moral goodness must be independent of God.
It should instead read:
If ‘God is good’ is morally significant then moral goodness is not independent of God.
This line of argument has often been used as a defence against the implication from Darwin that humans as a species are not unique or that we are created moral beings.
August 8th, 2007 at 11:35 am
So when people say “God is good” they really mean “God is benificial to us”.
I also note that if we have the arguement:
1) assume God exists
2) God determined “his” system of morality
Without finding good reason, we can’t directly jump to:
3) we ought to accept this our morality
AC1
August 8th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
It could be read as “God is beneficial to us” but I think it would be more accurate to read what Le Poidevin is saying as “God is a projected example of all that is good about us”.
From his argument it is difficult not to arrive at the conclusion that named attributes of God are derived from human projections (be they hope, ideals, wishful thinking etc.)
The via negativist, the mystical theologian if you like who derides the use of language, especially the attempt to provide derived attributes of God that can be ‘known’. Could just as happily provide this analysis.
Your second point is the excellent one. There is nothing in a ‘moral argument’ for the existence of God, or for a theistic account of the origins of ethics for us to be compelled to accept those ethics or the existence of God.
That is one of the reasons why I feel the classic theistic account and the darwinian account for the origin of the moral sense are not necessarily incompatible.
August 8th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Another brief point, theological ethics has no one definition of God. It is worth remembering Hans Frei’s model of 5 types here. Different ethicists (ethics being a branch of philosophy) apply different theological criteria. So in Christian ethics you have the whole gamut of ethics from relativism to objectivism.
Although most of them will attempt to answer Plato’s euthryphro.
The second point, is the theistic argument found in Plato’s euthyphro is very general. So an orthodox rendering of Judaism and Islam would accept this model. With Christianity the extra factor is the idea of the man-God Jesus. To that extent there is the idea that if God was to become truly human (as is the Christian claim) then God must be subject to the same morality as man.
My very broad idea, that a theistic and a darwinian account are not incompatible takes the general theological view that the moral sense evolved for a sound evolutionary reason, and that evolution is a fact of the ‘created’ world. A natural mechanism that is not incompatible with the idea of a creator God.
If we believe that the moral sense evolved, then as you said we are not compelled to accept that God exists, or that this morality is good. This is a satisfactory position for the Christian Existentialist, and much of Christian Ethics, which is very interdisciplinary tends towards a basic existentialism. That we are free to choose.
August 11th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Just to expand my point slightly, I think both of these statements are equivalent if our origin of good is simply “personally beneficial” – this is the principle of ressentiment. Since we are talking about a way of determining good and evil from descriptive morality (what I think of as pre-God determined ethics), ressentiment aka descriptive morality is all we have to start from.
Changing the subject slightly, this discussion on the origin of ethics reminds me of the “bootstrap” problem which occurs in many fields of study. Essentially, it is the question of how to go from first principles to a desired outcome. The term comes from the expression “to lifting oneself up by one’s own bootstraps”.
In software engineering, it is the problem of going from a new hardware platform with no existing software to a useful system. With no software tools, how can a software tool be developed? We have a lack of a chicken and egg cycle!
In ethics, it is the problem of the origin of “ought” statements.
And changing the subject a third time, I was reading an interesting chapter in “Beyond Good and Evil”, questioning the direction and purpose of philosophy. Should it be as Wittgenstein says: “The task of philosophy is conceptual clarification” or as Nietzsche says “The real philosophers, however, are commanders and law-givers”? (I expect you say philosophy does both but I am not so sure. Current philosophy is very timid.)
AC1
August 11th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
1- yes as you put it that way we are both expressing similar thoughts.
2- I like the boot strap problem as you have articulated it, and I will study it further. I think it is a definite ‘problem’ in ethics. And perhaps an even bigger problem in theistic ethics because it demands some sort of nod towards metaphysics.
I was at the cinema today watching the Simpsons movie, and got to re-reading a chapter on morality in the simpsons in the simpsons philosophy book. Oddly enough it was having this same conversation, there are so many varieties in ethics from where the ‘ought’ comes from that it seems unsatisfactory. But one thing that is striking is that even institutionally (i.e. through the church) no one origin, say for example the two extremes Divine Command or Existentialism is either approved or denied. They make good use of every variety. It is perhaps worth me posting on the Divine Command vs Aristotelian Virtues at some point, I’ll probably lift it straight from the book. But thats for a future date.
3- Current philosophy is indeed very timid. One reason for this I think is that it has become enamoured with scientism. Thus you get certain philosophers who are concerned with making philosophy a scientific activity. Although it is feasible to do this in lets say the field of logic, it restricts epistemology to the rationalist/realist school, wipes out metaphysics (not always a bad thing), and reduces ethics to a system of inferences.
There are some strong and radical philosophers out there who are reinvigorating the field but they are fighting against the established schools.
Wittgenstein was often criticized (take note RD) for being almost completely unread in his chosen topic. So much so that it is said he knew nothing of its history. So when he wrote against Descartes, he had never read Descartes. Wittgenstein was anti-school/theory and yet gave birth to a school of thought.
That is probably the greatest obstacle to modern philosophy the continued existence of well established schools of thought whose tenets are akin to doctrines and dogmas.
There is a radical philosopher working out of London (whose name I forget) who is using the chemical structure of water as his motif.
But I think overall it should be a bit of both Nietzsche and a bit of Wittgenstein. I think the analytic approach is best, but it is an internal reformation of thinking, entirely inhouse.