Oppy on Moral Arguments (Part 9): The Argument from Convergence

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This post is part of my series on Graham Oppy's discussion of moral arguments. For an index, see here.


The Argument Stated
The ninth argument covered by Oppy is a neglected historical oddity. It is attributed to Henry Sidgwick (who did not endorse it) and is known as the argument from convergence. Take a look:

• (P1) What I have most reason to do is what will best secure my own happiness.

• (P2) What I have most reason to do is what morality requires.

• (P3) If there is no moral government of the universe, then what will best secure my happiness is not always what morality requires.

• (C1) Therefore, there is a moral government of the universe.

• (C2) Therefore, there is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

This is actually a pretty profound argument, and more deserving of consideration than the tawdry argument from the need for justice (which is similar in content). I think it neatly summarises certain opinions and intuitions that we have about the nature of morality. In particular, it captures the tension that most people see between self-interest and morality.  


Anyway, there is no need to wax lyrical on it for too long, we need to know whether the argument is successful.


Analysis
Sidgwick rejected the conclusion of this argument for one simple reason: he thought it more likely that there was a fundamental irreconcilable tension in the faculty of practical reason, than that there was a God to reconcile them. I tend to agree.

Oppy notes, as I did a moment ago, that the argument equivocates between prudential reason and moral reason. One way to resolve the tension is to reduce moral reasons to prudential reasons or vice versa. Many secular theories of morality do this. For example, Hobbes reduced moral reasons to prudential reasons of a particular sort.

Oppy on Moral Arguments (Part 8): The Argument from Conscience

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This post is part of my series on Graham Oppy's discussion of moral arguments. For an index, see here.


The Argument Stated
The eighth argument dealt with by Graham Oppy is the argument from conscience. Something like this seems to lie behind many religious believers acceptance of a moral law. The argument has the following form:

• (P1) Conscience, as a sanction of right conduct, induces feelings and experiences of fear, shame and responsibility.

• (P2) Such feelings require a person who is their 'focus', that is, a person to whom one is responsible, before whom one is ashamed and so on.

• (P3) No human being can systematically be the focus for these feelings.

• (C1) Therefore, conscience logically requires a relationship to an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

• (C2) Therefore, there is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

Reading that cannot help but evoke H.L. Mencken's immortal words: "Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody might be looking."

Let's see whether we can beat Mencken's mordant wit.


Analysis
Beginning with P1, we have to ask about the ontological status of conscience. It seems that it is simply a label for a cluster of emotions or feelings we have about our own conduct. We need to be clear that this is the meaning being employed because some might argue that conscience is mystical or sui generis. Understood as a label for a cluster of emotions, "conscience" clearly exists.

Moving to P2, we must ask whether it is true that conscience requires a personal focus. Could there not be a general, untethered sense of guilt just as there can be a directionless feeling of anger or a vague sense of unease?

Maybe this is not a good objection, but it is worth considering. More substantive is the question about the need for a single person to play the role of the focus. Why not many different people, at different times? There seems to be no good answer to that question.

P3 is perhaps the most dubious of all (at least from my perspective). Oppy does not pursue the matter in great detail (he speaks only of the plausibility of a naturalistic explanation for conscience), but I am pretty sure that there is one person, who is not God, who can be the focus: yourself. If we adopt a transtemporal theory of self, i.e. a view based on the idea that the self exists through time, there is no difficulty with believing that you can have certain expectations of your own conduct at T1 which you fail to live up to at T2 and which thereby induce feelings of guilt or shame at T3. (See Ainslie's The Breakdown of the Will for some of the theoretical basis for this).

Oppy on Moral Arguments (Part 7): The Argument from Heavenly Reward

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This post is part of my series on Graham Oppy's discussion of moral arguments. For an index, see here.


The Argument Stated
The seventh argument to get the Oppy-treatment is the argument from heavenly reward. This is a presumptuous argument with the following form:

• (P1) People who fail to believe in an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god are guaranteed to miss out on the benefits of infinite heavenly reward.

• (P2) No sensible person chooses to miss out on the benefits of infinite heavenly reward.

• (C1) Therefore, every sensible person believes in an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

• (P3) What every sensible person believes cannot be false.

• (C2) Therefore, there is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

This must have been cooked-up in some theistic genetics laboratory. It is a strange hybrid of Pascal's wager and an argument from authority. Is this new creature any less troubling than its fallacious forebears? Let's find out.

Analysis
P1 assumes what needs to be proved. The argument is trying to establish the existence of God from certain moral considerations, but right there in P1 is the assumption that God exists ("those who fail to believe...are guaranteed...". Furthermore, it assumes that one particular interpretation of God's justice is true, namely: that he will punish wrongdoers forever. Even some Christians are willing to doubt this.

In addition to this, the argument assumes we have access to the "secret handshake" that gets us into heaven. But different religious sects have different understandings of this secret handshake forcing us into a type of moral epistemological nihilism. Thus, the pragmatic appeal of the argument is lessened.

Finally, P3 is not obviously true. There seems to be no reason to accept that sensible (by which is meant "prudent" in this argument) people have true beliefs.

Oppy on Moral Arguments (Part 6): The Argument from the Costs of Irreligion

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This post is part of my series on Graham Oppy's discussion of moral arguments. For an index, see here.


The Argument Stated
The sixth argument that Oppy looks at often comes up in non-philosophical conversations. It is the argument from the costs of irreligion. It looks something like the following:

• (P1) Loss of belief in God has coincided with a rise in social evils: divorce, murder, lack of respect for authority and so on.

• (C1) Therefore, loss of belief in God is the cause of modern social evils.

• (C2) Therefore, we should all return to belief in an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

• (P2) One cannot have an obligation to adopt false beliefs.

• (C3) Therefore, there is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

There is always going to be something fishy about an argument with three conclusions drawn from only two premises: it is likely that unwarranted or suspect inferences are being made. Let's see if we can pinpoint those suspect inferences.

Analysis

This one could be thrashed out for hours, with numerous stats and historical examples being offered by both sides.

First off, Oppy thinks we may have reason to doubt the very idea that there has been a rise in unbelief. Given that it was often dangerous to profess unbelief in the past, it may be that the recent increase is simply due to a more tolerant social environment. Oppy doesn't go beyond a mere suggestion, but Jennifer Hecht's book Doubt: A History shows that religious scepticism has a long and noble tradition.

Second, Oppy thinks there is no clear evidence to suggest that the world is getting worse. Some, like Steven Pinker, have argued that things are getting better. A rhetorical question might help to underline the point: if God gave you a choice to live at any other moment in history, would you choose pious Medieval Europe, wracked by plague, corruption, torture, witch-hunting and war? Oppy argues it is unlikely that you would.

Let's concede the first premise. It still does not follow that unbelief causes social evils. Correlation does not prove causation, as people are fond of reminding us. Other factors may be causally relevant, e.g. massive increase in population, increasing urbanisation (a good predictor of crime). There is no non-question-begging reason to causally link unbelief with the rise in social evils.

One could push this further by arguing that an increase in belief would only add fuel to fire. The world is a melting pot of different religious beliefs and fundamentalisms. Getting more people to believe might simply accentuate the latent conflict in ideologies.

Finally, the jump from P2 to C3 is chasm-like in proportions. There are different senses of obligation, and no reason to suspect that a moral obligation must be based on true beliefs. I covered this earlier in the series.

Oppy on Moral Arguments (Part 5): The Argument from the Need for Justice

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This post is part of my series on Graham Oppy's discussion of moral arguments. For an index, see here.


The Argument Stated
The fifth argument that Oppy covers is a popular one: the argument from the need for justice. It has the following form:

• (P1) Virtue is not always rewarded in this life.

• (P2) Justice demands that virtue is always rewarded in the end.

• (C1) Therefore, there is an afterlife in which an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god ensures that the virtuous are rewarded.

• (C2) Therefore, there is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

There is a correlative version of this argument that replaces "virtue" with "vice", and "reward" with "punishment".

The argument is nothing more than wishful-thinking, but this means that it has a strong emotional appeal. Let's see what can be done to smother its appeal.

Analysis
P1 is largely uncontroversial. However, we would need to pin down or settle upon a definition of virtue and vice. This should not be too difficult, so we can leave it to one side.

The main problem with the argument comes in P2. On a technical level, Oppy thinks it is ambiguous because it does not differentiate between individual acts of virtue and a lifetime of virtue. Here's the problem: in the course of your life you do many good and bad things. Surely when we demand that virtue is rewarded and vice is punished we only mean the net sum of virtue over vice over one lifetime should be rewarded, and not each individual act? Oppy, at least, thinks this would be a better way of putting it.

Accepting this reformulation, it is still not at all clear why virtue needs to be rewarded. Beyond a mere wish that this be the case, there are no sound arguments linking virtue and reward. There is certainly no logical connection between virtue and reward. And many moral theories reject the idea, preferring to say virtue is its own reward.

In any case, there is massive leap from P2 to P3. Just because we would like virtue to be rewarded does not mean that it must be rewarded. In particular, it does not mean that there is some afterlife where this takes place. From observable evidence, the best inference to make is that our universe is morally imperfect. Theists might argue that there are good independent reasons for believing in an afterlife (they always do this!) but that cannot be proved in this argument.

Finally, even if we accept that virtue must be rewarded, there are alternative metaphysical schemes in which this is the case -- e.g. karma and reincarnation -- and which do not support the existence of an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

Oppy on Moral Arguments (Part 4): The Argument from Scripture

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This post is part of my series on Graham Oppy's discussion of moral arguments. For an index, see here.


The Argument Stated
The fourth argument that Oppy looks at is based on the moral character of scripture. It can be stated as follows:

• (P1) No mere human being is capable of producing anything that has the moral excellence of such-and-such scripture.

• (C1) Therefore, such-and-such scripture is the inspired product of the workings of an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

• (C2) Therefore, there is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

This type of argument is very weak, but it can be tricky. Oppy offers a general refutation based on his overarching interest, i.e. can arguments change the minds of reasonable people? Difficulties can arise when believers are willing to go to great lengths to defend a particular interpretation of a particular scripture. Such debates can be dangerous when you do not know a great deal about the scripture in question.

Analysis

The first objection raised by Oppy is directly related to the point I was just making. Oppy argues that no one scripture, among the many extant scriptures, is so clearly morally superior to the others to justify P1: Each scripture has its moral high-points and low-points. Furthermore, different scriptures would support different conceptions of God. These points alone defeat the argument.

We can go further and point out that there are many moral failings in, say, the bible. Oppy rehearses some well-worn examples (stoning of rebellious children, stoning of adulteresses, ban on handicapped entering a place of worship etc.).

C1 is also problematic. First off, given that the bible offers a mixed morality, the best explanation of it is that it was the product of an agrarian and patriarchal society. Second, even if we grant that there is moral excellence in scripture, there is no reason to think that the best explanation for this is that the scripture is the inspired word of God. Teams of human beings, working over centuries, can produce objects of great complexity and intricacy that are far beyond the capabilities of any individual. This is a plausible alternative explanation.

Oppy on Moral Arguments (Part 3): The Argument from Happiness

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This post is part of my series on Graham Oppy's discussion of moral arguments. For an index, see here.


The Argument Stated
The third argument that Oppy looks at it is the Argument from Happiness. It has the following form:

• (P1) People who believe in an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god are happier than those who do not.

• (P2) The best explanation for their happiness is that there is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god rewarding them for their faith.

• (C1) There is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

This argument needs to be distinguished from the previous one about moral virtue. Happiness is not being taken to be the equivalent of moral virtue. Instead, happiness is being understood as some state of emotional satisfaction. Furthermore, we are only concerned with earthly happiness, not happiness in some afterlife. To bring in the afterlife would be to assume the truth of some religion. In other words, it would be to assume what we want to prove.

Note, however, that the term "happiness" is ambiguous and this may morph the argument into something different if you are not careful. I will cover this at the end.

Analysis

Looking to P1, we can immediately identify problems. It could be that the theist is arguing that the belief in God is, in and of itself, sufficient to guarantee happiness. This is clearly false. There are people who believe in God who have miserable and unhappy lives. For example, they could live in constant fear of God.

A more modest claim might be made: the theist could claim that believers are, on average, happier than non-believers. This weakens the argument considerably, but empirical studies of this nature come out from time-to-time. However, Oppy points out two crucial lacunae in such studies.

First, they are too temporally and geographically limited: a good study would need to compare the happiness of polytheistic and nontheistic religious believers (e.g. Hindus and Buddhists) to monotheistic believers living in the world today; and we would need to know historical rates of happiness as well. It is not enough to consider isolated groups of people in isolated pockets of time: that would not complete the argument being made.

Second, in order for such studies to increase the probability of God's existence, there would need to be no naturalistic explanation for the reported happiness. It is unlikely that this condition is met with existing studies. It is likely that the alleged happiness of believers is due to social support networks that non-believers presently lack.

Moving on to P2, and assuming P1 is acceptable, there is one huge problem for the argument. It claims that the best explanation for the happiness of believers is the truth of their belief. This is absurd. It is far more likely that their reported happiness arises from the content of their belief, not from its truthfulness. People may be encouraged at the prospect of eternal life and all that (I have to confess to joining Christopher Hitchens in thinking that the belief is not all that attractive).

An Ambiguity: Happiness or Purpose

There is one crucial ambiguity in the use of the word "happiness". This is the tendency to conflate it with the notion of purpose or meaning. Religious believers may be inclined to argue that their worldview is the only one that provides people with ultimate (as opposed to contingent) meaning and purpose.

However, that would not actually amount to a premise in an argument for the existence of God. It would be a form of wish-thinking (i.e. a hope that ultimate meaning exists). It could only convince those with a pre-existing belief in God.

Oppy on Moral Arguments (Part 2): The Argument from Virtue

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This post is part of my series on Graham Oppy's discussion of moral arguments. For an index, see here.


The Argument Stated
The second argument that Oppy considers is the argument from virtue. This is an odd one: it argues from the alleged moral superiority of believers to the truth of their beliefs. A formal version would look like this:

• (P1) People who do not believe that there is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god are morally inferior to people who do believe in such a god.

• (P2) People should always choose that which is morally superior over that which is morally inferior.

• (C1) Therefore, people ought to believe that there is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

• (P3) Anything that one ought to believe is true: one cannot have an obligation to believe falsehoods.

• (C2) Therefore, there is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god.

This is an argument of two halves. The first half, up to C1, tries to establish that we have an obligation to believe in God. This is called a "doxastic" obligation. It is distinct from a moral obligation. The former is about beliefs; the latter is about conduct.

The second half, from C1 to C2, tries to establish the truth of our doxastic obligations.

Now, we must ask: is the argument any good?

Assessment

The problems begin with P1. It is not clear how the moral superiority of believers is established. One possibility, beloved of evangelical Christians, is that the belief is itself morally virtuous, irrespective of its effects on our conduct. If you've ever heard someone saying that the acceptance of Jesus is the ultimate moral act, you have come across this claim.

But this is a pretty lousy claim. Assuming that objective values cannot rely on God for their existence (something explored in part one), we must further assume that God is non-moral (although he may have moral properties). It is difficult to see how believing in something that is intrinsically non-moral can be morally virtuous. Only the related properties would have that power. And so at best, we should acquire belief in the properties that make God morally virtuous.

In any event, even if conduct (as opposed to belief) is the test of moral superiority, it is not at all clear that believers are morally superior to non-believers. Any fair trawl through the historical record makes it pretty clear that believers and non-believers are equally capable of morally atrocious acts. Compiling a balance sheet comparing believers and non-believers would be difficult and not very illuminating.

Even if we accept P1, there are good reasons to reject the argument as a whole. The main problem comes from it's willingness to jump from moral obligations to doxastic obligations. Again, moral obligations are about conduct, doxastic obligations are about belief. There seems to be no contradiction in stating that one could have a moral obligation to believe something that was not true.

Finally, there is no reason to assume that a doxastic obligation to believe in something would actually establish the truthfulness of the belief.

Oppy on Moral Arguments (Part 1): The Argument from Objective Values

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This post is part of my series on Graham Oppy's discussion of moral arguments for God. For an index, see here.

The first argument that Oppy looks at is the argument from objective values. It usually has something like the following form:

• (P1) The Moral Law, has a real, absolute, objective existence.

• (P2) If the Moral Law has a real, absolute and objective existence, there must be a Mind from which the Moral Law is derived.

• (C1) (Hence) There must be a Mind from which the Moral Law is derived.

Oppy takes this version of the argument from Rashdall (1907),* it is also similar to the argument offered by C.S. Lewis.

1. Terminological Prelude

Before we can even begin to assess this argument, we need to be clear about the meanings of the terms being used. First, "the Moral Law" is obviously some sort of prescriptive law that tells you what you should and should not do ("You should do X"). Another way of putting this is that the moral law gives you reasons-for-action. This makes it distinct from a descriptive law, which simply offers a formal description of the relationship between you and your actions (e.g. "You do X, because of Y").

Next, we must ask what it means to say that the Moral Law has "real existence". I take it that this simply means that the moral law exists, i.e. it is not fictional. Thus, there is something in existence that gives us reasons-for-action.

Of course, it is not enough that there exists something that gives us reasons-for-action. That something must be "absolute". This means it must hold true in all times and places: it is not relative to the needs of particular individual, society or historical moment.

Finally, it must have an objective existence. This seems to mean that it is not observer-dependent; that it is not a matter of subjective opinion; and that it somehow inheres in the fabric of reality.

2. Analysis

Now that we have some idea of what the argument means, we can assess its merits. We must question both of its premisses. We begin with P1. It is open to us to reject P1. There are two ways in which we can do this.

First, we can argue that it is impossible to satisfy all three requirements ("reality", "absoluteness" and "objectivity") at the same time. We can say that an objective and absolute law would fail to give us reasons-for-action because what motivates us is (a) subjective and (b) context-dependent. See my post on realism for more.

Second, we can provide an alternative account of our moral beliefs. In other words, we can explain why we might think there is a moral law, even though there really isn't. For example, we might feel bound to particular rules because (a) we are projecting our own emotions onto reality or (b) we are blindly following the morality of our culture.

Let's assume that we accept P1. If we do, we must ask two crucial questions about P2:

1. Is there a plausible non-theistic theory that accounts for the reality, absoluteness and objectivity of the Moral Law?
2. Does theism actually account for the reality, absoluteness and objectivity of the Moral Law?

In relation to the first question, we must ask how moral facts and properties could fit within our worldview without theism. There are plausible non-theistic theories that allow for a Moral Law. For instance, we could take a Hobbesian position and argue that objective reasons-for-action can arise from contracts for mutual advantage; or we could take a Kantian position and argue that the mechanism of practical reason automatically gives us objective (and absolute!) reasons-for-action. These are both theories that allow for moral facts to supervene on natural facts. To counter this, the theist would have to start shouting "No! no! no! Only God can account for a Moral Law!". But this would be a classic instance of begging the question.

In any event, it is not at all clear that God does a better job of accounting for a Moral Law. The problem is that theists want God to make a difference to morality. For them, it cannot be the case that the Moral Law is a necessary truth: it must be contingent upon God's existence. This forces us to imagine that there are many possible worlds in which the Moral Law could have been different. For instance, there must be a possible world in which God could have made the Holocaust morally permissible (or even obligatory). But this destroys the idea of morality: even if such a world was possible, indeed, even if we are now living in that world, we would have no reason to follow this Moral Law.

In short, making morality dependent on the contingent choice of God makes it impossible. If there are genuine moral facts, then these must be necessarily true, or true in all possible worlds.

* "The Moral Argument for the Existence of God" reprinted in Hick (ed) Classic and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964).