Tuesday, September 7, 2010

The End of Skeptical Theism? (Part 3) - Extreme Moral Skepticism


This post is part of my series The End of Skeptical Theism? For an index, see here.

I am currently working my way through William Hasker's article "All too Skeptical Theism?" which is a critique of Michael Bergmann's preferred brand of skeptical theism. As with all the entries in this series, it is worth referring back to this post on the evidential problem of evil to get a feel for what is a stake in this debate.

In the previous entry, we looked at Bergmann's four skeptical theses (ST1-ST4). Combined, they help Bergmann to undercut the crucial inference in the evidential problem of evil, but they do so at a price. We have already looked at two initial worries. In this entry we will focus on the moral skepticism that is engendered by Bergmann's theses.


1. Farewell to the Design Argument
To say that skeptical theism seriously undermines our moral judgment is nothing new. I have even covered such arguments in the past. However, Hasker takes a strong line on this issue that begins by pointing out an interesting concession made by Bergmann.

Bergmann notes that his skeptical theses (ST1-ST4) crucially undermine any arguments for the existence of God that are based on the identification of an all-things-considered good. He says:*
If the order one sees in the natural world or the joy one witnesses in people's lives is identified as reason to think that there is a good being who is the cause of such things, one is failing to take into account the lessons of ST1-ST4. Given our cognitive limitations, we simply don't know what evils may be entailed by those good things and this prevents us from being able to conclude that they are all-things-considered goods that an omnibenevolent being would bring about.
It is worth pausing to reflect on how sweeping this kind of value skepticism really is. Consider, if one accepts Bergmann's ST1-ST4:

  • One cannot accept any design-based argument for the existence of God, be it in terms of biological design or cosmological fine-tuning. Both of those arguments are based on the idea that there are certain states of affairs (e.g. the existence of conscious, rational beings) that are good and that God would wish to realise.
  • One cannot accept some types of experience-based arguments that are based on inferring God's goodness from one's experience of nature.
  • One must withhold judgment about whether a state of affairs that is a prima facie good/evil is an actual good/evil.

This, Hasker suggests, is a truly extreme variety of moral skepticism.

You can ask: is the skeptical theist really committed to such an extreme position? Hasker argues that they are and that this can be seen when we consider Bergmann's response to a criticism that was first made by Richard Swinburne.


2. Swinburne's Criticism
Swinburne asks us to imagine a case of prima facie gratuitous evil such as the previously-given example of a five-year old girl who was raped and killed by her mother's boyfriend. He takes it that when presented with such an example we would assign a high subjective probability to it being an actual gratuitous evil. This would make the evidential problem of evil a genuine doxastic threat.

Then, along comes a skeptical theist waving around ST1-ST4 and telling us not to be so quick with our talk of doxastic threats. After all:

  • (1) We may fail to recognise the existence of some good state of affairs that is made possible, or some evil that is averted, because this instance of evil is not prevented.
  • (2) We may fail to grasp the logical connection between this particular evil and some good that is made possible, or some evil that is averted, as a result of its not being prevented.
  • (3) We may fail to evaluate properly the moral significance of this evil state of affairs, or of the good that is made possible, or of the evil that is averted, by its not being prevented.

These would reduce our subjective probability assignment and reduce the doxastic threat posed by the evidential problem of evil.

That's fine, but Swinburne points out that ST1-ST4 could easily be employed to make the opposite argument. As follows:

  • (4) We may fail to recognise the existence of some additional evil state of affairs that is made possible, or some good that is prevented, by this instance of evil.
  • (5) We may fail to grasp the logical connection between this particular evil and some additional evil that is made possible, or some good that is prevented, as a result of its not being prevented.
  • (6) We may fail to evaluate properly the moral significance of this evil state of affairs, or of the further evil that is made possible, or the good that is prevented, by its not being prevented.

These would cause us to increase our subjective probability assignment, thus making the evidential problem even more of a problem.


3. Bergmann's Response
Bergmann responds by pointing out that Swinburne has misunderstood the skeptical argument. It is not that skeptical theism causes us to lower our probability assignments when confronted with prima facie evils; it is that skeptical theism entirely discredits any such probability assignments.

Hasker thinks this is right insofar as it goes. If Bergmann wants to undermine the evidential problem of evil, then he really does need to entirely discredit any assessments we would be inclined to make about prima facie evils.

To see this, imagine that ST1-ST4 only caused us to lower the probability that we assign to a prima facie evil by 80% (0.8) and to increase our confidence in the existence of some logically necessary outweighing good by the correlative amount. This would not be sufficient to undermine the evidential problem for there are vastly many instances of prima facie evil and, given enough of them, the probability that each and every one is outweighed by some greater good becomes vanishingly small.

This argument underscores the importance of two things. First, it shows how, when discussing the evidential problem, it is important not to get bogged down by one or two specific examples (e.g. E1 and E2) and to remember the vastly many instances of prima facie evil that do arise (E1...En).

Second, it shows that Bergmann's brand of skeptical theism is probably the best bet if one wishes to undermine the evidential problem of evil. But this forces us to accept that Bergmann has provided an undercutting defeater for any belief that we may have about something being an all-things-considered good or evil.

So this really is an extreme form of moral skepticism.

That's it for this post. In the next part we will consider whether Bergmann's skepticism is ultimately incoherent.


* From Bergmann, M. "Skeptical Theism and the Problem of Evil" in Thomas and Rea (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology (Oxford: OUP, 2009) p. 389

8 comments:

  1. John D,
    "This would not be sufficient to undermine the evidential problem for there are vastly many instances of prima facie evil and, given enough of them, the probability that each and every one is outweighed by some greater good becomes vanishingly small"

    How exactly does this work? Doesn't ST1-ST4 outweigh the probability assigned to each and every prima facie evil we mention no matter how many they are or is Hasker also taking into account what Swinburne said about increasing our subjective probability assignment?

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  2. Good question. Hasker isn't as perspicuous as I would like on this point but I think his argument is roughly the following.

    1. There are n specific instances of evil (E1...En) to which ST1-ST4 apply.

    2. ST1-ST4 imply that the probability of there being outweighing goods for each specific instance is (hypothetically) 0.8.

    3. This implies that the combined probability that each of n instances of prima facie evil is outweighed by a greater good is equal to 0.8 to the power of n.

    4. This number would be vanishingly small (test this by letting n=20 or something).


    My only problem with this is that maybe ST1-ST4 don't apply to specific instances of prima facie evil but rather to the total sum of prima facie evil in the world. This would imply just one multiplication by 0.8.

    Anyway, Swinburne's objection would still seem to hold in this case. Hence, the skeptical theist needs to completely undermine all probability assessments.

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  3. It just occurred to me that 1-4 in my previous comment don't actually constitute a complete argument. For that, we would need:

    5. Therefore, ST1-ST4 fail to undermine the evidential problem of evil.

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  4. Bergmann has responded to the concerns that Hasker and others were having with his argument:

    ...the strongest conclusion...is not the general claim that skeptical theism as such undermines ordinary moral practice but rather the significantly weaker claim that endorsement of ST1 – ST3 in the absence of various background beliefs that theists are very likely to possess undermines ordinary moral practice. (p. 5)

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  5. So that's a response to the earlier argument by Almeida and Oppy, and not a response to Hasker's objections. Indeed, as far as I know, Hasker's article is a response to Bergmann's most up-to-date (2009) defence of skeptical theism. Bergmann could well be preparing a response to Hasker. After all, philosophical debates of this kind have a tendency to cycle-on indefinitely.

    Anyway, the quoted passage would seem to miss the point of the objection mounted by Hasker (and the others covered in this series). It might be true that the theist's background beliefs could sustain moral practice, but the point here is that the skeptical principles being endorsed undermine those background beliefs as well.

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  6. Sorry, I definitely didn't mean to convey that Bergmann was responding to the same article that you are summarizing here.

    I don't see exactly how Hasker's objections (or the others you mention) show that the ST principles undermine the background beliefs of theism to the extent that ordinary moral practice is undermined. I will read over those articles again, perhaps I am missing something important (it wouldn't be the first time).

    As a side note: Bergmann does indeed admit (Peterson's "Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Religion." 2003.) that design-based arguments for God should be rejected. However, he doesn't conclude this on the grounds that they require an epistemic relationship between us and goods states of affairs. He does so on the grounds that they make the invalid noseeum inference:

    1. We can't conceive of an evolutionary reason for biological feature X
    2. Therefore there probably isn't an evolutionary reason for biological feature X

    By the way, I promise not to be a comment annoyance on your blog. It just so happens the problem of evil is one I have been studying quite a bit the past year or so. One day I hope to have a blog of my own, but I need to learn to write more clearly first. Haha!

    Cheers,
    David

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  7. Well I don't what he says in that earlier article, but the quotation above about design-based arguments is from his 2009 article on skeptical theism.

    The point about the reverse noseeum inference is interesting although I'm not convinced it works. Alexander Pruss uses something similar (although he tries to avoid associating himself with ST) when dismissing Rowe's arguments on the grounds of its appeal to "anomalous cases".

    Also the quote says nothing about the relationship between us and good states of affairs. It talks about all-things-considered goods, which, I presume, may or may not include us (human beings). I mentioned conscious rational beings because that is an example of a good that is often brought up in design arguments (e.g. Robin Collins).

    As for how ST might undermine ordinary moral practice, see part 4 and also the posts on Stephen Maitzen's articles. The basic idea is that the skeptical principles embraced would undermine consequentialism (because we can't evaluate consequences) and divine command theory (because we can't reliably identify God's commands).

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  8. Oh I see, you said epistemic relationship. My bad.

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