To Derek RE: our latest moral argument discussions

[To the reader: cf. all posts on the Moral Argument for the proper context of this letter.]

Based on your writings and our phone conversation, I perceive your view to be thus: you believe that contingent persons really create morals, which only regard other contingent persons. These "morals" are possible because of a permanent, abstract concept, "good", which is derived from the impersonal facts of the universe. Please correct me if I have your view wrong.

Where I think you missed my point, and where I feel the Russellian Platonist's view should be corrected to understand that if morals exist, then an eternal person of utmost authority exists, goes like this:

A Law of Ought is one person's willing, wanting, and urging for another person to obtain a possible situation. Although it may be possible for contingent persons to create Laws of Ought, their laws can only persist as long as they live and have authority to create laws. Therefore, if any necessary law exists, it means that it was created by a necessary person (ie God).

Let me try to animate my thinking a little more for you; pardon the redundancy of some broad-stroke claims.

So for example, Smoking Teenager (from my adventure) willed, wanted, and urged people in the neighborhood to not trespass. Smoking Teenager, at T1 did not want people to trespass anytime after T1, even though at T1 nobody was actively trespassing. He imagined the situation of another person trespassing and did not like it, so he willed that people not do such a thing. He also urged (in this case through a written linguistic expression--the sign) that people not trespass. This Law of Ought (that people should not trespass) did not exist before he made it. But when he made this Law, it began to exist. When Smoking Teenager dies, this Ought will cease to exist, as there will no longer be a person with authority over this property, wanting, willing, and urging people not to cause the possible situation 'trespassing' to obtain.

It is because Laws of Ought require their creators to possess abilities like imagination, emotion, intellect, will, and authority that they are obviously only able to be created by persons. These attributes are personal, and indeed are critical elements of the definition of what is personal. For example, a rock has no self-consciousness, intellect, feelings, will, or authority. But a human person like me or you may have those things.

A bean stock may have vegetative life, but it has no consciousness.

An orangutan may have consciousness and (physical) feelings (or urges or drives), but he has no intellect and no will (although he may exhibit behaviors roughly expressing what might be called 'desires' he has no 'intentionality', no rational deliberation, he cannot write a book or a meaningful sign saying 'no trespassing'). Orangutan's do not have intellectual, or rational, minds.

No, rocks, bean stocks, and orangutans are not capable of creating Laws of Ought. Only full-fledged persons are. 'Person' roughly meaning here, a united object with definite attributes, including emotion, intellect, and will.

What I meant in my former posts by 'objective', when describing such permanent Laws of Ought as morals, was not only 'real', as you seem to have taken it. What I meant was transcendent. Specifically, I mean by 'transcendent', that the law described exists outside of human (but not personal) existence. So the laws of logic are transcendent, as they exist whether or not there are humans writing truth tables. The laws of math are this way, too. Even the laws of nature, although it is debatable as to their logical necessity, transcend human existence. Transcendent objects like laws are not created by humans, they are not social constructions, they are not artificial, they are not generated by human activity, they persist throughout the birth and death of individuals. Transcendent objects may be discovered, but they may not be generated (by humans).

So step 1 of the argument I have been trying to make clear is that transcendent morals exist. I understand that there are possible situations that we should pursue obtainment of. In other words, we should do certain things. But the things that we should do, these standards for right and wrong, do not change as humans live and die. Although they only regard humans, the standards themselves do not fluctuate in and out of existence (unlike 'no trespassing' signs). Nor do they change. What is right has always been so and will continue to be so, and what is wrong has always been so and will continue to be so. Step 1 then, is that transcendent morals exist.

Step 2 is that Laws of Ought (in this case 'morals', not Monopoly rules or traffic regulations) can only be generated by persons. Like I said, this is so because they regard possibilities (requiring imagination), desires (requiring emotion), and will (requiring intellect). They also bear authority (something only a person can wield).

So then it is not only that the property or relation 'good' is predicated of certain situations, it is that 'good' situations are things that we are being urged to pursue. We are wanted to do good. But not only this, an authority wills that we do good, that we obtain those possibilities that are described as 'good'. We should perform good deeds because an authority over us tells, urges, desires, wills, and wants us to. Good things most often happen to be those things which preserve life and uphold truth and nourish souls, but these things, these good things, should be pursued because of a personal requirement of us to do so. This is analogous to the 'no trespassing' sign, but it is different in that these moral laws do not change, and are above man made laws in authority. This is where I have begun to understand Dostoevsky. To perceive a moral is to apprehend that there is a person who is requiring adherence to it.

A 'moral' is not a situation. It is not a moral, 'man loves wife'. Rather, the moral would be 'the situation man loves wife should be pursued'. Even if the situation 'man loves wife' is said to be a 'good' situation, morality is not yet being described. Rather, the 'good' situation 'man loves wife' is something that we ought to cause to obtain. In other words, someone cares that we do what is right. Someone is urging us to do what is good. There is a will that supposes us to comply. There is an authority that has generated these Laws of Ought. Only persons may generate Laws of Ought (like morality).

Step 3 is easy, for if oughts can only be generated by persons, and permanent, authoritative oughts exist, then it logically follows that there is a person who does not come into existence or die, a person with authority greater than any human person. So...

(1) Oughts are generated by persons
(2) Necessary Oughts exist
(3) ∴ a necessary Person exists

This is like saying that if we perceive with our minds some moral ought like 'it is wrong to rape', we are looking at a cosmic sign saying 'no trespassing', a perception that logically leads to belief in a person who generated that ought and has the authority to enforce it. This differs from saying that,

(1) Oughts are generated by persons
(2') Oughts exist
(3') ∴ persons exists

This seems to be your argument, but the key deviance from mine is (2'). Although you verbally affirm that objective morality exists, your view does not allow for it. For if any Ought persists despite individual humans living and dying, then my conclusion is necessitated.

Now, if you happen to believe that the universe we live in is somehow in existence without a God, and it itself is impersonal, but nevertheless capable of evolving persons, then the BEST you can do if you grant (2) is to say that the universe coughed up a person, then that person generated morality. If you only grant (2), then you can deny (1), and there is no problem for you. "Morality", if it can be called such, is then relative to each individual human person who generates his own. Societies can then construct agreements, and life can go on as you seem to want it to. BUT this entails that you must concede that under your view there are no necessary morals, no transcendent, objective 'oughts'. There is no right and wrong that is above man made Laws of Ought (on the level of traffic regulations, copyright infringement, transgressions of the Geneva Convention, identity theft, taxes, etc.). The laws that human authorities make are the highest standards man should follow, and there is nothing above them or beyond them. You therefore forfeit the right to call things like the Holocaust (sorry for the example, Chris) "evil" unless you qualify it with the statement that it is evil according to your own made-up rules. In other words you are forced to say 'because I say the Holocaust was wrong, it was wrong'. You can't say that the individual Nazi's under Hitler's authority should have known better, for they were being obedient to their sovereign. Surely it makes no sense (even under this view) to say that every man should follow his own made up rules, deviating from the commandments of their sovereign. If this were so, the government would have no right to punish murders or anybody for that matter, on the account that each individual should be expected to behave as he himself deems fit. I am not here refuting your view, but you have to admit this in the tradition of your clear-thinking atheist fathers such as Nietzsche and Sartre. These men agreed with my argument, but rejected God's existence and as a consequence rejected all notions of morality (transcendent morality).

If you accept (1), you can reject (2). Perhaps morality can be generated by impersonal objects, or perhaps moral laws are like logic or math - they are just necessary components of the universe. To argue for this, however, you must either a. show that neither emotion, intellect, nor will are required to generate moral oughts, or b. show that neither emotion, intellect, nor will are personal attributes.

But if you grant (1), and (2), which you seem to be trying to do, then you must show where my logic is wrong. How is the conclusion not entailed by the premises? Where does my fallacy lie?

What exactly is the view of the RP in reply to this? Can you show me how her view is coherent, and why my critiques are not valid?