Abstract
Gerald Harrison identifies two Euthyphro-related concerns for divine command theories and makes the case that to the extent that these concerns make trouble for divine command theories they also make trouble for non-naturalistic moral realism and naturalistic moral realism (call this the parity thesis). He also offers responses to the two concerns on behalf of divine command theorists. I show here that the parity thesis does not hold for the most commonly discussed version of divine command theory. I further argue that his responses to the two concerns fail. Finally, I draw on some of Harrison’s ideas to identify an advantage that non-naturalistic moral realism has over divine command theories and naturalistic moral realism.
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Notes
As Harrison points out, we need to exclude the actions’ spatiotemporal properties to prevent the denial of this claim from being a trivial truth (2015, 115); accordingly, ‘natural properties’ should be read as ‘natural properties minus spatiotemporal properties.’ I relegate this point to a note because it plays no role in the arguments I advance.
It might be suggested because non-naturalistic moral realism does not provide a principled explanation for the falsity of (EI) the theory entails (EI). But, that cannot be right; evolutionary theory (for example) does not provide a principled explanation for the falsity of (EI), but it hardly follows that evolutionary theory entails that (EI) is true.
Harrison distinguishes trivial and nontrivial versions of what he calls ‘the local moral supervenience thesis’ (2015, 115–6); this distinction is irrelevant to the points I make, so I do not discuss it.
Similarly, consider a Christian version of non-naturalistic moral realism according to which the arrangement of non-natural moral properties is under the control of an omnipotent God; such a theory seems as susceptible to Objection A as perfect being command theory is. Of course, the version of divine command theory most commonly discussed in the literature includes the existence of a perfect God, whereas the most commonly discussed version of non-naturalistic moral realism does not, so there is no need to appeal to a double-standard to explain philosophers’ differing assessments of how serious Euthyphro problems are for divine command theory and non-naturalistic moral realism.
Harrison writes: ‘Zangwill attempts to deal with non-naturalism’s Euthyphro by denying that the global moral supervenience thesis needs to be explained. If that is a viable way of dealing with the problem it is equally open to the divine command theorist to refuse to explain things’ (2015, 113). This claim is mistaken: establishing that supervenience needs no explanation is sufficient to address the worry that a given theory fails to explain the truth of supervenience but is not sufficient to address the worry that a given theory is inconsistent with supervenience.
I take it that one of Harrison’s goals is to make the case that something like strange powerful creature command theory should receive more attention from philosophers. Indeed, Harrison could accept my contention that the parity thesis does not hold for perfect being command theory but may hold for strange creature command theory and offer it as one more reason to reject perfect being command theory in favor of strange powerful creature command theory. Fair enough, my point here is simply that Harrison’s claim about the existence of a double-standard is unwarranted.
To put my point a bit more technically, the horrendous deeds worry is about whether the wrongness of Hitler’s deeds individually supervenes on the natural properties of those deeds whereas rather than whether moral properties globally supervene upon natural properties. For a helpful discussion of the distinction between individual and global supervenience, see McLaughlin and Bennett (2014).
What justifies this claim is an intuition in the actual world that the act in question is wrong in all possible worlds.
Harrison’s reasoning also fails to establish the weaker claim that the torture is wrong in every possible world that is naturalistically identical with the nearest world in which the torture occurs, since all such worlds will also be devoid of intuitions that the torture is wrong.
More precisely (and pedantically), at least sometimes, that an action instantiates the moral properties that it does is completely caused by the fact that the action instantiates the natural properties that it does.
For discussion of this idea, see Wielenberg (2014, 18-21).
Harrison advances some alleged advantages of divine command theories in Sect. 6 of his paper; a proper discussion of his claims there is outside the scope of the present paper. However, for some relevant discussion from the non-naturalistic moral realist camp, see Shafer-Landau (2003, 203–9).
I am grateful to two anonymous referees for Sophia for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Wielenberg, E.J. Euthyphro and Moral Realism: A Reply to Harrison. SOPHIA 55, 437–449 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-016-0545-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-016-0545-x