Can objective morality exist without theism? -- extinctionist vs. wiploc

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

This thread has been set up for a formal debate between extinctionist and wiploc on the following resolution:

Resolved: Objective morality could exist only if a god existed.

extinctionist will go first, taking the affirmative, and wiploc will oppose. The debate will proceed for 5 rounds (tentatively) as agreed to from the parameters (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=82662).

A Peanut Gallery (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=88588) is set up in the Moral Foundations & Principles forum for the rest of us to comment on the debate.

Good luck to both participants!

Jason

[extinctionist]

Hi everyone. First off, obligatory thanks, to iidb for setting this up, to wiploc for agreeing to take part, and to anyone who takes the time to read this debate. Secondly, just to point out, I am an atheist (this has caused some confusion when debating this in the past). Thirdly, standard misogyny disclaimer for refering to God in the masculine.

1) Morality is constructed. It cannot exist independent of its purpose.

Firstly, I'll make the self-evident point that a moral decision, any moral decision, is just that - a choice. Whether we are making a judgement on what to do in a given situation, for example whether to give change to a beggar, or forming an opinion on a situation outside our direct control, for example a terminally ill woman going to court to win the right to die, we use morality to resolve conflicts either within ourselves or between different people. If these conflicts had no chance of occuring then I put it to you that morality would not only have no need for existence, but could not exist in a world without God.

To explain this, I argue that conflict is inherent in humanity. As long as people have different beliefs and needs, we will have to make moral choices, and since people have had conflicting beliefs and needs since we have begun to think logically and emotionally, we found it necessary to construct moral systems to resolve crises. In primitive human society, these could be as simple as whether we should resort to violence to solve disagreements, or whether or not food should be shared equally amongst the social group. As we developed, more and more moral questions arose, whether we should go to war, whether one should believe in God, whether pre-marital sex is ok, whether we should engage in stem cell research etc... (note, it is not necessary to believe that any of these should be moral questions, only to accept that they have been considered as such).

In any case, the key is that these moral systems had to have been constructed, for the simple reason that they cannot exist independent of humanity, or at least some form of logical and emotional being. All known moral views and systems are constructions of humanity, either individually or by a group. This is true with or without God, and of course assumes at least some degree of free will. Why this is true without God is self-evident, but even with God we have thusfar only subjective and contradictory interpretations of his word, assuming of course the Abrahamic God.

2) Morality develops with societal and technological advances. Different moral questions arise in different societies.

This was touched on in 1), but it has relevence in itself here. Moral questions, such as whether we should use GM technology in food, whether we should have nuclear weapons, sex and violence on television, gay marriage in church, only came about relatively recently. If we accept this, then it should follow that new moral questions are likely to arrive in the future. Indeed, new moral questions are likely to arise for as long as humanity continues to exist. Moral attitudes, too, will change. Nietszche used the example of the Greeks believing revenge moral in Human, All Too Human. The witch trials were considered moral. As was the subjugation of a wife to her husband. All these attitudes have (thankfully) changed in many areas of the world.

3) Assuming no God

Thus, from what I argue in 1) and 2), our general moral systems are not only constructed, but added to, chipped away at and changed, some parts developed, some parts left alone, some parts discarded altogether. Individual moral views are, of course, subject to change and subject to conflict with these moral systems. But the moral systems have in themselves been constructed by a mass of individuals, bonding together in a society. I am not saying that the boundaries of acceptable morality are clear - far from it. There is great debate around the more complex moral questions that we face, such as cloning, for example. But by observing the actions of society, and its laws, we can get a fair idea of what it considers 'right' and 'wrong'.

Whilst this is a necessarily short summary, given my alloted space, I think it gives a fair account of how our moral understanding comes about. If we assume no God and some freedom to make moral choices, then morality can ultimately only be based on individuals and their chosen values, based on their own life experiences and (possibly) natural instincts as well. But if this is the case, then we have no moral reason to follow our moral laws, even if every single person were to agree on what those laws are, other than 'we say so'. To construct any kind of 'ought' based on this reasoning is circular. Objective morality relies on the construction of 'ought' from 'is', but there is no way to do this universally under the way morality is constructed. Based on what I have written so far, the only way to approach morality would be either to deny its relevence/existence (a nihilist perspective) or to argue that we construct our own 'oughts' based on our own values, whilst recognising that no ultimate judge of whether we are correct or not exists (a subjectivist perspective). Note the subjectivist perspective does not actually prescribe that we must follow our own 'oughts', although one can have their own opinions on whether we should or not.

4) Assuming God exists

I have already argued that the history of how we have constructed morality remains true regardless of whether or not God exists. This, to me, is self-evident. The main difference, of course is that there is now an ultimate judge of right and wrong. And now we come to Plato's question: 'Are things wrong because God says so, or does God say things are wrong because they are?'

From what I have argued earlier, things cannot 'just be wrong'. Morality must follow human requirements, it cannot exist outside of them. It also must have been constructed by someone. Here, of course, we assume that someone is God. But this would appear to discount the second answer de facto, as morality cannot exist without an entity constructing it. And if we assume God is omniscient and omnibenevolent, then that morality must come from God. Why would it come from a less-than-perfect being as opposed to a perfect one?

Now to the first question: are things wrong because God says so? It seems that logically, going on what I have said previously, the answer must be yes. How can I give this answer, though? How is this answer not unacceptably circular, as I have just argued similarly in 3) of morality constructed by humans?

The answer lies in the question of knowledge and purpose. God, in his omniscience and omnibenevolence, has constructed a morality which he expects the humans he himself created to live by. If we take God as omniscient, then he knows every single potential moral situation which humans can possibly encounter, something that humans themselves cannot possibly know. He does not have to guarantee that humans will come across every one of these, any more than an electrician needs to know that a back-up power supply he constructs will one day be needed by the factory. He just needs to know they are there if needed. This answer, I believe, successfully evades the free-will problem, and also the question of moral validity.

To contend the other problem, that of 'oughtiness', I will start by making another point relevent to the paragraph above. With God, moral decisions are most likely finite. If God has created the universe and everything in it, and constructed morality for humans to live by as part of his overall purpose, then we have been given a pre-defined reason for existence, and as part of that it follows we have a way we should act during our existence. Assuming God's omniscience and omnibenevolence, the morality he has layed out for us is part of the objectively correct way we should act in our lives.

This, of course, is merely the opening statement, and there remains quite a bit unexplained. This is necessary, due to the limit on space, and obviously I'll reply to whatever bones wiploc has to pick with it. I request that anyone reading this look at my argument in terms of the conscious or unconscious creation of the universe, as that may help to explain where I'm coming from.

[wiploc]

Objective Morality Debate
Extinctionist vs Wiploc

Round 1
First Negative Post

Greetings. Thanks, Extinctionist, for this opportunity to exercise. Thanks to iidb for providing the gym.

Extinctionist's position is that we could have objective morality if we had a god, but we can't since we don't. My position is that if we could have objective morality with a god, then we can have it without one; and if we can't have it without a god, then we couldn't have it with a god.

I’m out on a limb here, since Extinctionist gets to define "objective," and "morality," and "god." But I'm arguing what I believe, so if it turns out that I'm wrong, then that means I'll have learned something.

The meaning of "god" has been at least tentatively resolved in the set-up thead: We are talking about a dude with omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence.

My first concern, then, is to discover the meanings of "objective" and "morality." I conclude that, in Extinctionist's mind, the difference is something like this. Subjective morality is moral rules that people think they should follow, and objective morality is moral rules that people really should follow. In other words, objective morality has an "ought" to it.

Gleaning thru Extinctionist's post in a hunt for reasons god-made morality would be oughty and man-made morality not, I located and summarily executed (for various reasons) the following candidates: God made morality is finite. Man-made morality is constructed and subject to dispute. Extinctionist may re-nominate these candidates if he thinks I have eliminated them in error.

If I'm reading him right, Extinctionist's case is this: Any man-made morality is non-binding; that is to say, the strongest case we can make for compliance with a man-made morality is that such a morality may have some esthetic appeal for some people. God-made morality, on the other hand, is oughty: it would ought to be complied with because it would be wrong---in some more significant sense than can be derived from esthetics---not to comply. This significant wrongness follows from one or more of these three factors: God-made morality might be unchanging; it might serve god's goals in addition to man's; and a god-made morality would contain no errors resulting from its creator's ignorance, stupidity, or malevolence.

Changability vs Unchangability:
There is no connection between lack of change and oughtiness. The desire for unchanging rules is the desire for the ability to comply, the desire not to get caught driving on the right side of the road in a left-side-of-the-road country, the desire not to fail to get into Heaven because you were complying with the old law after Christ had changed all the jots and tittles, the desire not to be cast into Hell for refusing to slaughter Mideonites when you thought there was a rule against that sort of thing, the desire not to be stranded in the station because the late train doesn't run on Thursdays anymore. It is perfectly natural to want not to be mousetrapped by rules that are subtle, complex, arcane, or subject to change without notice. But the issue of whether the rules are understood is distinct from the issue of whether they should be followed. There is no presumption that understood rules should be followed.

I offer Conan's rules for the good life as a dispositive counter-example: "[C]rush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of the women!"


A Morality That Serves God's Goals:
It is true that a god-made morality might serve god's purposes in addition to our own, but why should we care? Why should we think god's purposes more important than our own? We can see how god's purposes would be more important to him, but the same logic makes our purposes more important to us.


The Effects of Omnipotence and Omnibenevolence:
These have to do with error-avoidance. The implication is that there can be right rules and wrong rules. This could only be true if there were some higher standard by which god-made morality could be judged. We have no reason to believe that such a standard doesn't exist now but would exist if god existed.


Godless Basis of Morality:
As far as I can tell, all moral systems are ultimately rooted in utilitarianism. If a morality wasn't about increasing happiness, what would be the point? So, suppose for a minute that I'm right about that, that if an omniscient and omnibenevolent god made a rule against rapes and Holocausts, that would be because people would be, on balance, happier without rapes and Holocausts. If that is what makes a rule oughty, then I can make oughty rules too. My level of benevolence, and my partial comprehension of the human condition enables me to confidently state that we shouldn't do rapes or Holocausts. If a god made a rule against rapes and Holocausts, it would be the same as my rule. If his would be oughty, mine is oughty.


Theistic justifications of oughtiness:
In my experience, theists offer four reasons that god-made morality would be oughty. Since none of them is even marginally defensible, the theist technique is to try to dance back and forth between the various incompatible positions so fast that they can't be pinned down and made to realize what they are doing. One of the most popular justifications of divine oughtiness is that god may hurt you if you don't comply with his rules. There are two problems with that. One is that it isn't a moral claim: one doesn't believe, for instance, that rape victims are morally obligated to obey rapists. The other is that any community with a police force can make the same claim about obeying human rules. In fact, anybody with a blunt object or a sharp tongue can make the same claim. No theistic justification succeeds in making god-made rules seem oughtier than man-made rules.


Disclaimer/Apology
Extinctionist, I did substantial mining and refining in the attempt to understand your claims well enough to respond to them. Presumably, I got some of it wrong. I ask you to accept any misrepresentations as accidental rather than deliberate, and as opportunities for clarification.


Conclusion:
We have been offered three reasons to see god-made morality as oughtier than man-made morality. The possibly-unchanging nature of god-made morality cannot be linked to oughtiness. The alleged obligation to obey rules that serve a god's purposes has not been supported and has no intuitive appeal. The third justification actually weighs against Extinctionist's intent by suggesting that those rules which are oughty are those which benefit people---we already have rules like that.

Therefore, as far as we can tell after Extinctionist's opening statement, the existence or non-existence of gods does not affect the objectivity of morality.

crc

[extinctionist]

Wiploc's rebuttal concentrated on the oughtiness aspect of a God-made morality. I will attempt to establish this here, and not concentrate so much on the non-oughtiness of atheistic morality for now (although my arguments on that side may flow naturally from my arguments about God, since I am asserting this is the only possible way to derive an objective ought). For now, I will simply assert that in an atheistic world, the is-ought gap is unbridgable. To derive an 'ought' conclusion from 'is' premises would entail making 'ought' into nothing more than a type of is. This is not possible in a world who's purpose, in the unlikely event it has one at all, is entirely unconscious.

Also, before I start, wiploc is correct in eliminating the following: human morality is constructed and subject to dispute, God is powerful so we should obey his laws, we will be punished unless we obey God's laws. None of these have anything affirming an oughtiness of morality, the former was dealing with reasons why human morality is subjective, the latter two were not even implied as reasons. He is welcome to eliminate the likely finite nature of a God-made morality as well if he wishes, as in itself it is not a reason for oughtiness, but I will come back to it to demonstrate points regarding purpose if I have to. It is only part of my argument.

At the end of my opening statement I asked people to look at my argument from the perspective of a conscious/unconscious creation of the universe. The reason why will hopefully become clear, as I begin to explore the link between morality and purpose.

Firstly, take the premise: God created the universe. The universe that we know of today would not have existed had God not had too much time on his hands and been bored of playing celestial pitch-and-toss with Lucifer. It follows from this that God, if he has determined the universe as such, has played a part, whether direct (man from dust, woman from rib, or whatever), or indirect (letting evolution play a role). Either way, the statement 'God created the universe' implies that humanity is causally linked to God.

Now, expand on this with the following: God create the universe for a purpose. There is an 'end' which the universe must itself achieve. It therefore follows that, if we are causally linked to God as a part of the universe he created, it is at least possible that we are causally linked to God's purpose (we could have nothing to do with it, of course, in which case our morality would be our own). In effect, that we have been created by God to fulfil a role which would bring about such a purpose. wiploc would no doubt interject here (he made the point in his rebuttal) to ask why we should care about God's purpose, when we ourselves are capable of constructing our own? There are two potential ways of dealing with this, but I'll concentrate on the one for now, and see what wiploc makes of it.

I'll ask you to consider the following argument:

1) Object is designed to do X
2) Object is physically incapable of doing other than what it is designed for
3) Object is unbreakable (premise 2 should deal with this, it is added only for clarity)
----> Object will do X

That the object will do X in that situation is a given, there is no logical way where it can escape this action. If we can agree on that, we can move on to a similar argument.

1) Humanity is designed to bring about God's purpose
2) Humanity is physically incapable of doing other than what it is designed for
----> Humanity will bring about God's purpose.

Again, this is a valid argument. If the premises were true then the conclusion logically follows. IF the premises were true though, we would be talking about a kind of determinism, whereby God has constructed humans as little more than biological machines to bring about actions which would attain his ultimate goal. I mentioned in the OP that morality can only exist in a situation where a conscious being is faced with a conflict, thus in this situation morality cannot exist, or we would be faced with a contradiction whereby morality would be constructed to determine choices for beings who had no choice in the first place.

So, basically what we have is humans being constructed for a purpose. Lets leave them alone for now, and turn to the purpose as a whole. This should not be arbitrary, ie God must have a reason for aiming for this purpose, other than a churlish 'cos I want to' or 'cos I can'. God knows (omnicience...) that failure in this purpose would be worse than success. God's omnibenevolence demonstrates that he wishes good to be done. I cannot make an arbitrary claim for what that 'good' would be, but I don't need to. I only need to make the claim that God has an objective measure for which to define it, and I hold that that is perfectly possible that he would.

So, if God has constructed the universe, the world which we live in, and thus ourselves, and developed a reason for us to live, how do we insert morality into the equation? The answer, of course, lies in granting humans the ability to make choices. Essentially granting us free will, but with the purpose of our existence still the same as if we did not have it. Again, it is not my remit to explain why God has done this, or if he had a choice, only that it is possible. Now, since any 'ought' term can go at the end of an argument if the 'ought' is only related to the theme of the premises as a condition of bringing about a given end (for example desire-ought results from desire premises, happiness-ought from happiness-premises), its not much of a stretch to derive a moral ought from what I have just been saying. Take this argument, same principle as the previous determinist argument, but with free will inserted:

1) Humanity is required to bring about God's purpose.
2) Humanity chooses to do what is required of it
----> Humanity will bring about God's purpose.

This, for God, is the best case scenario, where humans, acting on their own free will, have brought about the purpose, which he knows is the best possible course of action in a given circumstance. Now, if as I argued in my opening statement, morality is a means by which we make certain choices, then the following argument explains how we get to this 'best case scenario'.

1) Humanity is required to bring about God's purpose
2) For humanity to do what is required of it, it must follow God's morality
----> Humans ought to follow God's morality.

I hold that as a logically sound method of deriving moral ought from is, but it can only work in a theistic world. Without a God, there is no ultimate omniscient judge which creates the purpose in the first place, thus any attempt to claim we are 'required' to do something is false. The universe itself may have a purpose in some sense without God (it is highly unlikely, but I concede it is at least theoretically possible), but since the universe itself is not a conscious entity we have no reason whatsoever to follow its purpose.

I believe I have dealt with most of wiplocs points here. The one that I haven't touched on, as yet, is changeability/unchangeability. I'll clear that up now, since wiploc appears to have misunderstood slightly. Remember my electrician analogy in the OS? I'm talking unchangeability in that sense. In effect, what I'm saying is that God knows all possible moral choices that we may have to make in all possible situations, and has a correct moral answer for each one. We may not even need to come across them, just like in the real world we may never need to drive on a different side of the road if we stay in the same country, but the rules still exist if we need them. Unchanging means the same pre-defined moral rule for any given situation, not limited moral rules to deal with potentially unknown situations.


Also, I find his assertion that all moral systems are rooted in utilitarianism curious. There are many, Objectivist morality for instance, that aren't. Maybe he means credible moral systems, which may bring him a little closer to the mark. Regardless, the point he was attempting to make, that oughty rules should be related to bringing about human happiness, is not necessarily true. A benevolent God would likely make this true as far as he could, but certain rules could potentially exist without a visible bearing in increasing human happiness (for example, a rule against promiscuity). In an atheist world, whilst it is true that individual happiness can be objective, there is no measure of overall happiness, nor can it take into account the happiness of those who don't actually exist yet. Nor is their any reason for me to want to increase overall happiness at too great an expense to myself, if I have no knowledge that it will work. So no, you cannot derive objective morality from
happiness.

[wiploc]

Also, I find his assertion that all moral systems are rooted in utilitarianism curious.


What I'm saying: Whatever your system, if you want me to agree that it's oughty, you must either show that it increases human happiness or introduce another justification for oughtiness.


I take this as the essence of your argument:

1) Humanity is required to bring about God's purpose
2) For humanity to do what is required of it, it must follow God's morality
----> Humans ought to follow God's morality.


Since I don't see how "required" differs from "ought," I read your syllogism this way:

- 1. We ought to do what god wants.
- 2. To do what god wants is to do what god says.
- 3. Therefore, we ought to do what god says.

But this doesn't establish an ought in the conclusion; rather, it assumes an ought in the premise. It assumes that which was undertaken to be proven. Why ought we to do what god says? I propose two categories of answer to that question. Category one: Obeying god's orders would increase human happiness. Category two: Anything else.

If you want to use Category Two, you're on your own. I don't see any way to derive an ought from Category Two. If you want to use Category One, then oughtiness is a gimmee in the presence of god, but you have the problem of showing why the oughtiness doesn't exist in the absence of god.




<snip>
God create the universe for a purpose.
<snip>
humans being constructed for a purpose
<snip>
we have been created by God to fulfil a role
<snip>


Yeah, so?




the link between morality and purpose.
<snip>
God knows (omnicience...) that failure in this purpose would be worse than success. God's omnibenevolence demonstrates that he wishes good to be done. I cannot make an arbitrary claim for what that 'good' would be, but I don't need to. I only need to make the claim that God has an objective measure for which to define it, and I hold that that is perfectly possible that he would.


God's omnibenevolence deals either with Category One goodness (utilitarian goodness, the goodness that makes people happy) or with some Category Two "goodness" which, as near as I can tell, doesn't concern humans at all. Category One goodness exists even in the absence of gods. Category Two "goodness" is oughtless even in the presence of gods.

If we are talking about Category One goodness, then omniscience could be useful. A reliable guide to what is good could tell us which actions produce unhappiness. An omniscient guide could say, for instance, that rape is bad because the victims don't like it. The problem is, we know this already! If the rule against rape is oughty in the presence of an omniscient god, then it is oughty in the absence of an omniscient god.

crc

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

extinctionist has informed us that he will not be able to meet the deadline for next statement and that he requires another day. The rules permit him a 3 day grace period, extending the deadline to June 29th. He will have until then to submit his next statement.

Jason

[extinctionist]

Apologies for the lateness of this statement. I was struck down with Moving House In The Middle Of A Week Of Night Shifts Syndrome.

Anyway, it seems that wiploc read the term 'required' in my argument a little differently to what I intended. Look at it again:

1) Humanity is required to bring about God's purpose
2) For humanity to do what is required of it, it must follow God's morality
----> Humans ought to follow God's morality.

Wiploc states that he cannot see how 'required' differs from ought. He states my argument as 'assuming what is undertaken to be proven'. This may have been bad wording on my part. I could just as easily have used the term 'designed', but I was looking for a term which suggested that it was possible for humans to do other than what they are designed for. The 'free will' issue is crucial here. As I explained before, if God had not caused humans, whether directly or indirectly, to have free will, then we would be pre-determined to bring about whatever purpose God had for us. However, the fact that we have free will does not necessarily change what we were originally designed for. Utilising the will incorrectly, ie to do other than what we were designed for, is little more than a malfunction.

I realise that is quite a strong claim to make, but I think it can follow from what I argued in round two. Free will, if we have a purpose in life, does not give us the freedom to do what we want. We are still designed for something, but we have a possibility of veering from that course. God's morality is the means by which we stay on course, thus we ought to follow God's morality. I asserted that God's purpose, assuming his omniscience and omnibenevolence, is the best possible purpose to have. Humans therefore have no valid reason not to do what they were designed for by incorrectly utilising their free will.

I actually missed out the derivation of a moral ought in post two. The above argument does not derive a moral ought, but a design ought, with God's morality as the action to bring about the design. However, a moral ought can easily be derived from the above by this argument:

1) Agent needs to follow God's morality
2) To follow God's morality, agent must do X
-----> Agent ought to do X

The 'need' term has already been established in the previous arguments, refering to the purpose of our design.

Now, wiploc proposed two categories for deciding why we should follow God's morality, category A being to increase happiness and category B being anything else. Above, I have argued why my argument doesn't 'assume what is undertaken to be proven', but I will still take these as valid for discussion, to move us on to non-theistic morality.

I stated earlier that I do not need to demonstrate what God's purpose is, I only need to assert that it would be the best possible course of action. Thus either category is potentially valid. But I will concentrate on category A. Lets assume, then, that God's purpose is to maximise human happiness, either in this world or another later world. Now we can move on to the non-theist side of the coin.

The first problem that I have with all claims of objective atheistic morality is precisely that it lacks a purpose for life derived from a higher being, thus there is no ultimate 'is' to derive an ought from, such as the design 'is' from my previous arguments. Note, this is also true to an extent with a God who has not designed us for any purpose, meaning humanity's actions affect only humans and their world. Regardless, even if we want to base morality on increasing human happiness, which as I said in post two can be objective, any reason for following such morality is entirely derived from our own values. There is no objective reason to do so. It also doesn't follow that morality is objective simply because human happiness is objective. A moral choice can be made with the express purpose of increasing human happiness in the future, but there is no way of knowing whether it will or not. Ultimately, in this case the moral choice will be based on our own values in the matter, which in turn are derived from our own experiences.

There are also other well-known problems with utilitarianism as a moral system rather than merely a guide. For example, if it were possible to create a drug to cure AIDS within a week, but the only way to do this was by using unwilling human test subjects resulting in the probable death of these subjects, how does one make the decision? Curing AIDS would undoubtedly increase human happiness, but it involves removing any sense of happiness from the test subjects. Most of us would not accept that as a moral course of action. Or, to change the problem a little, is it moral for the test subjects to resist, given that doing so would prevent AIDS being cured quickly and resulting in thousands of deaths. Again, most of us would say no, even though objectively speaking it probably would increase human happiness. One would have to demonstrate that we ought to use these subjects, and probably that we ought to choose the subjects based on how few friends/family they have and their overall use to society as well. I don't think it is possible to do this.

Finally, there is the problem of knowledge. With God, this is easy, omniscience solves it straight away. However, without God, any moral decisions based on happiness can only be made with the knowledge we have at the time. Indeed, it is impossible to know the end effects of most moral actions. A common response to this is to point out that even if we cannot know the results of our actions at the time we make them, there is still a correct course of action to take because one action will create more happiness than the others. This may well be true, but its besides the point. To me, any morality is constructed to aid us in moral choices, based on what we know about the world, and based on the values we have derived from such. But in this case, we are assuming a choice can be morally right or wrong based on something which is not only not known, but impossible to know. Sure, we can predict, and have the best intentions, but ultimately if we predict wrongly then we are morally wrong. I do not see the point in basing morality on things that are impossible to know, it would make morality, in a sense, useless. If we make it into a 'best guess' of human happiness instead, then we are deriving what would increase human happiness from our own values, making it subjective.

There are other problems I have, but this should be sufficient for now. Again, apologies for being late.

Exx, typing from the same 'desk' as before, but with a shoebox to rest the keyboard on. ;)

[wiploc]

Extinctionist vs Wiploc
Objective Morality Debate
Third Negative



Utilising the will incorrectly, ie to do other than what we were designed for, is little more than a malfunction.

This presupposes a meta-rule that things ought to do what they are designed for. No such rule can be established, regardless of whether there is a god.




a moral ought can easily be derived from the above by this argument:

1) Agent needs to follow God's morality
2) To follow God's morality, agent must do X
-----> Agent ought to do X

The 'need' term has already been established in the previous arguments, refering to the purpose of our design.

What we're designed to do; what god says we need to do, or are required to do, or must do; what god says is moral; what accords with god's purpose; and what is considered to be proper function rather than malfunction, these are all things there is no reason to believe we ought to do. It doesn't matter how you line them up and recombine them---unless you establish that there is one of them we actually ought to do, you'll get nowhere.




I do not need to demonstrate what God's purpose is, I only need to assert that it would be the best possible course of action.

This is begging the question. "Best" for what, and in what way? Unless it is good for us, in what way would a god's purpose's bestness be something that we ought to care about or support?




The first problem that I have with all claims of objective atheistic morality is precisely that it lacks a purpose for life derived from a higher being, thus there is no ultimate 'is' to derive an ought from, such as the design 'is' from my previous arguments.

Here your meta-rule is that oughty moralities derive only from something "ultimate" and/or a higher being. Even if we knew what "higher" and "ultimate" meant, there would be no reason to think this rule to be true.

I invoke the scorpion god as a thought experiment: The scorpion god creates a universe and brings forth people for the sole purpose of stinging us to death in order to enjoy our pain. If we should doubt this "higher" being's bestness, disobey his morality, sin against his "ultimate" purpose, "malfunction" according to his design specifications, why, that would seem to me a wonderful thing! If you are right about what morality is, then why shouldn't we become true moral abominations? Immorality would be a glorious virtue, would be the highest state attainable by man. (Which is not, of course, to say that we would ought to be immoral. :))




It also doesn't follow that morality is objective simply because human happiness is objective.

I'm not taking that position---I'm offering to concede that position if you want to take it. That is, if you try to establish any other basis for oughtiness, I'll point out that your basis doesn't work, that it fails as a justification of oughtiness. If, however, you offer a utilitarian basis for morality, I will tactfully neglect to mention that it doesn't work, and will instead point out that it works just as well without gods as with them.



A moral choice can be made with the express purpose of increasing human happiness in the future, but there is no way of knowing whether it will or not.

This looks like an effort to show that intent-based moralities are oughtier than outcome-based moralities. But you can't show that one of those is oughtier than the other until you first establish that oughtiness exists at all.



Finally, there is the problem of knowledge. With God, this is easy, omniscience solves it straight away. However, without God, any moral decisions based on happiness can only be made with the knowledge we have at the time.

If you want to establish a divine morality that makes judgments based on outcome rather than intent, you are welcome to try. But you can't establish that oughts are based on results until after you have established that oughts exist.


Conclusion: In this debate, Extinctionist, you have undertaken to show that oughts could exist if there were gods, and that they cannot exist in the absence of gods. I don't see that you have made any progress toward showing that oughts could exist if there were gods.

crc

[extinctionist]

Short and sweet, and clear as an unmuddied lake, as an azure sky of... I forget the rest.

On the establishment of a meta rule:

Wiploc claims that I have 'presupposed' the existence of a meta-rule, where things ought to do what they are designed for. This isn't the case, as you can see going back to round two in this debate, where I established the design ought. My argument was that things will do what they are designed for without free will or error on the part of the designer. Free will, as I have maintained, does not necessarily change what we were originally designed for, but is a part of our design that requires another design (ie morality) to facilitate it correctly.

To bring this on a step, there is a reason why my arguments cannot be used for theists to claim that we should follow God's morality, because this would only work if we had absolute certain knowledge of the existence of God, and that said God was both omnicient and omnibenevolent. That is the point though, that the 'oughtiness' is derived from the knowledge of God's complete benevolence and omniscience, which would make God's purpose ultimately the best possible outcome for humans. Following God's morality is good for us and others, not following Gods' morality is bad for ourselves and others. The ought is simply an expression that there would be no legitmate reason for us not to follow the morality.

This is why wiploc's 'scorpion god' analogy fails (by the way, I used to keep a scorpion, they are lovely creatures and I resent them being used in evil imagery :p ). If we have established that the God would be completely benevolent, then arguments against a God's possible intentions won't work. The other point to bring in is that a non-benevolent god would be acting in its own self interest, which removes the element of oughtiness because it makes morality merely a subjective decision from the god.

On utilitarianism, and intent/outcome:

I was not suggesting you were taking the position that objective morality follows from the possible objectivity of happiness. But this is the argument from utilitarianists, and as we had utilitarianism as a working example of God's purpose I thought it important to bring up.

There is no way of deriving oughtiness from utilitarianism is a world without God, because there is simply nothing to measure the overall effects of actions against. God could say with perfect knowledge that, say, doing x will result in more happiness than doing y. Humans can only make best guesses. To use the rape analogy from earlier, but in a slightly different context, it is theoretically possible for a single rape to bring about more happiness (by increasing awareness, by encouraging the passing of a new protective law, etc). Therefore it is impossible for rape to be objectively immoral because we do not know for certain that it will create more harm. God would have this knowledge (indeed it is likely that an omnibenevolent God would have designed a world where rape in all cases creates more harm) therefore he can prescribe an ought/ought not with complete objectivity in all cases.

You suggest I attempt to show intent based moralities are oughtier than outcome based moralities. Not quite, although you have a point in one sense: by my assertion that morality is the means by which we make choices, there is no such thing as an 'outcome-based' morality. How can one make a choice based on something which has not yet occured? No, the point I was making was that oughty rules cannot be made in an atheist world because the intent of a rule would not guarantee the outcome of a decision based on that rule. The outcome can rely on factors independent of the initiator of the act. To revisit another analogy, that of AIDS research, if one were to make the choice to carry out research on unwilling humans and it didn't work for some unforeseen reason, one could not say the act was less moral than if the experiments had been successful, because it would be using knowledge which did not exist at the time of the choice.

Knowledge of the effects of an act is absolutely paramount to oughtiness. In the theistic world, as I have argued, God's knowledge is complete and thus his ability to tell us what we should do is perfect. If one attempts to insert hindsight into utilitarian morality, then one reduces morality to nothing more than a measure of human happiness, utterly removed from the process of decision making and thus utterly removed from oughtiness anyway.

On Bits and Bobs:

I have found this debate to be very interesting and productive, although how much more there is to say in this setting I'm not sure. We agreed tentatively to five rounds at the start of the debate, and I suggest to wiploc that we stick with that, him making one more rebuttal and then the closing statements. Any further issues can be dealt with in the peanut gallery thread.

I feel satisfied that I have covered all of wiplocs counter-arguments, whether rightly or wrongly is for people to make their own minds up on. Likewise, I am pleased with the way wiploc has responded to my arguments, he has made an effort to cover everything. However, there is one thing that he has skirted thus far, and that is the question of free will. I have put that as pivotal to my arguments about deriving moral oughts, and thusfar he has yet to respond in any way regarding it. I respectfully ask him to do so in his next rebuttal, to allow me to summarize that area in the closing statement. In a nutshell, in a nontheist world free will is completely that, ie to the extent that we have it we create entirely our own reasons for acting on it. In a theistic world there can plausibly be an interrelationship between free will, morality and the end purpose, where morality facilitates free will to bring about the purpose. Therefore, free will does not give you the right to act counter to God's morality. Discuss!

Cheers.

Exti (same shelving lying on the floor, same shoebox for a keyboard rest, same uncomfortable sitting position, dammit I need a desk!)

[wiploc]

Resolved: Objective morality could exist only if a god existed.
Extinctionist vs Wiploc
Fourth Negative


There is no way of deriving oughtiness from utilitarianism [in] a world without God, because there is simply nothing to measure the overall effects of actions against. God could say with perfect knowledge that, say, doing x will result in more happiness than doing y. Humans can only make best guesses.

Example situation: A boat sinks in cold water, far from the shipping lanes, leaving two people dog paddling without life jackets. No ships in sight. They know they will be dead in a few minutes. The man is strong enough to do anything he wants with the woman.

Question: Should he torture her for her last few minutes of life?

Extinctionist's Answer (assuming I understand Extinctionist's position): If these were the last two people in the world, then Jeff would know with 100% certainty that torturing Sue would decrease net human happiness, and therefore a moral obligation not to torture her would be possible. If, however, there were other people in the world who might somehow be affected by Sue's torment, say because her thrashing and screaming might cause a hurricane (very unlikely, but not known with divine certainty) then Jeff cannot possibly have a moral reason not to torture Sue.

I don’t know why Extinctionist thinks we oughtn't to act on probabilities. He wouldn’t apply that standard to any other aspect of life, why should he apply it to morality? He knows he not to stick his own fingers into a light socket because it will probably hurt. Why then can't he recognize that he shouldn't stick someone else's fingers in a light socket based on the same probability?

I know of no moral rule that requires 100% certainty, and Extinctionist hasn't established one.



If we have established that the God would be completely benevolent, then arguments against a God's possible intentions won't work. The other point to bring in is that a non-benevolent god would be acting in its own self interest, which removes the element of oughtiness because it makes morality merely a subjective decision from the god.

A good god's intention and purpose would be no less subjective than a bad god's intention and purpose.



there is one thing that he has skirted thus far, and that is the question of free will. I have put that as pivotal to my arguments about deriving moral oughts, and thusfar he has yet to respond in any way regarding it.

I don't understand. I believe in free will. All of my arguments presuppose free will. Without free will, there would be no choices, and therefore no moral choices.



In a theistic world there can plausibly be an interrelationship between free will, morality and the end purpose, where morality facilitates free will to bring about the purpose.

Plausibly? Isn't that an abandonment of your burden of proof? If I now say it is plausible that morality can exist without god, haven't I refuted your case by fielding an opposing argument exactly as strong as yours?

In any case, I concede that we do have free will---and there is still no plausible reason we should go along with a god's purpose unless it happens also to be our own purpose. If you can establish a moral obligation to go along with our own purposes if there is a god, then I can, using the same argument, establish that obligation even if there is no god.

crc



Notes:

I have found this debate to be very interesting and productive,

Thanks, it's been interesting and pleasant for me too.



I suggest to wiploc that we stick with [five rounds.]

Okay.



dammit I need a desk!)

Good luck with that.



clear as an unmuddied lake, as an azure sky of...

… of deepest summer."

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

extinctionist,

Please note that the deadline for your next statement has passed. However, you're permitted a grace period, extending the deadline to Monday, July 19.

Thank you for your consideration,

Jason

[extinctionist]

Before I summarise the debate, I'll reply to some of wiploc's points in the last round.

So, on whether Jeff could torture Sue. Firstly, wiploc is incorrect in asserting that if they were the last two people on earth Jeff could know with certainty that torturing Sue would decrease net human happiness. It is, of course, possible that Jeff would see any happiness gained from him as outweighing Sue's pain. The only way wiploc's assertion could be true is if Jeff had absolutely no desire to torture Sue in the first place, in which case he has no choice to make and the question of morality is non-existant.

wiploc is also incorrect in asserting that Jeff 'cannot possibly have a moral reason not to torture Sue'. No. Jeff cannot have an objective moral reason, in an atheist world, for reasons I have given throught the course of this debate. But this doesn't mean he has no moral reason. If, as I have argued, morality comes from individuals and is based on their chosen values, which in turn are derived from their own experiences, then Jeff CAN have a moral reason. Its just a moral reason that he himself has derived. This brings us on nicely to the question of probabilities, as Jeff could use an assertion that it would probably cause more harm to humanity as a moral reason not to torture Sue, if he so wished.

Interesting wording in the statement: "I don’t know why Extinctionist thinks we oughtn't to act on probabilities". As a matter of fact, I think we should act on probabilities, but not because there is an 'ought' or 'oughtn't' existing anywhere. Wiploc claims I wouldn't apply this to any other area of life. But what exactly is he saying in the light socket analogy? Firstly, he asserts that I know it will probably hurt, therefore I wouldn't do it. This is true, assuming I didn't want to be hurt. But if I did want to hurt myself in such a way, then I maintain there is no 'ought' to prevent myself from doing so (there is, in fact, no ought even if I didn't want to hurt myself, but since I would have no motivation to stick my fingers in a light socket in such a case then that is irrelevent). And I would apply the same standard to putting someone elses fingers in a light socket, contrary to wiploc's assertions. Ultimately, reasons not to stick my own fingers in a light socket and reasons not to do the same to someone else come from the same place, there is no 'ought' in either. Wiploc creates a false dichotomy by attempting to separate them.

I have no way of establishing a moral rule that requires 100% certainty (for me to attempt to do so would be self-contradictory based on previous arguments), but then I don't need to. I don't think there are any absolute moral 'rules'. But we are free to create our own and live by them as we choose.

On to omnibenevolence. Wiploc made a claim, sent to me by pm, that "if there's no such thing as morals, there's no such thing as good, and if there's no such thing as good there's no such thing as all-good, and thus no such thing as omnibenevolence". This reads like a variation of the 'God says things are good because they are' horn of the Euryphro dilemma. However, wiploc would need to demonstrate an absolute causal relationship between morality and 'good' for his argument to work. My reply is that things can be 'good' in some senses without being morally good. For example, happiness does not have to pertain to morality. God's omnibenevolence can mean that it is not possible for him to act in ways other than would result in increasing 'good' (whatever that may be, happiness has been our working definition), and God's morality is the means by which human's make choices to achieve such a 'good'. Here, I will repeat my assertion that if we did not have free will then we would not need morality, but this wouldn't mean that things couldn't have a meaningful definition of 'good'.

Finally, before I summarise, wiploc questions whether my claim of a 'plausible' relationship between free-will, morality and purpose is an abandonment of my burden of proof. No, it isn't, as the title of the debate clearly proves. My burden of proof was twofold. To demonstrate that objective morality 'can' exist in a theist world (which I feel I have done, all I needed to do was prove its plausability), and secondly, the only absolute, to prove that it could not exist in an atheist world (again, I feel I have done this). You are welcome to say its 'plausible' that objective morality could exist without God, but you need to prove its plausibility.

So, to conclude:

wiploc and I both felt that if we didn't include 'oughtiness' in the debate it would be largely pointless. It would have been easy for me to prove that morality without oughtiness, given a certain definition of morality which I could have picked at random, could only exist with God. My most important task, then, has been to establish the possible oughtiness of God-based morality, and the lack of such without God.

I feel I have successfully done this. I hold my logic in establishing a moral 'ought' with God, as put down in my second statement, as sound. None of it required the assumptions of moral ought within the premises. The single strongest argument against it, that God's idea of what is perfectly 'good' still needs an outside standard by which to judge it, I dealt with by arguing that defining 'good' as overall happiness (as we have been doing) gives us an objective standard which does not necessarily require judgement on a moral basis. This objective standard can exist in an atheist world, but because certain things are impossible to know by humans, It is impossible to have complete knowledge about the effects of a moral decision, thus we are always going to have to derive morality from our own values. wiploc did not question my assertion that morality must always be constructed, which if correct makes the argument logically inescapable. I am aware that some people would question this assertion, but those arguments I will be willing to have in the peanut gallery. Countering them here would constitute a new argument.

The problems I gave with atheist utilitarianism, for example the AIDS analogy, identified precisely why it is impossible for us to base morality on 'the greater good'. Aside from this though, there was no objective recourse with which to base morality on. If there is no moral higher being, then morality is constructed by people with no knowledge of the effects certain actions will have on the world, and thus no reason to act in any given way.

That's all I got. Thank you to everyone who took some of their valuable time to read this debate. Thanks to Nightshade and others at iidb for facilitating this and providing me with a chance to test my debating skills. And thanks to wiploc, for a very challenging and productive debate that was conducted in a very pleasant and fair manner.

Exx

[wiploc]

Objective Morality Debate
Extinctionist vs Wiploc
Fifth Negative: Closing Argument



- A Restatement of the Issues:

Christians like to field arguments like this:

1. Morality cannot exist unless god exists.

2. Morality does exist.

3. Therefore god exists.

I grant the validity of this argument: if the premises were true, then the conclusion would also be true. However, since there is no reason to think the premises are true, the argument is worthless. It has zero persuasiveness.

Atheists often contest the second premise. While I grant that there can be an interesting issue there---depending, of course, on what is meant by the word "morality"---it seems to me that it is often perverse and counter-productive to join that issue. Emotionally---as opposed to logically---contesting the second premise has negative persuasiveness. That is, some Christians will take that argument as confirming that atheists are amoral; and others, nearly-ex-Christians flirting with rationality, will, upon hearing this argument thinking they teeter on the brink of moral nihilism, will retreat into faith in order to retain concepts of right and wrong, in order to remain a decent person.

So I prefer to contest the first premise. I make these claims:

4. If morality can't exist without god, then it can't exist with.

5. If morality can exist with god, then it can exist without.

Initially, I made these claims experimentally, as a means of finding out if they were true. I have mused upon them long enough, however, and fielded them often enough in conversational proving grounds like this debate, that I now make them with conviction. I believe that there is no (non-trivial) meaning of, "god" or, "morality," for which propositions 4 and 5 are not true.

(Example of trivial definition: "'Morality' means, 'That which cannot exist unless god exists.'" Example set of trivial definitions: "'God' means, 'a temperature below which freezing can occur,' and 'morality,' means, 'freezing.'")

For this debate, as often happens, Extinctionist and I have included the word "objective" in the argument, thusly:

1b. Objective morality cannot exist unless god exists.

2b. Objective morality does exist.

3. Therefore god exists.

That's fine with me. I maintain that there is no non-trivial meaning of "god," "morality," or "objective," for which 1b and is true:

4b. If objective morality can't exist without god, then it can't exist with.

5b. If objective morality can exist with god, then it can exist without.

We settled on having "god" refer to someone who is omnipotent (though presumably unable to violate logic), omniscient, and omnibenevolent. Oh, and for at least parts of Extinctionist's argument, god must also be the creator.

And, as near as I can tell, we are using "morality" to refer to stuff you ought to do, and "objective" as an intensifier or clarifier, as a way of distinguishing what is moral (what you really ought to do) from what is thought to be moral (what individuals, cultures, or debate opponents believe you ought to do). And I believe we have been tolerably consistent in our usage.


- Clarification:

I should note that Extinctionist is an atheist; he is not defending any of the above numbered claims aside from 1b:

1b. Objective morality cannot exist unless god exists.

And he further maintains the implied corollary that Objective morality could exist if god did exist.



- Whence Oughiness?

Extinctionist says that without god, we can't have oughty morality, which I concede for the sake of argument, so that we may focus on 5b.

Extinctionist says we can have oughty morality if somebody (call him god) is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent creator.

- Omnipotence: It is clear that might doesn't make right. We have no reason to believe, for instance, that the Jews were morally obligated to obey Hitler, or that I ought to worship Bill Gates. Oughtiness cannot be derived from power, not even from the extreme power of omnipotence.

- Omniscience: Omniscience would work for a signpost god, for a god who pointed the way to a pre-existing morality. If, for instance, the utilitarians are right about us having an obligation to try to increase human happiness, then---in that case---an infallible god could tell us which acts would infallibly increase happiness, and we would be obligated to do those acts. But note that the omniscience does not create the oughtiness any more than street signs create streets or compasses create direction. In order for an omniscient god to infallibly inform us as to what we ought to do, there must already be something which we ought to do. Otherwise, he would find himself omnisciently declaring that, morally speaking, it doesn't matter what we do.

- Omnibenevolence: This turns out to be a bit of a kinky issue. If there is no such thing as morality, then there is no such thing as goodness, in which case there is no such thing as all-good or omnibenevolent, right? So, to say that god is omnibenevolent is to say that morality exists, is to say that there are things we ought to do (or at least that god ought to do). So you can't say god is omnibenevolent without saying objective morality exists. In other words, this is an example of defining god so that it is trivially true that morality exists if god does. In light of this, I have to retract my earlier concession that morality cannot exist without god, since if morality can exist with god, it can exist without god. The claim that god is good or moral is not evidence that goodness or morality would not exist without god.

(Extinctionist disagrees, challenging my linkage between that which is good and that which we ought to do. I don't understand why he takes that position, but I don't mind. If we don't ought to do what is good, then god's goodness will be of no help in establishing oughtiness.)

- Creatures and Creators: Though at times he seemed to deny it, at other times Extinctionist seemed to be invoking a rule that creatures ought to do what their creator wants them to. There is no plausible justification for this rule.

Taken individually, omniscience, omnibenevolence, omnipotence, and creatorliness, make no progress toward establishing oughtiness; so Extinctionist tried recombinant technology, reasoning that if he put them together in the right order, sprinkled liberally with free will, and baked in a 350 degree oven for forty-five minutes, he might plausibly find an ought when he opened the oven door. He never made his case. I confess I never knew exactly what Extinctionist was thinking when he advanced various recipes for oughtiness, but none of them seemed the least bit persuasive. Since none of the ingredients in the pot is similar to oughtiness, nor seems like a precursor to oughtiness, nor seems able to contribute to oughtiness, it cannot matter which one goes in the pot first.

- On Plausiblity: Extinctionist says it is plausible that there we will find oughtiness when he opens his oven door. To my ear, that sounds like an attempt to shift the burden of proof, to claim victory on the grounds that I haven't proven someone else couldn't make his argument more persuasively than he has. (I ran across a more memorably-phrased version of this move in Texas back around 1977: "If I knew what I was talking about, I could rip you to pieces!") Since Extinctionist objects to this interpretation of his plausibility move, I suspect what he's trying to say is that he has moved the ball, that he may not be across the goal line of 100% certainty, but that he has clearly moved it toward that goal line from the 50 yard line of total non-persuasiveness.

Not so. No moral obligation has been established for obeying a powerful god. Nor have we any moral reason to obey a creator. Nor have we seen reason to obey a powerful creator or a creatorly power. Nor have we seen reason to obey a know-it-all, nor a creatorly know-it-all, nor a know-it-all creator, nor a creatorly know-it-all power, nor a powerful creatorly know-it-all…. Etcetera. The ball has never moved from where it was when the game started.

- On certainty: Extinctionist omniscience is required for objective morality because moral obligation requires 100% certainty. If one were only 99% certain that something would be morally wrong, one might as well go ahead and do it. There is no way such a claim can be supported.


- Conclusion: No form of morality which would be impossible in the absence of god has been shown to be possible in the presence of god. Nor form of morality which would be possible in the presence of god has been shown to be impossible in the absence of god.

Thanks to our hosts, the Internet Infidels, for providing our venue. Thanks to the moderators for their support and encouragement. Thanks to Extinctionist for a challenging and engaging discussion; I look forward to reading your further comments in the peanut gallery.

crc

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

This concludes the formal debate. We would like to thank extinctionist and wiploc for their participation. :)

Jason