In my last post, Richard Carrier and the Arbitrariness Objection, I argued that Richard Carrier’s attempt to defend Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s arbitrariness objection failed. I also argued his defence of this argument is incoherent and engages in special pleading because the arguments he defends apply with equal cogency to his own version of ethical naturalism.
When one turns to Carrier’s defence of the abhorrent commands objection, similar points can be made. Armstrong had
argued:
[1] If DCT is true then if God commanded us to rape we would be required to rape.
[2] It is absurd that we could be required to rape.
[3] God could command us to rape.
Therefore:
[4] A DCT is absurd.[1]
I responded that [3] and [2] cannot both be true given that God, in the discussion, is defined as an an “all powerful, all knowing, loving and just, immaterial person who created the universe.” Premise [3] is true only if it is possible for an all knowing, all loving and just person to command rape, something which is unlikely to be true. Moreover, even if it is possible for a loving and just person to command rape, this could only be in cases where the rape could be endorsed by a fully informed, loving and just person, and hence, would be a situation so different to the contexts rape normally occurs in as to make [2] no longer be obviously true.
Carrier objects that this is an own goal he claims:
“In challenging Armstrong’s claim that DCT can justify rape, Flannagan responds that this is true “only if it’s possible for an all knowing, loving and just person to command rape,” which Flannagan concludes “is unlikely” and even were it to occur, and if we were adequately informed, we would agree rape in that unusual case would be loving and just. I concur with Flannagan. But this rebuttal assumes rape is immoral for reasons other than that God commands it. Flannagan is therefore rebutting not Armstrong here, but his own DCT.”[2]
Carrier’s response relies on his unargued for assertion that “this rebuttal assumes rape is immoral for reasons other than that God commands it.” This, however, is false. All my response does is assume that a person who has the character traits mentioned: being loving, just, powerful and omniscient, would not command rape. I do not need to assume these things are morally required prior to God’s commands, nor do I need to assume that a loving and just person would prohibit these things because they are morally required.
To see this consider John Mackie’s famous argument for nihilism in The Subjectivity of Values. Mackie argued that our moral discourse presupposes that objective moral requirements exist. He then argued that no such requirements do exist and so our moral discourse is systematically mistaken.
Mackie points out that in denying moral requirements exist he is “not denying that there can be objective evaluations relative to standards,” taking, as an example, the standard of justice:
“In one important sense of the word it is a paradigm case of injustice if a court declares someone to be guilty of an offence of which it knows him to be innocent. More generally, a finding is unjust if it is at variance with what the relevant law and the facts together require, and particularly if it is known by the court to be so. More generally still, any award of marks, prizes, or the like is unjust if it is at variance with the agreed standards for the contest in question: if one diver’s performance in fact measures up better to the accepted standards for diving than another’s, it will be unjust if the latter is awarded higher marks or the prize …”[3]
What follows from nihilism is rather that:
“The statement that a certain decision is thus just or unjust will not be objectively prescriptive: in so far as it can be simply true it leaves open the question whether there is any objective requirement to do what is just and to refrain from what is unjust, and equally leaves open the practical decision to act in either way.”[4]
On this Mackie is surely correct, a person who believed nothing was right and wrong could still understand the concept of what is loving and just. Such a person could understand that this idea of justice entailed certain standards and paradigmatic examples and he or she could in many cases tell whether certain behavior was loving or was in accord with the standards of justice. She or he also could choose to live in accord with these standards if he or she wanted to and she or he could choose not to live in accord with them. He or she could simply reject that there was any moral obligation to behave in accord with such standards. The question of whether an action is just and loving and whether it is obligatory are, in principle, separate questions.
This distinction is subtle but important and it has application here. A DCT entails that, prior to God’s commands, no action is morally wrong. This, however, does not mean that actions cannot be loving and just prior to God’s commands. Prior to God’s act of commanding, certain actions will be loving and just without it being the case that they are obligatory and this is all that is needed for my response to work. If certain actions are unjust prior to God commanding them then God being essentially just will not command them. No prior existing moral requirement to act in accord with justice is necessary.
Carrier’s Special Pleading
Carrier’s response therefore fails. While Carrier gleefully contends my argument here is an “own goal”, a closer examination suggests that it is his own defence of this argument that is the own goal. Remember again Carrier’s own version of ethical naturalism.
“S morally ought to do A” means “If S’s desires were rationally deduced from as many facts as S can reasonably obtain at that time (about S’s preferences and the outcomes of S’s available alternatives in S’s circumstances), then S would prefer A over all the available alternative courses of action (at that time and in those circumstances).”[5]
Let S+ refer to S after S’s desires were rationally deduced from as many facts as S can reasonably obtain at that time. Now consider the following analogy of Armstrong’s argument.
[1]’ If Carrier’s naturalism is true, then if S+ desired to engage in rape then S would be required to rape.
[2]’ It is absurd that S could be required to rape.
[3]’ S+ could command us to rape.
Therefore:
[4]’ Carrier’s naturalism is absurd.
[1]’ is clearly true; it is an implication of Carrier’s position that if a person who had considered as many facts as he could reasonably obtain, and deliberated correctly, decided he wanted to rape someone then he would be morally required to do so. It is hard to see how Carrier can deny the validity of such an implication without also denying the same implication in [1].
Carrier cannot deny [3]’ either. DCT proponents can avoid affirming [3] for the reasons I pointed to above. It is unlikely that an essentially loving and just person could command actions such as rape whereas S+, however, is not subject to these constraints. The only properties that S+ is specified to have are that his desires were rationally deduced from as many facts as S can reasonably obtain at that time. Nothing in Carrier’s description requires S+ to be loving or just or empathetic. If a sadistic hateful person with a deep seated apetite for rape deduced from as many facts available to him a plan to violently rape and torture people then Carrier’s position entails S has a duty to carry this plan out.
Carrier could object that no person who was sufficiently informed and reasoning properly could devise such a plan but, obviously, an analogous line of reason can be made by the proponent of DCT to reject [3]. God, after all, is sufficiently informed and rational. Any argument Carrier made to rule [3]‘ out would seem also to rule [3] out. If my rejection of [3] “is an own goal” then Carrier’s rejection must also be an “own goal”.
The only option Carrier seems to have is to reject [4]‘. He must hold that if a person is a sadistic, hateful rapist, then he has a moral duty to rape and torture people. I think this is an absurd pill to swallow.I think that anyone who bites this bullet to save naturalism, but reject DCT by pointing out that God might command rape, has a lot of explaining to do. Certainly, Carrier’s outrage at a whole host of practices he claims are taught in scripture seems bizarre in the extreme given his own position seems to entail the permissibility of sadistic rape.
Conclusion
Carrier’s objection that a DCT makes morality, again involves special pleading. Not only is his rebuttal of my argument unsound, but his own position makes morality far more whimsical and arbitrary than any DCT does. On his view morality is subject to the arbitrary whim of human beings.
[1] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008).
[2] Richard Carrier, “On the Facts as we Know them, Ethical Naturalism is all there is: A Reply to Matthew Flannagan” Philo 15, no. 2 (Fall-Winter 2012).
[3] John Mackie “The Subjectivity of Values” in Ethics: Essential Readings in Moral Theory ed George Sher (Routledge, 2012) 184.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Carrier, “On the Facts as we Know them, Ethical Naturalism is all there is: A Reply to Matthew Flannagan” 208.