Does Objective Morality Require the Existence of God?

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Does Objective Morality Require the Existence of God?

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Post by wiploc »

The Peanut Gallery is here:
viewtopic.php?t=33976

Those who wish to comment on this discussion may do so there. Once this thread is closed, Tanager and wiploc may post there too. In the meantime, we may respond here to comments made there.

Topic: Does Objective Morality Require the Existence of God?

Tanager's position -- if I understand it -- is that objective morality is possible if a god exists, but not possible otherwise.

My own position is this prejudice: If objective morality is possible with a god, then it is also possible without a god; if it is not possible without a god, then it is also not possible with a god.

I invite Tanager to expound on his position.

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Post #21

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The Tanager wrote:
wiploc wrote:Now let's look at how you define good. Sometimes you say it has to be dictated to us by a nonhuman--would a sea turtle suffice? That seems arbitrary and self serving since you want good to be determined by your nonhuman god.
This gets into sufficient and necessary conditions. I'm saying being nonhuman is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for anchoring human morality. The source of morality is outside of individual or majority human opinions; we don't invent it ourselves. It seems like you would agree that humans don't just make morality up themselves.
We desire to make each other happy. We desire that ourselves. The fact that rape has a strong tendency to reduce happiness is a fact about the world. We don't need to be told that by an invisible dictator.


wiploc wrote:Other times, you say god is good even though no non-god dictates the nature of goodness to him.
Someone or something has to "dictate" it to humans for it to be objective to us,
Why? Does somebody have to dictate that water runs down hill? How could dictating something make it more true?


whether that is a god or a natural law or reason or whatever. Whatever "dictates" goodness must have a different relationship to it. Goodness is not independent from its ultimate source; that would be a logical contradiction.
I don't follow you.


If goodness had to have that goodness dictated to it from something else, it wouldn't be the ultimate source of goodness. We would find ourselves in an infinite regress. That seems logically impossible to me here; it's got to stop somewhere. I'm not saying it can only stop at a god. I'm saying the other alternative stopping points fail for various reasons.
I think maybe I do follow this, because it reminds me of the first cause argument. The first cause argument consists of starting a chain reaction, and then arbitrarily (at least as it seems to me) cutting it off when it gets to a god.

But if peanut butter causes a net increase in happiness, then gods don't come into it. We don't need a god for peanut butter to cause happiness. And if a god dictated, "Thou shalt eat peanut butter," that wouldn't increase the happiness that peanut butter causes. It might decrease it.

So, again, I don't see what gods have to do with it. People who don't like peanut butter shouldn't eat it, regardless of what gods say on the subject.


wiploc wrote:Sometimes you say that god is good by his nature, just happens to be good. At that point you are obviously judging god by some standard other than god's nature. Because there's a note of approval when you say god is good. You like that. But you wouldn't like it--you'd be indifferent to it--if all you meant is that god's nature is like god's nature.
I'm not judging it by another standard. Here we must analyze my view to see if it remains consistent. We start with my view: God is good by his nature.
Most of the time you say that goodness has to be dictated. But sometimes you switch around and say that it can just be, by it's own nature. Those are contradictory positions.

And if good and evil can just be, then why can't rape be evil by its own nature? Why can't kindness be good by its own nature?

I don't understand the about face, and I don't understand the special pleading.


God creates humans in His image. Humans then judge what is good and bad from this knowledge, which is grounded in God's nature. God's nature is the standard. It may look like we are using a different standard to judge an action from God, but we actually aren't. Of course we aren't saying anything new by calling the standard of goodness [God]. I don't see the problem there. Whether it is true or not is another matter.
(Fixed a typo for you, changed "good" to "God." I hope I got that right.)

Suppose we did say that god was good by his nature. Then wouldn't, "God is good," just mean that god is like god? Isn't that true of everything. The elephant man was like the elephant man. Wouldn't he have the same claim to goodness that god has?

But in normal speech, that's simply not what we mean by "good." "Good" means things like acceptable, satisfactory, nice, pleasing, ship shape, up to snuff, worthy, and admirable. None of those means "god" or "godlike."

If "good" just meant "godlike," then there wouldn't be any reason to want to be good.


wiploc wrote:If a scorpion god created the world for the pleasure of stinging us to death, his nature would be like his nature, and therefore--according to your test--he would be good. That kind of goodness is meaningless.
If we were made in the scorpion god's image, we too would find pleasure in stinging things to death.
Maybe I wasn't clear. If the creator of the universe created us for the purpose of his getting to sting us to death, would we then be morally obliged to go along with that by letting him sting us to death? Would morality consist of willingly submitting to that torture?

If your argument is that creators get to do whatever they want, and we are morally obliged to go along with that, then your answer must be yes.

If you don't answer yes, then you need some other argument than he's-the-creator. That won't be a reason to go along with a creator god's instructions.


And, in our language, this would be called 'morally good'. This is true of anything. If the natural laws were different, then the Earth might not be round. This doesn't mean the shape of Earth is meaningless or subjective.
So we would be objectively required to let an evil god sting us to death. That's your idea of objective morality? What good is it? Why should anyone want to be moral?


wiploc wrote:Now let's look at your way: Rape is bad because god says so. Why should anyone care?

Don't you like that example (rape) because the god-based rule happens to accord with our utilitarian instincts?
I'm not saying utilitarianism is completely off on everything. I'm just saying it doesn't go all the way to objectivity.
Water really does flow downhill. That seems objective enough to me, even in the absence of gods. And rape really does make people unhappy. That's a fact about the world, even if no gods exist.

And rape would still be evil if an existent god called it good. Even a magic-throwing god couldn't make it good just by saying so.


We should care because god's commands lead to true happiness and fulfillment, because god created us that way.
The utilitarian underpinning of Christianity. In my view, every morality that's worth anything is ultimately based on utilitarianism.


That is what makes it fit. And the person who thinks rape leads to more happiness or doesn't care about net-happiness is wrong because they were actually made differently by god.
I don't see what gods have to do with it.


If the god(s) don't exist, who is to say we are right and they are wrong?
I'm a utilitarian, so I say making people happy is good. You're a Christian (I assume) so you might say--though you might not say it this way--that following god's instructions is good.

Who's to choose? Apparently you see the appeal of being nice to people so they'll be happy. You said that we should care about god's commands because they make us happy. Any decent person would go along with that if only they believed it was true. But the appeal is nearly universal. Sociopaths aside, we all get it. We want people to be happy.

We don't all want to take orders from invisible would-be dictators, because we don't see how that would increase happiness. As far as I can see, taking instruction from gods has no appeal at all.


Socio-biological evolution has led us to our desires and beliefs and the rapist to their desires and beliefs. Why are they errors, but not us?
I'm going to tell a story. I was in Houston, in the seventies. This guy invited me to his apartment for a drink. He said the whiskey was stolen. He said he was a career criminal.

At one point he gestured to his drink and said, "I'm going to Hell for drinking. I know it. But Presbyterians will drink right in front of the preacher, and that's not right!"

If you base your opinions on the bible, then every opinion is as good as any other. There's no privileged interpretation of that pile of contradictions. But if you base your opinion on what makes people happy, then some people are right and others are just wrong.

Sam Harris (The Moral Landscape) would say that whether something makes people happy or unhappy involves facts about the world (including facts about brain states). And facts about the world, that's what science deals with. Scientific inquiry is the way to know whether, for instance, keeping women in bags makes them happy.

But if the opinions of gods is the test of morality, then, once again, no behavior can be objectively preferable to any other. Everybody can have a different god with different opinions. And, if we stipulated that gods existed, then none of our opinions about which gods were real, and how those gods wanted us to behave would be demonstrably better than others.


wiploc wrote:Suppose we talked about the god-based rules where you don't get to wear two kinds of fabric, or don't get to eat shellfish, or have to murder your children if they talk back to you. Those rules don't accord with our utilitarian instincts, so there doesn't seem to be any reason to go along with them. So you'd get no traction if you tried to base your moral argument on those.

Imagine yourself on a soap box (or in the Prophet's Alley in Life of Brian) haranguing people with this: "If your kids talk back, you have to murder them. That's morality. But how would you justify that morality if there were no god? You couldn't do it. You'd have to let your children live? Wouldn't that be terrible? You'd better believe in gods."

You wouldn't get converts with that. If you want the moral argument to even seem plausible, you have to use examples where your god-based rules accord with utilitarianism.
We shouldn't get bogged down in specific examples, at least not yet. I'm willing to talk about any and all of them. It may be that some of the Biblical rules are immoral. That doesn't change anything I've said so far. It would mean the Bible (at least as it stands now) is not the inerrant word of god(s). That is certainly something for Christians to look at, but I don't see how it's pertinent to this part of our discussion. I'm not trying to convert you to Christianity or even theism. We're trying to figure out if strong atheism and theism are consistent with objective morality.
They were just examples. My point is that you can only get people to approve of a god's rules by telling them that those rules are utilitarian, as you did when you said that we should care about what god says because that's how we get happy. Absent that utilitarian base, there is no reason for anyone to go along with the rules of gods.

So why should we need the gods? Why not just do what makes people happy? The god stuff is just implausible bric-a-brac added on for no purpose.

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Post #22

Post by The Tanager »

I posted something, but it's unwieldy, so I am going to try to streamline it and repost.
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Same as last post.

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Post by The Tanager »

I'm seeing two key ways to approach comparing our views (the second is a longer post):

(1) relationship between goodness and happiness
(2) moral obligation

Let me know if I've misunderstood you anywhere and if I missed something you feel is crucial to our disagreement.

(1) The relationship between goodness and happiness:
wiploc wrote:Often, I imagine, the rapist enjoys it. And anything that brings someone happiness is in that degree good.

So rape is a net evil, but not a pure evil.
I'm still confused on the relationship between good and happiness for you, then. You said happiness is the result of good, but this seems the reverse. It's not that good things bring us happiness, but that happy-causing things are called good because they are happy-causing. Goodness and happiness seem like synonyms there.
wiploc wrote:It's bad because it makes people unhappy. That can hardly be independent of how people feel about it.

If it didn't make people unhappy, there wouldn't be anything wrong with it. And, presumably, you wouldn't think your god forbids it.
I think there is a difference between saying an action is bad because it makes people feel unhappy (I think your view) and that bad things tend to make people actually less happy than they could be (which is my view). I'm wondering if our big departure is something like this distinction. Let's call it felt happiness vs. true happiness.

Act utilitarians think that an action is good if that specific act creates more felt happiness. You, a rule utilitarian, think an action is good if that kind of act generally creates more felt happiness. But felt happiness is a subjective thing. It's logically possible that the net-felt-happiness has or will change on some things that your rule utilitarianism calls 'good' right now. Maybe that hasn't or won't happen with rape, although it is still logically possible that even that will or has changed at some point in the past, but I'm sure it's happened on some moral issues.

I'm a kind of "divine utilitarian," although I'm not sure if there is any official name for this kind of view. In my view an action is good if that act creates more true happiness. I believe that humans have a specific nature, a way they are supposed to be, where they find certain things truly happiness-causing. And I think God is responsible for that nature. And I think that nature is the way it is because it images God's self-existent nature. But people can settle for less true happiness, thinking that their felt unhappiness is true happiness, yet being wrong about that.

And, therefore, the truth of the collective felt happiness that you base moral goodness on can be wrong about what true happiness consists in. If my view is true, felt happiness is subjective, while true happiness is an objective feature of human nature made that way by God.
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Post #25

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(2) Moral obigation:

Assuming, with your view, that there is a net-felt-happiness that never changes for the world in any moral situation, I still don't see what obligates us to care about the net-felt-happiness of the world.
wiploc wrote:On the one hand, I think that's obvious. On the other hand, I can't give you an explanation--which is admittedly frustrating. I can say that we are talking about morality, and morality is about increasing happiness. I don't know of anything else it could be about.
Which is begging the question. Some people say it is about increasing one's own happiness. Some say it is about following certain rules, like never lying no matter what. There are definitely alternatives out there.

Your moral obligation is a hypothetical imperative, while mine is a categorical imperative. You say:
wiploc wrote:If you want to be a doctor, you need to get the training. If you want to make people happy, you need to be moral.
I'm only obligated to "be moral" if I want to make people happy. And by "being moral" you mean specific actions like not raping, not torturing babies, and various other things. From your hypothetical, I'm not obligated to do those actions if I just want to be concerned with making myself happy. The oughtness is conditional. This obligation is subjectively based on how an individual feels about making other people happy.

My view is a categorical imperative. You ought to "be moral" whether you want to make people happy or not. Why? Because that is what God cares about and what God intends for humanity as a whole. But not only that, it actually is part of making you as happy as you can truly be, whether you feel like that is true or not.

But you say my obligation is arbitrary because it is based on somebody dictating something to us. I think you misunderstand the foundation of my view. I think my use of "dictate" is a big part of the confusion. But perhaps your example of water running downhill can help me here. Using "dictate" in the way I was, I would have said gravity "dictates" that water flow downhill. Simplifying the language for our purposes here, gravity just is gravity. Water obeys gravity. So both are, so to speak, "gravitationally good" in different ways; neither goes against the law of gravity, but they have different relationships to it.

In the same kind of way, on my view, moral facts are ultimately "dictated" by God's nature, not by the act of dictation as you seemed to understand that term. And being non-human isn't enough to ground the objectivity. A sea turtle could dictate a moral code, but a sea turtle doesn't know human nature and isn't responsible for it being the way it is. A creator is a different story. Especially a creator that creates humans in it's image. It's this creator's nature that grounds goodness. God's nature is goodness. God's nature and choices in creating us dictates how humans are and should act. Humans flourish when living as they were created to live, which includes being morally like their creator. Whether or not the creator also dictates the moral law through some "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots". The creator just is good. Humans obey the creator's desires. Both are, so to speak, "morally good" in different ways; neither goes against the moral law, but they have different relationships to it.

So, if it is morally good to increase net happiness...and if peanut butter increases net happiness (it does)...then we should eat peanut butter. My wife made peanut butter cookies last night, actually. I was very moral last night. But it's not the "thou shalt" that grounds goodness here. It's the creation of humans in a certain way, upon the image of the creator.
wiploc wrote:I think maybe I do follow this, because it reminds me of the first cause argument. The first cause argument consists of starting a chain reaction, and then arbitrarily (at least as it seems to me) cutting it off when it gets to a god.
Okay, but is this moral obligation still arbitrary in a different way? I don't think it's arbitrary, if properly understood either in that argument or this one. The chain has to be cut off somewhere. Whether that is my view or yours or someone else's. Everyone has to stop this chain of explanation for morality somewhere.

You have seemingly cut it off at "it causes net happiness" is just a moral truth. What do you mean by thinking this is just a moral truth. That there is a physical "it causes net happiness" that we can physically point to? Some atheists say that, in that morality is reducible to actual, physical features. Do you mean it is like a platonic form? It exists somewhere, but in some abstract way? So far, it has seemed to me that you see moral truths as statements about how the human race collectively feels in response to specific actions. I don't think you stop your explanation at an arbitrary point, but it is stopped at a subjective point rather than an objective one, for reasons I have further said above.

I say net-happiness is good because humans have a specific shared nature that can be most happy in specific ways, which includes making other people truly happy. Humans are that way because their creator loves making others truly happy and made humans in its image. Their is a logical path followed there (if the facts are true) which means its not arbitrarily just sticking God in there for no reason. And the place I've stopped it, it may be wrong, but if it is right, then it is an objective stopping point.
wiploc wrote:Suppose we did say that god was good by his nature. Then wouldn't, "God is good," just mean that god is like god? Isn't that true of everything. The elephant man was like the elephant man. Wouldn't he have the same claim to goodness that god has?
Yes, in a sense, "God is good" would mean that god is like god. But this isn't because 'good' means 'being what you are.' It is true of everything that it is what it is. It may or may not be true that the elephant man is also just, loving, and all the rest of the things we mean by the term 'good.' If the elephant man's nature determined what is good, then it would be definitionally true that the elephant man is good means the elephant man is like the elephant man, while we wouldn't necessarily say "god is good.

But now I seem to be saying goodness is a relative or subjective term. Yes, I am. You seemed to be doing that too when you write:
wiploc wrote:But in normal speech, that's simply not what we mean by "good." "Good" means things like acceptable, satisfactory, nice, pleasing, ship shape, up to snuff, worthy, and admirable. None of those means "god" or "godlike."
Acceptable to whom? Satisfactory to whom? All of these descriptions are relative words. In this way, 'good' is a relative term. The question is what the objective standard is, if there is any. And whatever the standard is, wherever the infinite chain is stopped, we would have to say that first link subjectively anchors goodness. Whatever that first link is, goodness is objective to humans. And this doesn't necessarily mean that the anchor is arbitrary (i.e., that reason for no reason whatsoever).

But in your view, the anchor of goodness is human felt happiness. If we stop the link there, then goodness is not objective to humans, for that link is subjective human felt happiness.
wiploc wrote:If your argument is that creators get to do whatever they want, and we are morally obliged to go along with that, then your answer must be yes.

If you don't answer yes, then you need some other argument than he's-the-creator. That won't be a reason to go along with a creator god's instructions.
There is a difference between being morally obligated and whether or not we are motivated to go along with it and then even what drives that motivation.

Let's look at my view first. We are morally obligated not to rape (among other things). We are motivated to go along with this because we were made to subjectively like these things because God is the type of being that cares about our good and the net-true-happiness of everyone. Our objective moral obligation, moral truth matches up with what we subjectively like (and therefore we call it 'good'). Our subjective beliefs actually match up with reality, just like when we believe Earth is round.

Now the scorpion god. We are morally obligated to let god sting us to death. I think your thought experiment assumes we still have the same subjective likes we currently have, namely, of not being stung to death. It also seems to assume free will exists. So, we would be motivated to avoid god or be an unwilling victim of god's sting. Our objective moral obligation, moral truth does not match up with what we subjectively like (and therefore we call it 'evil').

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Post #26

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The Tanager wrote: (1) The relationship between goodness and happiness:
Good is the sources of happiness. That's a definition. If something causes happiness, it is good. It may be a net evil, if it causes more unhappiness than happiness, but if it causes some happiness then it is somewhat good.


wiploc wrote:Often, I imagine, the rapist enjoys it. And anything that brings someone happiness is in that degree good.

So rape is a net evil, but not a pure evil.
I'm still confused on the relationship between good and happiness for you, then. You said happiness is the result of good, but this seems the reverse. It's not that good things bring us happiness, but that happy-causing things are called good because they are happy-causing. Goodness and happiness seem like synonyms there.
I don't see how you're confused.


wiploc wrote:It's bad because it makes people unhappy. That can hardly be independent of how people feel about it.

If it didn't make people unhappy, there wouldn't be anything wrong with it. And, presumably, you wouldn't think your god forbids it.
I think there is a difference between saying an action is bad because it makes people feel unhappy (I think your view)
If it causes unhappiness, then it is evil. Evil is the sources of unhappiness, all of those sources, so anything that causes unhappiness is evil.

I don't know how to be clearer about this, so help me out if you can.


and that bad things tend to make people actually less happy than they could be (which is my view).
I pick up on two things there. One is the word "tend." Genocide has a strong tendency to reduce happiness, but if we posit an instance of genocide that nobody minded--not even the victims--then that particular instance of genocide wouldn't be evil.

If X causes unhappiness, it is evil. If, generally speaking, X's tend to cause unhappiness, then we'll probably regard X's as evil, but a particular X that happens not to cause unhappiness won't actually be evil.

I hope I'm being clear here. This may be a nitpick to ignore.

The other thing I notice is mention of "less happy." That's like unhappy. Suppose there's a happiness scale, and Joe goes from 20 to 10, so he's less happy, and Sara goes from zero to minus ten, so she's unhappy. Both of those are bad moves, so whatever caused them is evil in both cases.

I don't know if this is helpful or if I'm just rattling on.


I'm wondering if our big departure is something like this distinction. Let's call it felt happiness vs. true happiness.
Happiness is a feeling, right, so any happiness is felt, and no happiness can be true without being felt.

I confess that I do not at all understand whatever distinction you're trying to make. I further confess to a prejudice against things labeled "true X." I think of the no true Scotsman fallacy. I think of Bertrand Russell saying that people resort to newfangled ways of thinking something is true only when they have given up on it being true in the oldfangled way. "Ah, you may think this triple patty hamburger with five kinds of cheese is fattening, but these aren't true calories."

To the extent that your "true happiness" isn't the same as regular happiness, I don't have a clue what it is. The less it's like regular happiness, the more it's like unhappiness, and I don't see why you'd call that "true."

I'm confessing a prejudice here. I'm not closed minded on this. I'll attend to any explanation you offer. I'm just saying that, so far, I don't know what you're talking about.



Act utilitarians think that an action is good if that specific act creates more felt happiness.
They think it's good if it results in a net increase in happiness.


You, a rule utilitarian, think an action is good if that kind of act generally creates more felt happiness.
It's good if it increases happiness. But the specific instance can't be analyzed by itself. If murder has a strong tendency to decrease happiness, then you can't call this instance of murder good because you rationalize that it won't decrease happiness this particular time.


But felt happiness is a subjective thing.
If you feel happy, that is an fact about the world. If you say, "Chocolate ice cream is delicious," that's subjective. But it's still a fact that you think it's delicious.

I won't call it an "objective fact" because you seem to think those have to be dictated from far away by nonhumans.


It's logically possible that the net-felt-happiness has or will change on some things that your rule utilitarianism calls 'good' right now.
It's logically possible that we're wrong about how much a given act will ultimately increase or decrease happiness. If that's all you're saying, then I agree with you.


...
I'm a kind of "divine utilitarian," although I'm not sure if there is any official name for this kind of view. In my view an action is good if that act creates more true happiness.
It's good if it increases happiness. I can't tell if I'm agreeing with you, of if you have some point that I'm totally not getting.


I believe that humans have a specific nature, a way they are supposed to be, where they find certain things truly happiness-causing. And I think God is responsible for that nature. And I think that nature is the way it is because it images God's self-existent nature. But people can settle for less true happiness, thinking that their felt unhappiness is true happiness, yet being wrong about that.
I'm confused.


And, therefore, the truth of the collective felt happiness that you base moral goodness on can be wrong about what true happiness consists in. If my view is true, felt happiness is subjective, while true happiness is an objective feature of human nature made that way by God.
I'm still confused. I know what happiness is. Are you talking about something else?

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The Tanager wrote: (2) Moral obigation:

Assuming, with your view, that there is a net-felt-happiness that never changes for the world in any moral situation, I still don't see what obligates us to care about the net-felt-happiness of the world.
My view is about regular happiness. I have no views about your new kinds of "happiness" that I don't understand.

If "net-felt-happiness" never changed, then I don't suppose we would care about it.


...
Your moral obligation is a hypothetical imperative, while mine is a categorical imperative. You say:
wiploc wrote:If you want to be a doctor, you need to get the training. If you want to make people happy, you need to be moral.
I'm only obligated to "be moral" if I want to make people happy. And by "being moral" you mean specific actions like not raping, not torturing babies, and various other things. From your hypothetical, I'm not obligated to do those actions if I just want to be concerned with making myself happy. The oughtness is conditional. This obligation is subjectively based on how an individual feels about making other people happy.
You can't have an obligation without a reason. Making people happy is why you ought to be nice to them.

You can say, "But what if I don't want people happy?" and I can say, "But what if I don't want to obey gods?" Neither of us gets a leg up on the other from that exchange.


My view is a categorical imperative. You ought to "be moral" whether you want to make people happy or not.
Why?


Why?
Uh.... Yes, why?


Because that is what God cares about and what God intends for humanity as a whole.
What if I don't care what gods care about? What if I don't care what gods intend?

I've read about a claim that evolution requires rape because that's an efficient way of propagating genes. That's a repulsive way to think. Even if we were to grant--for the sake of argument--that that offensive theory were true, then rape would still be evil. Morality would require us to rise above the dictates of evolution.

If gods were real, morality might require us to rise above their dictates and purposes too.

You think you're trumping my argument by acting like the why of obeying god is obvious, self evident. But I don't believe you have an explanation. If you do, I don't know what it is. It is not obvious to me.

If you were preaching to the choir, people would say, "Yes, you should obey gods!" But I'm not in the fold, so I don't know why you think gods' purpose for us, or gods' desires, are relevant.

You say, "But what if I don't want people happy?" and all I can answer is, "Then you are a sociopath." You may be happy as a sociopath, so maybe you don't find that compelling. (Though I doubt it, because your theory is ultimately utilitarian because you weave happy-making into gods' purpose for us.)

I say, "But what if I don't want to do what gods dictate?" What are you going to say to that? Will you tell me I'm not a Christian? I'm happy not being a Christian.


But not only that, it actually is part of making you as happy as you can truly be, whether you feel like that is true or not.
See, your theory is utilitarian at bottom. There's no point in arguing against a position that you yourself adopt.


But you say my obligation is arbitrary because it is based on somebody dictating something to us. I think you misunderstand the foundation of my view. I think my use of "dictate" is a big part of the confusion. But perhaps your example of water running downhill can help me here. Using "dictate" in the way I was, I would have said gravity "dictates" that water flow downhill. Simplifying the language for our purposes here, gravity just is gravity. Water obeys gravity. So both are, so to speak, "gravitationally good" in different ways; neither goes against the law of gravity, but they have different relationships to it.

In the same kind of way, on my view, moral facts are ultimately "dictated" by God's nature, not by the act of dictation as you seemed to understand that term. And being non-human isn't enough to ground the objectivity. A sea turtle could dictate a moral code, but a sea turtle doesn't know human nature and isn't responsible for it being the way it is. A creator is a different story. Especially a creator that creates humans in it's image. It's this creator's nature that grounds goodness. God's nature is goodness. God's nature and choices in creating us dictates how humans are and should act. Humans flourish when living as they were created to live, which includes being morally like their creator. Whether or not the creator also dictates the moral law through some "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots". The creator just is good. Humans obey the creator's desires. Both are, so to speak, "morally good" in different ways; neither goes against the moral law, but they have different relationships to it.

So, if it is morally good to increase net happiness...and if peanut butter increases net happiness (it does)...then we should eat peanut butter. My wife made peanut butter cookies last night, actually. I was very moral last night.
:thumbsup:


But it's not the "thou shalt" that grounds goodness here. It's the creation of humans in a certain way, upon the image of the creator.
Humans are happiest when we're nice to each other. You can believe that that's because gods designed us that way; I can believe it results from materialist evolution. I'm not sure we even have a disagreement.

But let's create a hypothetical conflict. Say that Joe lives in a universe where gods' will conflicts with utilitarianism. Obeying gods will make people miserable. Then, it seems to me, that it would be wrong for Joe to obey gods.

I see no point--if it doesn't increase happiness--for people to obey gods. Can you offer any reason?

You may say it's categorical, we're supposed to obey gods for no reason. I just don't understand that claim. Why should we obey gods if there is no reason to obey gods. The way you seem to be using the word, "categorical" could be a synonym for "irrational."


wiploc wrote:I think maybe I do follow this, because it reminds me of the first cause argument. The first cause argument consists of starting a chain reaction, and then arbitrarily (at least as it seems to me) cutting it off when it gets to a god.
Okay, but is this moral obligation still arbitrary in a different way? I don't think it's arbitrary, if properly understood either in that argument or this one. The chain has to be cut off somewhere. Whether that is my view or yours or someone else's. Everyone has to stop this chain of explanation for morality somewhere.

You have seemingly cut it off at "it causes net happiness" is just a moral truth.
By definition. That's what we're talking about when we talk about morality.

What are you talking about when you talk about morality? Much of the time, you seem to be talking about the same thing: We should obey god because that will increase happiness. That's the reason we should obey. But the rest of the time you disavow that, saying we should obey god for other reasons or no reasons, "It's categorical."


What do you mean by thinking this is just a moral truth. That there is a physical "it causes net happiness" that we can physically point to? Some atheists say that, in that morality is reducible to actual, physical features. Do you mean it is like a platonic form? It exists somewhere, but in some abstract way? So far, it has seemed to me that you see moral truths as statements about how the human race collectively feels in response to specific actions. I don't think you stop your explanation at an arbitrary point, but it is stopped at a subjective point rather than an objective one, for reasons I have further said above.
Let's dispose of the Platonic forms first. I think Plato was a nitwit. I never compare anything to Platonic forms.

People are happier if we're nice to them. That's a fact about the world. You can think that your god designed the world so as to make that a fact, but it is a fact regardless.


I say net-happiness is good because humans have a specific shared nature that can be most happy in specific ways, which includes making other people truly happy.
And I say happiness is good because it's good, because it's happy. Aside from your attempt to give gods credit for this, I'm not sure we disagree.


Humans are that way because their creator loves making others truly happy and made humans in its image.
I can go this far with you: Humans are that way.


Their is a logical path followed there (if the facts are true) which means its not arbitrarily just sticking God in there for no reason. And the place I've stopped it, it may be wrong, but if it is right, then it is an objective stopping point.
It seems to me that you stick him in for no reason. Not only is it implausible, but it serves no purpose. What is the point?


wiploc wrote: ...
But now I seem to be saying goodness is a relative or subjective term. Yes, I am.
And yet, somehow I don't get the impression that that's a concession.

My opening position was that either both of our systems are objective or both are subjective.

Your opening position was that your system is objective and mine is subjective.

So it looks like you've come around to my way of thinking. Am I right about that? Or am I just continuing in my confusion?


You seemed to be doing that too when you write:
wiploc wrote:But in normal speech, that's simply not what we mean by "good." "Good" means things like acceptable, satisfactory, nice, pleasing, ship shape, up to snuff, worthy, and admirable. None of those means "god" or "godlike."
Acceptable to whom? Satisfactory to whom? All of these descriptions are relative words. In this way, 'good' is a relative term. The question is what the objective standard is, if there is any. And whatever the standard is, wherever the infinite chain is stopped, we would have to say that first link subjectively anchors goodness. Whatever that first link is, goodness is objective to humans. And this doesn't necessarily mean that the anchor is arbitrary (i.e., that reason for no reason whatsoever).
A subjective anchor makes for objective morality? I'm just not with you. And I don't see how you can claim that your anchor (gods) is more objective than my anchor (human happiness). So far that remains an unjustified assumption, arbitrary.


But in your view, the anchor of goodness is human felt happiness. If we stop the link there, then goodness is not objective to humans, for that link is subjective human felt happiness.
One minute you get it, and the next you don't. I don't know what to say.

I don't think "felt happiness" is meaningful, nor "objective to humans." Nor do I see how adding an extra link to the chain and saying it leads to gods increases objectivity.

When I say, "Why should I care what gods want?" you say that gods want our happiness and know how to achieve it. That's the whole basis for utilitarianism. When you talk like that, I don't know why you're on the other team. It's like you're happy with utilitarianism as long as gods get the credit. But the only way you can give god credit is by having him be a utilitarian, which hardly amounts to a repudiation of utilitarianism.


wiploc wrote:If your argument is that creators get to do whatever they want, and we are morally obliged to go along with that, then your answer must be yes.

If you don't answer yes, then you need some other argument than he's-the-creator. That won't be a reason to go along with a creator god's instructions.
There is a difference between being morally obligated and whether or not we are motivated to go along with it and then even what drives that motivation.

Let's look at my view first. We are morally obligated not to rape (among other things). We are motivated to go along with this because we were made to subjectively like these things because God is the type of being that cares about our good and the net-true-happiness of everyone.
So god is a utilitarian. That makes him good (not to mention that it makes him quite unlike the biblical gods). How is that supposed to refute naturalist utilitarianism?


Our objective moral obligation, moral truth matches up with what we subjectively like (and therefore we call it 'good'). Our subjective beliefs actually match up with reality, just like when we believe Earth is round.
So we're on exactly the same team? Then why are you thinking that god-based morality is superior?


Now the scorpion god. We are morally obligated to let god sting us to death.
Why? What is the point of that rule? Why have you again suddenly abandoned utilitarianism?


I think your thought experiment assumes we still have the same subjective likes we currently have, namely, of not being stung to death.
Yes.


It also seems to assume free will exists.
Whatever.


So, we would be motivated to avoid god or be an unwilling victim of god's sting. Our objective moral obligation, moral truth does not match up with what we subjectively like (and therefore we call it 'evil').
So why is yours objective and mine not? Why are we objectively required to obey the scorpion god? What is the point of a perverse morality like that?

And who created a rule like that, a rule that we have to obey creator gods? Certainly not a good god.

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wiploc wrote:I don't see how you're confused.
I think the confusion may come from how we use the term 'good'. You put things in the category of 'good' solely based on if the action causes a feeling of happiness in someone. For you, goodness really means something like "the quality of causing a feeling of happiness in someone." So, when you say "good is the source of happiness," this seems equivalent to saying "causing a feeling of happiness is the source of happiness". It's a tautology. I've got two different points to make about this.

First, for me the category of 'good' includes some things that may cause actual feelings of unhappiness. The giving of one's life to save another's may cause more feelings of unhappiness than happiness for collective humans. It's still the good or right thing to do. And I think feelings of happiness often come to us from sources that are not good. The feeling of happiness a rapist feels is not good to me, even as a feeling of pleasure. To me pleasures are not always good things.

Second, how is this different from my saying "god is good"? God means something more than just goodness (it also includes omnipotence, omniscience, self-existence, etc.). Goodness picks out certain things (justice, love, mercy, etc.). So, it tells us something specific about god to say "god is good." It means "god is just, loving, merciful, etc." Just like you could say "Wiploc is good." In your view, this means "Wiploc causes a feeling of happiness in someone."

But the phrase I'm finding fault with is "good is the source of happiness". Don't I also say "god is the source of goodness"? Well, what I mean there is that god is what makes it so that we have (if we are working correctly) a subjective like of things like justice, mercy, love, etc. God created us to like and thrive on liking those kinds of things, because god likes those kinds of things. God determines what becomes called 'good' by humans. Your equivalent statement there, it seems to me, is that feelings of happiness determine what becomes called 'good'. So, in that sense, happiness is the source of goodness for you.
wiploc wrote:I pick up on two things there. One is the word "tend." Genocide has a strong tendency to reduce happiness, but if we posit an instance of genocide that nobody minded--not even the victims--then that particular instance of genocide wouldn't be evil.

If X causes unhappiness, it is evil. If, generally speaking, X's tend to cause unhappiness, then we'll probably regard X's as evil, but a particular X that happens not to cause unhappiness won't actually be evil.

I hope I'm being clear here. This may be a nitpick to ignore.
That seems clear to me, but I may be misunderstanding you. The problem is that this looks like subjective morality to me. Genocide is actually evil only when enough people are bothered by it. The standard of judgment is the (collective) subjective responses to the actual action. Morality changes with the subjects' thoughts/responses, it's not true independent of their (collective) feelings.
wiploc wrote:Happiness is a feeling, right, so any happiness is felt, and no happiness can be true without being felt.
Let's look at a former rapist. In the past that rapist felt happy about raping their victim. But now they have changed their mind. They regret that they ever felt happy over that. They believe they should not have felt happy over that action and would not feel happy over it now. So, I'm making a distinction between how we react to certain things and how we should react to certain things. We often feel happy about something we shouldn't feel happy about. Perhaps a better term could be used then "true happiness," I don't know. Highest possible felt happiness? I'm open to suggestions, for sure.

We should definitely keep an eye out for things like the no true Scotsman fallacy. I'm not sure it will come into play here because I'm not arguing for specific things, but making a general point. I don't know if this cleared anything up for you.
wiploc wrote:If you feel happy, that is an fact about the world. If you say, "Chocolate ice cream is delicious," that's subjective. But it's still a fact that you think it's delicious.

I won't call it an "objective fact" because you seem to think those have to be dictated from far away by nonhumans.
One way to look at this is that these are statements and, as statements, they have a truth value. They are either (objectively) true, subjectively true/false, or (objectively) false.

So, two examples to get our bearings:

1. "Chocolate ice cream is delicious" is a statement that is subjective. It's actually true to some and actually false to others.
2. "Chocolate ice cream is delicious to Tanager" is a statement that is true for everyone.
3. I see no reason to give that shows "Everyone should think chocolate ice cream is delicious" is a statement that is true for everyone. This statement's truth value, then, is subjective, depending on if the person making it feels it is true or not.

1. "I can see" is a statement that is subjectively true/false. For some it's true and for some it's false.
2. "Helen Keller was blind" is a statement that is true for everyone.
3. "Every human eye should see" is a statement that is true for everyone, because that is what human eyes are meant to do (whether a god exists or not). Blindness is a defect in the natural purpose of the eye.

Now, what I see of your view:

1. "Increasing net happiness is desirable" is a statement that is subjective.
2. "Increasing net happiness is desirable to Wiploc" is a statement that is true for everyone.
3. You say you see no reason to give that shows "Everyone should desire to increase net happiness" is a statement that is true for everyone. If your view is true, then this statement's truth value is subjective.

Now, my view:

1. "Increasing net happiness is desirable" is a statement that is subjective.
2. "Increasing net happiness is desirable to Tanager" is a statement that is true for everyone.
3. "Everyone should desire to increase net happiness" is a statement that is true for everyone. Why? The creator made humans to desire such a thing because it desires such a thing. To settle for a felt happiness that isn't as good as it could be is a defect in the natural purpose of humanity.

Your view of morality is like the chocolate ice cream, while mine (if true) is like blindness.
wiploc wrote:It's logically possible that we're wrong about how much a given act will ultimately increase or decrease happiness. If that's all you're saying, then I agree with you.
I'm saying we can be wrong that a given act increases/decreases the net felt happiness of everyone involved and that we can also be wrong that a given act increases/decreases the net highest possible felt happiness of everyone involved.

Let's say the Nazis won WWII. They have taken over the world and brainwashed most people that the Holocaust was a moral thing. The last Jewish person is discovered by the Nazi authorities and everything is televised for the world to see. In this world the net felt happiness of the people will actually be increased by that person's death. We aren't wrong if we say that. But they are settling for less happiness than they could have had and should have had. There would have been an actual higher level of personal and net felt happiness if they weren't Nazis. As it stands, they are happy about a bad thing. Evil would be the source of net felt happiness.

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wiploc wrote:
But not only that, it actually is part of making you as happy as you can truly be, whether you feel like that is true or not.
See, your theory is utilitarian at bottom. There's no point in arguing against a position that you yourself adopt.
Yes. But I'm arguing for an objective kind of utilitarianism vs. what appears to me to be a subjective utilitarianism.
wiploc wrote:Humans are happiest when we're nice to each other. You can believe that that's because gods designed us that way; I can believe it results from materialist evolution. I'm not sure we even have a disagreement.
Materialist evolution has led to two kinds of humans: those that want other people to be happy and those that don't care if other people are happy. Those both come out of materialist evolution in the same way; both have survived. You have been saying "if you want to make people happy, then you should be moral." So, materialist evolution leads the first kind of human to act moral, but not the second kind. There is no moral obligation. Or, if you want to say there is obligation, then it is a subjective obligation based on how one feels about making other people happy. It's not objective.

God's design of humanity is for them to find happiness about good things (i.e., justice, love, etc.). That means that when humans do not, there is a defect. They aren't acting like they should. This is an objective moral obligation placed upon them by their creator. Whether they follow through or not is a different question.
wiploc wrote:But let's create a hypothetical conflict. Say that Joe lives in a universe where gods' will conflicts with utilitarianism. Obeying gods will make people miserable. Then, it seems to me, that it would be wrong for Joe to obey gods.

I see no point--if it doesn't increase happiness--for people to obey gods. Can you offer any reason?

You may say it's categorical, we're supposed to obey gods for no reason. I just don't understand that claim. Why should we obey gods if there is no reason to obey gods. The way you seem to be using the word, "categorical" could be a synonym for "irrational."
What do you mean "wrong"? You seem to define wrong as "make miserable". So, you've answered the question as soon as you've asked it by how you define things. If gods' will conflicted with the best possible net felt happiness, then I think we would still be morally obligated to follow gods' will (as our creator), but not be motivated to do so. Just like I can place an obligation on my children, even though they may not be motivated to fulfill that obligation.

However, I believe that God's will does not conflict with the best possible net felt happiness. And so we have moral obligation and moral motivation (since God designed us in God's image and God cares about humans having the best possible net felt happiness).

Materialist evolution does not give us moral obligation (it gives us hypothetical obligation based on our desires) and it has given some people a motivation to make others happy and some people a motivation to not care about that.
wiploc wrote:By definition. That's what we're talking about when we talk about morality.
Then you are begging the question by your definition. I wouldn't define morality in terms of causing feelings of happiness (or in terms of God). Morality is judging between right/wrong or good/bad behavior. There can be subjective morality, objective morality, and I think objective morality is grounded in God, but God isn't a part of the definition of morality itself.
wiploc wrote:What are you talking about when you talk about morality? Much of the time, you seem to be talking about the same thing: We should obey god because that will increase happiness. That's the reason we should obey. But the rest of the time you disavow that, saying we should obey god for other reasons or no reasons, "It's categorical."
The confusion comes in the distinction I've been trying to point to. God designs many things to be pleasurable to humans, including things like sexual pleasure and making other people happy. There is a certain heirarchy to this that will result in humans feeling the highest possible amount of happiness. You don't put your sexual pleasure above the autonomy of others which is part of making other people happy, i.e., you don't rape Sara.

Joe rapes Sara, bringing unhappiness (that sounds woefully inadequate a term, but I think you understand me) to her and those who know her, videos it and brings (distorted but actual) happiness to thousands of perverts. The actual net level of felt happiness is increased by this rape. Theoretically, this could even become the norm for human reactions to rape in general, and therefore a rule utilitarian would have to say that rape is good, following your logic.

But I would say the action is still wrong, evil, immoral even though net happiness actually increases. People's desires are messed up, so they aren't a good judge of morality or even happiness. It's like God designed humans to have a happiness level of 10. Doing good things will lead to a happiness level of 10; doing bad things will lead to a happiness level of 0 if we desire as we were meant to desire. But human desires are often messed up.

Using the hypothetical scenario above, Joe raping Sara (or rapes in general) actually increases human happiness from a 2 to a 3. Not raping would decrease human happiness from a 2 to a 1. If the above is true, then on your logic/principles, the rape would be good because it increased actual human happiness. On my view, the rape is not good, ultimately because it is settling for an increase in human happiness to 3 rather than a happiness of 10 that could have been had.

I think as we make good choices, even as they go against actual felt human happiness (of individuals or collectively), we begin to become happier about the right things. We get to the point where Joe raping Sara would cause an actual decrease instead of an increase. This is where the insight of virtue ethics comes in to morality, I think. For Joe, where raping Sara used to increase his happiness, he can get to the point where raping Sara would decrease his happiness, because he is becoming more like God designed him to be (and, therefore, more like God in his desires), which is part of the insight of natural law theory, I think.
wiploc wrote:Let's dispose of the Platonic forms first. I think Plato was a nitwit. I never compare anything to Platonic forms.

People are happier if we're nice to them. That's a fact about the world. You can think that your god designed the world so as to make that a fact, but it is a fact regardless.
I should have phrased it better because your theory rests on whether "we should care about making people happier" is a fact about the world. What accounts for that? If God exists, God could account for that. That's all I'm saying about my view. A platonic form could account for that. If morals were reducible to physical properties, that could account for that. You think platonic forms are obviously false. I do too. I think the reduction theory is wrong. I'm open to considering other alternatives and hearing critiques of the God theory. This isn't sticking God in there for no reason.
wiploc wrote:And yet, somehow I don't get the impression that that's a concession.

My opening position was that either both of our systems are objective or both are subjective.

Your opening position was that your system is objective and mine is subjective.

So it looks like you've come around to my way of thinking. Am I right about that? Or am I just continuing in my confusion?
Hopefully my next attempt won't just add to the confusion. Goodness is a relative term, but that is different than the opening positions. The opening positions, the objective or subjective question, is about the relationship of goodness to humans. The definition of objective I used at the start was: "certain things are really good or evil and certain actions are obligatory or impermissible, regardless of one's opinions on the matter." For goodness to be objective to us it must be independent from our opinions, desires, feelings just like the shape of the earth is independent from the opinions of flat-earthers or my own correct opinion. Something is subjective if it depends on our opinions, desires and feelings. We are talking about our human relationship to goodness.

You think goodness is located in human experiences, feelings of happiness, our desires. Not each individual person, but the collective of human experiences, feelings, desires. Goodness is dependent upon human feelings. Goodness is subjectively located in humans, not independent from humans.

Atheistic moral platonists think goodness is located subjectively in platonic forms, which is located objectively to humans. If true, certain things like rape would be really good or evil (although I'm not sure about obligatory or impermissible) regardless of our opinions, feelings, desires on the matter. The truth of goodness is outside of, independent from human feelings. In my view goodness is located subjectively in God, but independent from or outside of humans.

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The Tanager wrote:
wiploc wrote:I don't see how you're confused.
I think the confusion may come from how we use the term 'good'. You put things in the category of 'good' solely based on if the action causes a feeling of happiness in someone. For you, goodness really means something like "the quality of causing a feeling of happiness in someone." So, when you say "good is the source of happiness," this seems equivalent to saying "causing a feeling of happiness is the source of happiness". It's a tautology. I've got two different points to make about this.
Maybe--just maybe--your "true good" is my "net good," and your "felt good" is my did-it-cause-any-happiness-at-all.


First, for me the category of 'good' includes some things that may cause actual feelings of unhappiness.
Right. Drug addiction may cause some happiness, but I assume that it usually causes a net loss of happiness.


The giving of one's life to save another's may cause more feelings of unhappiness than happiness for collective humans. It's still the good or right thing to do.
I'm not disagreeing, but why, from your point of view, is it good and right?

I'd say that we live better, we're happier, if we're willing to make that kind of sacrifice. You might say the same thing--and add that this is because god designed us this way. I don't know what you gain by that move.


And I think feelings of happiness often come to us from sources that are not good.
Often, yes. That is, they cause more suffering than happiness, so they are not net-good.


The feeling of happiness a rapist feels is not good to me, even as a feeling of pleasure.
So nothing counts as good unless it is pure-good? Or at least net-good? Or maybe not unless it meets our design specifications?

What if someone is to choose between torturing someone to death or killing him painlessly? It seems to me that the painless death is better, which is to say more good.


To me pleasures are not always good things.
To me, things that have some good are not always totally good, or even mostly good. But I still recognize the good that is in them.

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