Mailbag: "What's a Good Stopping Point?"
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Hayyan writes:
Hey Dr. Baggett, hope you're well.
I'd like to get your thoughts on the objection to the moral Argument which goes something like this...
It seems at some point on every theory of Morality there's gonna be a point where one hits a brick wall and must say “it just is.” For example, if you're an atheist and believe reducing suffering is good, if asked why you might just have to reply “it just is.” Similarly, if you're a theist and let's assume the theory we hold is that God's nature is the standard of Goodness, well why? And if one says well because God is the greatest possible being, and then one asks, Why is goodness Great? It seems we'd have to say “it just is” again.
Similarly in any theory one could continue asking ‘why is that Good’ and at some point the reply is going to be ‘it just is.’
I'd like to know what you make of that.
Thank you for your work.
Hayyan
Hi Hayyan, thanks for the note. I tend to agree there has to be an appropriate starting (or stopping) point. Otherwise we'll have what some might call an "'infinite regress." This is the whole point of something like foundationalism in epistemology, predicated on axiomatic starting points. This is how Euclid did mathematics, building on certain axioms. There are other approaches; we could adopt, say, a coherentist rather than foundationalist model, but the problems with coherentism seem even worse. One might have a wholly coherent set of beliefs, none of which correspond with reality at all, for example. So there seems something right about building your system of knowledge on a foundationalist model of some sort, and this goes for ethics as much as other areas.
What I think ethics has going for it is that there are really suitable-seeming axiomiatic ethical truths on which nearly everyone agrees. Like: "It's wrong to torture children for fun." As Thomas Reid put it, there are certain nonnegotiable moral facts to which we should pay homage. This is at least a strong prima facie case for something like moral realism. It seems utterly clear to us that certain things are morally the case. This is saying more than simply this is the way it just is. Presumably the idea is that our epistemic faculties are such that we cannot help but apprehend these basic metaphysical (or logical or ethical) truths, and then on their basis we can build our theories, engage in reflective equilibrium, etc.
What I find to be suitable candidates in the arena of ethics for such properly basic truths are things like "Gratuitous torture is morally bad," and other judgments in that sort of vicinity. Really clear-cut things like that, which we deny on pain of what seems patent irrationality or perversity. What possible reasons could I adduce for rejecting such axioms that I could be more sure of than the axioms themselves? I think we are hard pressed to say.
I don't put a claim like "God functions at the foundation of morality," however, into the same category. God might be the first and final cause of all things, and something of the ultimate brute fact, but epistemologically anyway, we need reasons and evidence and arguments to take seriously the efficacy of theistic ethics. That's not an appropriate time simply to say it's a properly basic truth requiring no evidence.
Indeed, I take the direct experiential evidence we have of moral realism to raise questions about what it is about reality that would provide a robust, and ultimately best explanation of such nonnegotiable moral truths. This is where attentiveness to a wide range of moral evidence is needed, and careful argumentation to show that God can provide a compelling explanation of moral data otherwise hard to make sense of—the rationality of morality, the convergence of our moral judgments with objective moral truth, the ultimate airtight connection between happiness and holiness, the grounds for authoritative moral obligations, the solution to Sidgwick's dualism of practical reason, etc.
This is what gives me confidence in the theoretical advantages of a theistic ethic. We can then ask, if we're convinced this is so, how much evidence such a case provides for the truth of theism. Maybe it adds a little, maybe a lot. Maybe a cumulative moral case in itself makes theism more likely than not. That's a complicated question. But the evidence from morality certainly, to my thinking, adds to the evidential case for theism.
Having worked that through, we can then ask, "But what made God exist?" Or something like that. But God is the one reality for which we have the most principled reasons to think is without any external cause. Necessary existence is part and parcel of who he is. This is the import of something like the modal ontological argument. To ask what caused God is to ask a malformed question predicated on a fundamental understanding, as if God were merely one more item in the furniture of reality rather than the very ground of being itself.
So, regarding God, the point goes well beyond simply "It just is." At least as I see things, the "brick wall" to which you refer is actually the theoretically adequate appropriate stopping point in our explanations that gives us reason to think it's a proper foundation on which to construct our account of reality and avoid the otherwise intractable infinite regress of explanations.
More generally, though, we can't help but do moral theory on the foundation of what seems to us the case. Suppose someone were to say, "But that's not enough." On what basis would they say it? Presumably because it seems to them not to be enough! So rather than providing a counterexample to the method, they are following it impeccably. It just seems to be an inescapable feature of our epistemic situation. Sadly, Cartesian certainty requires more, but is just beyond our ken. Fortunately, knowledge doesn't require such certainty, so hankering after it is misguided. Hope some of that helps!
Blessings, Dave
David Baggett is professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Moral Apologetics at Houston Baptist University. Author or editor of about fifteen books, he's a two-time winner of Christianity Today book awards. He's currently under contract for his fourth and fifth books with Oxford University Press: a book on moral realism with Jerry Walls, and a collection on the moral argument with Yale's John Hare.
