Cumulative Case
18
Nontheistic Moral Platonism
Wielenberg’s Godless Normative Realism
Erik Wielenberg’s nontheistic account is one of several secular efforts to underwrite strong moral realism in a nonnatural way without appealing to theism.1 Obviously we cannot discuss any and every secular ethicist, so why choose Wielenberg? One important reason is that he, unlike many secular ethicists, interacts extensively with Christian thinkers. We respect his work and think it worthy of serious consideration. A great many other secular ethicists settle for shortcuts, appealing to dogmatism or superficial analyses. Wielenberg is not the only exception, of course—David Enoch, Russ Shafer-Landau, and others come to mind—but he is definitely one of the most thoughtful secular metaethicists whose work demonstrates that he takes these questions with great seriousness. If we have time to discuss only one major thinker from the ranks of secular ethicists, he’s as good a choice as any.
Wielenberg’s views are already pretty well known, so we will offer just a brief recap of their salient features and then delve into a comparative analysis of his approach and the theistic analysis to which we’re drawn. His central aim in his excellent book Robust Ethics is to defend the plausibility of a robust brand of moral realism without appealing to God or any exotic cognitive faculties. As its name suggests, his godless normative realism (GNR) involves a threefold claim. First, it is a moral realism; that is to say, it affirms the objectivity of moral values and duties. Second, it is a godless realism, not in the sense of being atheistic but in the sense that God plays no role in the theory. Third, it is a version of normative ethics—that is to say, it seeks to ground moral duties in our having moral reasons to do things.
We will now use Wielenberg as a paradigmatic example of nontheistic Platonism and contrast it with a theistic metaethic. At this point we set aside our many points of agreement and resonance with Wielenberg and focus instead on ways that we think a theistic approach is the stronger alternative. We identify six reasons for thinking so. Platonism is a fascinating account of strong ethical realism, but it’s unclear that it actually accomplishes much if any work of explaining. Often it seems more like an elaborate construction, which is what George Mavrodes was driving at when he wrote that Platonism, despite its virtues, doesn’t really explain anything.2 Moreover, the account it proposes seems subject, on reflection, to numerous criticisms. What we intend to do here is contrast Platonism with theism in an effort to see which, of these two options, is the more hopeful possibility. We aim to identify six ways in which theism seems to provide the better explanation less susceptible to criticism, the collective force of which we find to be quite powerful and persuasive.3
Personalist Dimensions
First, the nature of morality is ineliminably personalist, a tenacious feature of morality that makes theism better adapted to serve as its foundation than Platonism. Platonism is essentially impersonal, involving brute facts that exist apart from persons or even any consciousness to apprehend them. Theism, in contrast, is personal to the core. There is perhaps no more fundamental point of divergence between (secular) Platonism and theism than the fact that Platonism is ultimately impersonal, whereas theism is essentially personal. This radical difference puts Platonism, right from the start, in a precarious position with respect to explaining morality. By its nature, morality is person-related.
Many atheistic ethicists reject wholesale the notion that objective moral values and duties are anchored in some transcendent ground, but Wielenberg’s robust moral realism is an exception. It affirms that objective moral values and duties do exist and are not dependent on evolution or human opinion, but he insists that they are not grounded in God. Indeed, moral values have no further foundation. They just exist.
But what does it mean to say, for example, that the moral value Justice just exists? It’s hard to know what to make of this. It is clear what is meant when it is said that a person is just; but it is bewildering when it is said that, in the absence of any people, Justice itself exists. Moral values seem to exist as properties of persons, not as mere abstractions—or at any rate, it is hard to know what it is for a moral value to exist as a mere abstraction. Nontheistic moral Platonists seem to lack any adequate foundation in reality for moral values but rather leave them floating in an unintelligible way.
Or consider propositions, which, if they exist, as Platonists affirm, are abstract objects that are by their nature intentional. That is, they are about something if that something can be clearly denoted. Propositions about ethics are about, say, moral rights and wrongs. How do such propositions exhibit intentionality apart from minds? It seems absurd to say that mind-correlative entities, ones that have mental characteristics, exist independently of minds. Even more far-fetched is the notion that there are intrinsically impersonal entities that are about and apply to persons.4 We submit that the failure of Platonism as a moral theory owes in no small part to its impersonal dimension, in contrast to the thoroughly personalist nature of theism, which can justify the existence of ethical realism.
Theism, at least the perfect-being theology characteristic of Robert Adams’s theistic Platonism, entails the personhood of God. A perfect, maximally great being, a loving and creative personal God, is, as we shall see below, an eminently worthy explanatory ultimate and, moreover, makes good sense of both the emergence of persons and God’s care for the moral and spiritual health of his creations. In patent contrast, why would an impersonal reality constituted by abstract entities care about us and be worthy of our emulation? Since personal beings to whom ethics apply are unplanned, anomalous interlopers, in a naturalistic universe, why would there be laws governing their behavior? Why would either the universe or the collection of abstract objects care about such things?5
We have indeed argued in this book that “God is good” is true in the sense of both identity and predication. God is the best candidate for the good itself; it makes most sense to attribute the property of goodness to persons. Recall that this was Sorley’s point: The explanatory ultimate is plausibly personal. Once more the personalist nature of theism enables us to say that ultimate reality—God, not mere abstracta—is actually itself good, indeed, maximally so. God is, to our thinking, the good itself. We stand in the long tradition according to which God himself is the ultimate good and thus the perfect archetype of the good. The ultimate good is not an abstract principle that is itself neither good nor capable of love but rather Someone who is personal through and through, who attracts us to himself, deigns to pursue us, and extends his overtures of love to us all.
Explanatory Depth
One important reason adduced by some philosophers for thinking that the moral argument today is flagging is the persuasive force of a claim that Wielenberg makes about brute facts. While admitting that his theory makes appeal to such facts, he insists that theists are in the same proverbial boat, needing to make appeal to brute facts of their own. Moreover, these commentators say, since Wielenberg is as entitled to his own brute facts as theists are to theirs, the explanatory edge that theism might be thought to hold evaporates.
Why does Wielenberg claim that Platonism and theism are on a par or in the same epistemic boat in at least this respect that both make appeal to brute facts? He points out that Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne affirm that God’s existence is a brute fact, making, he thinks, their theism and his own moral realism equally and ultimately brute. Here is how Wielenberg puts it: “On both types of views [theistic and atheistic], the bottom floor of objective morality rests ultimately on nothing.”6 On his view, the reasons that reality is committed to morality derive from the brute necessity attaching to certain Platonic moral propositions. But the persuasiveness of this claim is diminished once we delve into questions regarding explanatory depth and explanatory ultimates.
We share a deep-seated conviction that explanatory depth is a theoretical virtue in ethics, just as it is in physics or mathematics.7 A theory that provides an explanation or grounding of ethical principles is superior to one that adopts a “shopping list” approach, whereby one simply helps oneself to the principles one needs without any attempt at explanation. Our claim is precisely that theism has the explanatory resources that atheism lacks to account for the objectivity of moral values and duties. Here we will address the comparative explanatory adequacy of Platonism and theism regarding objective moral values; later we’ll address their comparative explanatory adequacy regarding objective moral duties under the heading “Moral Authority.”
“One of the things we want our moral theory to help us to understand,” Kagan says, “is how there can even be a moral realm, and what sort of objective status it has.”8 One of the features of godless normative realism that makes it so challenging and interesting is that it seems to take this need for explanation very seriously. Platonism is a worthy competitor to theism in providing a metaphysical grounding for the objectivity of moral values.
In the opening section of his book Robust Ethics, titled “Metaphysics of Morals,” Wielenberg espouses a robust moral Platonism as the metaphysical foundation for his ethical theory.9 His view is akin to mathematical Platonism, which holds that in addition to the world of concrete objects, there exists a transcendent realm of immaterial, causally effete, abstract objects, like numbers, sets, and other mathematical entities. Most of us think that such entities have at most a sort of conceptual reality, but for the Platonist these objects are objectively real. Wielenberg holds that moral values are similarly abstract objects of some sort existing independently of human beings.10 When the right physical situations occur in the world, these abstract objects supervene on the situations. For example, the abstract object goodness supervenes on two persons’ loving each other, so that their loving each other is objectively good.
Platonism is, however, a metaphysical view that is so extravagant that it makes theism—which itself involves hefty metaphysical commitments!—look modest by comparison. The prominent metaphysician Peter van Inwagen explains,
The Platonist must think of objects, of what there is, as falling into two exclusive and exhaustive categories, the abstract and the concrete. If x falls into one of these categories and y into the other, then no two things could be more different than x and y. . . . The differences between God and this pen pale into insignificance when they are compared with the differences between this pen and the number 4; indeed, the number seems no more like the pen than like God. The difference between any abstract object and any concrete object would seem to be the maximum difference any two objects could display.11
Given this strange bifurcation of reality into these two causally unconnected domains, muses van Inwagen, it would be much more credible to suppose that one of the categories is empty. But concrete objects are indisputably real and well understood, in contrast to abstract objects. So, van Inwagen maintains, the presumption should be that abstract objects do not exist. Nominalism of some sort is thus the default position. Indeed, van Inwagen believes that “one should not believe in abstract objects unless one feels rationally compelled by some weighty consideration or argument. . . . A philosopher should wish not to be a Platonist if it’s rationally possible for the informed philosopher not to be a Platonist.”12
Wielenberg acknowledges that he has no rationally compelling arguments for moral Platonism, not to mention the objectivity of moral values.13 He thus cannot overcome the presumption against Platonism and, hence, against godless normative realism. The theist, by contrast, faces no such obstacle because he grounds moral values in a concrete object (namely, God) and so need not be committed to a realm of abstract objects.14 The theist thus has a more plausible explanatory ultimate.
Moreover, even given the truth of moral Platonism, GNR faces a number of formidable objections in its account of the objectivity of moral values that diminish its explanatory power. For example, GNR’s account of the supervenience of abstract moral properties on physical situations seems unintelligible. How is it that these abstract objects like goodness or badness come to be attached to physical situations? Wielenberg recognizes that it would be implausible to say that this just happens, as if by magic.15 Rather, he claims that the physical objects cause the abstract objects to supervene on physical situations.16 This is not ordinary supervenience; it’s been rightly called “superdupervenience”!17 Unfortunately, this superdupervenience is utterly mysterious. Ask yourself: How can a physical object somehow reach out and causally connect to a transcendent, causally isolated, abstract object?
Ironically, in order to make his claim plausible Wielenberg has to appeal to theism as an analogy to his view. He writes, “A paradigmatic example of the sort of robust causation that I have in mind is the causal relation that many theists take to hold between a state of affairs being divinely willed and the obtaining of that state of affairs. . . . Theists typically maintain that if God wills that p, this necessarily brings it about that p obtains. . . . I propose . . . to construe the making relation involved in . . . supervenience as this sort of robust causation.”18
Unfortunately, this analogy fails precisely because neither God nor the universe is an abstract object. God and the universe are concrete objects endowed with causal powers and dispositions, which can therefore be causally related to one another. But how physical objects can be causally connected to abstract objects is wholly obscure.
Moreover, we may ask, how do these physical situations “know” which abstract objects to instantiate? What if instead of picking out moral goodness, some physical situation might pick out moral badness? Indeed, what if it picks out some other abstract object like √2 to instantiate, so that two people’s loving each other has the property of being √2 instead of being good? Wielenberg says that while some moral properties are caused necessarily to supervene on certain physical situations, in other cases they are only contingently caused to supervene.19 So why does this happen?
Again, ironically, Wielenberg turns to theism in order to explicate his position. He invites us to consider the doctrine of divine conservation: “According to that doctrine, God not only brings all contingent things into existence; He also sustains or keeps them in existence for each moment that they exist. . . . There is a robust causal relation between divine willing and every contingent thing at each moment of its existence. One way of construing my proposal, then, is as a doctrine of non-moral conservation: whatever moral properties are instantiated are conserved or sustained by various underlying non-moral properties via a robust causal relation that holds between the relevant non-moral and moral properties.”20
But once again, the analogy with theism fails, for God is a personal agent who freely chooses to sustain in being certain contingent things. By contrast, Wielenberg says that his proposal “should . . . not be understood as ascribing agency to non-moral properties.”21 But without agency how can these physical situations correctly select the right moral states of affairs to instantiate? The problem is not just that the holding of this causal relation between nonmoral and moral states of affairs is, by Wielenberg’s own admission, inexplicable.22 The problem is that Wielenberg’s view, which is supposed to be consistent with scientific naturalism, imputes to physical objects causal powers that are mysterious and completely unknown to contemporary physics. It is, in fact, a sort of voodoo metaphysics.
DCT, on Adams’s (and our) view, takes God to be the paradigm of moral goodness. The theory’s explanatory ultimate is more satisfying than Wielenberg’s. First, it does not stop explanation prematurely but stops only when we have reached the metaphysically ultimate being, a self-existent, metaphysically necessary being from whom all remaining reality derives and beyond which one cannot go. Second, God’s being the greatest possible being makes God a particularly apt explanatory stopping point.
Moral Knowledge
Third is the important issue of moral knowledge. Nontheistic moral Platonism actually seems to render moral knowledge quite improbable. This is a vital concern for Wielenberg’s theory, for part 4 of his book, “Answering the Evolutionary Debunkers,” which is devoted to moral epistemology, tackles evolutionary debunking arguments against moral knowledge. Wielenberg’s account of moral knowledge seems vulnerable to Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism (EAAN).23
Plantinga argues that naturalism is self-defeating because if our cognitive faculties have evolved by naturalistic processes, they are aimed not at truth but at survival, and so they cannot be relied on to produce true beliefs. This is especially evident on Wielenberg’s physicalist anthropology, since our mental states have absolutely no effect on our brain states. Thus, the content of our beliefs is irrelevant to our survivability. But if we cannot rely on our cognitive faculties to produce true beliefs, then the belief in naturalism is itself undermined, since it has been produced by those very cognitive faculties.
We can apply Plantinga’s argument to our moral beliefs as follows:
1. The probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable, given naturalism and evolution, is low.
2. If someone believes in naturalism and evolution and sees that, therefore, the probability of his cognitive faculties’ being reliable is low, then he has a defeater for the belief that his cognitive faculties are reliable.
3. If someone has a defeater for the belief that his cognitive faculties are reliable, then he has a defeater for any belief produced by his cognitive faculties (including his moral beliefs).
4. Therefore, if someone believes in naturalism and evolution and sees that, therefore, the probability of his cognitive faculties’ being reliable is low, then he has a defeater for the reliability of his moral beliefs.
Because our moral beliefs have been produced by faculties aimed at survival, not truth, we can have no confidence that our moral beliefs are true.
As Andrew Moon explains, the crucial question in assessing Plantinga’s argument is, “Which beliefs may one use to respond to a potential defeater?”24 The naturalist might think that he can offer a defeater-defeater for Plantinga’s defeater of the reliability of the naturalist’s cognitive faculties. Unfortunately, Moon explains, the naturalist, while engaging in such reasoning, would be appealing to the very beliefs that he already has reason to distrust. In other words, any potential defeater-defeater will itself already be defeated by the original defeater of the reliability of one’s cognitive faculties. Therefore, the naturalist (if he is a physicalist) cannot block defeat by appeal to a defeater-defeater, since the naturalist’s beliefs are already defeated.
Rather, what the naturalist needs is what Plantinga calls a defeater-deflector. While a defeater-defeater assumes that some belief is a defeater that must in turn be defeated, a defeater-deflector prevents the belief from being a defeater in the first place.25 Figuring out exactly which beliefs can function as defeater-deflectors is difficult and constitutes an unresolved challenge for Wielenberg’s view that he needs to address.
The solution to EAAN is to deny not evolution but naturalism. On theism God can supervise the evolutionary process in such a way as to guarantee the fundamental reliability of our cognitive faculties. Since Wielenberg, by contrast, is committed to naturalism in the relevantly problematic sense, as well as evolution, he has a defeater for the reliability of his moral beliefs. GNR thus seems saddled with an insuperable objection with respect to moral knowledge. If Plantinga is right, then moral knowledge is impossible for the evolutionary naturalist.26
Kantian Moral Faith
Fourth, whereas Platonism doesn’t hold promise to help resolve either aspect of Kantian moral faith, theism handily addresses both of its aspects. Recall that the first aspect of such moral faith involves the performative matter of living up to the moral law. Since the moral law is beyond unaided human capacities to satisfy, the deontic principle that ought implies can still relevantly applies if divine assistance is figured into the equation. Indeed, God’s grace can account for the satisfaction of all three deep moral existential human needs of forgiveness, moral transformation, and ultimate perfection. This is where tapping into the distinctive strengths of Christian theology can greatly help, for these three moral needs correspond to the three aspects of Christian soteriology of justification, sanctification, and glorification.
The second aspect of Kantian moral faith, pertaining to the very rationality or rational stability of morality, requires for its resolution ultimate correspondence between virtue and happiness. This has been a recurring issue of discussion throughout the history of ethics. In Sidgwick’s iteration of this old tension, he cashed it out in terms of the dualism of practical reason, concluding that, on rare occasions of radical perceived disconnect between the deliverances of morality and those of self-interest, rationality equally sanctions either the altruistic path or the self-interested one. Because he thought that there is insufficient evidence for the invariable coincidence of rational self-interest and altruism, Sidgwick considered both options to be equally legitimate. But he also discerned that this represented a fundamental challenge to the ethical enterprise, a reason to think that it lacks rational stability. The only solution he imagined on offer was a theistic one—namely, a loving and providential God who would ensure that the holy are ultimately also the happy, that virtue and self-interest always ultimately cohere and coincide. But his aversion to a theistic solution dissuaded him from taking this approach, even if it did promise to salvage the full rationality of morality. Once more, though, whereas theism holds out such hope, Platonism has nothing analogous to offer on this score.
Moral Authority
Fifth, consider moral obligations robustly construed and their authority binding. Here a study of contrasts is in order between theism and Platonism.
Comparative Strengths of Theism
Consider divine command theory’s account of moral duties. This is where DCT’s explanatory superiority to Wielenberg’s theory becomes most evident. For even if every moral theory must ultimately stop explanation somewhere, such a theory may still enjoy the advantages of a more plausible explanatory ultimate and of greater explanatory depth than its rivals.
As we have seen, obligations and prohibitions are typically grounded in imperatives issued by a qualified authority. As the paradigmatic good, God certainly fills that role. For as the supreme good (summum bonum), God is eminently qualified to issue imperatives that constitute for us our moral duties. A morally and metaphysically perfect being who is personal arguably provides the best—indeed, best possible—account of authority in the ineliminably personalist arena of morality. Whatever the merits of the particular variant of deontic ethics that is DCT, this broader point seems, to us at least, eminently clear.
Moreover, explaining our moral obligations as arising from divine commands exhibits explanatory depth, even if the theist, in response to the question, “Why are we obligated to obey God’s commands?,” finally says, “Every theory must start somewhere, and my starting point is that obligations are constituted by imperatives issued by a qualified authority. As the ultimate good itself, and the greatest possible being, God is qualified to issue moral imperatives.”
Moreover, why think that the divine command theorist must stop explanation in brute facts? In answer to the question, “Why are we obligated to obey God’s commands?,” the most straightforward answer is, “Because God commands us to!” At first blush such an answer might seem to launch us on an infinite regress, for now the objector will demand, “Why are we obligated to obey God’s command to obey his commands?” This is the prior obligations objection considered earlier in the book. But there is no need to embark on such a regress. Rather, DCT’s definition of moral obligation should be understood as an impredicative definition, one that includes itself.
It might be feared that impredicative definitions lead inevitably to paradox. But, in fact, impredicative definitions are not inherently paradoxical. One has to construct the situation in a particular way in order to generate a paradox. One thinks of Russell’s illustration of the village barber who only shaves everyone who does not shave himself, which is inherently paradoxical, or the set of all sets that are not members of themselves, which brought down naive set theory. By contrast, the set of all things mentioned in this book is itself mentioned in this book. No paradox there! So suppose God has issued to us the following command: “Obey everything I command you!” If we ask why we should obey that command, the answer lies not in a further command (leading to an infinite regress) but in the command itself. The command to obey everything God has commanded us is one of the things God has commanded us to do. So if God’s commands constitute our moral obligations, we are obligated to do everything God has commanded us, including obeying his command to do everything he has commanded us.
There is nothing objectionably circular about saying that we are obligated to do everything that God commands us—including that command. Neither is such self-referentiality or impredicativity inherently paradoxical. On the contrary, such a moral theory exhibits explanatory depth as well as a plausible explanatory ultimate.
Comparative Weaknesses of Platonism
Godless normative realism’s account of objective moral duties, in stark contrast, is seriously flawed. Here are five major problems with it: First, GNR implausibly implies that if you have decisive moral reasons for doing something, you are obligated to do it. On Wielenberg’s view, moral obligations are constituted by having decisive moral reasons for doing some action. For example, if I’m trying to decide whether to steal someone’s pocketbook, I examine the moral value of alternative actions and see that I have decisive moral reasons for not stealing the pocketbook. Therefore, I ought not to steal it.
Wielenberg’s normative account seems to get the explanatory order exactly backward. It is not the case that we are obligated to do something because we have moral reasons to do it; rather, our being obligated to do something provides us a moral reason to do it. That is why on DCT our moral obligations are unconditional or categorical. Whereas on normative theories like Wielenberg’s our moral duties will depend on our interest in moral matters, on DCT God’s commands give us an unconditional obligation to do something whether we care about morality or not.
In holding that our moral obligations arise from our having decisive moral reasons to do something, GNR fails to provide unconditional moral obligations, which a robust moral theory ought to do. Your having decisive moral reasons to do an act implies at most that if you want to act morally, then that is the act you ought to do. In other words, the obligation to do the act is only conditional, not unconditional. A robust moral theory ought to provide a basis for unconditional moral obligations, which Wielenberg’s view does not. By contrast a divine command provides a categorical obligation to perform some act.
Moreover, Wielenberg’s view is incompatible with morally supererogatory acts, like sacrificing one’s life for another, for even though such an act is supremely good, it is above and beyond the call of duty. Wielenberg’s view seems to imply that we are always obligated to do the best thing, whereas in some cases we are obligated at most to do a good thing, not the best thing. Even if it were morally better, for example, for you to become a doctor rather than an engineer, you’re not morally obligated to become a doctor, for both are good moral choices.
Second, GNR subverts the objectivity of moral duties by undermining freedom of the will. Wielenberg endorses what he calls “the causal closure of the physical.”27 That implies that our mental states are causally effete. The mind has no effect on the body. The only causality is from physical brain states to mental states. Physical brain states are, in turn, caused exclusively by prior physical states. Thus, mental states are causally impotent states that just float along, as it were, on brain states. They do and effect nothing. In that case, everything we think and do is causally determined by prior physical states.28 You are an electrochemical machine, and machines have no moral obligations to do anything.
Your body is not obligated to do anything. What about your self, your mind? On Wielenberg’s view the self is just a succession of discrete mental states; there is no enduring subject that persists from one moment to another. Literally no one can be held morally accountable for prior acts. Moral praise and blame are impossible since there is no enduring moral agent. Your perception of yourself as a moral agent and your sense of moral duties and accountability are illusions of human consciousness. Thus, the objectivity of moral duties, along with moral agency and moral accountability, is undone by GNR.
Third, one of the recurring deficiencies of Plato’s theory rears its head once more: the lack of a person who can issue moral imperatives as an expression of the ultimate good. Platonism posits an objective good, all right, but lacks any basis for objective moral duties because the good is an impersonal, abstract object. Moral obligations and prohibitions arise from imperatives issued by a qualified authority. But on Platonism, there is no one to issue such imperatives.
Fourth, the nature of moral duty or obligation seems incompatible with nontheistic moral Platonism. Let us suppose for the sake of argument that moral values do exist in an atheistic world. Suppose that values like mercy, justice, love, forbearance, and the like just exist. How does that result in any moral obligations for us? Why would we have a moral duty, say, to be merciful? Who or what lays such an obligation on me? On this view moral vices such as greed, hatred, and selfishness also presumably exist as abstract objects too. Why are we obligated to align our life with one set of these abstractly existing objects rather than any other?
Fifth, it seems improbable that just that sort of creature would emerge from the blind evolutionary process who corresponds to the abstractly existing realm of moral values. This seems to be an incredible coincidence when one thinks about it. It is almost as though the moral realm knew that we were coming. As William Sorley saw, it is far more plausible to regard both the natural realm and the moral realm as under the hegemony of a divine Creator and Lawgiver than to think that these two entirely independent orders of reality just happened to mesh.
In sum, DCT, in grounding moral obligations and prohibitions in divine commands, offers a more plausible and adequate explanation of moral duties and authority than does GNR.
Human Dignity
Sixth, theism arguably provides the better account of human dignity, the sort of intrinsic value of which Immanuel Kant wrote, as distinguished from mere price. There’s an important cluster of interrelated notions here: basic human rights, intrinsic human value, human dignity, essential human equality, and the like. Earlier in the book we talked about Kant’s emphasis on the inherent dignity of each person, something that should be regarded as an unconditioned and incomparable worth that deserves our reverence. It’s widely accepted that among patristic and medieval writings, modern political texts on natural law and right, the humanism of the Renaissance, and Enlightenment ideas about basic human rights can be found a vision of the individual as reflecting the imago Dei.
Of course, such historical facts don’t establish biblical teachings about human persons being made in God’s image as the only possible account of human dignity and worth. Nor do such facts entail the truth of the doctrine, but they do establish a historical pedigree to the enduring idea that people of all stripes, throughout the world and history, possess inherent dignity and value, not a mere price. We quoted an array of thinkers who chronicled how the biblical principle of the imago Dei translated historically into salutary reforms in the political and social arena and functioned centrally in the imagination of those who advanced the cause of various humanistic agendas. We need not argue that there is no secular counterpart that is as effective at inculcating such widespread commitments to socializing reforms, but we think our secular interlocutors are hard-pressed to find one.
On occasion mention is made of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which accorded pride of place to human dignity as the foundation for such rights without any pretense of grounding them in a transcendent source or Christian anthropology. It is true, moreover, that the larger commission responsible for drafting the document was little concerned about such underlying foundations. Interestingly, though, it was different with the four key drafters. One was a member of the Greek Orthodox Church and an ardent Thomist, another a devout and learned Christian, and the other two quite knowledgeable about the Western religious traditions. All were cognizant of the historical role played by the theological vision of human beings as persons imbued with inalienable dignity by a transcendent God. But they happened to think the epistemology of the matter was clear and intuitive enough that the metaphysics need not be articulated. Even those not steeped in the undergirding theology can still apprehend and appreciate the deep and mysterious value of persons, they thought, enabling the document to appeal to those from a wide array of perspectives.
Often we think this is a wise course, and we celebrate Wielenberg’s recognition of the value of persons. This is no small agreement, and we appreciate his realist commitments on this matter and many others. We need not argue that his efforts to explain it hold no purchase, even if we wish to suggest that secular accounts seem inadequate to the task of upholding the sacredness of human beings and the inherent dignity of people, abled and disabled. Nicholas Wolterstorff argues at length that capacity-based and, more broadly, various atheistic accounts of human dignity fail to include those persons who are incapable of rational reflection or agency.29 Wolterstorff’s theistic account of human dignity makes appeal to God’s love for all human persons, which is certainly an interesting account worth careful consideration. Our favored theistic account draws on the traditional doctrine that human beings have been made in God’s image. As Robert Adams maintains, things have value insofar as they resemble God, the highest good. As God’s image is an ontological feature of all human persons, it is less tied to anything volitional and so less susceptible to Euthyphro-styled objections.30
Wielenberg does not consider human value one of the brute facts to which he makes appeal. He recognizes, rightly we think, that a deeper metaphysical story is needed to account for it, even if we all have the epistemic ability to discern its truth.31 Readers can decide for themselves whether a secular story can do the job as well as something like our having been made in God’s image, but we’re inclined to think this robust feature of a theological account provides a decided advantage explanatorily. The personalist nature of theism again seems to be of central importance; on our view, the value of personhood is found in the fact that the metaphysically, axiologically, and explanatorily ultimate Being is personal.32 We will end this section with these words from David Bentley Hart:
To look on the child whom our ancient ancestors would have seen as somehow unwholesome or as a worthless burden, and would have abandoned to fate, and to see in him or her instead a person worthy of all affection—resplendent with divine glory, ominous with an absolute demand upon our consciences, evoking our love and our reverence—is to be set free from mere elemental existence, and from those natural inclinations that pre-Christian persons took to be the very definition of reality.
And only someone profoundly ignorant of history and of native human inclinations could doubt that it is only a consequence of the revolutionary force of Christianity within our history, within the very heart of our shared nature, that any of us can experience this freedom. We deceive ourselves also, however, if we doubt how very fragile this vision of things truly is: how elusive this truth that only charity can know, how easily forgotten this mystery that only charity can penetrate.33
Cumulative Case
By way of wrapping up our discussion, we appeal to the idea of a cumulative case argument once more. What we have seen here in this final chapter is an array of considerations that individually suggest that theism has an explanatory edge over Platonism, perhaps even a significant one. Although we won’t endeavor to quantify the result, we do wish to suggest that the case for theism is stronger than merely the individual items delineated here. For in the final analysis, we can and should combine these evidential considerations into a cumulative case in favor of theism over Platonism. Their combined strength, in particular, we submit, offers principled reasons for thinking that theism can win this friendly debate. We say this while remembering, once more, the limitations in what we were able to do here and the many points of agreement we share with our Platonist interlocutors.
We have argued that theism wins over Platonism in the following six respects: (1) personalist dimensions, (2) explanatory depth, (3) moral knowledge, (4) both aspects of Kantian moral faith, (5) moral authority, and (6) human dignity. And when we add the pieces together into a cumulative argument, the strength of the case for theism over Platonism becomes yet stronger. The personal nature of theism, the suitability of God as the explanatory ultimate of morality, the power of a theistic solution to debunking concerns, the availability of divine grace to meet our deepest existential moral needs, a strong account of moral authority and responsibility, and a sturdy and time-tested grounding for the dignity and worth of human persons, basic human rights, and essential human equality collectively, to our thinking, render Anselmian theism the account preferable to atheistic moral Platonism.
1 Wielenberg’s approach, he thinks, is consistent with theism, but it’s an effort to account for strong moral realism without appeal to theism. Erik J. Wielenberg, Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism (Oxford University Press, 2014). This is a reminder that there’s precedent for this; others, like Keith Yandell, have been theists who have endorsed variants of Platonism. We tend instead toward theistic metaethics, thinking it better equipped to handle the moral data. See Keith E. Yandell, “God and Propositions,” in Beyond the Control of God? Six Views on the Problem of God and Abstract Objects (Bloomsbury, 2014), 219.
2 George Mavrodes, “Religion and the Queerness of Morality,” in Ethical Theory: Classical and Contemporary Readings, 2nd ed., ed. Louis P. Pojman (Wadsworth, 1995).
3 This means that our present goal is limited to less than a full-fledged abductive account. Having narrowed the operative options at this point to theism and Platonism, we offer several reasons to think that theism is the better alternative. A full abductive account would need to show that theism is the best option from among the full range of alternatives. Although we have hinted at such a case, space constraints preclude our laying out this full case.
4 Thanks to Steve Parrish for discussion on this score.
5 Conceptually distinct arguments are at play here, which complement one another quite well: An impersonal reality cannot exhibit intentionality, and value requires personhood.
6 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 55.
7 We resonate with the words of ethicist Shelly Kagan (The Limits of Morality [Clarendon, 1989], 13):
An adequate justification for a set of principles requires an explanation of those principles—an explanation of why exactly these goals, restrictions, and so on, should be given weight, and not others. Short of this, the principles will not be free of the taint of arbitrariness which led us to move beyond our . . . ad hoc shopping lists. . . . Unless we can offer a coherent explanation of our principles (or show that they need no further justification), we cannot consider them justified, and we may have reason to reject them. . . . This need for explanation in moral theory cannot be overemphasized.
8 Kagan, Limits of Morality, 13.
9 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 1–39.
10 “I take it that a fundamental category of existing thing is the category of states of affairs. States of affairs are necessarily existing abstract entities that obtain or fail to obtain” (Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 36; cf. 45–46). But Wielenberg often speaks of properties instead of states of affairs and sometimes speaks of states of affairs as though they were propositions (36, 46). He is not consistent in treating states of affairs (and properties) as abstract objects, since he thinks that nonmoral states of affairs cause moral states of affairs to be instantiated. He then seems to be thinking of the physical instances of abstract nonmoral states of affairs; for example, “moral rightness supervenes on truth telling because being an instance of truth telling makes actions right” (67).
11 Peter van Inwagen, “A Theory of Properties,” in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, ed. Dean Zimmerman (Clarendon, 2004), 1:110–11.
12 Van Inwagen, “Theory of Properties,” 107.
13 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 4, 36–38.
14 As Robert Adams says, “If God is the Good itself, then the Good is not an abstract object but a concrete (though not a physical) individual” (Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics [Oxford University Press, 1999], 43). If one does want to be a Platonist, it is far more plausible to be a theist, since then putative abstract objects can be seen as either created by God or as ideas in God’s mind, thus giving us a unified view of reality. See the suggestion by C. Stephen Evans, God and Moral Obligation (Oxford University Press, 2013), 154, drawing on the work of George Mavrodes.
15 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 18.
16 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 13, 16, 56.
17 A term coined by Terence Horgan, “From Supervenience to Superdupervenience: Meeting the Demands of a Material World,” Mind 102 (1993): 577.
18 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 18–19.
19 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 37–38.
20 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 20.
21 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 20.
22 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 37–38.
23 Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (Oxford University Press, 2011), 344–45.
24 Andrew Moon, “Debunking Morality: Lessons from the EAAN Literature,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98, no. 51 (2017): 208–26; “Global Debunking Arguments,” in Evolutionary Debunking Arguments: Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Mathematics, Metaphysics, and Epistemology, ed. Diego E. Machuca (Routledge, 2023), 304–32.
25 To illustrate, suppose you learn that your dinner was tainted with a certain drug that distorts the color vision of 95 percent of the people who ingest it. You would now have a defeater for the reliability of your color vision. It would be futile to appeal to your clear perception of colors of objects around you, for that perception has already been defeated. However, suppose that before dinner a scientific expert had informed you on the basis of a blood test that you are among the 5 percent who are immune to the drug. In this case the would-be defeater never becomes a defeater in the first place. It is deflected by what you already believe. The challenge for the evolutionary naturalist is to come up with some sort of deflector of the defeater of the reliability of his cognitive faculties.
26 Richard Swinburne is known for expressing skepticism about the moral argument for God. Though, by his own admission he actually thinks the epistemic variant of the moral argument does constitute a C-inductive argument for God’s existence, if only by a little. “You are right that I am sympathetic to a version of an argument from our knowledge of morality to the existence of God, but only one which by itself would add a fairly small amount to the probability of God.” Richard Swinburne in personal correspondence to David Baggett, November 25, 2023.
The bone of our contention with Swinburne about the efficacy of the other variants of the moral argument is not the necessity of certain moral truths but rather Swinburne’s tacit assumption that necessary truths cannot stand to one another in relations of explanatory priority. Why should we accept that assumption? Not only do we see no reason to think that assumption true, but it strikes us as obviously false.
For example, the axioms of Peano arithmetic are explanatorily prior to “2 + 2 = 4,” as are the axioms of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory to the theorems thereof. To give an example from metaphysics, the fact that “No event precedes itself” is necessarily true because it is necessarily true that “Temporal becoming is an objective and essential feature of time.” To give a theological example, “States of consciousness exist” is necessarily true, since “God exists” is necessarily true. That is to say, the fact that a personal, metaphysically necessary being like God exists explains why it is necessarily true that states of consciousness exist. We regard as quite implausible the suggestion that the relation of explanatory priority in such cases is symmetric. It would be inept to maintain, for example, that the reason it is necessarily true that God exists is because, necessarily, states of consciousness exist.
27 Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 15.
28 As Jaegwon Kim has shown, there would be on physicalism neither need nor room for mental states to exercise causality. See Jaegwon Kim, Mind in a Physical World (MIT Press, 1998), 37–47; Physicalism, or Something Near Enough (Princeton University Press, 2005), 13–22; Philosophy of Mind, 3rd ed. (Westview, 2011), 214–20. We’re indebted to J. P. Moreland for these references.
29 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs (Princeton University Press, 2008), 325–40.
30 This is not to suggest that Wolterstorff’s account faces insuperable objections in this regard, but here’s an example of such a criticism: Jordan Wessling, “A Dilemma for Wolterstorff’s Theistic Grounding of Human Dignity and Rights,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 76, no. 3 (2014): 277–95.
31 Wielenberg tries his hand at the task here: “Three Sources of Human Dignity,” in The Inherence of Human Dignity, ed. Angus J. L. Menuge and Barry W. Bussey (Anthem, 2021). We harbor doubts that his account using symbolism can undergird dignity for the nonabled, a discussion for another day.
32 Mark Linville, “The Moral Argument,” in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, ed. William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland (Blackwell, 2009), 391–448.
33 David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale University Press, 2009), 213–14.