Recent Work on the Moral Argument, Part II
/
In this second installment of exciting recent work in moral apologetics, we asked Dr. Mark Linville to offer a quick summary of what he’s been up to. He does really excellent work, and MoralApologetics.com is always happy to direct people to his substantive contributions. In his own words here is that summary:
I titled my essay, “Darwin, Duties, and the Demiurge.” I begin by comparing the “evolutionary debunking arguments” of C. S. Lewis and Alex Rosenberg. No two thinkers could be further apart in their views of the nature of the universe, but they agree on two fundamental points: A consistent naturalism entails either moral subjectivism or nihilism, and most naturalists are not consistent, as they seek ways of avoiding the full--and repugnant--implications of their worldview. Rosenberg embraces both naturalism and its repugnant implications. Lewis rejects both.
In contrast to both Lewis and Rosenberg, I argue not that naturalism entails or requires some variety of moral non-realism, but that moral realism--the idea that some acts really are right or wrong--does not find a good “fit” on that worldview. And where they argue that the consistent naturalist would embrace some variety of moral non-realism, I instead advance an epistemological argument to the effect that the consistent naturalist is a moral skeptic. Where a naturalist of Rosenberg’s stripe will reject any teleological explanation for what Rosenberg calls “core morality”--basically, the common sense moral beliefs that are widely distributed--the theist thinks that human moral faculties are designed for the purpose of discerning moral truth. “Theism thus provides underpinnings for the expectation that the human moral sense is capable of discerning moral truth.”
After recounting a general Darwinian “genealogy of morals,” I consider some objections to the sort of argument that I advance. I assess Louise Antony’s direct replies to my earlier work. Perhaps the heart of her critique is that despite the origins of our moral faculties, we are still in a position to evaluate moral claims and beliefs by appeal to “reason and evidence.” And she cites an important recent article by Roger White (“You Just Believe That Because….”) in support of her argument. The heart of my reply is that certain of our most basic moral convictions, such as Chesterton’s example that “Babies should not be strangled,” is not had by any inference of reason. We do not reason to this as a conclusion, but we reason with it as we evaluate other moral claims. And it is not as though babies have the empirically discernible property of not-to-be-strangledness stamped under their bonnets, giving us empirical evidence for the belief. Rather, the best evidence for that conviction is it seeming to us to be true, and self-evidently so. And it is this very seeming that is undercut on Antony’s naturalism.
I then turn to Erik Wielenberg’s interesting and ingenious attempt at avoiding evolutionary debunking arguments by appeal to a “third factor” involved in the explanation of human moral beliefs. His aim is to challenge the debunker’s claim that even if there were objective values the naturalist would not be in a position to know them. The core of his argument, I think, is that if there are rights, and if such rights supervene upon the possession of reason, and if believing that there are rights requires the possession of reason, then it would appear that our evolution, aiming only at fitness, has also guided us to truth. My main reply to Wielenberg invokes George Santayana’s critique of the young Bertrand Russell’s early embrace of both moral realism--a Moral Platonism similar to Wielenberg’s--and naturalism. The heart of Santayana’s argument--what one commentator on Santayana calls his “most telling criticism”--is what might be dubbed the demiurge argument. Santayana argued that, unlike Plato’s scheme, Russell’s Platonic Good “is not a power,” and so cannot be thought to influence the course of nature. And so there is a great gulf fixed between those Platonic precepts and whatever shape the world takes, with the result of a Platonism “stultified and eviscerated.” In a world in which “man is a product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving,” there is no reason to expect that the moral convictions of evolved rational creatures would be informed in any way by the moral declarations in the Platonic Empyrean. What is missing, then, is someone or something that can fill the role of Plato’s demiurge, and the theist has the perfect candidate.
Other Relevant Recent Work
“God is Necessary for Morality” is my main essay in my printed “debate” with Louise Antony in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, 2nd edition, eds., Michael Peterson and Raymond VanArragon (Blackwell, 2019). Antony and I also exchange brief replies to each other’s main essays.
“Moral Argument” in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion eds., Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro (Wiley-Blackwell). I believe this comes out this year.
“Respect for Persons Makes Right Acts Right” is my main essay in my printed “debate” with Alastair Norcross (who defends Act Utilitarianism) in Steven B. Cowan, Problems in Value Theory (Bloomsbury, 2020). I offer a brief critique of Divine Command Theory here along the same lines as my critiques of several other ethical theories (along the way to defending a Kantian respect for persons principle). Perhaps of at least indirect relevance is my fairly extensive ("Chestertonian") critique of Alex Rosenberg's Scientism in "A Defence of Armchair Philosophy: G. K. Chesterton and the Pretensions of Scientism" in An Unexpected Journal (December, 2019)--online and Amazon hard copy. (This journal is put together by several graduates of the HBU apologetics program.)
We appreciate Dr. Linville doing that for us! Be on the lookout for all those exciting essays to come. In our next installment we’ll take a look at two younger scholars doing exciting work on aspects of moral apologetics, namely, Suan Sonna and Adam Johnson.
