An Objection to Divine Command Theory

Bartricks

That people here will dispute it - or will dispute it when I assert it - is not evidence of controversy. Among philosophers there is none. Moral imperatives are imperatives of reason. The controversy is over their content and over exactly what an imperative of reason is.

Ironically this is precisely why most philosophers reject divine command theory - they reject it because it makes moral imperatives imperatives of God, rather than imperatives of Reason. Needless to say, they do not realize that Reason is God.

Deleted User

Needless to say, they do not realize that Reason is God. — Bartricks

Is this also non-controversial?

Banno

Bart's an obvious troll. Why are you responding?

T Clark

If you like. It's just that you seem to be annoyed at a newbie for not responding, when their thread has been hijacked - you are upset a the wrong thing. — Banno

Hey, @SwampMan, Banno is full of crap. If you are going to start posts, and you've started three, you should be participating.

Banno likes to stick his nose in cause he thinks he's all wise and stuff, but you'll notice he rarely has anything substantive to say. This exchange is a case in point.

Fooloso4

Skeptical are we? — Bartricks

Indeed!

How would my telling you those things do anything to reduce your skepticism? — Bartricks

My question was rhetorical. It is evident that you do not have a PhD in philosophy.

Anyone could just make up such answers. — Bartricks

They could. Is that what you would do rather than tell the truth?

Here's a more reliable test: try and refute my argument. — Bartricks

The problem is, more than once you have demonstrated that you are incapable of seeing that you have been refuted.

I will go back to ignoring you, just as most other members do who are familiar with your "arguments.

Deleted User

It is uncontroversial that moral norms are norms of Reason. — Bartricks

False. It's precisely controversial:

Moral emotions are a variety of social emotion that are involved in forming and communicating moral judgments and decisions, and in motivating behavioral responses to one's own and others' moral behavior.

However, in the last 30–40 years,[when?] there has been a rise in a new front of research: moral emotions as the basis for moral behavior. This development began with a focus on empathy and guilt, but has since moved on to encompass new emotional scholarship on emotions such as anger, shame, disgust, awe, and elevation. With the new research, theorists have begun to question whether moral emotions might hold a larger role in determining morality, one that might even surpass that of moral reasoning.

Wiki on Moral Emotions

Banno

↪T Clark

Cheers. Very helpful.

Deleted User

Bart's an obvious troll. Why are you responding? — Banno

It's amusing. :halo:

Bartricks

↪ZzzoneiroCosm

No, that's extremely controversial. But it follows from my premises.

It is uncontroversial that the argument I made is deductively valid, as anyone who understands arguments would know.

And each premise, taken individually, is uncontroversial.

It is uncontroversial that moral imperatives are imperatives of Reason.
It is uncontroversial that all imperatives of Reason have a unified source: Reason (that's why we call them imperatives of Reason, as opposed to just 'imperatives').
It is uncontroversial minds and only minds can issue imperatives.

So, put together, we get the conclusion that Reason is a mind. That's controversial. But it uncontroversially follows from uncontroversial premises. That's called a discovery.

Bartricks

↪Banno

Stop Bartricks baiting and argue something. You don't have to read this thread. You can start your own or contribute to another and regurgitate half understood Stanford pages to each other. And other people, Banno, can make their own decisions about whether to reply to me or not - they don't need your help. It's not my fault you lack a position of authority in real life - go away.

Banno

↪ZzzoneiroCosm

Fair enough. Been there. Feel a bit sorry for @SwampMan being chastised by TC for not following through, though.

Deleted User

Fair enough. Been there. Feel a bit sorry for SwampMan being chastised by TC for not following through, though. — Banno

Yeah, it's the Wild West.

Wouldn't the mods boot Bart if someone reported him?

Banno

↪ZzzoneiroCosm

I was contemplating asking @jamalrob what he thought of this... guess I just did.

Bartricks

↪Fooloso4

It is evident that you do not have a PhD in philosophy. — Fooloso4

How so?

Do you have anything philosophical to contribute or are you too just interested in Bartricks baiting?

Deleted User

↪Banno

Happy to be a second. He constantly ruthlessly insults (almost?) everyone he talks to.

Bartricks

↪Banno

You are just a Bartricks baiter - you have contributed nothing - nothing - philosphical to this thread. All you do is goad. It's a little pet project of yours - go to any thread to which I am contributing and tell others how mean I am and not to participate in a debate. It's pathetic.

Fooloso4

↪Bartricks

I am not interested in making this thread anymore about you than it has already become.

Bartricks

↪Fooloso4

I just made an argument directly relevant to the topic of the thread. Which is more than the rest of you have done. All you've done is made it about me. Just address the argument or show me that it is irrelevant to the topic - you know, try and do some philosophy and stop making things personal.

neomac

↪Bartricks

> No, it is valid.

Of course it's invalid, no matter how many times you keep boring us with your stupid claim. You should formalise your first argument as it is to prove that it is formally correct. But you can’t. Why? Because you need 4 deductions to make your first argument look formally acceptable, that’s why. And to claim that these 4 deductions back up your claim that your first argument is deductively valid, would be just the second most stupid claim in here. So you contributed with the two most stupid claims one can find in this thread. Kudos.

> And note, bolding false assertions does not an argument make.

Right, but if you can claim that your first argument is a valid deduction without proving it (and you didn’t prove it yet), I do not feel compelled to provide an argument to affirm that your claim is stupid.

> I and 2 of the first argument are open to question, as are the first premises of the next two.

One can philosophically question all 8 premises of your 4 deductions. Your premises are theoretically loaded so much that one could question any of them.

> Now, you've got nothing philosophical to contribute, have you?

BTW is your intellectual dishonesty a moral imperative from Reason?

> Thus far you have made none at all, just Barticks baited - which didn't go so well, did it?

Bait all you want, little ant. I’ve got enough thick skin for you.

neomac

Bart's an obvious troll. Why are you responding? — Banno

I can handle trolls. And also trolls might have interesting things to say.

Fooloso4

try and do some philosophy and stop making things personal. — Bartricks

Plato shows us that the personal is an important part of philosophy. Not knowing that you do not know but insisting that you do know is a serious problem. Fix that and the ability to have a reasoned discussion might follow.

EricH

↪neomac

@Banno
Whatever else you might think about B's musings, I don't believe he's a troll (I'm guessing he identifies as male). I just checked - he has nearly 4500 posts in the 2 years he's been out here, and AFAICT his positions seem consistent. My take is that he genuinely believes what he's saying

Deleted User

troll — EricH

His constant puerile insults mark him as a troll regardless of his positional consistency.

Banno

↪EricH

Well, maybe. He's no thinker. Look at this thread, were he presented a supposed argument that consists of an invalid inference from confused assumptions, then simply abuses the four or five folk who have pointed this out. If he is genuine, then so much the worse for him. You will find the same way of working purveys his other threads.

The only reason I became involved here is because of the oddity of

↪T Clark

's reply to @SwampMan. The real OP has a genuine philosophical point, written by a relative newbie, well grounded in an historical and logical context, that has now been submerged in nonsense.

I think that merits Mod intervention.

Jamal

I think that merits Mod intervention. — Banno

I don't know. None of Bart's posts seems to deserve moderation on its own, so if he/she is as disruptive as you say, the best thing would be for everyone to ignore him/her.

Banno likes to stick his nose in cause he thinks he's all wise and stuff, but you'll notice he rarely has anything substantive to say. This exchange is a case in point. — T Clark

Apparently you're the only person who's allowed to do that. What were you saying in the shoutbox about kettles and pots?

Right now I'm not going to take any mod action, but to @Banno and @T Clark I say: probably best to avoid this thread unless you're going to address the OP.

Cuthbert

With the new research, theorists have begun to question whether moral emotions might hold a larger role in determining morality, one that might even surpass that of moral reasoning — ZzzoneiroCosm

And not only new research:

All morality depends upon our sentiments; and when any action, or quality of the mind, pleases us after a certain manner, we say it is virtuous; and when the neglect, or non-performance of it, displeases us after a like manner, we say that we lie under an obligation to perform it. A change of the obligation supposes a change of the sentiment; and a creation of a new obligation supposes some new sentiment to arise. — Hume, T 3.2.5.4, SBN 517

I don't wholly agree with that quote but sentiment (emotion) certainly has some part to play. It's not all about commands. And the part that is about commands is problematic as per the OP, also the idea that you can ask about any command "Why is it right - or is it right at all - to do what I've just been told?", meaning (if it is right) then it would be so regardless of being commanded or not.

.
And Kant also commits the fallacy of supposing that This ought to be means This is commanded. He conceives the Moral Law to be an Imperative. And this is a very common mistake. This ought to be, it is assumed, must mean This is commanded; nothing, therefore, would be good unless it were commanded; and since commands in this world are liable to be erroneous, what ought to be in its ultimate sense means what is commanded by some real supersensible authority. With regard to this authority it is, then, no longer possible to ask Is it righteous? Its commands cannot fail to be right, because to be right means to be what it commands. Here, therefore, law, in the moral sense, is supposed to be analogous to law, in the legal sense, rather than, as in the last instance, to law in the natural sense. It is supposed that moral obligation is analogous to legal obligation, with this difference only that whereas the source of legal obligation is earthly, that of moral obligation is heavenly. Yet it is obvious that if by a source of obligation is meant only a power which binds you or compels you to do a thing, it is not because it does do this that you ought to obey it. It is only if it be itself so good, that it commands and enforces only what is good, that it can be a source of moral obligation. And in that case what it commands and enforces would be good, whether commanded and enforced or not. Just that which makes an obligation legal, namely the fact that it is commanded by a certain kind of authority, is entirely irrelevant to moral obligation. However an authority be defined, its commands will be morally binding only if they are—morally binding; only if they tell us what ought to be or what is a means to that which ought to be. — G E Moore, Chapter IV: Metaphysical Ethics.§ 76

neomac

I don't believe he's a troll — EricH

I don't care if he is a troll. He's got the intellectual creepiness of a troll, though.

AFAICT his positions seem consistent. — EricH

I don't know what you are referring to when talking about the consistency of his position. All I can say is that I learned about his positions on this and another previous thread. The first time his line of reasoning looked catastrophic to me from the start to the end, while now it just started very badly, but later it improved. However his attitude was less hysterical the first time than this time.
This time his line of reasoning started very badly b/c he made the stupid claim that the following argument is deductively valid, which is obviously not.

1. Moral imperatives are imperatives of reason
2. Imperatives of reason have a single source: Reason
3. Only a mind issues imperatives
4. Therefore, moral imperatives are the imperatives of a single mind
5. The single mind whose imperatives are the imperatives of reason will be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent (God). — Bartricks

Indeed the logical form of this argument (as it is) is something like:

If m then r
If r then s
If i then n
—————
p
q

And only nutcases and Bartricks would dare to call this line of reasoning deductively valid. BTW since he is using quantifiers (e.g."single source", "single mind"), his argument may look even messier if you put it into a predicative logic form, instead of a propositional logic form. So the claim that his first argument, as it is, is logically valid is the most stupid claim one can find on this thread up to now.
Later he presented 4 deductions to counter my accusation against his deductively invalid argument, to support the idea that his deductively invalid argument was indeed valid. But this is just the second most stupid claim one can find in this thread b/c the 4 deductions provided by him do not present the propositional logical structure of the first argument, as I asked.
Conclusion: I can grant you that his 4 deductions express a line of reasoning worth examining, (at least wrt the first argument), even if they do not argue in favor of the DCT argument of the main post of this thread, still they were preceded and then accompanied by the 2 most stupid claims one can find in the current thread. He could have simply said something like: "All right, the first argument is not deductively valid but what I meant is that I can provide a better version of it, which is deductively valid, here it is...". Instead he preferred to put up a hysterical straw man show, only proving his intellectual dishonesty on top of his two stupid claims (indeed the two most stupid claims one can find in this thread).

Cuthbert

He constantly ruthlessly insults (almost?) everyone he talks to. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I have been left alone. So far. I am reminded of a wrestler belittling his opponents and announcing victory before, during and after the fight, regardless of what happens in the ring. I'm only sticking around to show that I'm not scared and add some Hume and Moore to the mix. Although, truth to say, I am a bit scared.

spirit-salamander

G E Moore, Chapter IV: Metaphysical Ethics.§ 76 — Cuthbert

In this respect, he @Bartricks sees his philosophy in agreement with that of Ockham:

My view is, clearly, a form of divine command theory and, where moral imperatives are concerned, it is equivalent to William of Ockham's. — Bartricks

This is what Ockham's moral theory says:

On the other side is an extreme voluntarism that says that natural law consists entirely in a command or prohibition coming from God’s will, a view that Suárez attributes to William of Ockham (DL 2.6.4). On this view, what one ought or ought not to do is wholly determined by God’s legislative acts and, furthermore, God’s legislative acts are unconstrained. That is, there is no act that is intrinsically bad such that God is compelled to prohibit it or even prevented from commanding it and no act that is intrinsically good such that God is compelled to command it. Had God commanded us to murder and steal, then doing so would have been obligatory and good. — spirit-salamander

The last sentence is crucial:

"Had God commanded us to murder and steal, then doing so would have been obligatory and good."

So this is what B subscribes to.

On the other hand, he says:

Hitler is an excellent example. According to Salamander's view, Hitler did nothing wrong. That's silly. — Bartricks

Now, your view entails that Hitler did nothing wrong. Which is stupid. Hitler was a jerk. — Bartricks

The view that moral imperatives are our imperatives entails Hitler did nothing wrong. It is thus absurd and can be rejected — Bartricks

Surely there is a great deal of tension here. God could command Hitler's behavior from us. He could do that, and it would be all right if he did. But then why is Hitler wrong in commanding his own behavior?

According to Bartricks, there is nothing in God or outside of Him (no reason, no principle whatsoever) that would prohibit murder per se except His total arbitrariness, which, however, from our point of view, is total randomness. I don't see why God should be in any respect better than Hitler.

That's why I showed him Suarez's view as a middle ground:

Suárez, on the other hand, thinks that God’s commands and prohibitions are constrained by natural goodness and badness. As befits a perfect being, God prohibits some actions precisely because they are evil. Suárez thinks it absurd to suggest that there are no actions such that they are too evil for God to command or even just to permit. To this extent, then, Suárez agrees with the naturalist; the obligations of natural law are rooted in natural goodness and badness." https://iep.utm.edu/suarez/#SH3i — spirit-salamander

spirit-salamander

BTW since he is using quantifiers (e.g."single source", "single mind") — neomac

Yes I agree, these quantifiers make the premises conceptually unclear.

An Objection to Divine Command Theory

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Categories

More Discussions