Because it violates the principle of identity.
No, it doesn’t. How we treat people is not tied to the principle of identity. We can decide to treat people however we want.
The objective part of morality I see is in determining what objective results our actions will have. For example, if we drop bombs on a city it is objective true that many lives will be put at risk. However, this can’t tell us if we ought to drop bombs on a city, it can only tell us what the consequences of our actions will have. That is where the subjective part of morality comes in. The objective part of morality will tell us what the result of our actions will be while the subjective part of morality tells us what results we should aim for.
Actually, I’m pretty sure it does. If you believe X is true, you should not act as if X is not true.
Maybe it’s not exactly the identity principle, but it looks to be pretty closely related.
That’s not the principle of identity.
I think you are misrepresenting Plantinga. I seriously doubt that he believes you can make assertions about God and call those assertions science.
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Pretty sure he wouldn’t limit the definition of science to methodological naturalism.
But it’s close and it’s objective
You aren’t actually interacting with anything people are saying. What is your understanding of what he means by non-Duhemian Augustinian science and how does it relate to the scientific method we are discussing here? Plantinga said methodological naturalism was appropriate for “Duhemian science.” Can you define Duheminan science? What is a single example of a scientific theory that is not based on methodological naturalism and instead makes a philosophical judgment?
I just did… he wouldn’t limit the definition of science to methodological naturalism.
I don’t believe you understand what he meant by the quote you included, because I don’t think you can articulate what non-Duhemian science is. Prove me wrong.
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The issue is arbitrarily drawing the line at the human level and not “further up” like at the primate level or “further down” at the racial or familial level. Once again these moral systems presuppose that humans somehow have some special status in the world. Under naturalism, there is no such basis for a preference. There is an evolutionary explanation as to why we hold it (or at least many people), but nothing prescriptive that compelling us to follow it. Furthermore, there are evolutionary arguments claiming some people are born to be racist and others are born to be vegetarians due to their genetic predisposition and the “diameter” of the circle of their moral concern. Claiming someone “ought” to change their circle of moral concern needs justification. My argument is naturalism fails to offer a basis for one.
I wouldn’t like it if someone ate me for food, but I don’t have a problem eating animals (or plants). I wouldn’t like to be in a zoo but I don’t have a moral objection to primates in zoos. This idea of “wrongness” is just one of many. Now I agree with you on this and about the Golden Rule. At the same time, to claim it is “wrong” not to follow the rule often presupposes that this idea of “wrongness” is not culturally relative. Or it involves an admission we are using the word “wrong” to convince people to act a certain way that we don’t believe we have a basis or epistemic reason for (at least if naturalism is true). As a result, my issue is not the content of the Golden Rule but how we justify it ontologically and epistemically.
Most people, despite what they say, don’t actually want to live in a society where everyone is equal. They want to live a society where they are treated much better than others. This may be why people who are on the “bottom” advocate for equality and people on the top can often care less. Plenty of us are fine turning a blind eye when child laborers are making our iPhones, or migrant works are underpaid to perform jobs we don’t want to do. We like to “say” we think these things are wrong because they violate our principles, but us recognizing they are in violation of how we want the world to be does not provide an obligation to act to remedy it. This is especially true if we are not the ones actively mistreating others. As bystanders we absolve ourself from the responsibility of changing the way others are treated.
And so is tribalism, racism, xenophobia, etc. Yet we don’t behave as if their existence in reality is justification for why we should practice them. We need some kind of justification for why empathy “should” be practiced while racism "shouldn’t.” Under naturalism, all such prescriptive claims are not grounded in reality, as the positivists like Ayer claim, following Hume’s is/ought distinction.
I’ve seen a few articles that try and argue they’ve bridges this distinction (I know Harris claims he has, and I saw one the other day that makes the same claim that brought about some interesting points). I’m very interested understanding how people justify such prescriptive claims, because I have yet to see an argument demonstrating how they could exist under naturalism. There was one person (who seemed to be an atheist) who wrote an article trying to justify prescriptive claims that brought up a few points I need to think about though. Perhaps it is possible.
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“Although Duhem may have thought that religious doctrines had little to do with physical theory, he didn’t at all think the same thing about metaphysical doctrines. In fact he believed that metaphysical doctrines had often entered deeply into physical theory. Many theoretical physicists, as he saw it, took it that the principal aim of physics is to explain observable phenomena. Explanation is a slippery notion and a complex phenomenon; but here at any rate the relevant variety of explanation involves giving an account of the phenomena, the appearances, in terms of the nature or constitution of the underlying material reality.”
“Well, what’s the matter with that? The problem, says Duhem, is that if you think of physics in this way, then your estimate of the worth of a physical theory will depend upon the metaphysics you adopt. Physical theory depends upon metaphysics in such a way that someone who doesn’t accept the metaphysics involved in a given physical theory can’t accept the physical theory either.”
“The point Duhem makes is that if a physical theorist employs metaphysical assumptions and notions that are not accepted by other workers in the fields, and employs them in such a way that those who don’t accept them can’t accept his physical theory, then to that extent his work cannot be accepted by those others; and to that extent the cooperation important to science will be compromised.”
I believe this is the background Plantinga gives before we turn to the passage where he considers the role a non-Duhemian Augustinian science plays.
Something which I consider to be non-Duhemian science would be any consideration of whether space is infinitely divisible.
Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades.
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Humans are primates, so if it is based on humans it is also based on a primate species. We also recognize cultural differences in morality as well as morality as it relates to familial relationships. As humans we expect that we will have different feelings for our close relatives than we will for a stranger. That’s how we are built.
I also don’t see a problem for basing human morality on human wants and needs. We aren’t saying that human morality applies to all species. We are saying that human morality applies to humans. In fact, if morality were objective it would be really strange that it just happens to conform to the wants and needs of one species on one planet in this really large universe. Different species from this planet or another may very well have a different moral system that is based on their wants and needs.
Those animals and plants aren’t humans. At the same time, if we were to come across another sentient species we would probably innately extend to them the same protections we extend to other humans. The main reason we don’t extend those protections to other animals is that we don’t recognize the same human qualities in them that we see in each other. Even then, we do extend extra protections to other apes and primates. People might think it is ok to eat cattle, but not chimps, and this is primarily due to us seeing something of our humanity in chimps.
What do we do in real life? We discuss and debate it, between humans. Morality is something we work out between us. And yes, it is sometimes difficult to figure out.
In my opinion, this is better than the objective morality alternative. If someone claims that God told them you should act in a certain way, there is no argument. You have to obey. No matter how much your inner sense of morality says that it is wrong you must obey. To me, replacing morality with obedience is not an improvement. In fact, blind obedience is the abdication of morality.
No one said that morality is easy.
Why aren’t they grounded in reality??? Where are you getting this from???
People exist. People debate morality. People have emotions, wants, and needs. These are all part of reality.
I recently picked up “Where the conflict really lies” and have really been enjoying it, though I’m not very far. What is really interesting is he came to similar conclusions about the implications of quantum mechanics as I did when I first had to study it as an undergraduate (before I knew who Plantinga was).
I think Plantinga’s target in naturalism is the extension of methodological naturalism to metaphysical naturalism. The former is required for science and is obviously possible for Christians to do. The latter is not required to do science, is not science, and is not compatible with Christianity.
Plantinga has expressed praise for some of Dawkins work, including “The Blind Watchmaker” (though he disagrees with it). I think his main target here is the “science vs religion” debate. He does quote Dawkins but seems to take more issue with Dennett.
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The one piece missing from this description is predictions. For example, once Einstein proposed that mass warps spacetime you could make all sorts of predictions of what you should see in certain situations. One example is our Sun bending starlight around it. This prediction was confirmed, and many more since then (e.g. Hafele–Keating experiment - Wikipedia). A good explanation makes testable predictions.
This is where concepts like intelligent design fall down. ID doesn’t make strong predictions. What should the pattern of sequence conservation in exons and introns look like if ID is true, and why? What should the pattern of transition and transversion mutations look like between genomes if ID is true, and why? What pattern of shared and derived features should we see in species, and why? I have yet to see ID make any sort of predictions like these, and yet the scientific explanation (i.e. evolution) makes very strong predictions of what we should see in these cases.
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Yes, exactly, his rhetorical target is New Atheists, not Christian scientists who see the value in methodological naturalism for scientific pursuits. I don’t think he was ever saying anything close to “the definition of science should include investigating God.”
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So from this, you think Plantinga is advocating something like trying to scientifically investigate miracles?
Nice comment and well said.
Is there evidence apart from novel testable predictions?
In the hands of someone with more talent than me…