The Case That Our Moral Knowledge Points Toward God: Part 2

This is the second article in a series on how one might offer several different moral arguments that all (1) focus on our knowledge of moral truth and (2) reinforce each other so that their joint force is even stronger than that of each individual argument.[1] This series of articles focuses specifically on three well-known arguments for God’s existence that have to do with our moral knowledge. After examining each argument, the series will conclude by offering a strategy for how they can be used in conjunction so that they reinforce each other. Last time we examined the similar (but different) arguments given by Mark Linville and Alvin Plantinga concerning evolutionary naturalism (EN). Now we will inspect an argument from Scott Smith.

SCOTT SMITH’S ARGUMENT 

Like Plantinga, Smith concludes that we would have no knowledge—moral or otherwise—if naturalism were true, but Smith arrives at this conclusion quite differently. Instead of arguing that EN would give us a defeater for all of our knowledge because we would have evolved for adaptive behavior rather than holding true beliefs, Smith focuses on the fact that naturalism eliminates any basis for humans having an immaterial essence, or soul, that can allow for genuine mental events—intentional thoughts “of” or “about” things in the world. If a human person is only a physical brain that receives and processes inputs, then Smith argues that such intentionality is impossible. This, he believes, unavoidably undermines any basis for us having knowledge. Let us examine Smith’s view more closely.

Smith makes his case largely by laying out some key implications that the atheist Daniel Dennett believes follow from naturalism, since Smith believes much of Dennett’s perspective is an accurate representation of what would be true in a naturalistic world. Smith perceives Dennett as one of the few philosophers of science working in cognitive science who takes seriously “the implications of naturalism—and naturalistic evolution.”[2] Dennett denies that there is an enduring self (a “you” that continues to exist over time); instead, the brain has been shaped by evolution to give us the illusion that there is a self and that the self has mental content such as “beliefs, desires, fears, and hopes.” Humans are just biological machines and have no intentionality, but we have come to regard ourselves and others as intentional agents because it is useful for predicting behavior.[3] Just as this allows us to predict what a “chess-playing computer will do,” it is efficient for us to view humans and animals in the same way and attribute intentionality to them; however, in reality, there is no such intentionality. We live in a physical world with no metaphysical persons who have real intentional states, so we do not really think “of or about something.”[4]

Dennett admits that genuine mental states must be “of” or “about” some particular thing. One cannot have a thought or experience that is not about something. This “ofness” or “intentionality” is essential to every mental state. A thought about a particular thing (e.g., a cat) could not be about something else (e.g., a dog) and “still be the thought that it is.” Dennett recognizes that true mental states must be nonphysical in nature in order to be “of their intended objects.” Since Dennett realizes that naturalism leaves no room for nonphysical essences, Smith agrees with Dennett that naturalism merely allows us to “take (interpret, conceive) a mental state to be about something.”[5] But Smith argues that this does not constitute knowledge, as the “denial of the existence of essences results in our inability to have knowledge.”[6] Naturalism requires that mental states must be “reduced to physical stuff or denied.” Since our mental states have no essence and no “ofness,” our “experiences” are merely “the last state in a long, causal, physical chain.” But this means we can never get past experiencing our “last physical state” so as to know whether we are perceiving the object of our experience as it is. Only if mental states are nonphysical can they “escape the physical limitations of causal chains.”[7] Natural selection entails that our thoughts are no different from a computer program. A computer’s intentionality is not original but is derived from its programmer, and any intentionality (“ofness” or “aboutness”) that we have in our thinking is similarly derived from natural selection.[8] Although our mental states, sense of self, and moral beliefs seem evident to us, these things would not have any basis in reality. In terms of morality, “evil” merely becomes our “interpretations of physical events.” There are no “intrinsically mental (or moral) entities” that could have a “good or bad quality” or an “essence.”[9] For there to be objective moral truths that we can know, there would have to be “essences involved both in our mental states, the moral principles and virtues, and in persons.”[10]

Smith also emphasizes that the “self must somehow remain essentially the same through time and change, such that the identical person owns these thoughts and experiences, grows in understanding and learning, even if over a span of many years.”[11] Smith thus thinks that the reality of the soul, which clearly is beyond the resources of naturalism, is essential to us having knowledge. It is problematic if “I” am not an enduring self with true mental properties and if there are no essences for me to know. But with naturalism, the most we can do is merely attribute moral motivations to others while the actual processes going on in the human machine are purely physical and lack intentionality.[12]

Smith rightly points out that Dennett’s claim that we attribute intentionality to others is problematic. This is because one would seem to require real thoughts and intentional beliefs that are “about” or “of” another person in order to attribute intentionality to that person. Although Dennett does claim we can know things, his view undermines any basis for knowledge because our brain merely receives inputs and processes them. So, Dennett fails to realize that without any basis for intentionality and the self, it is self-refuting for him to claim true knowledge of his theory or of anything else.[13] We can never have a “conscious awareness” of reality as it is; ultimately, “everything is interpretation all the way down.”[14] Smith thus takes the firm position that “naturalism cannot give us knowledge.” This means that “all the various naturalists’ proposals for ethics also must fail due to their inability to offer any knowledge.”[15]

Smith’s argument has much force. He is surely correct that the mental events necessary for knowledge are different from physical events because physical events are not about anything.[16] A soul seems necessary in order for human persons to be more than biological machines that simply process inputs and produce mechanistic outputs. If mental events are nonphysical, as they seemingly must be, then it is hard to see how purely physical things could have them. Having surveyed Smith’s view, next time we will consider one final argument concerning moral knowledge.

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1. These articles are adapted for a popular audience from an article that I published in the Journal of the International Society of Christian Apologetics (Volume 12, 2019, pp. 49-64) that is titled “Toward a Cumulative Epistemic Moral Argument for God’s Existence.”

2. R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge: Overcoming the Fact-Value Dichotomy (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 137.

3. Ibid., 138-139. This idea of viewing ourselves and others as intentional, rational agents allows us to predict behavior, and Dennett calls it the “intentional stance.” This concept is laid out by Dennett in his book by the same name. See: Daniel Clement Dennett, The Intentional Stance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987).

4. Ibid., 140-142.

5. Ibid., 293.

6. Ibid., 294.

7. Ibid., 303.

8. Ibid., 143.

9. Ibid., 145.

10. Ibid., 322.

11. Ibid., 309-310.

12. Ibid., 146.

13. Ibid., 147-151.

14. Ibid., 151.

15. Ibid., 153.

16. J. P. Moreland has highlighted many other evidences that mental and physical events are not identical. These include: mental events, unlike physical events, are known and experienced only by the person having them; mental events, unlike physical events, have no parts; only mental events can be vague or pleasurable; one only has direct access to one’s mental states but physical states can be accessed by multiple people; and mental states, unlike the physical, are necessarily owned by a specific person. See: James Porter Moreland, The Soul: How We Know It's Real and Why It Matters (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2014) 80-81.