Tammy asked:

For the philosopher, ‘because God said so’ is an unsatisfactory answer to the question ‘why is act X moral (or immoral)?’ Why?

Answer by Stuart Burns

For two reasons.

One — it ends all discussion, and inquiry. Since God is, by stipulation, beyond human understanding, it is pointless to enquire any further. And since philosophy is a search for underlying reasons, such an answer stops philosophy cold. Not a result that a philosopher will accept lightly.

Two — it remains afflicted by Euthyphro’s Dilemma. In modern language, it would be cited as ‘Does God command that which is Right/Moral/Good/True, or is Right/Moral/Good/True defined by what God commands’. To choose the first horn of the dilemma means accepting that there is a concept of Right (or Moral, or True, etc) that exists independent of God. And in that case, one can inquire as to what that standard is, and how we can learn about it, and so forth. ‘Because God said so’ is not the end of the inquiry. To choose the second horn of the dilemma means that what God commands (or says, or does) is purely arbitrary from the level of our human understanding. Believers in God do not generally warm to the notion that their God acts arbitrarily, and their moral compass swings with (what appears to us to be) the arbitrary whims of God. In either case, ‘because God said so’ does not resolve the issue, because it does not resolve Euthyphro’s Dilemma.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/saburns/pg00cv.htm

Answer by Graham Hackett

The idea that an act is moral because God says it is, is an aspect of the Divine Command theory of morality. It seems perfectly reasonable to a committed Christian (I will restrict my remarks to the Christian tradition). After all, we hold that God is omnipotent, the final resort of anyone desperately seeking for two things;

* a guide to the correct thing to do

* some idea as to what makes it the correct thing to do.

So if God says ‘thou shalt not steal’, then that is the correct thing to do, and it is correct because God has said it.

We immediately find ourselves immersed in problems with the divine command theory. God does not appear to have covered everything, and there may be long silences between his utterances. We therefore have the question of interpretation as to exactly what the word of God may be, and we cannot demand that He speak to order, so as to clarify every instance where his Word might apply, and how it might apply if there is to be any variation to fit specific circumstances. God does not fill in the blanks. What we need is some general principle rather than a specific commandment. It would be good if we also had some reason for seeing that this command is moral; some way that motivates us to accept it. Can the divine command theory do this?

Then we have the problem as to whether God’s moral judgements apply to Himself. It might seem intuitively obvious that they will do, because he has spoken them and therefore must think them fitting things to do. But wait a moment. If he is bound by his own Word, then he ceases to be omnipotent. He is no longer the final authority on morality; his past corpus of sayings is the final resort. He is no longer omnipotent. What if we say that His Word applies to all other beings, but does not bind Him? We still get trouble, because it seems that the ground beneath the divine command system is not very firm. Can God contradict Himself? What if he does issue contradictory commands. How would he ever be able to resolve this problem?

We can express this dilemma a little more formally by referring to the so-called Euthyphro Dilemma. Euthyphro is a dialogue written by Plato, and the main character in the dialogue asks the following question;

‘Is an action morally good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is morally good?’

If we say that an action is morally good because God commands it, then we preserve His sovereignty but make him appear arbitrary. If we say that God commands something because it is morally good then we remove the arbitrary element at the expense of saying that there is something else (ethical standards) which he is bound by, which removes His sovereignty and also his free will.

There does not appear to be a principled answer to this question without arbitrarily (like God Himself) making stipulations. We need not go into the enormous body of debate by the Medieval Schoolmen in order to understand the favoured reaction from theologians anxious to preserve the divine sovereignty of God. This reaction is that the nature of God is that he has Goodwill, which means that we can opt for saying that his word is morality, and this morality is grounded in his goodwill, and not therefore arbitrary. This however, just seems like the Divine Sovereignty advocates just saying what they have to say in order to preserve the theory.

I maintain (and this my own view) that there is a principled answer to the Euthyphro dilemma, but it would involve God having to share some of his sovereignty with his subjects. This might be the system proposed by Kant, where he allows humans to have a good will, which is intrinsically good in itself, not just for the good ends it might achieve. And in addition to this, Kant also suggests that humans can internalise and universalise laws and make them generally applicable. We can treat others as ends in themselves, rather than as means to an end. We can belong to a kingdom of ends, in which we legislate for universal laws, binding ourselves as well as others. There is nothing in Kant which means that we can have no place for God. As Kant himself said,

‘Only two things inspire awe, the starry sky above and the moral law within.’

This seems a defensible piece of theology to me, but of course, I would not wish to seem to be offering God advice.

Graham Hackett is currently studying for the BA (Hons) in Philosophy with the University of London International Programme. He is a former student of Dr Geoffrey Klempner.

Answer by Massimo Pigliucci

The best way I can think of to answer that question is to tell you a story. Imagine that it is the year 399 BCE or thereabouts. We are in Athens, walking beside one of the greatest figures of Western civilization, the philosopher Socrates. As it happens, Socrates is on his way to the Agora, the main gathering place for citizens in ancient Athens. He is not going there for commerce, nor to engage in a discussion with one of his pupils. Rather, Socrates has been summoned on urgent business at the Royal Stoa, the office of King Archon. The reason for the summons is that a young Athenian named Meletus, whom Socrates hardly knows, has charged the philosopher with impiety (disrespect for the gods and general immorality) and of corrupting the Athenian youth. As we learn from one of Plato’s dialogues, the Phaedo, Socrates’s defense (described in detail in another Platonic writing, the Apology) will fail, and he will be put to death by the Athenian democracy.

But that nefarious day in the history of philosophy is still ahead of us; at the moment, Socrates has encountered an acquaintance, also on his way to the magistrate’s office. The character in question is Euthyphro, which is also the name of a dialogue in which Plato (who was Socrates’s student and Aristotle’s teacher) describes one of the most powerful arguments ever deployed to show that even if gods existed, and contrary to popular perception, they would have no role in how we decide what is moral and what is not. This is a crucial issue, because for most people a main reason for believing in God (or gods) is their feeling that only the supernatural could possibly guarantee the existence of a universal morality, and by implication that only the existence of that sort of moral code provides ultimate meaning to our existence. But if Socrates is right, then the question of the existence of gods is irrelevant to both morality and the quest for meaning in life- which implies that no shortcut based on sacred books will do and we need to do some sort philosophical work to figure things out.

So let’s follow Socrates for a bit longer and see what happens when he encounters Euthyphro. After exchanging greetings as customary, they inquire into each other’s business at the King’s Court. Euthyphro is aghast that someone would file suit against Socrates, but it is Socrates who is more surprised when he finds out Euthyphro’s business: the guy is going to denounce his own father, who accidentally caused the death of a household employee, who had in turn been guilty of murder. Socrates wants to know how Euthyphro can be so certain, judging from his boundless self-confidence, that this is the right course of action for him to take. Euthyphro’s response is that he knows what he is about to do is right because that’s what the gods want. But how, replies Socrates, do you know what the gods want? Completely unperturbed by the obvious irony in Socrates’s question, his interlocutor candidly responds: ‘The best of Euthyphro, and that which distinguishes him, Socrates, from other men, is his exact knowledge of all such matters. What should I be good for without it?’

Socrates feigns then much reverence for Euthyphro and declares himself to be the latter’s disciple, so that he too can learn about such important matters. This setup immediately leads the philosopher to ask the obvious question: ‘And what is piety, and what is impiety?’ In modern parlance, this question is about the same as asking what is moral and what is immoral. Euthyphro’s first answer is one that most people would give: ‘Piety, then, is that which is dear to the gods, and impiety is that which is not dear to them.’ In other words, gods define what is moral or immoral. This same sort of answer is why so many people are absolutely convinced that morality cannot possibly exist without gods , and that therefore denying the supernatural is equivalent to embracing moral relativism, and from there the distance is short to the conclusion that life is meaningless. But not so fast, says Socrates. He points out to his companion that, according to the stories we hear, the gods often disagree vehemently on what is right or wrong in any particular instance. This, of course, is a problem not just for polytheistic religions but also for monotheistic ones once we realize that the intelligent person ought to ask herself why she should embrace the moral dictates of one particular god rather than those espoused by another god of a competing religion. But Socrates this day is in a good mood, so he lets Euthyphro off that particular hook by postulating that there probably are at least some moral dictates on which all gods would agree (for example, that killing without reason is not permissible). Still, Socrates presses the point by rephrasing the question: ‘The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.’ Let us examine these two alternatives — the horns of what is now known as ‘Euthyphro’s dilemma’ — very carefully. If you understand why the dilemma is so powerful, you will have liberated yourself from the misguided notion so common among humanity that morality and divinity are inextricably entwined.

Consider first the second horn, that something is moral because it is approved by the gods. Rather counterintuitively, this essentially means that morality is arbitrary! If God decides that, say, murder, rape, or genocide are okay, then we would have to assent, regardless of how repugnant such a thought might be or how much our own sense of right and wrong would be offended or crushed by it. Indeed, it is not at all difficult to find perfectly good examples of God’s commandments in various sacred scriptures that no person in his right (moral) mind today would follow, regardless of their alleged divine origin. I’ll leave the reader to do some googling around in order to verify my statement, it isn’t difficult.

Perhaps, then, we should embrace the other horn of Euthyphro’s dilemma and agree that a given action is approved by the gods because it is moral, not the other way around. Except that such an agreement provides only temporary relief. Think of it this way: if God approves of a given action because that action is moral, this means that there is a God-independent standard for morality by which God himself abides. But if that is the case, two astounding conclusions follow: first, we do not need gods to be moral; and second, we now need to figure out how to be moral (which just happens to be the goal of ethics). The surprising outcome of Euthyphro’s dilemma, then, is that the religious believer has to agree that either morality is arbitrary or the divine, even if it exists, has nothing to do with it at all.

Of course, few people like this conclusion the first time they hear it, least of all our good old friend Euthyphro, who tries desperately to escape the horns of the dilemma on which Socrates has managed to impale him. He does not succeed, and his attempts reveal such a poor logic that Socrates pokes a bit of fun at him. Then, as the infinitely patient teacher that he is (or, depending on how you interpret his character, the always sarcastic commentator on society), Socrates tells Euthyphro that they now have to begin the discussion from scratch. But Euthyphro cannot take it anymore, and in one of the most unceremonious hasty retreats ever to appear in Western literature he takes leave of the philosopher by saying, ‘Another time, Socrates; for I am in a hurry, and must go now.’

The Euthyphro dialogue was written twenty-four centuries ago, and its conclusion is devastating for the whole idea that divinity and morality are intimately linked.

Prof Massimo Pigliucci Graduate Center & Lehman College City University of New York http://platofootnote.org

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

Just as a footnote, the British philosopher Peter Geach has another take on this. See my 2009 answer, God, ethics and Euthyphro’s dilemma included in my book Philosophy Q and A.

http://www.philosophypathways.com/vita.html

Sil asked:

What kind of fallacy is it when someone says ‘we are only human’?

Answer by Maria Blommestijn

If taken as a statement it is obviously true, if it refers to humans not being gods: also true, if it is rhetorical (it probably is), it means we are not perfect and not all our actions will be successfull: true again! You might have an issue with the word ‘only’? That could be seen as stating that creatures more perfect then humans, or that god/ gods actually do exist. And that is only wrong if you happen to be an atheist.

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

I sense that there is a fallacy, or potential fallacy here.

Let’s say, that you ask me to look after a precious vase while you are away on holiday. While cleaning my study, I carelessly knock the vase over and it smashes into little pieces on the floor. When you discover what has happened, you angrily remonstrate with me.

‘Why didn’t you take more care of my vase?!’

My laconic reply, ‘I’m only human. I occasionally knock things over!’

You have every right to be angry. But what did I say wrong, exactly? I spoke the truth. I am only human. I do occasionally knock things over. We all do. But this wasn’t my vase, it was your vase, so I should have taken special care.

The fact that I am human is true. But it is also irrelevant, with regard to your objection that I didn’t take sufficient care.

What I might have said is something along the following lines. I took exquisite care of your vase, but a bird flew in through the window and knocked it over. That’s a kind of rare event that one can hardly plan for. You couldn’t reasonably have expected me to keep the windows tight shut (in summer!) just in case a bird flew in.

The fallacy in question isn’t exactly a logical fallacy, more a fallacy of informal reasoning. The fact that ‘I am only human’ is a bad excuse for your vase having fallen over, whereas ‘a bird flew in’ is a good excuse.

We are assuming, of course, that in telling you that a bird flew in, I am speaking the truth. Otherwise my excuse would have the same status, in logic, as a valid argument from a false premise.

http://www.philosophypathways.com/vita.html

Mark asked:

‘A philosopher’s words are empty if they do not heal the suffering of mankind. For just as medicine is useless if it does not remove sickness from the body, so philosophy is useless if it does not remove suffering from the soul.’ (Epicurus). Agree, or disagree?

Answer by Massimo Pigliucci

Yes and no. It all depends on how one conceives of philosophy itself — most certainly a philosophical question! Epicurus surely had a point, which was consistent with much of the ancient Greek tradition in philosophy. Socrates, the Cynics, and the Stoics, would certainly have agreed. They all conceived of philosophy as a type of inquiry into the human condition, and one that had to have practical applications. For Socrates the unexamined life was, famously, not worth living; the Cynics flaunted their minimalist lifestyle as a model for how one should live; and the Stoics developed a series of meditative and spiritual practices built into their general philosophy — practices that turned out to be useful to politicians, generals and emperors, as well as the person in the street.

However, philosophy has always (not just in the form of contemporary academic practice) also been a broader quest for understanding and making sense of the world, a quest — let’s not forget — that span off a number of important fields, beginning of course with the natural sciences, but also, more recently, psychology, and economics.

While Socrates had little use for discussions that stranded too far from what today we would call moral and political philosophy, many of the pre-Socratics (e.g., the atomists) belonged very much to the same intellectual lineage that eventually led to modern science. Even the Stoics developed their versions of logic and physics (by which term they meant, more inclusively, all the natural sciences as well as metaphysics), and were not just concerned with ethics.

Moving closer to modern times, Kant is famous for his disquisitions about the moral law, but he was also instrumental in debates about the nature of science, epistemology, and metaphysics. The same goes for Descartes, Hume, Locke, Berkeley, and many, many others.

Contemporary so-called ‘analytic’ philosophy is admittedly fairly remote from any practical application. It started with philosophers who were very much interested in logic and mathematics, such as Bertrand Russell, and is now one of the dominant ‘traditions’ of philosophical inquiry. Interestingly, while Russell’s technical work is rather abstruse and of relevance largely or exclusively to other philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians, he was also very much concerned with the public use of philosophy, as a tool for ethical reasoning and even political activism.

Epicurus’ analogy with medicine is interesting, but, I think, rather misleading. Medicine, unlike philosophy, is by definition a practical pursuit. Philosophy, as I have argued above, has always been both practical and theoretical, as the ancient Greeks themselves clearly recognized.

So perhaps a better analogy is between philosophy and science, or even better philosophy and mathematics. Some science, as well as some math, is most definitely useful to address human problems. Just think of the innumerable technological applications that have had a (not always positive) impact on our lives.

But it is equally clear upon a moment’s reflection that there is a lot of science, and arguably even more mathematics, that doesn’t have, and likely will never have, any practical import whatsoever. Many scientists and mathematicians spend their entire lives going after decidedly non practical problems, such as establishing whether the foundational stuff of the universe is made of particles or strings, or how to prove abstract conjectures such as Fermat’s famous Last Theorem.

Are these efforts — and the parallel ones of theoretical philosophers — not worthy of our attention and support? That would mean that we are adopting a very limited view of human flourishing, one that is concerned only with the practical problems of living one’s life. But very clearly human beings are interested in much more than that. We pursue knowledge for its own sake, just like we do art and music simply because it enriches our existence. So why not theoretical philosophy?

Prof Massimo Pigliucci Graduate Center & Lehman College City University of New York http://platofootnote.org

Monica asked:

Could we be wrong about the direction of time?

Answer by Craig Skinner

A good question.

The answer is No, we couldn’t.

We assume the usual view that time is one-dimensional, continuous, unbranching, and has two directions along the timeline, past-to-future and future-to-past.

But neither direction is necessarily the past-to-future one i.e. time has no intrinsic direction.

Whichever direction happens to be the one in which entropy increases is the one that we, as entropy-producing creatures, must experience as past-to-future.

In our universe, the initial state, very shortly after the Big Bang, was very low entropy, so that as the universe expanded (the cosmological arrow of time), entropy could only increase, thereby settling the direction of the entropic (thermodynamic) arrow of time. We, as living, entropy- producing creatures must follow this arrow, so we experience time as flowing (the psychological arrow of time) in the same direction as the cosmological/ entropic arrows. So, we recall the past and act for the future, and as agents, we experience causation (causal arrow of time) as being in the same direction as the other arrows.

In short, the psychological/ causal/ entropic arrows necessarily coincide, and the direction was set as that of the cosmological arrow by the contingent fact that our universe started off with very low entropy.

If the universe ultimately starts to collapse towards a Big Crunch, the arrows would remain as now, creatures would experience the universe contracting to a Crunch. There would be no reversal of the psychological arrow making them think they were in a universe expanding from a Bang rather than towards a Crunch.

If the universe had been a steady-state affair with nothing happening except by quantum fluctuations, eras would have arisen (given enough time) in which gigantic flukes produced low-to-high entropy gradients in either direction of time. Indeed some cosmologists thought we lived in just such a universe, until the Big Bang story became evidence-based in the 20th Century.

Why was our universe in such a low-entropy state at the beginning? Well, shortly after the BB, the universe was a uniform, hot, gas. This sounds like a maximally disordered (high entropy) state, like the air in a room, rather than a well-ordered (low entropy) state like the books on my shelves. But paradoxically, this is not so, because of gravity. Whereas gravity plays virtually no role in a small, not very dense system, like the air in a room, it was crucial in a very, very dense system like the very early universe. In this context, universal gravity makes clumping the high-entropy state, and sure enough, as the universe expanded, gravity produced clumps of gas, ultimately forming galaxies, stars, planets and us, all the while entropy increasing.

As to the mechanism producing this initial state of extraordinarily low-entropy, I understand that cosmic inflation explains it, but my cosmological expertise isn’t up to the fancy footwork of this explanation. As to why there is a universe at all, rather than absolutely nothing, nobody knows.

So keep moving along the entropic gradient. As a living entropy-producing being, you have to, and have to experience it as past-to-future, and have no choice as to which way this direction is.

If you fancy a rigorous philosophical (and scientifically savvy) account of all this, try “Time’s Arrow and Archimedes’ Point” by Huw Price (OUP 1997), but be warned, it isn’t light bedtime reading.

Craig Skinner at philosophos.org

Pearl asked:

I am a 17 year old college student doing a paper on Rene Descartes first meditation. I am totally lost here. I am confused about what question he is asking. I submitted my first draft and the professor said it was not right. I thought Descartes was asking the question ‘Were all his beliefs which were based on his senses’ true and right. Please help me!

Answer by Craig Skinner

You may be confused because Descartes doesn’t actually say, in so many words, what is the question he is asking. Irritatingly, philosophers often don’t directly (or at all) say what question they are trying to answer, why it matters to them, and what arguments they will use in support of their answer. And Descartes is one of the clearer writers — just wait till you tackle the poorer writers among the great philosophers (and I hope you will).

But we can work out his question from the text. I will word it as:

‘Are there any beliefs which I can rely on with absolute certainty as being true?’

He starts (para 1) by saying that many of his former beliefs were false or doubtful. Therefore he must ‘build anew from the foundation, if I wanted to establish any firm and permanent structure in the sciences.’

So we learn two things from this.

First he thinks science needs a philosophical foundation. He doesn’t argue for this, just assumes it. These days, most scientists and many philosophers think science can manage just fine on its own. But let’s leave that point.

Secondly, he is convinced that a new foundation is needed. He doesn’t say here what’s wrong with the old foundation (scholastic philosophy, especially Aquinas influenced by Aristotle) but clearly doesn’t think it adequate.

So, if many former beliefs are doubtful, the new foundation must be a belief which can be relied on as absolutely certain. If there is such a belief, then he can start with it as the foundation on which his firm and permanent belief structure is built.

And, of course, in the succeeding Meditations he tells us what he considers that belief to be, and attempts to prove from it that God exists, the material world, including my body, exists, and that we can mostly rely on the evidence of our senses and our reason after all.

However, in the first Meditation, after his preliminary remarks about the need for a foundation of sure belief, he spends the rest of the text describing the method he will use in his search for such a belief — the famous method of doubt. He says he will doubt everything which can conceivably be doubted. This includes all beliefs based on the senses and all beliefs based on reason.

As regards the senses, we can doubt them because

1. They sometimes deceive us, a commonplace observation.

2. When I dream I think I am awake and doing things. So, at any time when I think I am awake, I might really be dreaming, and all the assumed external world an illusion.

3. A malicious god could put ideas in my mind suggesting an external world when no such thing exists.

As regards reason, he feels that although we think we know 2+3=5 with certainty, again a malicious demon could trick our minds so that every time we add these numbers we make a mistake, thinking the sum is 5 when it isn’t; or trick us when we count the sides of a square so that we mistakenly think there are four.

So he concludes by saying he will assume a powerful evil demon deceives him and that the heavens, earth, colours, figures, sound, all external things, and his own body are but illusions.

If then, as per this methodological doubt, we can’t rely on the evidence of our senses or on our powers of reasoning, what is left that can be the foundational belief ? Read on, for he tells us this in the second Meditation.

Good luck with your studies.

Craig Skinner at philosophos.org

Dakota asked:

Does anything matter if nothing’s real?

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

Yes, it does. Take the proposition by Bishop Berkeley that the world might not be real in the sense of being hard and soft, wet and dry etc., because these are all matters of perception. Then wet and dry, hard and soft are not real – they are ‘stories’ concocted by our perceptive apparatus. But you can’t say they don’t matter. They matter to us as perceiving agents.

Go one step further and look at evil. This is not real either, in the sense that it’s ‘out there in the world’. Rather it is a matter of perception again, yet it matters, because evil is suffered by the perceiving agents.

And now it is the perceiving agent who is crucial to this kind of thinking. If nothing else in the world is real, nonetheless the perceiver is. Descartes demonstrated this in his famous thought experiment of deconstructing the ‘real’ world. He said: let us assume that nothing exists, therefore I don’t exist either. But this lands us in a self-contradiction. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘therefore I exist.’ This sentence can’t be put into the negative, ‘I think, therefore I don’t exist.’ Accordingly ‘I’ (whatever this ‘I’ may be) exists without any possible doubt.

And it is this ‘I’ which, quite apart from having thoughts, also has all those perceptions. This ‘I’ perceives hard and soft, and wet and dry. They matter to the ‘I’, because they affect it. They can make the ‘I’ happy or sad, and they can make the ‘I’ perceive pleasure and pain, and all the other mental and emotional reactions of which an ‘I’ is capable.

You could put all this into a nutshell as follows: I doesn’t matter in the end if the world is real or not real. One way or another, we experience the world as real. Therefore we may as well act as if it was real. Especially so, as we are moral agents and have the ability to influence other human beings in their perceptions (i.e. with pain or pleasure). So that, in the end, real and sham are nothing more substantial than debating points. What matters is what we experience. The risk is only that thereby we oversimplify the complexity of the world, especially of those parts which are too big or too small for us to experience, but also those aspects (such as spiritual ones) which require special attunement to be perceived.

Consider finally, that even if nothing is real, but only perceptions, the greatest curiosity is that just about all human beings have the same perceptions of the same things. So there is a concordance among human perceptions which might at least suggest their source is ‘real’ and external to the perceiving agent. This makes it much more difficult to uphold the notion that these perceptions are all events in the mind of the perceiver. The old adage ‘reality bites’ is useful to remember in all discussions of this issue, especially if one of these bites doesn’t just hurt you, but kills!

Jürgen Lawrenz at philosophos.org