William Lane Craig unmasked.

[Angrboda]

I think Craig is on point here.  His opponent is drawing value judgements about harming others out of thin air, without really justifying why they are moral values.  He's engaged in a classic example of Moore's naturalistic fallacy.  So ultimately, I think the point goes to Craig.


“If everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Nah that's conflating moral ontology with moral epistemology.

Could you explain further? It seems to me that this is what Shelly is doing.

[Jehanne]

Nah that's conflating moral ontology with moral epistemology.

Could you explain further?  It seems to me that this is what Shelly is doing.

It's kind of like asking why 2 + 2 = 4 and not some other number.  Did God "cause" 2 + 2 to equal 4, and if so, could God have caused 2 + 2 to equal some number other than 4, say, 5 or 6 or 1026?  Perhaps instead of saying that such brute facts need a god to cause them to be true, why not just accept the existence of brute facts, even in the area of morality?

[Angrboda]

Morality is made up of should's and shouldn't's. These do not appear to be natural categories as there are no such norms in nature. This is why most moral arguments devolve to other moral values. Many of these are in dispute. Is abortion moral? It's less than clear that there is a brute fact of the matter. If Shelly is simply asserting that they are brute facts without any explanation, then so be it. But I don't think he affirmatively endorses that opinion. Nor do I find his presentation in this video clip to be much of an argument for accepting the position. What I got from this video was that he adequately explains why morals do not apply to lions, but does a less than adequate job of explaining why morals should apply to humans. That's another should that seems unexplained. Is it just a brute fact that we 'should' be moral, whatever that means?

I think there is plenty of evidence that our morals have something to do with our evolution as animals. Perhaps we are the only social animal capable of reflecting on our behavior, but we don't seem the only animal capable of acting on moral impulses. The specifics of our evolution as a social species seems to have everything to do with the morals we adopt with respect to our species. Would an animal that has thousands of offspring have the same morals regarding abortion as ours does? I doubt it. This seems to indicate that our morals are likely a contingent fact of our existence, and not mere brute facts. If our morals are contingent, then they depend on something; they have an explanation. I'm just not convinced that the tingling in our gut is as deep as we can go toward understanding the origin of morals.

[Jehanne]

Morality is made up of should's and shouldn't's.  These do not appear to be natural categories as there are no such norms in nature.  This is why most moral arguments devolve to other moral values.  Many of these are in dispute.  Is abortion moral?  It's less than clear that there is a brute fact of the matter.  If Shelly is simply asserting that they are brute facts without any explanation, then so be it.  But I don't think he affirmatively endorses that opinion.  Nor do I find his presentation in this video clip to be much of an argument for accepting the position.  What I got from this video was that he adequately explains why morals do not apply to lions, but does a less than adequate job of explaining why morals should apply to humans.  That's another should that seems unexplained.  Is it just a brute fact that we 'should' be moral, whatever that means?  

I think there is plenty of evidence that our morals have something to do with our evolution as animals.  Perhaps we are the only social animal capable of reflecting on our behavior, but we don't seem the only animal capable of acting on moral impulses.  The specifics of our evolution as a social species seems to have everything to do with the morals we adopt with respect to our species.  Would an animal that has thousands of offspring have the same morals regarding abortion as ours does?  I doubt it.  This seems to indicate that our morals are likely a contingent fact of our existence, and not mere brute facts.  If our morals are contingent, then they depend on something; they have an explanation.  I'm just not convinced that the tingling in our gut is as deep as we can go toward understanding the origin of morals.

Morality certainly exists among other animals.  If you have ever seen the movie (now parodied a half-a-dozen times) The March of the Penguins, there is a scene where a female penguin loses her chick, and then out of despair, tries to take another chick from another mother, but the collective does not allow her to do so.  It is doubtful that the "Penguin God" imposed such a moral code on the penguins, and instead, it is likely an evolutionary adaptation that aides their survival, such as their huddling together during the frigid Antarctic winters, taking turns at the center and edges so as not to freeze to death.

[Edwardo Piet]

Moral epistemology is regarding the fact that once a definition of morality is made... i.e. harming is bad, helping is good, then there may be objective answers in principle to that even if never in practice.

Moral ontology is regarding an absolute morality with the existence of absolute morals that require a foundaton. Craig kept asking for that but Shelly was arguing for an objective morality with an epistemic argument, not an absolutist one with an ontological argument.

All the debate was about was if atheists can be moral too. Nowhere was moral ontology specified or required. So Shelly didn't have to argue for that. Craig was asking specifically for absolutist moral ontology which was a red herring to the debate in question.

Absolute morality and the existence of absolute moral values and moral ontology is utter bullshit. Can there be objective answers to a version of morality in principle if not in practice once a definition has been specified (like harm=bad help=good?). Yes in an epistemic way. The same way that there can be objective answers in principle to what is healthy or unhealthy once we establish a definition of health. Doesn't mean there's ontological values existing absolutely in the universe that provide foundation for what's absolutely healthy or unhealthy. Yes we do need a definition first, and then objective answers in principle are given.

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Morality is made up of should's and shouldn't's.  These do not appear to be natural categories as there are no such norms in nature. [...]

That's moral ontology again. No morals or values have to "exist" in nature or anywhere else. Moral epistemology isn't about existence. It's about knowing that there are objective answers in principle to morality once a definition is given. Objective =/= absolute. It's the same way that there are objective answers in principle to health once the definition is given. There aren't any values about what's healthy or healthy that "exist" in nature either. There's no foundation to look for. Health is arbitrary but science works by practice once a model is given. We can't draw the line between what is exactly healthy or unhealthy either but that doesn't mean there isn't answers in principle to what we mean by "healthy" or "unhealthy" and whether there are answers in practice is of course irrelevant. An objective morality doesn't have to be universal either. There just has to be objective right and wrong answers in principle to a definition of morality like there is with health. No ontology or values that "exist" required. No foundation required besides semantic one. It's like Shelly said... there are objective reasons that something is harmful or helpful to us. He doesn't have to prove why "harm" = immoral or why "help"= moral..... that would be arguing for moral ontology which is what Craig is obsessed with but which isn't actually necessary for the subject of the debate. It's a red herring. There seems to be this whole thing that morality is only TRULY objective if it's an absolute morality grounded in moral ontology. Something which isn't possible and is a huge misnomer and rather an example of the NTS fallacy even perhaps. There's no reason whatsoever that morality is only objective if we're talking moral ontology. Science isn't even objective that way.

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 [...]Is it just a brute fact that we 'should' be moral, whatever that means?  
[...]

Well of course because morality is by definition what we should do. Saying that we should be moral is the same as saying that we should do whatever we should do.

So what is morality.

Shelly offers the commonsensical idea that what's moral is what helps and what's immoral is what harms. Does he have to absolutetly prove why that specific definition is the right one? No because he doesn't have to argue for absolutist moral ontology or the "existence" of moral values (whatever that would even mean) to address the question of the debate. That's a red herring. Objective answers in principle to a definition of morality is still objective answers in principle to that definition. There are clear answers in principle to what is harmful and what is helpful regardless of if there are in practice. Again, even science doesn't have an absolutist ontological foundation. Can we prove that health should mean being well as opposed to sick and shouldn't instead mean something completely different? No we can't... people pick a definition of what something means and then there can be objective answers in principle to that. Ontology and absolutist foundations are just silly (unless it's something like the logical absolutes because of course it's absolutely true that a thing is whatever that thing is whether we're there to conceptualize that or not). There is no reason to expect special pleading for morality. There is nothing magical about the word "should" the so-called is-ought gap is bullshit. Once a definition of what morality means or what "should" and "shouldn't" are about then that can go from prescriptive to descriptive (and why that definition should be selected isn't required because I'm talking moral epistemology here, not moral ontology). To ask "why should we be moral?" makes no sense at all. It's like asking "Why should we do what we should do?" errrrmmmm because we should. Ya know... tautology?

[robvalue]

People often get confused because "morality" can be approached from so many different angles.

It can be used as a scientific way of studying behavior. Essentially, that's what it is, it's explaining why we act the way we do. This is a study of a species as a whole.

Or we can look at the societal norms of a culture.

Or we can look at the moral values held by an individual, and their personal struggle with developing them.

These are all very different, and talking about them all at once is bound to cause confusion. But the "morality" of an action is simply a value judgement, and you need a sentient being to make such a judgement. We could agree ways of making the judgement, like we do with length and such, but there would be no point as such uniformity doesn't have the same practicality.

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And yeah, while I think WLC is correct to call out this idea of immorality = intentional harm being objective, I find his own position even more absurd.

For one thing, "harm" is an incredibly ill-defined concept anyway, and so the interpretation is still totally subjective.

[Angrboda]

Moral ontology is regarding an absolute morality with the existence of absolute morals that require a foundaton. Craig kept asking for that but Shelly was arguing for an objective morality with an epistemic argument, not an absolutist one with an ontological argument.

This seems a somewhat artificial split. Objective morals may need a foundation, but I don't think there is anything that requires them to be absolute. You seem to be arguing for a version of morals in which we choose what things are moral (doing good) and immoral (doing harm), and the values flow from that choice. That is a moral foundation as much as Craig's positing God as the source of morals is a foundation. It is argued by Craig that this is an insufficient ground for morals because it is essentially arbitrary.

All the debate was about was if atheists can be moral too. Nowhere was moral ontology specified or required. So Shelly didn't have to argue for that. Craig was asking specifically for absolutist moral ontology which was a red herring to the debate in question.

I didn't see the whole debate, just that segment which you posted. In that segment, providing an adequate ontology of morals was the key question.

Absolute morality and the existence of absolute moral values and moral ontology is utter bullshit. Can there be objective answers to a version of morality in principle if not in practice once a definition has been specified (like harm=bad help=good?). Yes in an epistemic way. The same way that there can be objective answers in principle to what is healthy or unhealthy once we establish a definition of health. Doesn't mean there's ontological values existing absolutely in the universe that provide foundation for what's absolutely healthy or unhealthy. Yes we do need a definition first, and then objective answers in principle are given.

The reason we value health is because it has instrumental utility in delivering things that we desire (long life, freedom from pain and loss). But there does not appear to be a similar explanation for morals. Nor do definitions like causing harm seem to account for morals. If you have high cholesterol and I cook you a fatty dish, I may be doing harm to your health by serving it to you, but noone would say that I am being immoral. Regardless, we have intuitions about moral truths that feel differently from thing that are merely of instrumental value. It seems that when something is wrong, it is inherently wrong, and it invokes in us a feeling like no other. This does not seem to fit with arguing that morals are a result of choosing proscriptive definitions. Take the example by Haidt wherein a brother and sister decide to have sex together while they are on vacation. Nobody but them will ever know, they use two forms of birth control, and despite enjoying the experience decide never to do it again. Many people would consider what they did wrong, but more important than the question of whether they're right or not is the point that their feeling of "wrongness" is different from that which say might accompany doing something unhealthy.

Regardless, this doesn't seem to be a question of ontology versus epistemology. Shelly is arguing that we would be capable of recognizing moral truths because of our ability to reflect. That certainly doesn't answer the what question (ontology), but it really doesn't justify morality from an epistemic perspective. Yes, it has to do with epistemology, but it's effectively saying that we have morals because we reflect on our behavior, yet morals seem to come to us unbidden as intuitions. His epistemological argument seems simply wrong. Either way, you can't answer the what question with an epistemological how. It just doesn't address the question. The fact that we "just are" able to figure out morals from definitions is not much of an answer, epistemological or otherwise.

Morality is made up of should's and shouldn't's.  These do not appear to be natural categories as there are no such norms in nature. [...]

That's moral ontology again. No morals or values have to "exist" in nature or anywhere else. Moral epistemology isn't about existence. It's about knowing that there are objective answers in principle to morality once a definition is given. Objective =/= absolute. It's the same way that there are objective answers in principle to health once the definition is given. There aren't any values about what's healthy or healthy that "exist" in nature either. There's no foundation to look for. Health is arbitrary but science works by practice once a model is given. We can't draw the line between what is exactly healthy or unhealthy either but that doesn't mean there isn't answers in principle to what we mean by "healthy" or "unhealthy" and whether there are answers in practice is of course irrelevant. An objective morality doesn't have to be universal either. There just has to be objective right and wrong answers in principle to a definition of morality like there is with health. No ontology or values that "exist" required. No foundation required besides semantic one. It's like Shelly said... there are objective reasons that something is harmful or helpful to us.

This seems more a question of figuring out instrumental utilities, pragmatics, than it does epistemology. I think that's a fancy term for what is essentially determining the a priori meaning of your definitions. If you include that in epistemology, so be it.

He doesn't have to prove why "harm" = immoral or why "help"= moral..... that would be arguing for moral ontology which is what Craig is obsessed with but which isn't actually necessary for the subject of the debate. It's a red herring. There seems to be this whole thing that morality is only TRULY objective if it's an absolute morality grounded in moral ontology. Something which isn't possible and is a huge misnomer and rather an example of the NTS fallacy even perhaps.

The subject of the debate is, "Is God Necessary For Morality?" While that can be answered epistemologically, it invites the ontological question, especially if there is no answer given to the ontological question. Your objection appears to be that you don't believe there is an objective foundation for morality beyond the one you have given. That's a matter of opinion which in itself doesn't determine whether the ontological question itself is relevant or not. According to Wikipedia, the majority of philosophers are moral realists and thus would likely differ on that subject; that makes the question relevant.

There's no reason whatsoever that morality is only objective if we're talking moral ontology. Science isn't even objective that way.

Ontology deals with the question of whether something is objective. You've given an answer for morals that offers a purely chosen foundation for morals. That by definition is a subjective morality; that is its ontology. You don't get around the ontological question just by postulating a subjective morality. You seem to want to skip that step as if the ontology of your ethics had no effect on its practical identity with human morals. Human morals appear objective in a way that is more substantial than that they are just an instrumental utility.

So what is morality.

Shelly offers the commonsensical idea that what's moral is what helps and what's immoral is what harms. Does he have to absolutetly prove why that specific definition is the right one? No because he doesn't have to argue for absolutist moral ontology or the "existence" of moral values (whatever that would even mean) to address the question of the debate. That's a red herring. Objective answers in principle to a definition of morality is still objective answers in principle to that definition.[1] There are clear answers in principle to what is harmful and what is helpful regardless of if there are in practice. Again, even science doesn't have an absolutist ontological foundation. Can we prove that health should mean being well as opposed to sick and shouldn't instead mean something completely different? No we can't... people pick a definition of what something means and then there can be objective answers in principle to that. Ontology and absolutist foundations are just silly (unless it's something like the logical absolutes because of course it's absolutely true that a thing is whatever that thing is whether we're there to conceptualize that or not).[2] There is no reason to expect special pleading for morality. There is nothing magical about the word "should" the so-called is-ought gap is bullshit.[3] Once a definition of what morality means or what "should" and "shouldn't" are about then that can go from prescriptive to descriptive (and why that definition should be selected isn't required because I'm talking moral epistemology here, not moral ontology). To ask "why should we be moral?" makes no sense at all. It's like asking "Why should we do what we should do?" errrrmmmm because we should. Ya know... tautology? [4]

1. That doesn't change the fact that, ontologically speaking, you have erected a subjective morality and that difference matters. For one, for the obvious fact that we don't "feel" that morals are a matter of subjective whim. Subjective morality guts the sense of morals that we have. Moreover, there appears to be largescale agreement on basic moral values (e.g. Haidt); this seems nonsensical if "do no harm" is just an arbitrary choice.

2. Not everybody agrees with you on this point for reasons already in evidence. Subjective morals don't appear to fit our intuitions about morals.

3. I don't think that's special pleading. Regardless, I don't think you've established that the is-ought gap is bullshit. We can commit to certain values such as do no harm if we choose, but that doesn't explain why we would choose those specific values as a moral foundation. You don't get around the fact that a choice is made by simply saying you're talking about something else now. Perhaps you could say more about why you think the is-ought gap is bullshit.

4. Your answer here appears to suggest that you have no answer to the question. Typically, we 'should' do things if there is instrumental utility in doing them toward things we value. But moral values appear to be a special case in which instrumental utility does not apply. For example, cheaters in a game appear to be "overpunished" for the wrongs they do. There's such a thing as moral outrage. This doesn't fit with a definition of morals that hinges on instrumental utility. Instrumental utility doesn't go near far enough in answering why we have moral should's.

[Jehanne]

We're back to the Euthyphro dilemma.  Let's say, for argument's sake, that Craig's God exists, a timeless, changeless, perfect Being; why would such a God be a (or, the) foundation for morality?  Is it because God commands something that makes it good, or is it because it is good because He commands it?

[ApeNotKillApe]

[Cyberman]

(Incidentally, this is the series of vids that opened me up to the wonderful "God On Trial".)