10 Morality Without God?

10.1 Flourishing, and its relation to the Good

Hume’s argument re: “is” and “ought”: cannot derive “ought” from “is”.

Esp. re: religion: “God commands X; therefore, X ought to be done.”

Must add the normative axiom: “God’s commands ought to be followed.”

G.E. Moore: Introduced the naturalistic fallacy. Target: utilitarianism. Bentham et al.

If you define “good” = “pleasure”, then you assert: meaning of good = meaning of pleasure.

Then it would make no sense to ask: Q: “Is pleasure good?”

But Q is an informative question. Therefore, good cannot be defined as pleasure.

Called the open question argument.

Involves paradox of analysis: If you give an analysis, you give meaning of things in terms of other terms.

But if analysis is only matching conceptual identity, then analysis cannot generate new information.

Frege: “A = A” is not informative. “A = B” is informative. But

Leads to sense-reference distinction.

Fundamental question: Suppose we want to say that flourishing is good. Can we ask this question?

Could the answer be “No”? Could we entertain circumstances under which human flourishing is not a good thing?

Hypothesis: we cannot say this. We cannot imagine any conditions under which this is false.

Open Question Argument suggests: “pleasure = good” might be false.

Assertion: Relationship between “flourishing” and “good” is the same as the relationship between “murder” and “immoral” / “morally unjustified”.

Claim: Instances of the property of “genuine flourishing” will always be a sub-class of the property of “good”.

Key question: Why is it so difficult to imagine instances of flourishing that are not good?

Look for specific instances:

When we see flourishing, why is it so hard to reject the assertion that this is good?

10.2 Divine Command Theory

An intellectual exercise to pull morality back from the Enlightenment ideals – the authority of reason – back to a religious foundation.

DCT: Self-interest becomes part of an authoritative hierarchical structure.

Social contract theory based on self-interest inherits the authoritarian structure of self-interests.

10.2.1 “Huge compromises had to be made”

• The degree to which the financial elite had a huge role in dictating fundamental policies. There was no way to devise the principles that govern the processes that determine policies, without them. They kept, and keep, tilting the balance in their favor.

• Communism tried to uproot the financial people with a new elite.

  • The problem is control, not ownership.
  • How do you distribute the (rewards of) assets so that the rewards flow fairly?

Unless we find a way to find a fair distribution of the wealth from these assets?

10.3 The Problem of Moral Alienation

If we affirm and follow moral laws solely because of commands (God’s or anyone’s), then we are not truly moral agents. We are a kind of animal.

This problem is one for all systems that are based on a hierarchical authority, where authority relies essentially on self-interested conception of the self and application of rewards and punishments.

It actually promotes a conception of the self as a self-interested being, a.k.a., homo economicus.

Beef w/ salvation-oriented (salvatic?) religions: it’s ultimately based on self-interest.