Mailbag: Does Morality Need a Personal Explanation?
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Good morning Dr. Baggett,
I hope all is well with you, but I wanted to ask you a question as it pertains to Moral ontology. Now bear with me Dr. Baggett I am a novice and am just throwing thoughts out there so i may sound silly at times. However, when it comes to moral ontology I know many people who aren't theist will argue morality exist in this platonic state. That moral truths exist necessarily and we can ground them in moral Platonism therefore there is no need for God as the grounding.
My question is this: do you think the foundation of morality (its ontology) needs to be a personal source? The reason I ask this is because when I think about morality it seems to only make sense between personal agents. Take for example humans When I kick another human for no reason that is considered immoral, however when I Kick say a rock or a tree no one looks at that and says I’m being immoral. As a matter of fact we would say that the relationship between a rock and me is more Morally apathetic, to even speak of morality between us is absurd.
So if that's the case and morality only seems to really make sense between Personal agents. Why should we believe that Moral Platonism (a non-sentient or personal object) can even ground morality?
Thanks for the reply and sorry for the long question Dr Baggett.
Joshua
Hi Joshua! For a self-professed novice you ask an excellent question, and I think your intuition is exactly right. How we might choose to couch it could be either (among other possibilities) to say that the personal source is the only explanation or the best explanation. It may well be both but it's a bit less ambitious to argue the latter. This is what I do. A personal source of morality makes better sense of the relevant moral data than an impersonal source. After all the truths of morality don't merely seem abstract, but intimately tied to personhood. Many of the great luminaries in the history of the moral argument have shared this conviction, which inspired them to look for a personal source. Platonism is perhaps, to my thinking, the second-best account out there, and it has more than a little going for it. For example, a committed secular Platonist would agree with the thorough-going theistic ethicist on moral realism, moral cognitivism, error theory, expressivism, constructivism, and even non-naturalism. It's just the final fork in the road where they part ways: Platonism or theism. And this is where the personal nature of theism has a definitive advantage, it seems to me. But as George Mavrodes puts it, the Platonic man rightly sees morality as deeply rooted in reality, which is absolutely right. This means there's lots of common ground shared by the theist and Platonist. And even though theism posits an additional entity, as it were, there are principled reasons for doing so because the personal explanation is the better, more robust explanation, so parsimony alone can't be used to give the nod to Platonism. Besides, if Swinburne is right, a theistic explanation can often prove simpler than secular ones. We can also choose, if we wish, to be something like theistic Platonists, as Robert Adams does, which may well be the way to go. This way the eternal verities are thoughts in God's mind, or something like that, rather than existing in metaphysical limbo, as John Rist puts it. So those are a few thoughts anyway! Thanks so much for the note, and I encourage you to keep thinking these matters through, Joshua. You might peruse MoralApologetics.com for additional resources, all free. By the way, I just got done directing a dissertation by Stephen Jordan arguing that a whole range of moral facts point to a personal source rather than an impersonal one. Hopefully in time we will see a version of it in print.
Blessings, Dave
David Baggett is professor of philosophy and Director of the Center for Moral Apologetics at Houston Baptist University.
