Metaphysical The Question (contd) A Further ( Related) Metaphysical Problem for DCT
It makes Gods goodness empty Consider: It is theists who will be attracted to DCT . And it is a
traditional tenet of theism that God is all-good or omnibenevolent.
But DCT seems to undermine the signicance of Gods goodness If whatever God commands is good, then when we say, God only
commands what is good, we are just saying, God only commands what he commands.
Or if the good is whatever God wants, then when we say, God is allgood, we are simply saying, God always does what he wants.
The Metaphysical Question (contd) One Last Metaphysical Problem for DCT
To deliver oneself over to a moral authority for directions about what to do is simply incompatible with being a moral agent. To say I will follow so-and-sos directions no matter what they are and no matter what my own conscience would otherwise direct me to do is to opt out of moral thinking altogether; it is to abandon ones role as a moral agent.
James Rachels
Lets call this the problem of moral abdication
Summing Up
The Euthyphro Dilemma is a serious challenge to theistic moral
theories
First, if one abandons DCT and says, God wills the good because it
is good then Gods willing it is an interesting additional fact about the good, but it appears to be a fact that is irrelevant to its moral status
Second, if one embraces DCT and says The good is good because
God wi%s it, then it seems that morality is arbitrary (and God, too).
Irrelevant or Arbitrary?
Out for the Count?
The Theists Challenge
First, the theist needs to address our many objections
concerning the motivational question and epistemological question
Second, the theist needs to somehow get out of the IOA pickle. Third, the the theist needs to do all this in a way that does not
diminish Gods essential properties (particularly, omnipotence and omni-benevolence)
The Theists Strategy
With respect to the motivational and epistemological
objections, let us sayfor our purposesthat the theist can simply admit the diculties, but point out that any moral theory is going to have trouble giving fully satisfying answers to these questions
The most serious problem for the theist is the IOA pickle. Is there a plausible philosophical move available to the theist?
The Theists Strategy (contd)
Compare Mawson (2008) and Swinburne (1993)
First, concede that God wills some things because they are
good.
(This strategy, therefore, is not strictly DCT.)
Second, argue that this concession in no way diminishes God or
limits his power.
(To preserve Gods omnipotence)
Third, argue that there are other things that are good because
God wills them.
(To preserve the notion that morality, in a sense, depends on God.)
The Theists Strategy (contd) Step One
God wills some things because they are good (or forbids some things
because they are bad)
For instance, God wills that we not inict agonizing pain on another for
our personal amusement
Inicting agonizing pain on another for the sake of mere amusement is
intrinsically bad it is a wrong action independently of Gods forbidding it
Why? The theist can argue that badness is essential to agonizing pain
that is, badness is a necessary element of agonizing Brief pain
A Detour on Necessity
Consider: Bachelorhood necessarily
involves being unmarried
Triangularity necessarily
involves having three sides
The Theists Strategy (contd) Step One (contd)
In a similar vein, the theist can argue that agonizing pain
necessarily involves badness. If it werent bad, it wouldnt be agonizing pain!
So God forbids inicting agonizing pain on others because
necessarily it is bad
This amounts to admitting that it is not bad because God
condemns it, rather God condemns it because it is bad (indeed, necessarily bad).
The Theists Strategy (contd) Step Two
But how is this not a threat to Gods omnipotence? Doesnt admitting that
even God cannot make agonizing pain good amount to abandoning the notion that God can do anything?
Here the theist can argue that omnipotence does not involve the ability to
do the logically impossible. Rather omnipotence involves being able to do anything that is possible
This is not a limitation on God in any meaningful sense because the
logically impossible isnt anything. So it is not something God cannot do.
The theist can argue, therefore, that Gods inability to make agonizing pain
good is no more a limitation than his inability to make married bachelors that is, no limitation at all
The Theists Strategy (contd) Step Three
It remains for the theist to argue that, in some sense, morality
depends on God
How can the theist achieve this? Continuing with our example of agonizing pain (there are many
other examples, of course), the theist can argue that, as the Creator of the world, it is up to God to determine exactly what sorts of things produce agonizing pain
The Theists Strategy (contd) Step Three (contd)
Consider Kagans example of setting a baby on re God chose to make a world in which humans have a certain physical nature
involving a sensitive skin layer, a responsive nervous system and so on. This physical nature interacts with ame in very unwelcome and predictable ways.
But God could have made us dierently. The way our bodies react to re is
not a logically necessary feature of the world.
So God could have created the world such that a loving mother always sets
her baby on re whenever it is hungry (re is wholesome, lling, and a great source of vitamins, say)
Here is a moral principle: it is always wrong to set a baby on re for amusement.
The theist concludes that this moral principle is true and that its truth depends on God (in the sense we have just discussed)
The Theists Strategy (contd) Wrapping Up
Note on this view the theist is not committed to saying that torture, for
example, could have been good if God willed it.
It denies this by saying that torture is necessarily bad. This is how the theist
escapes the objection of arbitrariness.
But what counts as torture depends on God. This is how the theist escapes
the objection of irrelevance.
Example: God chose to make a world in which passing electricity through
someones body counts as torture but he could have made our bodies such that passing high voltage through them produces health and pleasure
So shocking somebody could have been a good act. But there seems nothing
counterintuitive or problematic about morality being arbitrary in this sense