Thursday, January 11, 2018
Morality and the causal structure of the world
Morality needs to connect with the causal structure of the world. If morality means anything at all, it has to be a reason why we do some of the things we do. "I decided I couldn't cheat on my taxes. It would be wrong." "She was so beautiful, and so seductive, but I remembered my marriage and realized it would be wrong to sleep with her." "I can't keep working at this car dealership. I have to keep lying to customers, and it's just wrong." This is one problem I have with Wielenberg's Robust Ethics, morality is causally inert for him. But it can't be. Yet, at least naturalistic atheism believes in a causally closed world of physical and only physical causes. Morality, even if it exists, doesn't do anything. If you believe in automonous ethics, we need an account of how that realm can have something to do with the actual occurrence of moral conduct. Christian theism has a way of doing that. Naturalism does not.
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Yet, at least naturalistic atheism believes in a causally closed world of physical and only physical causes. Morality, even if it exists, doesn't do anything.
That's the equivalent of saying mathematics doesn't do anything, science doesn't do anything, or the US Navy doesn't do anything, because there is no precise list of physical phenomena we identify as morality, mathematics, science, or the US Navy. I find it difficult to believe there is a serious position that morality does not exist and science does, and I doubt that there is a *serious* position that does not account for the notion of physical activities being put together into something called "science" even though that theory may deny the existence of the abstract object itself. Similarly, such a theory will account for the putting together of various physical activities into some grouping called "moral behaviors", even if denying the existence of the abstract category.
I donate a portion of my income every year to Planned Parenthood because it is the morally right thing to do.
Clearly, the only possible explanation for my behavior is the objective truth of Planned Patenthood's moral superiority...
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