Prologue:
Let's be clear about our the question at large. Atheists and theists may both live moral lives if they chose to. Atheists and theists may both believe in the existence of morality (regardless of whether such belief is warranted). Atheists and theists may both postulate systems of morality (regardless of whether such systems point their owner to other beliefs). What I am trying to establish is that the existence of transcendental moral facts points to the existence of God. If you think that morality is relative, that's fine - I am not attacking your view. I would however, argue that morality, popularly defined, is objective. So I say that you should revise your language; but I am not trying to debunk your view at this particular juncture.
Introduction:
The best atheistic worldview that yet affirms the existence of objective moral facts is one held by a realistic, yet fictitious Russellian Platonist. Derek's character is described thus:
she thinks there are certain moral facts lingering around the universe and can cause certain things be or not be the case when certain things are done or not done. So a Russellian Platonist believes the predicate good is true of the universe. But unlike in mathematics and logic when having a conversation about the predicate good she cannot help think that such conversation about goodness is usually a conversation about humanitySuch a character is indeed manufactured for the purpose of doing good philosophy. We should be concerned about making the best and most ultimate arguments and conclusions. So, even though Derek himself believes in both objective morality and the Christian God, he happens to believe that it is in fact possible to be both an atheist, and coherently affirm the existence of objective moral facts. Just for fun, I rummaged around and was able to scrounge up a primary source that thinks along Derek's lines:
http://rawtheology.blogspot.com/2006/12/russellian-platonist-wants-to-know.html
Atheists who are in fact materialists would find it very difficult to accommodate transcendental moral facts to their worldview, but atheists who are not materialists need not find any difficulty in doing so. A non-materialist atheist can, for instance, follow Plato in supposing that transcendental moral facts exist in their own right as brute facts. Hence, the argument that atheism precludes transcendental moral facts by virtue of excluding the transcendent altogether, is unsound.Argument 1:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/moral.html
I will set aside the possible argument from the fact that Plato's "Good" is widely considered to be thought personal by him, rendering him a theist of sorts. Rather, for the sake of argument, I will allow that it is possible to be an Atheist/Russellian Platonist about numbers. When it comes to morality however, things get more difficult for such an atheist.
As numbers are nonphysical and unchanging in value and relation, our fried would say that they are transcendent, organizing, eternal principles of the universe. Such a view is only one step short of theism. For theism only requires the set of all such things to be personal.
But the difference between mathematical axioms and moral facts is that morality is personal. How can something impersonal ask you to do something? Can an impersonal set of universal brute facts say that you should do something? Or is logic itself capable of judging one circumstance as "bad" and one as "good"? Mathematics and logic concern dry tautologies. There is nothing about 2+2=5 that is morally wrong; it is just plain false - it cannot be. But the life of an innocent man being taken is a scenario that can be. And yet it isn't supposed to be. But Who is supposing such a situation to not be? The very nature of an ought is that it comes from a person. It is impossible that a mindless set of brute facts produce such moral oughts. The moment you leave mathematical Platonism, and perceive there to be such things as moral facts, is the moment you render yourself a theist. For the theist is just a Platonist who says that brute facts such as math and logic are descriptions of the nature of God, and moral facts are descriptions of the character of God. For, moral facts concern agents alone, and can be generated by character and command only - not some sterile, impersonal, universal just-about-almost-a-god-but-missing-personhood. Ought implies authority - a personal attribute.
Argument 2:
No matter how hard you try, unless you postulate God, you will always have a meta problem when it comes to morality. For example: suppose our Russellian Platonist affirms the existence of objective mathematical facts, and objective moral facts, yet denies the existence of any eternal person. Our friend still cannot tell me why it is wrong to transgress this moral law. Even if it is indeed "wrong" to do action W (according to the universe), so what if every human on earth performs W? Who cares?
Argument 3:
Finally, Who will hold you accountable to such moral oughts? Suppose I am able to perform a crime such that nobody will ever arrest me. Now, suppose I am so convinced of my own righteousness that I never feel bad about it. Also suppose that said crime benefits me materially or relationally for the duration of my life. Under the Russellian Platonists view, there is nobody to hold me accountable for my transgression! So this "morality" spoken of isn't really anything at all. The Russelliaon Platonist can give such a criminal no reasons for being moral, or even an argument for why such a criminal "ought" to have done otherwise.
Conclusion:
Morality is something by persons and for persons. To affirm that there is a transcendent morality is to entail that there is an eternal person of unsurpassed authority, whose character and command dictate right and wrong, and who has the power and intention to hold lower persons accountable for such oughts.
Epilogue:
Such a God, being thus just, could not allow crimes to go unpunished. But how sublime it is that God Himself became incarnate as a man, to live a righteous life, only to die as a substitute for you and me! In this way the moral lawgiver Himself walked in our nature and fulfilled the law so that He could pay our debt to Himself! Thanks be to God that all we have to do to accept such a gift is to confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord, and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead!
2 comments:
I think the best argument you gave was the first, so I’ll be addressing the arguments in the reverse order of their presentation.
Contra argument 3
Argument 3 is the classic problem of why the evil prosper. Plato himself goes to great lengths to answer this problem in book 2 or 3 in his Republic. Louis argues that if there is no God to distribute just deserts, then the importance of following any moral oughts is undercut. If there is no just desert for evil then it makes no difference whether one is evil or good, so long as one can get away with being evil.
The Russellian Platonist responds:
One should notice that this argument doesn’t show the inconsistency of the Russellian Platonist world view, but rather its tragedy. The argument’s formulation itself does not deny the possibility of good or evil in a Russellian Platonic universe, for as Louis writes:
“Under the Russellian Platonists view, there is nobody to hold me accountable for my transgression!” Just because there is no accountability for such a transgression, this does not mean there was no transgression to begin with; the two are distinct, and Louis’ point assumes this. This means the Russellian Platonist is not being inconsistent; at worst she’s being tragic. If she’s being tragic because there sometimes is no consequence for one’s actions because that sometimes is the case, then she’s a tragic Russellian Platonist because that would be the way things are, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Appendix A for contra 3:
Some Russellian Platonists would insist that the nature of the property good is such that if it is not instantiated when it was supposed to be, the perpetrator would inevitably suffer the consequences, even if there was no external force to render a just desert. The thief who stole someone else’s properly earned money would feel shame and sadness in proportion to the amount stolen, and the thief’s overall well being would deteriorate accordingly. In Louis example though, the thief was self deceived in thinking he was guilty of no ills. Under some Russellian Platonisms this phenomenon would be possible, but the outcomes Louis described would be impossible; namely that he wrongly believed he wasn’t guilty and hence didn’t feel bad. These Russellian Platonists would say that if such self-deception did occur, then the thief would necessarily feel guilty without knowing why. If one were to ask these Russellian Platonists how they know this is true, they would say that the proposition is one of those strange instances of synthetic a priori knowledge.
Contra argument 2
Argument 2 was basically the “who cares!” problem. The Russellian Platonists in described in Appendix A for Contra argument 3 would respond by saying that the predicate good, although in essence simple, bears certain necessary relationships to the wellbeing of humans such that if the good does not obtain when it should have, then it will destroy the person involved in proportion to the severity of the transgression. So, as Socrates once mentioned, the importance of whether or not men live their lives in conformity to the good is paramount to all other cares and concerns. In other words, everyone cares, and if they don’t, then they’re becoming non-human.
It should be noted that the tacit point of argument 2 is actually the content of argument 3; namely that unless just deserts are guaranteed (and only God can do that kind of work), then morality ceases to exist. In some respects the same point could be made towards the theist: If one does not care about whether or not he will go to hell for his transgressions, why should he care? The theist’s response will be something like the response of some Russellian Platonists mentioned above, in which case theism is no better then some kinds of Russellian Platonism.
Contra the juicy argument (argument 1)
Some preliminary counter points:
“But the difference between mathematical axioms and moral facts is that morality is personal. How can something impersonal ask you to do something? Can an impersonal set of universal brute facts say that you should do something.”
Touché, but this isn’t fatal. The difference between Russellian Platonism and Theism here is a matter differing ontological ground and not content. Since the content is different, the attitude of the content changes. Under Theism the ontological grounding is that the universe was made a certain way by a certain interested person, so moral oughts flow from an interested person who cares about what is going on; one should do this or that because God designed humans to perform this or that. This cannot occur under Russellian Platonism because moral facts are not emanating from a person, but rather affecting persons in virtue of how the world exists, or more precisely, how that world in regards to human persons. When one person does something to help another who is in need, the property good is predicated because that’s how humans work. When someone does something to cause undue harm to another, the predicate good fails to obtain because the psyche of the person who committed the transgression fails to be ordered in a certain sort of way. The moral ‘should’ is derived out of the fabric of the universe; one should not commit undue harm to another because the predicate good will be unable to be instantiated, and this will cause the wellbeing of the party involved to deplete. Louis might retort “Well why does that happen?” and The Russellian Platonists might respond “because that’s just how the world is!” So the very notion of “ought” does not carry theistic baggage if we understand the term to be a construed as a hypothetical disjunct. When someone asks “how ought I travel to get to Boston the quickest?” and the appropriate response would be “by taking a nonstop flight”. Moral language works the same way for a Russellian Platonist: if someone were ask “how could I best preserve my well being?” the Russellian Platonist’s response would be “you ought to be moral.”
RE: ARGUMENT 3
Granting that "good" is a simple, you're right on this one; I abandon this argument.
RE: ARGUMENT 2
Argument 2 contains a key for this discussion. This is more than a "who cares" argument, and I dropped the ball in not explaining this better the first time around.
Axioms are descriptive, and can be seen to be true by virtue of being understood. Once you understand 2 + 2, you get no new information by performing the addition. 2 + 2 is a description of 4; one cannot imagine 2 + 2 not being identical to 4. The world must exist this way, and nothing hypothetical is involved. Reality cannot exist other than in the way described by axioms.
Morality is so radically different than this, because understanding a situation like 'man punches wife in the face without reason' does not entail seeing that this situation obtains in this world. Quite the contrary, morality contains "oughts", such that situations like that described are not meant to obtain in this world, while other situations, such as 'man loves wife' are suppose to obtain. Morality concerns possibilities, while axioms contain necessities.
So when I ask "who cares" I am not asking whether there is anyone who cares. I am stating that it cannot be an "it" that is supposing a situation to obtain, it can only be a "who". So, "caring" is an appropriate word to describe the giving of moral oughts. "Who cares" is not meant to be a question, so much as is it meant to say that it is a "who" that is "caring", rather than an "it" that is "describing".
Now, Miss Russellian Platonist describes the quality "good" as a description of situations that can obtain in this world. But here lies the meta-question of argument 2. If "good" is merely a quality of certain situations, then why ought a person pursue such situations? While I think that 'good' is indeed an accurate descriptive of certain situations, I feel that morality is something different. It is stronger than a description alone, it is the 'ought' that I am asking about. Morality is what supposes us to pursue what is good. And this can only be accomplished by a person who is capable of regarding possibilities and requiring behaviors.
You say "if the good does not obtain when it should have, then it will destroy the person involved in proportion to the severity of the transgression", and I can only ask you if this is your ethic, or the reason for your ethic? In other words, is something wrong because it is damaging, or does something damage because it is wrong?
Furnishing an ethic in place of an ethical theory is question begging. We are not concerned with the heuristic for right and wrong, we are concerned with why there is right and wrong. So, if this statement is only an ethic, then I have to ask why it is wrong to damage myself or others. Why is destruction wrong and construction right? Would it still be wrong if everyone on earth just agreed to do cocaine, noting its destructive effects, but opting to endure them for the sake of pleasure?
RE: ARGUMENT 1
I am not sure that there is much more I can do to convince you of this fact, but it is not merely that morals happen to flow from the character of the God how made everything and holds it together, it is that morals can only come from persons, because of the type of thing that they are. Morality bears authority, and should compel you to do something or to not do something. They do not merely regard things as they stand. So "how ought I travel to get to Boston the quickest" is a poorly worded question, because there is not ann actual moral "ought" to the situation. There is only a geometrical solution, dry of any hypotheticals and void of any compulsions. There is no transcendental 'should'. There is no authority. And "how could I best preserve my well being" isn't tautological with "be moral". Morality is not the type of thing that can be boiled down to an ethic; ethics are the application of morals. Preserving life is a moral thing to do in general, yes, and moral actions also happen to preserve life, but an action is not moral only because it preserves life.
I think we may have to start examining cases for us to get any further. So for example, under my view it makes sense to sacrifice your life for another human being. But your view can provide me no motivation or theoretical ground for a moral like this. You might try a feeble "it is good to sacrifice yourself for another human to keep the species going". But this will quickly fail, as the exchange of one human life for another in itself does nothing to keep the human species going, nor have you answered the meta question of why human survival is something I ought to sacrifice myself for.
Miss Platonist, how can anything impersonal regard persons? You almost make it seem as though the universe cares about our well-being, and exists such that it makes it clear to us how to pursue that.
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