But, of course, that's where we have our own little theological disagreement.
Randal: Hah, yes, on that we agree.
Randal: You know, I’ve got a feeling we could keep hashing out the issue of theological disagreement all day.
Justin: Hmm, I think you’re probably right about that.
Randal: So is it alright with you if we shift gears? I’ve got one or two arguments for God up my proverbial sleeve, and I’d like to hear what you think.
Justin: Sure thing. Let's see what you got.
SETTING UP THE MORAL QUESTIONS
Randal: Great! Remember I promised to talk about arguments that would distinguish God from your maximally evil being. It's time to make good on that promise.
Justin: Good. Let's hear it.
Randal: So what I'm thinking about right now is how best to explain an aspect of morality.
Justin: There are plenty of aspects to morality. What specifically are you after?
Randal: Ahh, a very practical question! So, as you know, morality is concerned both with moral value and moral obligation. Moral value deals with questions of good and evil, while moral obligation deals with questions of right and wrong, ought and ought not.
Justin: A hugely important distinction!
Randal: Indeed it is.
Any comprehensive account of moral value should seek to explain the origin of good and evil: why does our universe include these moral properties? And any account of moral obligation should seek to explain the origin and nature of right and wrong. That is, why is one act morally right and another act morally wrong? In other words, why is it that I ought to do x but I ought not do y?
Justin: I think this is right in so far as we assume moral statements are cognitive. Assuming moral statements to be cognitive means we assume that moral statements express propositions that can be objectively true or false about the world. Some persons deny this, and they are called noncognitivists.
Randal: Good point. Indeed, this would be a good time to say something about moral semantics. Semantics is concerned with meaning. And thus, moral semantics is concerned with what it means to make moral utterances like “Rape is wrong” or “Compassion is good.” The noncognitivist will deny that these seemingly meaningful expressions succeed in conveying a proposition that is true or false. For example, in ethical emotivism all moral statements are interpreted as emotional expressions like “Boo! Rape!” and “Yah! Compassion!”
But I'm guessing you’re not a noncognitivist, right?
Justin: That's correct. I think moral judgments like this convey something more than mere boos, hisses, or cheers. That said, plenty of atheists are noncognitivists and their arguments are interesting and worth considering.
Randal: Agreed. Or should I say, I can cheer that! So let's turn back to moral values and obligations. Consider the two statements “Murder is wrong” (a statement of moral value) and “You ought not murder” (a statement of moral obligation). What is the truthmaker of these statements? That is, what is it that makes it true that murder is wrong and that you ought not murder?
Justin: Correct me if I'm wrong here, but are those statements not true in virtue of their definitions? In other words, is it not the very meaning of the word “murder” that makes it wrong and its wrongness that requires that we should not murder? That's at least how it seems to me.
Randal: Excellent point, Justin! You’re right that the word “murder” just means unjustified killing. Consider the statement “All bachelors are unmarried.” Since “bachelor” just means “an unmarried male of marrying age,” it follows trivially that all bachelors are unmarried. And, likewise, since murder just is “unjustified killing,” it follows trivially that all murder is wrong.
Justin: Okay, great. That point aside, it was clear that we’re after something more substantive with your question. It had something to do with trying to understand what distinguishes right from wrong and the obligations that follow from those distinctions.
Randal: Right. What I want to do is get past the semantic convention to arrive at the moral values and moral obligations behind our condemnation of murderous acts. Perhaps the best way to do this is to give a concrete description of a particular action.
So, consider this: on the battlefield in WW2, a Nazi surrenders to an English soldier, Private Killum. While Killum has the capacity to take the Nazi as a prisoner, he instead decides to torture, kill, and mutilate the Nazi. We judge Killum's actions to be immoral. But why? What is it that makes them immoral? What is the nature of the values and obligations that he has flouted in torturing, killing, and mutilating the hapless Nazi POW?
You and I both need to provide an account of the moral evil of Private Killum's actions and the violation of moral obligation that he commits when performing them. And my claim is going to be that theism offers distinct advantages over atheism in explaining both moral value and moral obligation.
But I take it you disagree. So can you explain how you understand the nature of moral value and moral obligation?
Justin: That certainly helps. To be clear, both theists and atheists have endorsed a variety of positions on these metaethical and applied ethics questions and so I do want to be clear that the position I’ll be forwarding here is but one of many possible options for the atheist. It just so happens that the view to which I subscribe is available to both theists and atheists alike.
Now, according to desirism, a view that I find plausible,1 in order to make progress in answering this question, we need first to ask a different question. Would a person with good desires do that which was attributed to Private Killum? If a person with good desires would not do the act that Private Killum has done in that situation, then that act is morally impermissible.
Randal: Okay, but let's be sure to keep in mind that we need to explain two things: moral value and moral obligation. By torturing, killing, and mutilating the Nazi, Private Killum commits acts of moral disvalue. In other words, those actions are evil. Moreover, Killum has a moral obligation not to perform those evil actions. Thus, when he engages in evil, he performs actions that violate his moral obligations not to perform evil.
INTRODUCING ETHICS AND DESIRE
Justin: Ah yes, I’ve left out the value aspect of your question. As an aside, not all theories make that value/obligation distinction. For me though, I’ll need to unpack some foundational aspects first. I hold that value terms like good or bad describe relationships. Specifically, they describe relationships between desires and states of affairs. So I want to say that values are actually relational properties. Notice that relational properties (like distance to or from) are things that we can be right or wrong about. They aren't mere matters of opinion.
Randal: I think I follow you. But can you unpack it a bit more?
Justin: Sure. Maybe an illustration will help. Tom has an aversion to (a desire to avoid) pain. Tom lives his life like most of us trying to avoid unnecessary pain. One day, Tom accidentally stubs his toe, causing him a few moments of extreme pain. At that moment, Tom's aversion to pain is being thwarted by the state of affairs of his toe slamming into a step causing him pain. Another way to say this is that the relationship between his desire not to feel pain and the state of affairs that is his feeling pain are in direct conflict. This is bad. While it is Tom's subjective state of mind feeling the pain, the relationship between his feeling pain and his desire to not be feeling pain is directly and objectively in conflict. Given that Tom has a desire to avoid pain, he has a strong reason to walk more cautiously, so he should walk more cautiously.
Randal: Okay, I get the reasoning thus far, but I'm not sure this is going to get you where you want to go.
Justin: That's certainly understandable, as I’ve only really addressed value generically. You’ve expressed interest in my views on specifically moral value. I hold that moral value is a subcategory of value, just like orchids are a subcategory of flowering plants. Recall that this view holds that values describe the relationship between desir
es and states of affairs. Well, for moral values, we are focusing on relationships between desires and specific kinds of states of affairs—mainly states of the brain. Other desires! So, moral value is concerned with relationships between desires.
Now, not all desires are created equal. Some desires are “good” desires in that they are desires that people generally have many strong reasons to promote in their world. Other desires are “bad” desires in that they are desires that people generally have many strong reasons to discourage in their world.
Remember when I said earlier that if a person with good desires would not do the act that Private Killum has done in that situation then that act is morally impermissible?
Randal: I do indeed remember that.
Justin: This is what I was getting at. We should be assessing the desire(s) at the root of Private Killum's act. Was it a good desire? Would a person with good desires—those desires that people generally have reason to promote—do what Private Killum has done?
If not, he has done an impermissible act.
DEBATING DESIRISM
Randal: Good, thanks for the quick overview of your understanding of moral value. Let's hash this out for a bit before we turn to discussing moral obligation.
If I understand your view correctly, moral value exists when actions are undertaken based on particular kinds of reason.
Justin: The view I'm defending here says that value simply exists as a relationship between values and states of affairs. These exist independently of whether any action is ever actually motivated by them. Obviously, in the actual world, desires motivate people to act all the time.
Randal: Yes, well I have a couple of responses to this. First, we can often act in a way that is pretheoretical such that it does not involve any reasoning from premise to conclusion. It would seem that, on your view, these kinds of actions are not ripe for moral appraisal because they are not undertaken with explicit ends in mind. Is this correct?
Justin: It's certainly true that many of our actions are done without explicit appeal to reasoning or desires. But I think it's important to realize that, just because an action is done without careful consideration, it does not mean that it was not motivated by some combination of desires and beliefs. All intentional actions require at least one belief and one desire. So long as a desire is involved in the act in question, it's fair game for moral evaluation.
Randal: So would you say that the reasoning that makes an action ripe for moral appraisal need not be explicit? It can also be tacit or implicit?
Justin: What I mean to say is that, in so far as the action in question is intentional (motivated by a desire), it is appropriate to evaluate morally. Think of it this way: we don't live in a vacuum. We also don't often have access to what desires people have—at least not until their actions reveal them. Obviously, we hope that those around us have those kinds of desires that people generally have many and strong reasons to promote. But why is this? It's because that person's intentional actions will, by definition, be motivated by the desires they have. Whether the desires were being consciously considered or bubbling in the background at the time of the act in question doesn't matter much.
Randal: Okay, thanks for filling out the picture a bit more. To come to my second point, I want to take a closer look at Private Killum. You see, he could have many reasons for torturing, killing, and mutilating the Nazi. And those were in keeping with his desires. Could those actions possibly be morally right on your view? Could they be among the “many and strong reasons” you refer to that can inform morality? And if not, why not?
Justin: I'm not sure I'm completely clear on what your question is. Could you give an example of what you mean here?
Randal: Sure. Private Killum kills the Nazi because that is more likely to ensure his own survival, and he not surprisingly values his own life over that of the anonymous Nazi. As for the torturing and mutilating, those seemingly cruel actions are borne of Killum's desire to objectify and depersonalize his victim, with the intent that this will minimize the adverse psychological consequences he will later experience for having performed the killing. Those are reasons informed by Killum's desire for his own safety and personal happiness. Are they sufficient to make his actions moral?
In other words, what are the criteria by which you distinguish morally right desires and reasons from morally evil ones?
Justin: Oh, okay. I think I see what you’re after now. So, what we need to do is ask if the desire to torture/kill/dehumanize/etc. others is a desire that we generally have many strong reasons to promote in our world. It seems to me that dehumanizing others, especially for justifying some future killing, is not the kind of desire that we generally have reasons to promote. Hopefully that helps!
Randal: Alas, I'm not sure it does. After all, you might generally have reasons not to promote a desire for something, and yet find yourself in a specific situation where it is advisable to promote it. For example, generally I don't have reasons to push a granny from behind, but if that is the only way to save her from getting run over by a bus then I’ll do it.
Justin: Ah, so here you’ve identified a situation in which two good desires seemingly conflict. On the one hand, we all (granny included) generally have many strong reasons to promote an aversion to (a desire to avoid) infringing on other people's bodily autonomy. On the other hand, we all (granny included) generally have many strong reasons to promote an aversion to letting others needlessly die.
What's important to notice here is that, just because both desires are good, it does not follow that they are equally good. Some good desires really are such that we generally have more and stronger reasons to promote one over the other. In the example of these two competing desires, we generally have more and stronger reasons to promote an aversion to letting people needlessly die than we have reasons to promote an aversion to infringing on another's bodily autonomy. After all, without our lives, bodily autonomy wouldn't matter.
Randal: I'm not so sure about your analysis. I don't think I would know in advance whether Granny would value her life more than her autonomy. Indeed, she might be angry at me for saving her life, despite my best intentions. Maybe she just wanted to end it all.
Justin: That is certainly possible, but notice I’ve never said that we should know every detail of our specific circumstances before acting. That would be an impossible standard for any moral theory to impose upon moral agents. All I’ve said is that people generally have many strong reasons for action for promoting an aversion to needless death more so than an aversion to invasions of bodily autonomy. This is true even if there may be exceptions.
UNQUALIFIED MORAL JUDGMENTS
Randal: I still disagree. In the crisis moment, I may have no idea about the range of reasons for a particular action, but I still know that I need to act.
Regardless, let's leave those details aside and get back to Private Killum. You see, I don't think that his decision to torture, kill, and mutilate the Nazi POW could ever be morally justified. Those actions are not like pushing a granny from behind to save her life. Torture and mutilation are intrinsically dehumanizing actions. Those actions are always wrong. They’re evil.
Do you agree? And if you do, how do you justify an unqualified condemnation of Private Killum's actions based on your moral framework?
Justin: While I'm not wedded to the need for an unqualified condemnation, I see no reason why this view is incapable of joining you in an unqualified condemnation of Private Killum's actions. Recall that the view states that if a good person (a person with all good desires) would never intentionally do the act in question, then the act in question is morally impermissible and inexcusable. I think it is quite clear that no good person would do the acts you’ve claimed for the fictional private.
Randal: In my view it certainly is clear that it is always wrong to torture, kill, and mutilate the POW. For all the difficult cases one encounters in the moral life, there are nonetheless many other cases in which an ethical judgment is cle
ar and unqualified, and to my mind this is one of them.
Justin: I think we’re largely in agreement here.
Randal: I don't know about that. In the ethic you’ve presented, ethical judgment consists of weighing the distribution of reasons for and against a desire to perform an action and that is far more nebulous than an intuitive grasp of intrinsic evils.
Justin: I don't see how this is any less nebulous than discussing God. It seems to me that, while we might not be able to be as exacting with our conceptual and empirical considerations as to what effect any particular desire tends to have on others, that shouldn't be seen as a fatal flaw. For it seems quite obvious to me that the desire to rape, for example, is a desire that, when introduced into a community, will tend to thwart desires, while a desire for charity will tend to fulfill them.
Randal: Actions like rape thwart some desires, but they also satisfy other desires. That's why people rape, because they have particular desires (e.g., domination, violence, sexual gratification, etc.). What you need is an immediate judgment that can condemn particular desires unequivocally, one that can thereby justify the immediate way that properly functioning and moral people condemn such clear and egregious moral violations as the act of rape.
So let me lay my cards on the table: can you state with conviction and immediacy that Private Killum's torture, killing, and mutilation of the POW was unequivocally wrong, that such behavior is always wrong? If so, how do you justify that judgment? If not, then when is the torture, killing, and mutilation of POWs morally good?
Justin: Yes (with conviction and immediacy), Killum's torture, killing, and mutilation of the POW was morally wrong.
Now, when I say that Killum's behavior was morally wrong, I mean to draw attention to the fact that Killum did those things because some of his desires were the exact kinds of desires we generally have many strong reasons to condemn and weaken in ourselves and in others. They tend to thwart other desires. They are bad desires.
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