The conditional premise of the moral argument

That was an excellent read 🙂

Thanks Glenn. I think this a strong argument for theism.

I may have to re-read this as you may have covered it? You take equivocation of “ought” to task. I am frustrated at the equivocation of “laws” of science with moral “laws”. They are not categorically the same thus comparisons are incorrect. Better to use the formulas of science which is based on matter/energy; and laws, or rules, or oughts of morality which may be informational, though they probably in their own category.

Dear Kenneth

Wow, it’s like people have their fingers in their ears and are going “Nya, nya, nya I can’t hear you!” when I explain precisely why the moral argument is pretty much useless as a riposte to the problem of evil (and thus something I don’t even need to refute) given the problem of evil constitutes a very significant evidential threat to theism, which it does (and Glenn has spectacularly failed to explain why it doesn’t. Go read my blog if you are still not sure what my actual view is.

http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2011/12/glenn-peoples-on-evil-god-challenge.html

Sure I also pointed out the first premise is controversial. But that was largely an aside. It was not my response to the moral argument. So you are attacking a straw man, Kenneth. Please at least bother to find out what my actual view is before you start mocking it.

Glenn – I’m tempted to start investigating your argument more but it would be really helpful if you could set out the argument more formally, so that the most basic premises supporting your conclusion are clearly identified. Make it very clear why there is objective moral value if and only if there is an all-powerful, all-good, personal God. E.g. why moral Platonism won’t do, for example. Why non-natural objective moral facts won’t do either. Why it’s got to be a person. Exactly how the is-ought gap plays a role in delivering the conclusion. It would also be good to see what your assessment of the probability of each of basic premises of the argument is.

Notice by the way that as more premises are introduced that you may consider to be much more probable than not – that have, say, an 80% probability of being true – the probability of your conclusion being true may nevertheless drop like a stone. With, say, with just five required basic premises of 80% probability each, the probability that your conclusion is true drops to 32%.

That’s to say, the probability that your conclusion is FALSE is nearly 7O%!

(Wes Morriston also points this out, I believe)

However some theists (not you, I’m sure) others are very good at disguising this problem of plummeting probabilities with amazing rhetorical flourishes!

Glenn refers to the “is-ought” problem in : “Hume, who famously pointed out that you can’t (on the face of it) derive an “ought” statement from a collection of “is” statements. The nature of moral facts makes this attempt highly implausible.” But then, like a lot of people who do this proceeds to base his oughts on is’s. (In his case the existence of his god).

To a large extent this is inevitable as, in a sense, he has no interest here in understanding morality, but in using “the moral argument” to “prove” his god. I am coming from a different direction as I think understanding of morality is far more important than any religious belief and, anyway, the logical steps quoted always seem to prove only that the apologist can count to three.

If we actually look at what Hume was saying perhaps we will have more respect for his conclusions:
He says: ” the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprized to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not.”
And that no-one bothers to give a reason “for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.”

We can understand Hume’s point better if we read the context. His comment appeared at the section entitled “Moral distinctions not derived from reason.” He was very much making the point that morals are not based on reasons or outside facts but are based on intuitions. In fact they need to be as reason and facts by themselves cannot motivate people.

I take Hume’s point that we can never understand human morality by talk of gods or facts (or assumptions, wished for phenomena) about the outside world. We need to understand intuitions and subconscious motivating feelings and emotions.

I believe that modern science is now concurring with Hume’s idea of human morality – and going deeper with the advantages of modern psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science. It has led to a new science of morality.

Personally, I think these studies also reveal why some people get distracted into absolutist ideas of “objective morality” – because our intuitions of “right” and “wrong” are extremely strong – they need to be. They feel absolute or even “objective.” So people get fooled and start looking for objective “is’s” to explain their “oughts”.

Incidentally, I have listened to William Lane Craig and others, and have yet to hear a convincing argument for the premise.

All they ever seem to do is appeal to ignorance by saying something to the effect of “If there is no God, then it’s hard to see why…” which is a terrible argument. “I can’t understand why X is true” is not a proof that “X is false”.

For Craig’s moral argument to make any sense, he has to define his terms. But if you know anything about his divine command ethics, you’ll know that he defines his moral terms in a way something like the following:

a) good/moral: Some aspect of God’s nature
b) objective moral obligation/duty: that which is commanded by God

Now look at the original argument again:

1) If God did not exist, then there could not be any objective moral duties and values
2) There are objective moral duties and values
3) Therefore God exists

Now let’s look at it again, and substitute the actual definitions into the argument:

1. If God did not exist, then commands issued by God would not exist
2. Commands that are issued by God do exist
3. Therefore God exists

And this, of course, is an incredibly bad sounding argument, especially when compared with the version that obscures these moral definitions, by using the actual words instead of their definitions (i.e. “moral”, “moral obligation”, etc).

Even if it can be said that this argument doesn’t technically beg the question, its pretty doubtful one can demonstrate the existence of “commands issue by God” any easier than one could support the straight-up existence of God. It’s just a bizarre route to take.

Sorry, not 4000, 400 years. Think Galileo (now that is provocative?).

d,

That seems to be a poor interpretation of Craig. He doesn’t define objective moral values as “what God commands,” nor does he define the good as “aspects of God’s nature.”

What Craig does contend is that God is by definition the supreme authority and the paradigm of the good, but this is not the same as saying that the good is by definition that which God commands, or which is a part of God’s nature. Thus, you can’t use the sort of substitution you attempt. This would probably be more faithful to the gist of Craig’s point-

1) If there is nothing which is supremely authoritative and has a nature that is paradigmatic of the good, there would be no objective moral values and duties.

2) There are objective moral values and duties.

3) Therefore, there is something which is supremely authoritative and which has a nature that is paradigmatic of the good, and this all men call God.

Thus, it is demonstrating 1 that is important, and I think it is intentional that moral values and duties aren’t defined further.

I think Craig can certainly demonstrate that if there is a being which is supremely authoritative, and which has a nature that is paradigmatic of the good, its commands would constitute our duties, and its nature would constitute the good against which all other goods are measured. Thus, it naturally gives rise to the features of morality that we wish to ground, and if it exists, then morality would indeed consist in these products of such a being’s nature.

Of course, as a good philosopher, Craig isn’t defining morality to suit himself. The atheist is, because moral values and duties aren’t defined further, free to come up with another basis for objective moral values and duties that captures intuition as well as Craig’s supremely authoritative and paradigmatically good being.

Mike D:

These types of arguments – that “objective moral values” can only come from God, and which falsely equate moral relativism and moral nihilism, suffer from a flaw so glaringly obvious that it shouldn’t even need mentioning.

Even if I grant you that premises are true, and that the argument is correct, you’re still confronted by an intractable dilemma: how, exactly, is this absolute and objective morality known to us?

That’s a worthwhile question, sure, but it doesn’t pose a problem for the considerations offered in this blog post. On another note: This blog post doesn’t equate relativism with nihilism. I think there are distinctions to be made bewteen the two. But having said that, the following is a direct quote of an entire entry in the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy: “nihilism, ethical. See RELATIVISM.”

Stephen:

Glenn – I’m tempted to start investigating your argument more but it would be really helpful if you could set out the argument more formally, so that the most basic premises supporting your conclusion are clearly identified. Make it very clear why there is objective moral value if and only if there is an all-powerful, all-good, personal God. E.g. why moral Platonism won’t do, for example. Why non-natural objective moral facts won’t do either. Why it’s got to be a person. Exactly how the is-ought gap plays a role in delivering the conclusion. It would also be good to see what your assessment of the probability of each of basic premises of the argument is.

I think I anticipated responses of this sort when I said:

Here’s where I get a bit preachy and vent a concern that I have with the way some blog readers (mostly not readers of this blog, of course) approach the acquisition of understanding. If you want a full, satisfying answer to this (or any other complex) question, you shouldn’t be reading a popular level blog entry to get it. A number of philosophers of religion have defended the first premise. Indeed nearly all Christian philosophers I am aware of who have commented on that premise maintain that it is true, so there is no shortage of places to look.

I have a non-academic day job. I don’t get to read and write philosophy all the time. I work at the tax department, I come home, I spend time with my wife and kids, etc, none of which has anything to do, alas, with philosophy of religion or ethics. In my spare moments I blog, podcast and write stuff for publication. So I really wasn’t trying to be cheeky or just waxing rhetorical when I said the above. This blog entry is an overview that explains what some of the issues are and what some of the considerations in favour of the conditional premise are like.

It’s also worth noting that you said “Make it very clear why there is objective moral value if and only if there is an all-powerful, all-good, personal God.” Hopefully you’ll see that this specific argument doesn’t say anything about God being all-powerful. But besides that the considerations described in this blog entry are supposed to give a good idea.

Perhaps, Stephen, off the top of your head you could suggest a source for readers that offers considerations that count against the type of reasons offered here? (considerations that are compatible with moral realism)

TaiChi:

I’m not sure whether I should be convinced by Hume or not, but in the very least this way of putting it is question-begging. For suppose it is true that objective moral facts are a natural feature of the universe – then these facts can be, like other natural facts, expressed in descriptive statements. But in that case one can derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’, because those moral statements which we recognize as prescriptive turn out to be descriptive as well.

See, you said “this way of putting it,” as though you were referring to the way I put it, but then you used terms that I did not. I did not distinguish between Hume’s reference to natural facts and reference to moral facts. I referred to Hume’s reference to is statements vs ought statements. The principle that “ought” statements cannot be derived from statements that are not also “ought” statements of some sort is straightforwardly clear.

It’s true that if moral “facts” were nothing but commands then they would not be truth apt and hence not facts at all. Fortunately I didn’t say this. if you recall, I said that moral facts present themselves “like” commands, in the sense that they tell us what to do. This does not, of course, mean that there must therefore have everything in common with commands.

I daresay that your ostensible rejection of the view that moral facts have a motivational quality is very doubtful. But since we can verbally present anything we like – and we can even convince ourselves that it represents our real view if there is some benefit to us in doing so – I doubt very much I will be seeing you grant this.

Lastly (yeah I didn’t mention everything, just the things that struck me as most important), if Shafer-Landau thinks that there are full-stop objective obligations to believe certain things on pain of engaging in conduct that one absolutely shouldn’t, and he wants to call that a non moral obligation. Then I’ll just nod my shed, continue writing my shlog entries, and pignore him (i.e. he’s just messing with words).

Mssu – I find this weird: “Why think that the nature of morality is itself a subject of scientific investigation, unless you already have an idea of what it is you’re looking for?”

Why think anything can be investigated using evidence and reason/logic? Humanity would be in a very sorry state if we all thought that way wouldn’t it? Just as well most of us don’t.

The fact is that “the nature of morality” is being studied scientifically – or do you not accept that?

And this too is weird: “the significance of scientific findings to the question will be different depending upon your prior philosophical commitments.” I realize there are people who have “prior philosophical comitments” that prevent them from accepting a heliocentric solar system, the facts and science of evolution, the facts and understanding of our planet’s changing climate, modern medicine, etc. But that in no way prevents a consensus of understanding of reality which enable humanity to use that knowledge to create a better life. We would be unable to build houses, ships, planes or send vehicles to Mars if that were so.

And let me stress again I am in no way advocating “rejection of the argument on the basis of the conclusion.” you still misrepresent me. Surely we can disagree on belief in invisible friends without this misrepresentation.

” I could’ve said: suppose it is true that objective moral facts are a natural feature of the universe – then these facts can be, like other natural facts, expressed in ‘is’ statements. But in that case one can derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’, because ‘ought’ statements turn out to be ‘is’ statements as well.”

You means moral truths could be expressed via “is” statements like “X is wrong”? Well they already are! But clearly that sidesteps the problem.

“what is characteristic of moral norms is that they tell us how to act, and what is characteristic about Shafer-Landau’s logical norms is that they tell us how to reason.”

I don’t think this will do. “Do not bear a grudge against your neighbour” is not obviously about action over and above thinking, yet it strikes me as an eminently moral instruction.

You means moral truths could be expressed via “is” statements like “X is wrong”?

No, I mean they can be expressed in terms of something less obvious than that – with recognizably naturalistic terms only.

Well they already are! But clearly that sidesteps the problem.

Clearly, how? If one recognizes that ‘ought’ statements can be derived from ‘is’ statements concerning right and wrong, then that’s a first step. The second step for the Naturalist Moral Realist is to propose definitions for moral terms which largely pick out what those moral terms do, for then we can use the definitions to link the moral ‘is’ statements on back to natural features. Following this method, there seems to be no impossibility of deriving an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. (Easier in theory than in practice, of course).

I don’t think this will do. “Do not bear a grudge against your neighbour” is not obviously about action over and above thinking, yet it strikes me as an eminently moral instruction.

Well, you’ve said it is about action, in which case, I don’t see how it is a counterexample.

Ken,

I don’t think the nature of morality can be studied scientifically- at least, not in a way that is meta-ethically relevant. A full account of the evolutionary and sociological history of our moral instincts, for example, would not go one step closer to affirming moral nihilism over moral realism or vice versa.

If, as Hume points out, the ethical properties of the basic moral “ought” are not derived from pure reason or observation (it’s not like oughts are physical objects or behaviours that can be observed, after all), but are primarily apprehended through some other faculty, like conscience, that means that moral facts are not empirically investigable.

I don’t see how you could begin to claim that meta-ethics is an empirically investigable matter unless you have already done all the meta-ethical hard work and shown how moral facts can in principle be reduced to facts about matter in motion.

Dr Law,

About the nature of probabilities in deductive arguments, I’m wondering how you would respond to William Lane Craig’s article on the question, here: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8273 He seems to have a very low opinion of this line of reasoning.

I think that it’s rational to accept that a premise is true if you have much better reasons to believe in it than not. If I have five premises, each of which is 80% likely to be true, and that were a sufficient probability for me to believe within my rational rights that each of them actually is true (it’s not like there’s such a state of being as 80% true, after all), then I would be committed to the truth of a conclusion that followed from accepting all of them.

To multiply the probabilities of the truth of each premise to determine the probability of the conclusion thus seems to me wrong-headed. If one only believed that the premises had a certain percentage chance of truth, and not anything further, perhaps it might have force, but that’s not what’s going on in these kinds of arguments. Each premise is, once some minimum threshold of probability is established, regarded as true, and if each premise in an argument is true, the conclusion follows.

If your problem is anywhere, it would be with the leap from regarding something as probably true to regarding it as actually true. Yet it seems that the epistemic cost of restricting what can be known to be true to that which we are certain has a 100% chance of being true is unacceptable.

Hi Dima

(1) is obviously too stringent
(3) is obviously too weak
(2) is better though more probable than not is still too weak.

I’m not offering a good deductive argument against the existence of God.I’d have to go away and construct one…maybe when I got a moment.

Stephen, you are forgetting how theistic arguments are constructed. Each premise is axiomatic.

Dr. Law’s point, it seems to me, is misguided. In a deductive argument, if the premises are true and the argument is valid the conclusion is guaranteed. So if each of the premises has a probability that is high enough to warrant the claim that the premises are in fact true, then the conclusion is also warranted.

Mhssu – I raised the need to understand human morality because Glenn presented his argument in a naïve, trivial, way – as 3 step logic. Why bother with such an obvious list? After all such deductive logic is never better than the premises. That’s where the effort should be put. In scientific research we use such deductive logic all the time but I don’t recall anyone putting such attention into presenting these 3 steps and then putting so much effort into ignoring support for the premises.. Perhaps in theology this procedure is to make up for the fact that you guys are completely at a loss when it comes to the premises.

In dealing with the premises 1 and 2 that’s where science can be very useful. After all, it has a huge epistemological reputation for its ability to deal with and understand reality. Yet you guys refuse to acknowledge any role for science in supporting these premises. You don’t seem to have a clear idea of what is meant by human morality, let alone “moral truths.” And you won’t understand that until you interact with reality.

Perhaps this is because you are not interested in morality – rather you are using it as “the moral argument” to “prove” the existence of your god(s). But that is foolish because your whole argument depends on understanding morality! You need to pay attention to your premises.

You say: “I don’t think the nature of morality can be studied scientifically.” OK that’s you axiom. No support given. But the fact remains that there is a science of human morality. We are investigating “the nature of human morality.” So I am forced to wonder do you also think the nature of human origins, the origin and evolution of the universe, etc., cannot be studied scientifically? And what about chemistry, aerodynamics?

Perhaps your problem is that you are reducing scientific investigation into “moral facts can in principle be reduced to facts about matter in motion.” Moral decisions do of course rely on consideration of situational facts when they are undertaken consciously. They also rely on the values and criteria of the organism – avoidance of harm and concern for well-being. These values arise from the material facts of human nature – so in a sense it is “matter in motion.” But why express it that “cold” way?

Science is definitely capable of investigating the nature of human morality. (Notice this is not the same as making a moral decision – no one is claiming that). It also helps provide information useful in rational moral decision-making. But in the end, and in practice most of the time, moral decisions (oughts) are matters of feeling, emotions (Hume’s passions).

I think Hume’s “is-ought” argument is opportunistically misrepresented by the ideological inclined on human morality. And theistic concepts of “objective morality” surely seem to be an “is” – after all it is objective? So after misquoting Hume you guys then seem to proceed to make the very mistake he talks about.

And in the process you ignore the point Hume was making – that human morality is about “passions”, feelings, emotions. And there are good evolutionary reasons for that.

Ken – Your assesment of Hume’s point is spot on and brings.

What I find intriguing with this particular argument, especially in the format Glenn lays out in this post, is that it can potentially be damaging to the idea of Yahweh being that god.

Say I grant that the first two premises are correct and, therefore, the conclusion that God exists is true. Obviously this does not mean I will automatically think Yahweh is that God. The work is still cut out to show which, if any of the available options, is the God that authored these moral values and duties.

The problem with Yahweh (and I will use Yahweh in this post as this is a christian blog) is that his character, as shown in the bible, is lacking in the morality department. He commands genocide, abduction, slavery and mutilation – all things that many would take to be immoral. Based on the commands and actions of Yahweh I am faced with either 1) rejecting him as god, 2) rejecting him as a good god or 3) accepting he is god and that genocide, slavery and all the rest are moral.

Essentially this brings us back to Plato’s classic dilemma (altered to fit monotheistic considerations): Are god’s commands good because god commands them or does god command things because they are good?

Many apologists (such as William Lane Craig) prefer the fist option and use various rhetorical techniques to justify the actions we see as immoral today. That is simply because the second option (“god commands things because they are good”) indicates that good can be determined external to god. It may be that God’s ways are “higher” than our ways and whatever he commands is right by default. However if that is correct then morality becomes a purely subjective exercise based on the whims of a super-being.

Anyway I am at work – so this has to kept to a brief outline of my problems with the moral argument.

Josh, Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma has been well and truly dealt with by divine command meta-ethics. This has been done so many times I find it incredible that anyone still brings it up!

I have noticed a certain pattern when it comes to powerful arguments like the  Euthyphro Dilemma. It gets “demolished” by the declaration:

“Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma has been well and truly dealt with by divine command meta-ethics.”

Which means that The arguments against it are not impressive – except to advocate of command ethics. 

Mental gymnastics and bluster. Pity it wasn’t that easy.

Glenn – I would have thought my intention obvious. To point out a pattern of responses you tend to follow. You may well be satisfied with command ethics rejection of Euthyphro. Others aren’t – it is a sign of arrogance to dismiss them by such declaration. (Or perhaps embarrassment).

After all, command ethics advocates are not exactly credible at the moment with Craig’s justification of infanticide and genocide/ethnic cleansing. And the criticism comes from fellow Christians as well as others. But I guess you can fob them off by declaring that advocates of command ethics have dealt with the issue adequately.

They haven’t of course.

“I can understand your unwillingness to engage on this issue”

Ken, you lack self control. Your posts will now go into moderation by default. I’ll release them if they’re mature/civil. If that bothers you, sorry but you brought it on yourself. If you want your posts to appear, take a deep breath before you hit “send comment,” check your comment and ask if it meets basic criteria of civility, politeness etc, and check it against the blog policy that you have agreed to follow by posting here. If it does, go ahead and click, and it will be approved. For what it’s worth, sneering passive aggression is no more tolerable than blatant insults. Common sense is key.

As has always been the case, I allow 100% of all comments that follow the blog policy.

Geoff, Genesis 3:5 9(NIV) is unambiguous on the effect of eating from the tree of knowledge: For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Ergo, before Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, they did not know “good and evil”.

I remain flummoxed as to how anyone could be held morally responsible for anything before they knew how to discern right from wrong. This is no idle question. The doctrine of original sin is a lynchpin for Christianity. If anyone is aware of a good source of apologetic writing on this point, I would appreciate the cite.

[Yet another topic they conveniently neglected to discuss at Sunday School]

Seasons Greetings

Trying to find a conscious being to be the objective basis for morality is coming at it from the wrong direction. Your mistake, and that of many others, including Secularists, is looking for that basis in some form of conscious being, either natural or supernatural, ie looking for a conscious authority to give commands. The problem with that is that conscious authoritive beings have a hard time being objective. It seems to me that the objective basis for morality is not an authority nor a conscious being commanding via authority.

As long as you want to use a conscious being, particularly an authoritarian one, as that basis then it seems to me that it will be impossible to get an ought from an is. But shift your objective basis from a conscious being to an idea that is a political act that conscious beings can use as a base to measure the morality of actions, an idea such as mutual peace, and you’re on a different playing field and it looks level to me

Theists do not show that there is not a natural objective basis for morality, they just assert that their alleged alternative basis exists. The fact that we are still arguing as to whether this alternative exists, is an indication that it has not been established that it does.

The objective foundation for morality is the mutual peace of un coerced peaceful co-existence.

Morality comes from the idea of mutual peace, not the idea of god.

Mutual peace is not only the objective, it is objective. It is a political act between humans. It is not a divine gift. Mutual peace exists regardless of the existence or not of any gods. It cannot be given as a gift, it has to be achieved by human co-operation.

When humans behave in ways that create the conditions for mutual peace, they are being moral, doing right. The conditions necessary for peace, (and I mean un-coerced peaceful co-existence, not Pax Romana or Pax Britanica which are not mutual peace and are merely an Orwellian idea of peace) are created using the golden rule, mutual aid and loving your neighbour, using the tools of reason, empathy, compassion and emotion, measured against mutual peace.

It’s not rocket science. Why would you prefer not to live in a world of peace on earth and mutual aid and goodwill to all.

Mutual peace is the objective foundation of morality. Measuring behaviour from mutual peace gives us the basic modes of behaviour that result in morality. Morality is the rules of social living.

Morality is not a result of a religious discourse. Religion is the result of a moral discourse. You cannot have religion without first having morality as you can’t have religion without having a stable social group and to have a stable social group, you need to have morality.

Morality changes because we constantly measure morality against the idea of mutual peace and when humans decide that a particular moral standard doesn’t measure up against the idea of mutual peace anymore, we change our attitude and what was once moral now becomes immoral, like slavery, racism and sexism.

What was accepted as moral by Christians in the past is not accepted by them now, like slavery. The Quakers and liberal Christians who were at the forefront of abolition were not popular with mainstream Christians but they persevered and succeeded because their measurement of slavery against the idea of mutual peace was correct.

The practice of mutual peace is the end result of morality and the idea of mutual peace is the starting point. Peace is the alpha and the omega of morality. Not only is mutual peace the objective basis of morality it is the objective goal of morality. Only sadists and masochists and the immoral don’t want to live in a state of mutual peace. Only a state of mutual peace allows people to live a flourishing meaningful life and give a future to their children and therefore the species.

“Good” is not a basis for morality because it is subjective. There is disagreement about the concept of good because “good” is subjective. There is no disagreement, that I am aware of, around the concept of mutual peace. Everyone knows what that is, because it is objective.

Mutual peace does not care how we use the morality we obtain from peace, nor care whether we are moral or immoral. Mutual peace doesn’t demand that we behave in a certain way. Mutual peace is not an entity. Mutual peace doesn’t have an agenda or a Plan for us that it demands we follow. Mutual peace doesn’t demand our submission to its will.

Mutual peace is an idea that leads to a political act. From that idea, we can measure moral behaviour because when people behave in ways that generate un-coerced peaceful co-existence, they are being what we call moral, and those ways to behave start with following the golden rule, mutual aid and loving your neighbour.

Mutual peace is objective and is the same for everyone regardless of their prejudices and ideologies. Some people may not want mutual peace or like it but it is still objectively the same for them as it is for those who do want peaceful co-existence. That’s why people who are Humanist, be they religious or secular, strive for Peace on earth and goodwill to all, which is just another way of describing mutual peace.

We naturally derive morality from examining the way to live in un-coerced peaceful co-existence which gives us a natural ordering principle. We don’t need a god to reveal this morality to us. The morality from god thesis only shifts the goalpost as it leaves unanswered the question of how god reaches a decision on morality. If god uses reason to arrive at a morality decision then god is not doing anything we can’t do for ourselves.

What’s the point of morality? What are we trying to achieve with it. What type of life are we after? What is the end result of behaving morally? A peaceful un coerced life, that’s what we are trying to achieve, so that our children have a future.

Our cave dwelling ancestors worked this out a couple of hundred thousand years ago and we’ve been doing it ever since. Morality is the rules of social living.

So the argument looks like this

Objective moral values can be measured by mutual peace
Objective moral values and mutual peace exist
Gods are redundant in determining objective moral values

Shalom
Peace be with you
Go in peace
Peace on earth and goodwill to all (aka Mutual Peace)
Give peace a chance

Stephen:

“So what’s the highest probability can we reasonably assign to the conclusion, given the probabilities of the premises? Yes you DO indeed multiply the probabilities of the basic premises to figure that out.”

It’s you vs my logic teacher.

Glenn and others want to create a smokescreen of technicality to disguise the fact that his argument, looks, prima facie, like a dismal flop given it’s based on a series of “more probable than not” basic premises. The rule I am applying is: to get the highest probability you can assign to the conclusion in a valid deductive argument, you just multiply the probabilities of the basic premises.

Now yes, there are some exceptions to this general rule. So for example, when a premises is redundant, like so: A, B therefore A. Here, you don’t factor in the probability of B, for obvious reasons. Also, when the conclusion is a tautology, it’s probability will be 1, irrespective of the probability of the premises. Also, simple multiplication is not appropriate where there’s a logical or known causal connection between premises. The probability of the conclusion may then be either higher or lower than the figure you get by simple multiplying. E.g.

A is a man
A is female
Therefore A is male and A is female.

Given our background knowledge that being male makes it highly unlikely you are female (though not impossible: i.e. a hermaphrodite), it’s clear we should not give a value of 25% to the conclusion given a prob of, say, 51% to each premise. The probability is LOWER than you get by simple multiplication, given that further background knowledge. Ditto (and here the we’re dealing with mathematical exclusion – the conclusion has a mathematically guaranteed probability of 0):

A is 60 years old
A is 61 years old
A is 60 years old and A is 61 years old.

Other times the probability of the conclusion can indeed be higher than you’d get by simple multiplication, given background knowledge.

So yes, there exceptions to the rule. But the point is they are exceptions to a general rule that does otherwise generally apply and will apparently apply in the case of the moral argument too, unless Glenn can explain why it doesn’t. At this point, we cannot tell for sure, because Glenn won’t even clearly set out what the basic premises of his argument actually are. In which case, we should just shrug and walk away. Glenn’s given us nothing.

Incidentally the “upper bound” stuff, while it looks awfully impressive especially when articulated using long strings of formulae, appears to be based on some rather dubious ideas. I cannot find any reference to it outside of theistic circles (e.g. Tim McGrew). Can you point me to some?

Craig’s reference to it is opaque, btw, in the context of what he says. That looks like an attempt to baffle with bullshit.

But I note in any case that the “upper bound” point, even if it is correct, appears to give us no reason at all to suppose that we cannot, on the basis of saying that Glenn’s basic premises are five with a probability of 0.8 each, draw the conclusion that the probability of his conclusion can’t reasonably be estimated as higher than 0.32, given knowledge of just those premises. Indeed, that’s just the conclusion we’re usually entitled to draw in such cases (noting, of course, that there are indeed a few exceptions – perhaps Glenn will say “God exists” is a tautology?! In which case the premises are all redundant!). So why not in this case? That’s what Glenn would need to explain, once he’s actually identified what his premises are (hint: Glenn might insist there’s some connection between the premises that means the probability of the conclusion should be higher – but the onus is surely then on him to identify this connection). Remember, I am not saying the probability of Glenn’s conclusion will definitely be low. I am saying that if it’s based on a series of merely more-probable-than-not basic premises, then (unless this is some sort of special case – see above) the probability of the conclusion cannot be considered, on that basis alone, very high.

AND i meant to say value of 26% to the conclusion, not 25% in that example, obviously… sorry done in haste.

Regards the debate about multiplicative probabilities, let me give a “real world” example to make the issue easier to understand. Consider the following:

Premise 1. My father’s dog is alive
Premise 2. My father’s dog will not die today
Premise 3. My father’s dog will not die tomorrow (either because she is already dead or because she remains alive)
Premise 4. My father’s dog will not die the day after tomorrow
(………)
Premise 20,000. My father’s dog will not die on September 21, 2066

Conclusion: My father’s dog will be alive at midnight on September 22, 2066

This is deductively valid, and each premise is MUCH more plausible than its negation, yet its conclusion would be astounding if it turned out to be true.

Tim

Even assuming all that is true, how does the probability of the premises license us in giving the conclusion a higher probability than that lower bound?

Of course, other factors may license us in giving the conclusion a higher probability. But how do the probabilities of the premises do so?

Stephen,

Good question. Without further information, all that we can obtain for the conclusion of a deductively valid argument without superfluous premises is a lower bound: the probability of the conclusion is at least as great as a certain lower bound b. We can calculate b without assuming independence; in general, it will be a little lower than the value we would get if we assumed independence.

More precisely, where the uncertainty of a proposition x, U(x), is defined as 1 – P(x), the lower bound for a conclusion will be 1 – [the sum, for all i, of U(xi)]. So for a valid three-premise argument where the premises have probabilities .9, .8, and .7, the uncertainties are .1, .2, and .3 respectively, their sum is .6, and therefore the lower bound on the conclusion will be 1 – .6 = .4. (Note that this is a little lower than the calculation of a lower bound assuming independence, which would give us .9 * .8 * .7 = .504.) Other considerations would need to be brought to bear for us to see more precisely where the probability falls in the interval [.4, 1].

…perhaps the further thought is that premise 1 might lend some support to the conclusion anyway, even if, say, premise 2 is false.

Stephen,

These are indeed fascinating issues!

I haven’t worked the 5-premise argument you refer to, so everything I have to say will be strictly on the formal side. Assuming that the premises are independent (an assumption one should not make lightly), and assuming that the probability of each premise, given some reasonable background knowledge, is .8, then the lower bound would be (.8)^5, or just a little below .33.

What’s the use of such an argument? For one thing, in this case, it would get some version of theism — call it MT for “moral theism” — on the table for discussion. Because deduction is monotonic, merely adding premises cannot weaken the conclusion. Unless further evidence depresses the probability of the original premises of the argument, which of course it might, the probability of MT won’t go lower than that. When some new piece of relevant information comes in, we can take the endpoints of the interval [.32768, 1) and do standard Bayesian conditionalization with each of them (think of it as “worst case” and “best case” calculation) in order to obtain a new interval. Under certain plausible conditions, the interval will narrow. This shows that rational agents who share likelihoods and start with probabilities lying in that interval for their (relative) prior probability and then update by conditionalization on the same evidence, will find that their posterior probabilities converge. (I’ve made the interval half open in order not to have to qualify this claim further.) That’s interesting news.

There are also some interesting theorems that one can generate regarding the effect of multiple deductive arguments with premises that are all independent (i.e., each premise of argument A is probabilistically independent of every combination of assertions and negations of all of the other premises of A and of all of the premises of arguments B, C, …); it turns out that even when none of these arguments by itself renders their common conclusion more probable than a lower bound of n, for real valued n > 0, a combination of a sufficient number of them can raise the probability as close to 1 as one likes. (Of course, in certain circumstances that might require trillions of arguments!)

Stephen,

You write:

Incidentally the “upper bound” stuff, while it looks awfully impressive especially when articulated using long strings of formulae, appears to be based on some rather dubious ideas. I cannot find any reference to it outside of theistic circles (e.g. Tim McGrew). Can you point me to some?

(1) It’s a lower bound, not an upper bound.

(2) I’m not sure why you think that it is based on dubious ideas. Feel free to elaborate.

(3) You can read all about it in Ernest W. Adams, A Primer of Probability Logic.

Thanks very much Tim. I see you know this stuff inside out. You’re not the Tim, are you?

I certainly agree that these considerations might have some interesting consequences. Definitely worth pursuing. I have a couple more clarificatory questions if you have the time, though.

First, it seems to me that if someone says, “I have a valid deductive argument of five premises of prob 0.8 each that shows it’s much more probable than not that C” we should indeed be highly suspicious.

Indeed, if their premises are independent (and none are redundant), then setting aside whether there might be other factors that might bestow a higher probability on C, the probability of the conclusion given the premises alone is indeed 0.32768.

If, in their defence, they say, “Ah, but remember, the upper bound of the probability of the conclusion could be as high as one, even if the lower bound is 0.32768” they are in effect just pointing out that the probability of the conclusion could be higher, given other factors. But of course we knew that already. That’s not to contradict the point made in the preceding paragraph. Is that correct?

My other question probably has a simple answer but I cannot see what it is. It is true, isn’t it, that given other factors, the probability of C might also be lower than 0.32768? So in my cancer example, the premises might have a probability of 0.5 each, yet if I also know that I have the very rare z gene that prevents you getting cancer Y, I should assign a lower probability to the conclusion than is otherwise correctly obtained by multiplication. So why, if we say the upper bound of the conclusion I drew is 1, do we not say the lower bound is zero?

After all, A, -A, therefore A&-A is deductively valid, and might have premises with a probability of 0.5 each, yet it still has a conclusion with probability of zero. Probabilities can be revised down as well as up.

Indeed, in the following case our background knowledge that being male almost always excludes being female (but some hermaphrodites) and a probability of 0.51 to each premise, the probability of the conclusion is much lower than 0.25:

Ted is male
Ted is female
Therefore: Ted is male and Ted is female.

So, to return to our original example, why say the upper bound is 1 but the lower bound is no lower than 0.32768?

Stephen,

(1) “You’re not the Tim, are you?” From Monty Python? Yep. But who listens to me? 😉

(2) “I was referring to the upper bound of one.” Oops — my apologies. I misunderstood that.

(3) “After all, A, -A, therefore A&-A is deductively valid, and might have premises with a probability of 0.5 each, yet it still has a conclusion with probability of zero. Probabilities can be revised down as well as up.”

In that example, the premises are logically incompatible. If each premise taken alone is contingent, which they would have to be in order for P(A) = P(~A) = .5, then they are not probabilistically independent, for P(A|~A) = 0 ? .5. Since the minimum probability of the conclusion is 1 minus the sum of the uncertainties of the premises, we have P(A & ~A) ? [1 – (U(A) + U(~A))] = 0. And that is, of course, exactly right.

When the probability of the conclusion of a deductively valid argument is fixed at some real value r > 0 in this fashion, further evidence can depress the probability of that conclusion below r. But it cannot do so without also lowering the probability of one or more of the premises of the original deductive argument. So long as those probabilities remain undiminished, the impact of new relevant evidence on the conclusion will be to increase its probability.

(4) “So in my cancer example, the premises might have a probability of 0.5 each, yet if I also know that I have the very rare z gene that prevents you getting cancer Y, I should assign a lower probability to the conclusion than is otherwise correctly obtained by multiplication.”

First we need to reformulate the cancer example a bit. Your original argument was:

1. I have gene x
2. Those with gene x get cancer y

Therefore,

3. I will get cancer y

But it isn’t quite right to say that premise 2 here has a probability of .5; that would be to say, putting it colloquially, that it’s an even bet that every single person with gene x will get cancer y, whereas I think what you mean to say is that the probability, given no further relevant information, that an individual will get cancer y, given that he has gene x, is .5.

Thus reconstructed, the argument isn’t quite a modus ponens, since (reconstructed) premise 2 can’t be read as assigning a probability to an indicative conditional; if we want to read (reconstructed) 2 as a conditional, it will have to be a subjunctive conditional. But setting aside that worry for the moment, this is a case where the new evidence lowers the probability of one of the premises: the fact that you have rare gene z is ex hypothesi relevant to the question of whether, if you were to have gene x, you would get cancer y. So the impact of the new evidence “Stephen has rare gene z” is felt in its lowering the probability of the reconstructed premise 2.

Does that help?

d, the problem with taking the ‘first horn’ of the dilemma is that what appears to us to be objective morality is in fact just gods subjective morality, so the first conditional premise discussed here becomes “if god did not exist, then there couldn’t be god’s subjective views on moral duties and values”. this is just stating the obvious and the rest of the argument falls apart.

they can’t take the second horn because then good is independent of god and his role is just to point it out for us, so the premise is false.

glenn, when you say it has been ‘dealt’ with, is this a fair summary in a nutshell? god is the personification of good so it is meaningless to try and distinguish between his command and the thing which he commands. everything is good because he commands it but he only commands good things, there is no difference.

if this is reasonably accurate, how does it impact the first conditional premise? it seems to me that it still fails.

random thought: this conversation assumes the platonic version of categorical good, but i find the eastern ying/yang view more compelling in that all good has some bad in it and it is impossible to separate them and isolate ‘good’ even on an abstract level, so any moral duties and values will also be a partly immoral. i think this much more accurately reflects the world i see around me, and makes this entire conversation non-sensical. just a random thought though.

Glenn

It seems, given what Tim has said, that the highest probability we are licensed to place on the conclusion of an argument, by virtue of its being valid and having five non-redundant premises of probability of 0.8 each, is 0.32768.

Which is what we get by multiplying the probabilities of the premises.

Sure, that’s a more qualified and carefully formulated claim than my off-the-cuff remark earlier (which I’ll happily admit was rather sloppy). But my overall point remains the same – that such an argument is, as it stands, a flop.

I’m sure you’d be first to agree with that verdict if our hypothetical argument was an argument AGAINST the existence of God.

True, establishing certain inter-dependencies between the premises might then license us in giving C a higher probability than 0.32768. However, the mere fact that the argument is valid and has premises with those probabilities, does not, by itself, allow is to say that the conclusion is significantly more probable than not. In fact, it falls well short of allowing us to say that the conclusion is more-probable-then-not.

Such an argument might combine with other arguments to bestow a higher probability on C. C might, all things considered, be very probable indeed. It might have a probability of 1. That’s entirely beside the point. I was not making any claims about the probability of C all-things-considered.

Moreover, let’s not forget that other considerations (the evidential problem of evil) might work to reduce the probability of C still further (and also the probabilities of the premises).

That’s how it seems to me (though I’m no expert on probability theory, and am quite happy to be corrected). Tim is far more knowledgeable about the ins and outs of this stuff than I, so he may be able to point out where I’ve gone wrong, if I have… My thanks for his help thus far, in any case.

Happy Winterval!

No – I linked to what I called a “five step” argument. The five steps consist of four premises and one conclusion. However, premise three is really just the conclusion of premises one and two, so logically can be removed entirely. So in terms of how the argument works, there are three premises.

Very true Matt. This is yet another one of those contexts where the de dicto / de re distinction is so important and easily overlooked, as it is this distinction that undergirds the extensional / intensional distinction.

that was actually very helpful thanks, gave me lots to think about, and i think i see where i was going wrong. tell me if i’m on the right track now:

a designating phrase may designate different things under different conditions (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-intensional/#ParIntObj) but it depends on those conditions (carnap’s “state of affairs”?), such as knowledge or beliefs. “george knows that venus is seen in the sky near sunrise” may be false if george doesn’t know that the star he sees in the morning is venus, so ‘venus’ and ‘morning star’ cannot be swapped in this sentence. so while i couldn’t find a clear definition of intensional statements, all examples i found had intensional operators like ‘believes’ or ‘knows’, so it at least seems apparent that there needs an epistemic state of affairs named george for ‘the morning star’ to not mean ‘venus’.

in relation to the premise: you stand on one side of a pane of glass and draw on the glass a horizontal arrow pointing to your right. i stand on the other side of the pane of glass and see the same arrow, except to me it is pointing the my left. so the direction of the arrow is relative to the position of the observer. or if we stand on opposite sides of the north pole we can be facing each other but both facing north.

if moral rightness arises entirely from the commands of god, then from the perspective of god good moral rightness is subjective: he can command what he wants (even if what he wants is determined by his nature). but to us they will appear to be objective duties in that they are independent of our opinions or desires like any other objective fact, or gravity. so i was trying to discuss de re, but by making my extensional swap i was just replacing our perspective with gods perspective. and it’s not that i was wrong, it’s just that you weren’t discussing the arrow de re, you were discussing the direction of the arrow from our side of the glass. ie, the first conditional premise assumes ‘objective moral duties’ are relative only to the human perspective, but i missed that part. it was your whole point that the difference morning star was not venus relative only to a level of astronomical ignorance called george.

so the premise will need to be amended, because surely you can’t just assert that a statement is intensional without giving the condition or state of affairs. i can’t just assert that ‘clarke kent can’t fly’ without referencing lois lane’s beliefs, or that ‘the number of planets’ does not designate ‘9’ without referencing the epistemic state of affairs in 1781. so it doesn’t seem fair to just assert that ‘moral duties and values’ does not mean the same as ‘commanded by god’ simply because it is intensional and leave it at that. in my opinion the premise needs to be amended to show whose perspective it assumes, something along the lines of ‘if god did not exist then there would not appear to be objective moral duties to sentient non-god beings’. i’m sure you’ll amend it differently, but you get my point.

further implications i think this has, but ponder it more i must.

I’m taking it that Monty python Tim is Tim McGrew??