Draft of 9-29-03
PHIL 13: Ethics; Fall 2003
David O. Brink; UCSD
Handout #2: Does Morality Require a Religious Foundation?

THE AUTONOMY OF ETHICS
Ethics is autonomous if the fundamental norms of morality enjoy independence and are not derived from or reducible to extra-moral facts.  If morality requires a religious foundation, this may compromise the autonomy of ethics.  The autonomy of ethics is not only coherent, but attractive.  It explains how ethics can be objective even if atheism is true, but it also makes theism more attractive than it would otherwise be.

DIFFERENT ROLES FOR GOD
God plays a metaphysical or constitutive role in morality if the existence and nature of moral requirements depend upon his existence and will.   Even if God does not play this metaphysical role, he might play an epistemic role if he provides us with evidence about what our duties are (e.g. if he is an infallible indicator of moral value).  God plays a motivational role in ethics if he provides a needed incentive to be moral (e.g. by rewarding virtue and punishing vice in an afterlife).  It is the metaphysical role that bears most directly on the autonomy of ethics.

THE METAPHYSICAL ROLE
Consider Dostoevsky’s claim that if God is dead (does not exist), then everything is permitted.

  1. Something is morally forbidden if and only if God forbids it.
  2. If God does not exist, there is nothing that he forbids.
  3. If something is not forbidden, it is permitted.
  4. Hence, if God does not exist, everything is permitted.
This argument makes the content of morality, but not the existence of moral norms, turn on God’s existence.

THE EUTHYPHRO PROBLEM
In Plato's Euthyphro Socrates considers Euthyphro's definition of piety as what (all) the gods love (10a-11b).  He distinguishes two ways it might be true.

(a) Voluntarism: something is pious, because the gods love it, and
(b) Naturalism: something is loved by the gods, because it is pious.
Voluntarism claims that the attitudes of the gods make things pious, whereas naturalism claims that something's piety is part of its nature, which the gods’ attitudes recognize and track.  Socrates thinks that we tacitly accept naturalism.  He argues as follows:
  1. That which is loved by the gods (the god-beloved) is god-beloved, because the gods love it [10a-c].
  2. But the gods do not love the god-beloved, because it is god-beloved [10a-c].
  3. The gods love the pious, because it is pious [10d].
  4. The pious is not pious because the gods love it [10d].
  5. If the pious = the god-beloved, then the god-beloved is god-beloved because it is god-beloved [11a; by (3)].
  6. If the pious = the god-beloved, then the pious is pious because it is god-beloved [11a; by (1)]
  7. Hence, the pious is not the same as the god-beloved [11a; by (5) and (2) and by (6) and (4)].
What it is for something to be god-beloved is simply for it to be loved by the gods.  But what makes the gods take this attitude toward anything must be some other feature of the thing.  The gods love pious things because they are pious.  If so, the god-beloved character of pious things depends on their being pious, not vice versa.  Euthyphro accepts this explanation, and Socrates concludes that Euthyphro's claim fails as a definition, because it states a symptom -- rather than the cause or essence -- of piety.

VOLUNTARISM AND NATURAL LAW
We might try to adapt the Euthyphro Problem to our discussion of whether morality is metaphysically dependent on God’s will.

Divine Command: If God exists, x is good or right if and only if God approves of x.
Divine Command, like Euthyphro's definition of piety, admits of voluntaristic and naturalistic interpretations.

Voluntarism represents moral value as consisting in God's attitudes; there would be no moral attributes but for God's will.  As such, voluntarism denies the autonomy of ethics.  Notice that voluntarism and atheism together imply moral nihilism, viz. that there are no moral values.

By contrast, naturalism or natural law says that the moral properties of persons and situations depend upon their nature, and so do not presuppose a God, though a perfectly wise and good God would approve of all and only good things.  Natural law and atheism do not imply nihilism.  Though natural law insists on the autonomy of ethics, it is compatible with accepting epistemic or motivational roles for God (the wisdom of endorsing these roles is a separate matter).

AGAINST VOLUNTARISM
The Socratic argument supports natural law.  If God’s reasons for his attitudes are moral reasons, then the god-approved character of good things depends on their being good, not vice versa.

Some moral truths (e.g. that genocide and rape are wrong) seem necessary.  Yet voluntarism implies that all moral truths are contingent.  If God’s attitudes had been different, then these would not have been moral truths, and if God’s attitudes were to change, so would these moral truths.

The voluntarist cannot reply that God would not approve of these things because he is good,  because that would imply that it was God’s sensitivity to the value that these things possess independently of his attitudes that explains his attitudes.

The moral supervenes on the natural just in case the total natural properties of a situation fix its moral properties such that two situations cannot differ in their moral properties without differing in their natural properties.  The voluntarist must deny that the moral supervenes on the natural.  For instance, the voluntarist must deny that the natural facts about Jim Crow determine its injustice and must allow that a social clone of Jim Crow would not have been unjust if God had approved it.

However, voluntarism may seem necessary to secure God’s omnipotence.  (Of course, this argument could only appeal to certain traditional forms of theism.)  Natural law implies that God does not have the power to do anything he wants; he cannot make intrinsic goods evil or intrinsic evils good.  But necessary truths of logic and mathematics already show that God is not omnipotent in that sense.  Natural law is compatible with God’s omnipotence if that is understood as the power to do anything possible.

EPISTEMIC AND MOTIVATIONAL ROLES
Natural law does not itself preclude religion from playing epistemic and motivational roles.  But we should be cautious about endorsing these claims.

God’s will could provide one kind of evidence about what our duties are, but we could also engage in moral reasoning directly.  And God’s will won’t provide an independent access to moral truth if we adjudicate how best to interpret God’s will by appeal to which interpretation is morally most defensible.

Divine rewards for virtuous behavior and penalties for immoral behavior cannot supply an essential incentive for moral behavior if virtue should be its own reward and if prudential motivation for an agent’s actions tends to diminish their moral value.