On God and Morality: The Discussion with David Enoch (Column 456)

Thank you very much!
The main points have already been made many times in the books and on the site, but the discussion with Enoch does indeed sharpen them (anyone who has delved into the arguments as they have been presented so far could understand on their own what the answers to Enoch’s claims are… perhaps except for the remark that the thin God resembles the atheistic claim, and the response to that claim.
As for the Euthyphro dilemma, in column 278 you already set out your view at length, and your attitude toward the argument from morality…

I forgot about that column. I’ll check again; maybe the next column really is unnecessary.

Does grounding moral intuition in obedience to God amount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater? For two reasons, which may really be one:
A. That simply is not the intuition we actually have. The intuition is that it is forbidden to hit, not that one must obey the Holy One, blessed be He. This is completely different from positing God in order to ground the intuition that our cognitive faculties reflect truth, because in the matter of recognizing a fact one only needs justification. But positing God as what validates morality means, in effect, that the validity is a different kind of validity—not moral validity but the validity of obedience to God—and that means the moral intuition was completely mistaken (it just happened to be right *in practice*).
B. It totally empties morality of content. If my father commands me to follow the laws of morality and I hold only one value—“obey your father”—am I then “moral” (Kantian; on your view)? Obviously not. In fact, you are claiming that at the principled level there are no moral duties at all; there is another duty, namely to obey the Holy One, blessed be He, and it just so happens that you also assume that de facto this duty yields the moral duties in practice.

[Which implies that in the next column you will deal with Euthyphro also regarding religious values and other values, from which, on your view, God permits Himself to shrug off any moral obligation. And that seemingly means that God did not Himself legislate those either in an arbitrary way.]

If I understand correctly, the difference between you and David is that you claim that in addition to moral facts, authority is required.
From here, two questions arise:
1. Why do the “moral entities” have no authority?
2. The claim that one must obey a source of authority is itself a “moral entity,” and it seems to have stronger force than God, because without it authority will not help.

I don’t understand the rabbi’s claim that authority strengthens the argument for God’s existence from morality (the example from the categorical imperative).
“Do what is true because it is true”—it’s true that most of the world does not act that way, but everyone understands that one should act in accordance with the truth, and therefore if there is an ethical fact of the categorical imperative, even if it harms no one, the fact that it is true is enough in principle; and even if I go dance tango and evade taxes, I will still understand that I am acting falsely and that there is a problem with that (essentially, even if no one is harmed).
Why does the rabbi use “authority” in order to strengthen the argument for God from morality? The facts themselves also prove that they have a source (like the number 8). I didn’t understand. What did the rabbi gain by using the categorical imperative?

With God’s help, ערב ראש חודש אדר שני פ"ב

Besides the selfish pleasure of loving spinach—eating spinach also has great moral value, for spinach gives a person health and strength with which he can rescue the oppressed from their oppressors. Thus, for example, thanks to spinach, Popeye the sailor-redeemer can save ‘Olive’ from ‘Brutus’ the bully, and therefore we should accord spinach the highest honor.

For this reason, mothers urge their children to eat spinach so that they will grow up healthy and strong, and in this there is an additional moral value to spinach: honoring one’s mother, who takes the trouble to cook and season the spinach for her children. There is also here the value of accepting parental guidance, for their mature and experienced counsel will guide the child safely in the paths of life. And listening to the mother’s voice also contains gratitude for her devotion.

The two moral foundations of accepting spinach from one’s mother—the obedience to her wisdom and life experience, and gratitude for her devotion—are what obligate a person to obey his Father in Heaven as well, both because of recognition of His supreme wisdom and because of the creature’s gratitude to his Creator and Guide. The foundation of obligation to God is morality.

And with God’s help, may bundles of spinach and their delicate taste stand us in good stead, to overcome all hindrances and distractions, and to act kindly toward our Creator beyond the letter of the law.

With the blessing of Euthyphro,
Nefishtayim HaLevi

A. I think that intuition exists no less. But even if they are equal, there is still the question: what have I gained? It seems to me that the intuition that something is binding is not sufficient in itself, because if there is no source that binds, then what is the meaning of that intuition? It is just a feeling built into us, and that’s all. There is still no validity here for the rules of morality. In other words: if there is no such thing as a principle that binds, then an intuition that some principle binds cannot stand on its own. At most it is a basis for further inquiry into why it binds, and that is how one arrives at God.
B. There is moral motivation. But binding force it has only by virtue of the command. After all, even without God you can say that I have no motivation not to murder and not to steal. I have motivation to be moral.
As for the next column, I still need to check. They reminded me that I wrote about this in an earlier column.

1. Because these are entities that are facts. A stone has no authority. One may perhaps learn something from it, but not obey it and be obligated to it.
2. See my reply above to Tirgitz.

My claim is that there is no such thing as “moral truth” without God. So there is no point talking about the duty to do the truth. See my reply to Tirgitz above.
The number 8 is not a fact unless you are a Platonist. I noted this in my remarks in the column. There I also explained why the moral imperative is different.

What is “authority”?

What is “authority”?

I didn’t understand why, in the course of the discussion, when you needed to direct a question to him, you didn’t simply ask: “What obligates your child to behave like you?” or “Why is there justification for preventing murder?” After all, everything is based on a subjective feeling. Or as he defined it, “motivation for morality.” Whoever does not have it is simply not subject to those rules, and where do I get the justification to apply them to others? Sometimes, from too much philosophy, one loses sight of the discussion… and it becomes a tool for evasion and slippery arguments.

In addition, I didn’t understand your refutations of evolutionary theory in this context. After all, it is possible that the moral feeling was created in order to anchor our moral behavior. That is its “mechanical” way of operating in our minds and causing us to act morally. Likewise, the comparison to the evil inclination is not precise, because on his view the justification for morality is not only the feeling and desire themselves, but also the understanding that this is how one ought to act. A person with an urge to hit people does not think that this is indeed how one ought to behave.

B. I am sure that you distinguish between someone who obeys morality because the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded it (a moral person), and someone who obeys morality because his beloved, dear as his own soul, asked him to or threatened him (not a moral person). Let us set motivation aside, since we are dealing with duties even without motivation, and motivation has no moral value anyway. But I still have not understood the distinction.

I misspoke. Not “asked him to or threatened him,” but rather “commanded him,” and he feels a duty (a moral duty; let us assume he believes that the Holy One, blessed be He, commands him to obey so-and-so in every matter) to obey that person.

With God’s help, ערב ראש חודש אדר שני פ"ב

Yos—warm greetings,

A normal person has moral feelings. He feels guilt and shame when he has lied (and this is physically detectable on a polygraph), and he feels guilt and shame when he has hurt someone who did him no wrong, or when he has robbed or cheated.

This is not just a “subjective feeling.” It is a sensation that exists in most people, that lying or harming another person is “yuck.” Sometimes, when one is in bad company, the feelings become dulled, but at some point the conscience begins to weigh on him.

Why diminish the healthy moral feeling we have been privileged to receive as human beings and throw it onto “evolution,” whose processes of “natural selection,” in which the strong devour the weak without batting an eye, are the very opposite of morality?

The fact that a person has moral feelings even when they do not serve his “struggle for existence” points to something exalted in man. If you like, call it the “rational soul”; if you like, call it a “divine soul.” Enoch will call it the “human image”; Abraham will call it simply the “image of God.”

Regards,
Hanoch HaAnech Feinschmecker-פלתי

How do you understand the epistemological question—how and whether to recognize God’s authority?

I didn’t understand your point. That is exactly what I asked (leaving children aside, of course).
I didn’t understand the second part at all.

How do you understand your question? Because I don’t understand it.

There is an advantage to Huckleberry Finn’s natural morality, which rests on feelings of goodness and compassion, but natural feelings can lead to imbalance. Thus Huck pities the runaway slave, but does not pity the widow who may have invested the best of her money in that slave so that someone would take care of her house and fields; and in helping the runaway slave, is he not robbing a widow?

Feelings of goodness are a good foundation for motivating moral behavior, but on top of them there must stand rational judgment, seeking and charting ways so that the benefit will not be one-sided but will bring about a state in which neither side is deprived. Thus, for example, it may indeed be right not to hand the slave over to a situation in which he will be tortured, but to ensure that in exchange the widow receives ransom money that will enable her to hire laborers to help her.

Therefore it is important to cast the system of feelings into solid rules that will balance kindness and judgment, justice and compassion. Not for nothing does the system of commandments that expresses basic human morality—the Seven Noahide Commandments—also include the commandment of “laws,” which requires society to maintain a system of laws and just judgment, in which not “each person does what is right in his own eyes.”

Regards,
Chafash

Notice a certain overlap between a convinced monotheist like Michi and a panentheist (not a pantheist, heaven forbid) like Rav Kook.

This is what Rav Kook wrote:
“The heretical tumult, so long as it is occupied with moral aims, is itself truly a quest for God. Morality and its expansion, the enhancement of the value of life, its delight and its aspirations—this itself is a quest for God more than other quests that come only in the stirrings of the heart, without practical betterment of the order of life.”

And this is Michi:
“So what am I to do with the fact that there are moral atheists? Very simple: such a person is a hidden believer (or an unconscious one), or he is inconsistent.”

The panentheist tries to show this from our immanent standpoint, and Michi takes the philosophical route.

Paragraph 2, line 4
…that will enable her to hire…

I don’t see panentheism here. It says that God is the basis for norms, not for all reality. But there is certainly a similarity. I’m honored.

First of all, it’s panentheism, which is a wonderful thing, and not pantheism (absolute heresy).
Second, it is entirely reasonable that Rav Kook of blessed memory was a panentheist. His whole outlook is completely immanent.

In this case, you are saying the same thing, each in his own way.
It’s a shame that you deny panentheism and think that people who hold it are confused and don’t understand what they’re saying (just an aside, unrelated to the discussion).

Thank you very much for this wonderful post.
I wanted to ask: on your view, how do you explain evil? That is, there are moral values—ethical facts that are embedded in us or imposed on us. This state of affairs in itself is proof of God’s existence.
So how do we explain the fact that we nevertheless also do evil?

One might perhaps argue that the very fact that evil is embedded in us, or that we are also driven to behavior that is not in accordance with the laws of morality, is proof of God’s nonexistence.
Why do we do evil at all, if the good consists of ethical facts?

Obviously the very distinction between good and evil is part of the proof, but on this point I got a little tangled up in how to explain it.

1. I wrote panentheism (just without an aleph).
2. It really is not a wonderful thing, and in my opinion it is indeed nothing but confusion. But declarations are free.
3. Even if Rav Kook was a panentheist, that does not mean the claim you quoted stemmed from his panentheism. That is exactly what I wrote (I was not dealing with the question of what he himself thought or was).
4. In my opinion, despite the similarity, we are not saying exactly the same thing. He treats this as prophecy of the person’s inner point, whereas I treat it as a philosophical position. I also do not attribute importance to such unconscious prophecy, whereas he does.

I don’t understand—if this is not a pragmatist move, then what is a pragmatist move?
You assume that there is valid morality, but that doesn’t fit with simple reason, and you ask how it can nevertheless be validated; you think through all the possible options, reject them all, and are left with a metaphysical validator!
The reasonable thing would be to abandon it once you realize that you are making a blatantly illegitimate move here.

The issue is not evil or good. The very moral category, whether evil values or good ones, proves God’s existence, because without Him nothing has validity. Even evil values have validity (as a command not to do them).
But as I explained in the column, I am not dealing here with facts. Just as it does not matter to me that there are atheists who do good, I have no difficulty whatsoever with there being believers who do evil (especially if they are not really believers). They are either sinning or mistaken. There are also people who are mistaken about facts, so does that mean those are not facts? As long as those sinners understand that they are doing evil, then they believe in God (perhaps unconsciously). Actual behavior is irrelevant to the discussion.

What is meant by an intentional factor? One with will and free choice?

I have explained this several times, and I will briefly repeat it. Someone who wants there to be valid morality (because that creates a good society), and therefore invents God to give it validity, is a pragmatist. But someone who believes that there is valid morality (not that he wants morality, but that he thinks it exists) is implicitly positing God. And that is not pragmatism at all. That is what I called in the fourth notebook (the fourth conversation in The First Being) a “theological” or “revealing” argument. It has nothing whatsoever to do with pragmatism.

https://milog.co.il/%D7%90%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%98%D7%A0%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA

I claim that a discussion that remains at the level of theoretical definitions often tends to drag on unnecessarily. Precisely descending to the resolution of actual practice shows how fundamentally absurd the other person’s claims are when one tries to discuss them on the practical level.

You supposedly refuted the theory that moral feelings developed through evolution on the grounds that evolution should have activated us mechanically and not necessarily by means of motivating feelings. But then, apparently, one could argue the same about anxieties and fears: evolution could have caused us to flee in danger mechanically, instead of activating primitive mechanisms in our brain. Besides, according to Darwinians, emotion itself is considered a mechanical part of our brain. So what sense does it make to claim, “For survival it would be enough for us to behave ‘morally’ in a mechanical way”—that itself is mechanics.

Indeed, I raise the same difficulty regarding fears as well. Does the fact that the difficulty can be broadened mean that it is not a difficulty?

So you are really asking about the whole development of the concept of “emotions” according to evolution; it definitely didn’t sound that way. In any case, what is the problem with claiming that emotions are evolution’s way of making us act—why is an automatic panicked flight when we see a dangerous animal more sensible than fear that will cause us to act in exactly the same way? (As said, on their view emotion too is considered “mechanical,” so there is no principled difference between the two scenarios.)

To Rabbi Michi, greetings and blessings,

I share Tirgitz’s intuition—namely: how is it that one encounters morality as “It is your duty to do such-and-such,” and not “It is your duty to do such-and-such because God legislated it”? I will try to conceptualize the weak point that may exist in your argument.

It may be that your analytic analysis, according to which an ethical fact is a fact like all other facts and as such is also exposed to the danger of the is-ought fallacy, is the source of the problem. For it seems to me that the whole novelty is—and to my embarrassment, I was convinced that this is what you have been claiming for two decades—that the ethical fact includes within itself the normative command as well. That is, when I use my “mind’s eye” and encounter an “ethical fact,” what I grasp and recognize is: “It is your duty to do such-and-such,” and the question “But what obligates me to obey this ethical fact?” is senseless, because that is the very essence of that ethical fact. The “ethical fact” is a wondrous creature, a “normative existent” that both “exists” and “obligates” in one breath. Consequently, there is no need to justify or give validity to that moral law.

[I would add that perhaps in this sense we should distinguish between different kinds of “ideal seeing,” for when I look with my mind’s eye and see the Idea of “the Jew” in its pure sense, or the Idea of “democracy” in its pure sense, this is not like the ideal seeing of “You shall not murder” or “You shall not steal.” As stated, there are abstract entities, and there are abstract normative entities. Etc.]

Do you find any merit in this thought?

More power to you for the learned discussion with your disputant—may there be many more.

Indeed. There is no problem making that claim, but it is itself a claim that requires corroboration or justification. One can invent a great many ways to arrive at such behavior; indeed, one hardly needs “ways” at all—just alter the brain so that it produces them.
But as I explained, the whole discussion is not important, because even if the evolutionary explanation were correct, it would not supply validity to moral principles but only explain behavior.

I agree, and I have indeed written this in the past as well. And still, the understanding that a moral value is also binding (prescriptive and not descriptive) leads to obligation. And still, that obligation is conditional on the hidden assumption that there is a God who gives all this validity. The existence of prescriptive ethical facts is also not enough on its own. Their very prescriptivity is based on divine legislation.

[By the way, from what I wrote above it sounded as though I was saying that there is an intuition that morality is binding, but no intuition that one must obey the Holy One, blessed be He (and to that I was answered at the beginning of the reply that both exist). In truth there is no point parsing my words, and it makes no practical difference, but I did not mean that at all. I meant only that the intuition to obey morality is not rooted in obeying the Holy One, blessed be He. Separately, there is an intuition to obey the Holy One, blessed be He, when He commands or wants something, and that is a separate matter.]

So what you are really proving here is that if one believes in morality—one believes in God.
You have not proven that there really is a God, have you?
That is, the three options you presented still remain in place, unless there is another step in the proof?

If God commands but does not know, is that also enough for you to recognize the obligation?

Correct. That is what I proved. But now each person must decide whether, in his view, there is valid morality or not. Whoever thinks that there is valid morality—that is proof for him that there is a God. This is what I called in the fourth conversation of The First Being (part 3) a “revealing argument” (or a “theological argument”). But a person may think there is no valid morality and remain an atheist.

What is it that He does not know?

What happens in the world and whether the person fulfills it or not

It seems to me that the argument between you is really an argument about the cosmological proof, or about “the principle of sufficient reason.” Someone for whom the very existence of any being does not require an explanation, because “it simply exists, that’s all,” can in principle say the same about facts, or moral entities. And just as he will say “they simply exist, that’s all,” so he will say “they simply obligate, that’s all,” because that is their essence—to obligate (there is no such thing as non-binding moral facts; if they do not obligate, then they are not moral facts).

However, someone who demands a “sufficient reason” for everything, and for every existent asks “who, or what, granted it existence,” will ask the same about ethical facts. Only here, besides the question “who granted them existence,” he must also ask “who granted them binding force” (although in ethical facts existence and force are almost the same thing, it seems to me one can make between them a kind of “Brisker distinction”). And one should note that according to the principle of sufficient reason, it is not enough that the Creator created the world sometime in the past, because the existence of some being in the past does not compel its existence in the present as well. Therefore one must say that the Creator is the cause of the world’s existence at every given moment. And in the same way, ethical facts need a Creator to give them force at every given moment.

Still, it seems to me there is a difference between saying that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the moral command and grants it force, and your formulation that the Holy One, blessed be He, is the commander by virtue of His authority. According to the first formulation, the command binds in and of itself and the Creator is “only” the explanation for this fact, whereas according to the second formulation, what binds is the Creator’s will and the moral command is only a kind of “formulation” of this will.

What do you think?

I don’t see the connection. If He commands, then apparently that is the right thing to do. If He chooses not to monitor, that is His decision, and presumably He has good reasons for doing so. Perhaps there will be no reward and punishment here (though that too could exist without monitoring, via automatic mechanisms), but reward and punishment are not the essential reason to obey His commands.

I’m not sure, but it is quite similar. Except that, as you noted, in morality there is also binding force, and in that it differs from ordinary facts. Here the question is not only who created it but also who gives it binding force.
As for the question whether the existence of ethical facts is enough for them to obligate me, I think it is, so long as at their root there is a commanding or legislating factor. Without that, even if they exist in some sense, I do not see why one should act according to them.
I do not see a substantive difference between the two formulations regarding obligation by virtue of the facts after creation or the world’s continued existence after its creation. I am not even sure there is a difference between the two formulations, but in any case I see no practical difference.

Or one could assume that morality is valid by virtue of social agreement and remain an atheist.

How does one explain simply why we need to assume otherwise? That is, why do we need the starting point of ethical realism? What is difficult about the pragmatist assumption?

[For some reason, I feel that even apart from reward and punishment, if the commander whose will is at issue has absolutely no awareness of whether I violated his will or not, then it obligates me less. That is if the issue is indeed obedience to a will, and not merely discovering what “the right thing” is, since the rightness of the thing is merely a fact, etc., as written in the column.]

I do not understand. If it is given that there are “good” actions and “bad” actions, does it not necessarily follow that one should do the good actions and must not do the bad actions? Seemingly this is one and the same thing. The ethical fact that there are good and bad actions I “see” with my mind’s eye, and seemingly that is enough to obligate me, regardless of the question who created the concepts of good and bad and attached them to the various actions (just as the laws of physics affect us by virtue of their very existence, regardless of the question who created them). Of course the question “who determined or created the ethical facts” is an important question, but it is not in itself a question in ethics but in ontology (just as the question “who determined the laws of nature” is not a question in physics), and ethics has force even without it, simply because it exists.

There is no such thing as valid morality by virtue of social agreement. Morality whose foundation is agreement is not morality.
The assumption of social contract theory is that there is an obligation to obey social agreements. But that itself is a value, and the question is by virtue of what that value itself is valid (can this be demanded of someone who does not think so?).
I gave the example of the categorical imperative, and there the pragmatist approach cannot claim that this is how one ought to act.

I don’t see why, even if the issue is the command itself. The rightness of the thing is not a fact in the ordinary sense. It is “right” in the sense that this is how one ought to act, not in the factual sense.

You answered yourself. The laws of physics affect me, but in the case of ethical facts I am supposed to decide that I must obey them. Put differently: ethical facts that do not have a legislator at their base are not ethical facts. If you believe in ethical facts, you implicitly believe in a legislator.
I explained this in the column and also in my reply to Tirgitz above.

Does this assume that your entity has a will? Or that it shows us a will?
Because you distinguished this in the discussion.
For example, he used the term “personal,” and it seemed that you dodged it.

Shouldn’t the thin God be a bit chubbier?
Let us suppose there is the Bar Association guild. Is it reasonable that they would legislate something about economists?
And in any case, if there just happens to be some metaphysical entity in heaven outside the human world, does that mean one must listen to it? How is that different from an ethical fact? If three beggars on the street order things of you, is that a reason to listen to them…?

It sounds like if there is a creator, then it already starts to make sense to listen to him.
And if there is reward and punishment, then it sounds like he has teeth and thus is an excellent source of authority.
Not because of fear of punishment, but because it reveals the matter that he is a factor with authority.

Thanks

What is the question? You yourself say that I explained it in the discussion.

The question of where to make him fatter is a personal matter. I claim that for morality to have validity, there must be a transcendent factor with authority. Whence its authority? To that, each person will answer in his own way.

With God’s help, first of Rosh Chodesh Adar 5782 (the 218th yahrzeit of Immanuel Kant)

It seems that the question whether the validity of morality depends on the existence of the Creator depends on the two approaches to morality—Novardok and Slabodka. The Novardok moral approach, which emphasizes man’s insignificance, is all the more correct if “there is no ruler to the palace,” for man is after all no more than a speck of dust in the expanses of the infinite universe and his whole existence comes from a random mutation. So what has he to be proud of?

By contrast, the “greatness of man” from the school of Slabodka can be stated only if man is “the handiwork” of the Holy One, blessed be He, sent by his Creator into this world in order to elevate it. In that case, it is understandable that being the “ambassador” of the King of kings imposes on man sublime morality.

Regards,
Chur Karpas

K, why is punishment a revelation that the factor has authority? Bring that closer to my intuition.

With God’s help, first of Rosh Chodesh Adar II 5782

To T.G.—warm greetings,

God’s ability to intervene in the order of nature and subordinate it to His will indicates that He is the “master of the house” to whom the world belongs: “It is He who made us, and we are His.” Justice therefore requires that the “guests” obey the instructions of the “master of the house” who allows them to be guests in His world.

Regards,
Feivish Lipa Sosnovitzki-Dahari

And perhaps that is why Winnie-the-Pooh hung a sign on his house, “Trespassers will be punished,” for in this way it is clear to all who enter the house that he is the owner and therefore authorized to set the “rules of the game.”

If everyone answers this question personally, doesn’t that somewhat empty the discussion of content?
Doesn’t that sound like a strange form of justification?

No

This requires further study.

Do you mean that physical force is proof that he is the creator?

In any case, Rabbi Michael Abraham’s view that morality does not obligate a person unless there is an external factor (“transcendent,” in the secular tongue) is, in my humble opinion, not necessary.

Immoral behavior is not merely a “transgression” of a law, but also “sin” and “iniquity.” A person who fails by doing evil feels that he has “missed his mark” and “gone crooked,” twisted his path. It is man’s nature to yearn to be true, good, and upright, and when he twists his ways he feels “bummed out” at the missed opportunity.

The “transcendent” authority is needed when a person’s healthy nature has already been corrupted, and then he already has desire for evil. There is also a need for commanding authority regarding things whose evil is not trivial. Thus, from the plain meaning of Scripture, it seems there was no need to warn Adam not to steal and not to murder. About such things it was clear to man that “a black flag flies over them.”

The command was needed regarding eating from “the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden,” concerning which there is no natural sense of evil. On the contrary, the fruit of that tree was “a delight to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise,” and without a commanding authority man would have found nothing wrong with eating it. Such things are not apparent, and perhaps indeed are not “sin” and “iniquity”; the flaw in such eating is the “transgression” of the command, and the “crime,” the rebellion against the one who commanded.

And so too, offering the incense at the dedication of the Tabernacle was a wonderful and natural-seeming thing; the whole flaw was that it was “which He had not commanded them.” They should have waited to receive instruction from Moses and not acted on their own initiative. And as Maimonides explained, in moral matters between man and his fellow, the virtue is that a person acts this way even by his own nature, because he is “good and upright.” The virtue of overcoming one’s personal desire—“I could want to… but what can I do…”—is in matters of “between man and God,” where the virtue is to act out of divine command, to be “commanded and acting.” For the whole essence of “between man and God” is acceptance of God’s will that comes from above.

Regards,
Yaron Fish"l Ordner

Dear Yaron Fish"l,

“It is man’s nature to yearn to be true, good, and upright, and when he twists his ways—he feels ‘bummed out’ at the missed opportunity.”

I didn’t understand—how is this different from what Rabbi Michi said? This nature in which truth, goodness, and uprightness are embodied, as it were—isn’t that just another term for “entities,” for ideas, and for transcendent authority?

As stated at the end of the column, I sent the column to David Enoch and he responded to my remarks. Our discussion continues, and with his permission I am posting the exchange here.

Hi Michi and everyone.
Thanks for continuing the discussion, and also for the link.
Below are a number of substantial points that occurred to me while reading, and also following the discussion. But before that, something anecdotal: you write that ethical realism is a minority position among philosophers, but I’m really not sure that’s true, at least not among analytic philosophers. You can check the big survey that was recently published (I’m on a plane now without internet, but I can find the link later)—even *non-naturalist* realism is gaining strength. Realism in general—all the more so.

Okay, substance:

Here is a point on which I felt I had not been sufficiently clear. I do indeed disagree with you regarding the need for a source of morality, and also regarding the moral sufficiency—sometimes—of de re moral motivation. But the impression was created that the second disagreement explains the first, and here you were not sufficiently clear, I think: in my view, even de dicto moral motivation does not require any source for morality.

Here is another point I could have raised but did not. Consider, for example, the following formulation of your central point: “If a person thinks there is valid morality, he is necessarily a person who believes in God.” I think it is important to distinguish between what is part of the commitments of someone who sees morality as valid norms, and whether he thinks there is valid morality. The second question concerns people’s meta-ethical positions. That is not an interesting question—people’s meta-ethical positions are confused, of course, because they are complicated, and because not everyone gets paid to study them systematically. More interesting questions are questions about people’s implicit commitments. (Thus, for example, I think we would both agree that very many people who say they believe in relativism about morality are implicitly committed to the objectivity of morality.) But here there is something bigger—you attribute to people like Huckleberry Finn, for example, an implicit commitment to the moral law, and to people like me, for example, an implicit commitment to the existence of God. I refuse to attribute such implicit commitments in these cases. So we need to think about how one can decide disputes about which implicit commitments exist and which do not. And that is not trivial, because one cannot simply ask people (after all, these are *implicit* commitments). On the other hand, that does not mean that “anything goes,” that one can attribute any implicit commitment to anyone (certainly not merely because that would save the favorite theory of the relevant theorist). I think what is reasonable to say here is that implicit commitments should explain important things in the relevant person’s behavior (mental and non-mental). Thus I think there are important things in the behavior of someone who thinks he is a relativist that one cannot plausibly explain without attributing to him a commitment to objectivity. So the challenge for you, I think, is to show how the best explanation of my psychology, for example, requires attributing to me belief in God. And that needs to take into account all sorts of other things in my psychology that do not fit this very well… So good luck with that project!

I agree that it is preferable to be in the boat with Huckleberry Finn rather than with Immanuel Kant, and also that it still does not follow that Huck Finn’s behavior deserves moral praise (certainly not praise of the special kind, the kind that captures moral worth). But the comparison to the sheep is mistaken. Here are two things that are true of Huck Finn but usually not true of sheep. First, the connection between his action and the morally appropriate action is systematic, not accidental. True, he does not act out of respect for the moral law, but it is definitely not accidental that he acts appropriately—he is moved by the things that matter morally. Second, he *understands* those things; he is sensitive to them. And the things he is sensitive to (say, suffering) are exactly the things one *ought* to be sensitive to. This too does not hold of sheep.

Regarding your argument from alternatives—I just want to note that there are additional options you do not discuss (and which are not me either). There are versions of naturalist positions that are much more plausible than the ones you mention. And there are also voluntarist positions—trying to ground morality nevertheless in the will of each and every individual—that are quite influential, and much deeper and more interesting than the ones you discuss. Some of them, by the way, are heavily based on Kant—meaning that if you really think morality is one and Kant is its prophet, then you need to show how what you are saying here fits with a correct and comprehensive understanding of Kant. But, as stated, I’m not there.

You write, “He explained that I assume that the existence and validity of ethical facts requires justification (or a source of validity),” but for me the distinction here is very important. I reject the assumption that ethical facts need a source. At least with regard to most of them, I do not reject the assumption that they require justification. I simply do not think justification requires a source, certainly not always.

I did indeed agree in the discussion that relying on the example of moral laws in order to argue for the existence of laws without a source would be begging the question. But I did not agree that therefore such a move has no value here at all. The question how one ought to relate to question-begging is, in my view, a complex one, and not obvious at all. I think this is definitely a legitimate move, even if it is clear that it has no dialectical force, and that its justificatory force is limited (but not zero).
Relatedly: it is true that Platonism about abstract objects (for example mathematical ones) can go well with realism of my kind in morality (and the survey I mentioned above also shows that these positions correlate rather nicely). But that is not the whole story, and it is not enough to point out that Platonism too can be disputed. One needs to enter into the discussions about Platonism, the arguments for and against, and so on, and see which conclusion is better supported. (And I have done that too, though only very partially.)

The other examples I brought included a *normative* version of the law of non-contradiction, according to which it is not rational to believe contradictions; and another normative claim—namely, that it is not rational to form beliefs by means of wishful thinking. What would you say about those examples?

What would I answer someone who asks me why not evade taxes? Certainly not by means of a meta-ethical lecture. I would answer him ethically. I would speak about the needs that taxes are meant to serve. I would speak about the unfairness of deriving benefit from a practice without being willing to share in bearing the burdens it requires. I would speak about solidarity. And also, of course, I would speak about the cases in which it is important *not* to pay taxes. In other words, I would speak ethics, not meta-ethics. And if he asks me, “But why should I care about any of those things?” I would try my hand at a bit more ethics. At no stage is there any guarantee that I will succeed. But there is no guarantee that Kant (your version or the original) will succeed either. Life is hard. And if he asks me meta-ethical questions—say, what is the source of validity of your entire moral system—I would give him meta-ethical answers, as I am, for example, answering you. (The assumption that there must be a source is a false presupposition here.) I do not see any stage at which I am stuck and you are not. And that is even before—as I hinted in the discussion—we deal with the various other difficulties that introducing God here raises.

Why doesn’t God help? Because if after the entire ethical discussion, and my meta-ethical explanations, someone can still think something like, “So why should it matter to me that something is appropriate or inappropriate…,” and if that thought undermines something in moral validity according to my view, then after your entire ethical, meta-ethical, and theological discussion, that same person can think, “So why should it matter to me that God expects of me….” And that is supposed to undermine something in moral validity according to your view to exactly the same degree.

I do not think I claimed in the discussion, as far as I remember, that there is no difference between a thin God and moral facts of the sort I believe in. I claimed that *unless you attribute intentionality to him* (a fact that became clarified during the discussion), that is the case.

You attribute to me the claim that moral facts are enough to ground the validity of morality. That is not an accurate formulation of my position. I do not think anything is required in order to ground the validity of morality—morality is valid, full stop. And I do not think moral facts ground the validity of morality, because moral facts are already moral facts (such as—it is forbidden to humiliate people for no reason) and therefore they are already valid, as part of morality, period.

I am certainly not evading metaphysical claims, and I certainly do not think of analyticity as a way or an attempt to evade them. I am immersed up to my neck in certain metaphysical claims. I simply reject *certain* metaphysical claims, not because of any general aversion to metaphysics, but because of problems that I (think I) identify in them, as in the question of the source of validity. It may be that I am wrong, of course, but if I am wrong, it is not that mistake.

And also—saying “I won’t say Nazis, so as not to awaken Godwin from his slumber” is already to awaken Godwin, no? 🙂

Thanks again,
David

Hello David and everyone.

First, let me ask whether from your perspective this exchange can be uploaded to my site (as a continuation of the column), for the benefit of the readers. Of course I will not do so without your permission. If you think that could interfere with the discussion, tell me and naturally I will refrain from doing so.

Since your points were not numbered, I will respond according to the order of your paragraphs. I am numbering my replies for the sake of continuing the discussion, if there will be one. If you do not have the time or energy, do not feel any obligation whatsoever. Now to your remarks themselves.

1. You surely know the group of analytic ethicists better than I do, and so I am certainly willing to retract my impression regarding them.

2. I understood perfectly well that there is a disagreement between us also regarding the need for God in order to give de dicto validity. That is how I presented it throughout most of the discussion. My remark about de re moral conduct was a side remark. It does not seem to me essential to our disagreement.

3. I did not attribute to you and your colleagues an implicit belief in God, and I certainly did not claim that as a factual claim about you (and therefore asking you is not a relevant option). Let me clarify further. My claim is that without such a belief there is no realist validity to moral values. From this it follows that a moral (realist) atheist is either inconsistent or a hidden believer. So from my point of view you are not necessarily a hidden believer. It may be that you are inconsistent. Moreover, even if I assume consistency (the principle of charity), it is still a proof that you are such, not a factual claim that you are such. Therefore asking you about the matter is irrelevant. This is of course on the assumption that I am right in my claim that there is no other (Godless) basis for moral obligation.

4. In my view, the comparison to a sheep is a very good one. The difference between a human being and a sheep, as I understand it, is not awareness but decision. If the sheep had passive awareness—meaning, it were driven to do things deterministically by its very nature, but were aware of that (by the way, are you sure it is not aware? I am not entirely with Descartes on this point)—then for me there would be no difference whatsoever. For the same reason, systematicity is also not a difference between the cases. The sheep too (the one I defined for purposes of the discussion) behaves that way systematically. Is it therefore moral? Certainly not. For if its structure dictates its behavior, then of course one would expect that to be systematic. Does that mean we can now regard its behavior as moral behavior? In short, if sensitivity to suffering is embedded in the sheep and deterministically causes it to behave that way, then one should not attribute moral conduct to it. And if this is not deterministic but involves decision, then the question is by virtue of what you decide. By virtue of respect for the command or moral obligation (in short, there is no de re, only de dicto).
I claim that the only alternative to the sheep is a person who decides out of respect for the command. If that person acts because of the stomach pains (blessed ones) he feels at the sight of suffering, that is not morality. Those stomach pains are a fact, and a fact does not generate a norm or behavior unless it is an instinct (and instinct has no moral status). The only way to explain a decision is to say that he considered the matter and decided that suffering requires action. And if I ask why, he will answer: because that is what morality requires. Meaning there is de dicto here and not de re. Therefore, in my view, de re conduct cannot count as moral. It is of course very pleasant, and as I said it is nice to share a boat with a de re moralist.

5. Let me sharpen that although I do claim that morality is one, I do not claim that Kant is its prophet. I acknowledged this to you in the discussion only for the flourish of expression. If you reveal to me that Kant says all kinds of things I do not agree with, then I will disagree with him. I do claim that there is no morality without acting out of respect for a categorical imperative (whether Kant says this or not), and in my view there is no morality apart from this.
Regarding other justifications we have not discussed, it is hard for me to address them because I do not know enough. A priori it is very difficult for me to believe that there is such a justification that would not be open to my criticism. But of course I would be happy to think about a concrete proposal of that sort. To my shame I am not a professional and am not sufficiently versed in all the options that have arisen in the literature. I do think I understand what the possible options might be, and my philosophical analytical skill seems to me decent. Hence my confidence in that a priori feeling. But of course I may always be mistaken. If there is a concrete proposal, I would be happy to hear it and think about it.

6. Your next remark is connected to the previous one. If ethical facts require justification and one can offer them justification without an external source (a legislating factor), then that is basically to say that there are other justifications (what you claimed in the previous paragraph). Therefore my answer is the same as what I answered there. If I encounter such a justification, I can think about it. A priori I doubt the existence of other reasonable justifications.

7. Regarding begging the question, I have an article called “In Praise of Begging the Question.” My claim there is that every valid logical argument begs the question (essentially), otherwise it would not be a deduction (it would not be valid). But when we have an argument about a claim X, to bring as a counterexample your own position on claim X itself seems to me valueless. As I explained there, begging the question has value where it reveals to me insights that I would not have thought of otherwise (an illuminating tautology, as Malcolm put it). That is the case, for example, in geometry or mathematics. The conclusions there necessarily follow from the premises, and so are in fact latent in them potentially. Therefore in my understanding this is question-begging, but in that case it is illuminating (because I would not know the conclusion without studying mathematics and without clever people discovering it for me). But in my view that is not the case here.

8. In my understanding, the normative version of the law of non-contradiction is empty. A statement that it is not rational to believe A when not-A has no content and asserts nothing has no meaning, and certainly no normative meaning. Let me put it differently: what you call irrational thinking is, in my view, not thinking at all, but perhaps merely moving one’s lips (or one’s cognitive wheels) without content.
Regarding the claim that it is not rational to form beliefs by means of wishful thinking—I answered that in the discussion itself. There is clear evidence for that from experience. Therefore in my view it is not a principle that has no justification, and of course it needs no legislator. Think of a person for whom it turned out again and again that his wishful thinking hit upon the truth. Would you also recommend that he refrain from forming beliefs in that way? Beyond that, this is a principle that does not belong to the normative sphere. It is a guiding (methodological) rule for the optimal pursuit of factual truth. Regarding facts, certainly no source of validity is needed, as I explained in my column.

9. Regarding tax evasion (I note that the argument from needs is irrelevant, since I intentionally focused on a situation in which the evasion harms no such need), we return to the question of de re morality. If that person refrains from evading taxes because of your explanations de re, then he is not behaving morally (he is a sheep). Only if he decides to do so out of respect for the command is he behaving morally. Therefore you ought to present him with the thesis of ethical facts. And I ask whether you think that is a justification that can persuade him.
Let me clarify that I am of course not talking about the consequential question—whether you will succeed in persuading him. Factual success determines nothing in the principled discussion. I brought that example only to illustrate my claim that you cannot in principle succeed (unless you have confused your interlocutor), not to claim that in practice you will not succeed. There is no argument that can ground principled obligation without God. Even if you bring him to behave that way in practice, it will not be out of moral obligation (=respect for the command and the ethical fact), but from some other motive or from confusion (that is psychological motivation for action, not philosophical motivation. I am asking whether there is philosophical motivation here). Note that you yourself say you will not present him with the ethical facts and the rest of the meta-ethical arguments. If so, then even the meta-ethical justification you offer for morality will not be achieved in that way. Therefore I do not see how this proposal is an alternative to what I am saying.

10. My claim is that a person can of course think that the fact that God commands does not obligate him. But someone who thinks otherwise (that God does obligate) is not being inconsistent or irrational. By contrast, someone who takes ethical facts as a basis that moves him to be moral is acting irrationally and unreasonably. Again, practical success is not the issue here. My claim is that ethical facts should not move anyone to do anything, so long as we are talking about a fact that is an abstract stone standing shyly in the corner of the world of ideas and whispering to me to behave this way or that. This is a principled claim, not a practical-consequential one. I claim that if anything helps, it can only be God. It may be that He does not help either, but at the beginning of the column and our conversation I prefaced that I am making only the hypothetical claim: that only if there is a God does morality have validity. I am not claiming that every believer will actually be moral.

11. I am indeed speaking about an intentional God. You sharpened that point correctly. By the way, your remark in the discussion about His having causal power was not clear to me. I do not see what that adds to the discussion or why it is needed, but perhaps I did not understand your meaning.

12. To say that moral facts are valid by virtue of being what they are is what I called in my column stretching the question mark and turning it into an exclamation mark. As I explained, these are synthetic claims saturated with normative content, and therefore their inherent validity is puzzling and not understood. That is a claim that requires justification. This is unlike the law of non-contradiction or logical tautologies, and even unlike ordinary factual claims (as I explained in the column), where no external justification is needed (I simply saw, and therefore it is true. But if I saw an ethical fact, that is not supposed to move me to action. I am speaking about philosophical motivation, not psychological motivation, of course).

13. In the discussion you said that you are engaged in metaphysics, only that you do so with analytic tools. Therefore I was careful here to write that we are dealing with meta-meta-ethics and the discussion of it is not analytic in the full sense. My assessment is that this has something to do with your position in our dispute. But this really requires a better definition of analyticity (an analytic position and an analytic method), and this is not the place for that.

14. Regarding Godwin’s law, that was of course a joke. The contradiction is obvious and I employed it deliberately. Unless you are arguing here by virtue of the normative law of non-contradiction (that one must not use self-contradictory jokes). 🙂

Again, thank you for the discussion and for your response here. I am very glad about this discussion.

Michi

With God’s help, ערב ראש חודש אדר ב' 5782

To Tov VeRa—greetings and light,

Indeed, Enoch too admits that morality is not a human creation but a transcendent fact relative to man, which man only discovers and does not invent. Rabbi Michael Abraham simply “calls the child by its name” and speaks of “God,” whereas Enoch does not want “to call the child by its name.” I defined this above pictorially: “Enoch will call man’s exalted moral feeling the ‘human image,’ whereas Abraham will call it simply the ‘image of God’ 🙂

I, too, do not need to shy away from explicitly invoking God’s name with regard to morality, and nevertheless I also see educational value in Enoch’s view, which does not require faith in God for the basic principles of morality, but sees moral values as an “ethical fact” to which a person ought to be committed even if he does not believe. For the good is good in itself, and evil—evil in itself.

And thus when Joseph rejects Potiphar’s wife he gives both reasons—the “religious” and the “moral”: “How then could I do this great evil?”—an evil morally in itself; “and sin against God”—a grave violation of God’s command.

Likewise, in the Ten Commandments there is a distinction between the style of the first five, which are “between man and God,” where Scripture elaborates with “religious” reasons and “the Lord your God” recurs many times; whereas in the last five there is no long rationale and no mention of “the Lord your God,” but rather briefly and decisively: “You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, you shall not covet… or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Here the center of gravity is “your neighbor.” Leave belief aside for the moment—just be a mensch, who behaves morally and decently, without philosophy and without theology. Just be a human being, that’s all.

In short: both are necessary, both the “image of God” and simple “humanity.”

Regards,
Hanoch HaAnech Feinschmecker-פלתי

Another letter from David Enoch:

I did get to it after all…
Yes, sorry—usually I am one of the numberers, but since I’m on the road and writing on an iPad rather than a computer…
As for Godwin—yes, a joke of course. I have one like that somewhere in the book too, if I am not mistaken.

A few quick points, following the numbering in your message:

2. Excellent.

3. Yes, I understand. Still, you are doing more than merely claiming inconsistency. If someone believes, say, in naive set theory, we know he is inconsistent. But that does not lead us to attribute to him, or even consider attributing to him, hidden beliefs that iron out the inconsistency. He is simply inconsistent, full stop. And you very much emphasize the temptation to go another route here, one that does after all attribute implicit beliefs.
(I am also much more cautious in speaking of proof. Proofs in philosophy, I fear, are few and far between. Claims can be better or less well grounded; arguments can be better or worse; usually that is enough for us.)

4. I think you keep describing the case of de re moral motivation in incorrect ways that skew the discussion of it. First, I did not claim that sheep have no awareness. Of course they do. I am more doubtful about their capacity to be aware *of another’s suffering*. Though I understand there are interesting findings in that direction, at least regarding certain animals. And you speak of stomach pains, but that is of course not the case. I am speaking of the response that is exactly the appropriate response, and it can be entirely reflective, etc.
Two more small points here. First, in some of the articles on these matters, alongside the case of Huckleberry Finn, there are also cases mentioned of SS men who believed the Führer, but whose stomachs could not take it. (There are, apparently, speeches by commanders calling on them to steel their stomachs and act in accordance with… respect for the law.) I think, of course, that at times (depending on further details) such a response is a completely moral response, even if not wholly reflective.
Second, here is the intuition behind the thought that de re moral motivation often suffices, I think. Suppose that the moral law requires not humiliating people. If so, then the moral law itself says that what matters morally is not humiliating people. The thing one ought to respond to is the fact that certain behavior would amount to humiliation. And that’s that. The moral law does not identify itself as what matters morally to respond to. What matters morally, in other words, is the things that matter morally, not the fact that they matter morally. Someone who is completely indifferent to the things that matter morally, but sensitive only to the very fact that they matter morally (that is, someone who has no de re moral motivation but only de dicto motivation), is guilty of moral fetishism.
I, by the way, think this argument contains a genuine insight, but exaggerates its force. I think it shows only that often what matters is de re moral motivation, not necessarily always, and that sometimes there is room for both types of motivation. (I have a few words on this in my book.)

5. I am not an advocate of Kantianism or of Kant, not in this matter and not in any other. But the places to look for these things are constructivism (Kantian), for example in Korsgaard and very many others.

6. I do not think that this remark relies on the previous one. Even talk of justification is ambiguous (at least): even in epistemology, for example, one can ask whether a belief is justified in the sense of whether there is something that justifies it, and one can ask whether a belief is justified in the sense that it is justified to hold it. And the critical point is that justification in the second sense does not necessarily require justification in the first sense.
So too regarding moral principles—they can be justified without there being something else that justifies them (if they are basic enough).

7. As stated, I think stories about begging the question are very complicated, and you are still too dismissive about them. David Lewis, for example, gives the example of Graham Priest, who believes that there are true contradictions. Lewis says he has a knockdown argument against Priest, since there are no true contradictions. Then he asks: doesn’t this violate the rules of debate? Aren’t we supposed to argue from neutral grounds?
Lewis answers that Priest is challenging things that are too basic, and therefore there is no choice:
So much for the thought that philosophers should argue according to the rules of debate.
Of course, I am not claiming the cases are identical, but rather that you are too quick about when examples are emptied of all weight as part of a discussion like this.

8. I disagree with you completely about the emptiness of contradictions. I do not think that what we discovered, when we discovered the inconsistency of naive set theory, was that in fact we had not been thinking anything there at all. I think this is the sort of thing theorists say in order to make the theory sit nicely for them. But perhaps that is a topic for another day.
And the claim that it is not proper to form beliefs through wishful thinking is not an empirical claim. It is a paradigmatic normative claim, and it has no source. QED.
(Obviously there can be exceptions—if someone arrives at the truth every time he infers by wishful thinking, over a long period, across a variety of cases, etc., I will assume he has some kind of epistemic guardian angel, and that will change what it is rational for him to do. But that claim too (that it is rational for that person to keep working with wishful thinking) would be a normative claim, and it too would have no source.

I think points 9 and 10 just repeat what we have already said, no?
And I do not recall attributing to you a claim about causal powers of the thin God. Perhaps that was during the attempt to clarify exactly what you are committed to, the attempt that brought out that you are committed to His being intentional?

12. The talk about stretching question marks is a metaphor I find difficult to understand. I do not see an argument here.

Thanks again,
David

Hello David.

It seems to me that of you it is said: “And you shall meditate on it day and night”… “when you walk on the way, when you lie down, and when you rise”… between flights and between lectures. And yet another detailed reply with orderly arguments. Well done.

3. I do not see a third option here: according to my picture, you are either a hidden believer or inconsistent. I am not insisting on either of those two possibilities, but there is no third. Why do I raise the option of hidden belief? Because in my view God is an abstract entity, and as such a person can sense His existence, attribute that feeling to constructs or illusions, and reject it, whereas in fact this is a genuine belief he has. Therefore in my view the option of hidden belief definitely exists in the context of God. Think of a person to whom an argument proving God’s existence was presented, and he became convinced (such people exist). The argument is based on premises he had accepted all along. That means one of two things: A. either he was previously inconsistent; B. or he was previously a hidden believer too. Moreover, if I define belief only as something conscious and do not attribute the title “belief” to unconscious assumptions, then there is no difference between the two options. To believe a claim X implicitly means that claim X follows from your explicit beliefs without your being aware of it. Therefore, if you hold the claim “not-X,” you are inconsistent.
I entirely share your view about philosophical proofs. More than that, I think there is not and cannot be proof in the strict rigorous sense, since there are always basic assumptions (ontological arguments do not really exist—not the cogito and not Anselm’s), and those you are supposed to accept without proof (they are evident).

4. I do not see a difference between a person’s de re action and a sheep. We have no disagreement regarding the existence of awareness in sheep, for I said that even if passive awareness exists, it changes nothing. An appropriate and reflective response that is not out of respect for a command is not a moral action in my view. I see Reuven suffering. Compassion for him awakens in me. That compassion is an instinct; that is, I did not arouse it deliberately and consciously. It is simply there. The sheep ends the process here. It simply acts by virtue of the causal effect of its compassion (assuming it has such compassion). By contrast, I as a human being tell myself that this compassion obligates me to act, and only then do I act. I understand that this is how you describe the human being as distinct from the sheep. But in my view even this difference can be interpreted in one of two ways: 1. Compassion as such is a reason for action. But that is the naturalistic fallacy (compassion is a fact). 2. There is a command that tells me to act on the basis of feelings of compassion. That, and only that, can count as a moral action.
This of course does not mean I must be a categorical robot and neutralize feelings of compassion (what you called moral fetishism). That is a common mistake about which I have written more than once (both in halakhah and in philosophy). I too think it is desirable that I have feelings of compassion, but they are not supposed to be the basis for moral action. I am supposed to do it out of respect for the command, while at the same time feeling compassion and pangs of conscience over evil. Otherwise we are back to the sheep. The indication that even if those feelings exist, they are not the basis of my action will be this: that even in their absence I would do the same thing (there is discussion of this in halakhah, and you surely know better than I do the discussions in action theory about mixed motivations). Hence my reply to moral fetishism, in your terminology.
I am also not saying that I never act sometimes like the sheep, but in such cases I truly do not deserve moral credit (it is a good action, and certainly not an anti-moral one. But it is not an action that justifies moral credit for the doer. Again, we are back to the sheep).
SS men who got drunk so that they could manage to murder Jews, or who could not stomach it and therefore did not murder, are not moral people in my opinion. They are sheep.

6. It depends what you call “basic.” In the sense of indispensability? In my view, indispensability is not justification. Pragmatism is an unreasonable position, indeed categorically mistaken. The fact that something is useful does not mean it is true. For example, the fact that without God there is no morality does not mean I will adopt the existence of God (that is a pragmatist argument). It only means I would very much like there to be a God (otherwise the world would be an unpleasant place). For there to be justification here, I need to add to that my belief that there is valid morality (I mean evidentiality. My wanting there to be valid morality is not enough). In such a case there really is justification for belief in God (and not merely pragmatic necessity).

7. I do indeed hold a sweeping position on this matter, but it is difficult to discuss without a concrete example. Regarding begging the question, I wrote that it can sometimes be illuminating, but only when it is nontrivial (as in mathematics).

8. For our purposes, what matters is that in my view the law of non-contradiction requires no justification outside itself (and if it did require one, of course there would be none, since any such justification would itself rely on it). Regarding naive set theory, I am not claiming that we discovered that beforehand we had not been thinking anything. We discovered that the concepts we were using were not well defined, and then their precise definition became clear to us. But after that clarification, we understood better what we had been thinking all along. Specifically, we really did find that certain sets (like the set of all sets, or all sets that contain themselves as an element) are not well defined, and therefore talk about them is empty. But not everything we thought about sets. We simply found mistakes we had had, and that is perfectly fine.

Regarding wishful thinking, here I really do not understand your claim (by the way, מש"ל means “what was to be proved.” But what I saw in your words there was a declaration, not a proof 🙂). After all, there is a categorical difference between wishes and truth (apropos our discussion above in section 6 about pragmatism). Therefore, to aim at truth through WT is like claiming that speech is a tool for building a building. This needs no justification; it follows from the nature of buildings and the nature of speech. One may say there is empirical confirmation for it. In fact, speech simply does not succeed in building buildings. The same applies to WT. In all the cases where a person used WT to draw conclusions, he erred (that is, not always, but 50%, like a blind guess). So what is that if not empirical confirmation? What does this have to do with the normative sphere? Is there some prohibition on using WT? Is this an ethical fact? This is a question of truth or falsehood, not of what is proper or improper.

12. The metaphor of stretching the question mark expresses my feeling in the face of typical analytic solutions to substantive problems (which analytic philosophers sometimes prefer to ignore). Sometimes you have a difficulty with a claim X that you hold. In order to answer it, you simply take the question-sentence and turn it into a declaration. Metaphorically, that means stretching the question mark at the end and straightening it into an exclamation point.
In the previous section here you can see a good example of this (in my view). I argued that there is a categorical difference between WT and factual truth. I asked: is a prohibition on using WT a normative rule? (After all, it is not categorically admissible.) In your reply you simply stretched the question mark and declared: WT is a normative rule! And you even added a QED. Another example, and this time for a change from the religious direction. An atheist asks me: is belief in God really reasonable? (After all, there is no indication whatsoever that He exists.) And I answer: yes. Belief in God is reasonable! That is, it is an axiom requiring no justification, and thus I have exempted myself from answering. There are many believers who prefer this route in order not to grapple with the difficulties (others explain to you that it is a subjective religious narrative, and thereby exempt themselves from the difficulties). When I have evidence for a claim X, I have no problem with it. Evidence is a very good justification. But when there is no evidence and there is a difficulty with the claim, saying it is an axiom (=stretching the question mark into an exclamation mark) solves nothing. It seems to me we agree on that. The questions in our disagreement concern specific claims: are they difficult or evident, and therefore is accepting them stretching the question mark or a good answer.

Hi,
If I understand David’s claim, we are to accept that abstract and mysterious entities (moral laws, values?) came into being from the outset—or alternatively always existed—as intentional structures: duties, norms, expectations, and so on. And this whole creation is accidental or at least “spontaneous” (there is no personal God behind it). That strikes me as an implausible assumption. The implausibility grows further because in addition we must assume that there is some wonderful and accidental pre-established harmony between those entities and human subjects with intentions. Again, here too there is insistence on keeping the personal God out. Logically it may be possible, but why on earth hold such a strange position?

What does the rabbi think about the first half of his point 6, and I quote:
“6. I do not think this remark relies on the previous one. Even talk of justification is ambiguous (at least): even in epistemology, for example, one can ask whether a belief is justified in the sense of whether there is something that justifies it, and one can ask whether a belief is justified in the sense that it is justified to hold it. And the critical point is that justification in the second sense does not necessarily require justification in the first sense.”
Though admittedly this deviates somewhat from the main discussion.

I wrote my opinion there. If you see something here that was not answered, please spell it out.

Suppose there is some place/period where it is customary to eat bugs.
Someone says: “Lucky I’m not in that place/period—if I were, I’d be eating bugs, and eating bugs is yuck.”
Does that sound like a joke? I assume that to most people living in our society it does not sound like a joke in the way the child-and-spinach case does, and if they encounter a culture that eats bugs they will say it themselves. And yet here too we are dealing with taste, not with a claim of objective fact. So if something does not sound like a joke, that indeed means it is not personal taste, but it still does not mean it is a claim of objective fact; it may be a public-cultural taste rather than a claim of objective fact.

If you think there is something problematic about eating bugs (and not just that it isn’t tasty), then you’re right. But then it really isn’t just a matter of taste. If you think it is a matter of taste, then it is exactly like spinach.

I do not think eating bugs is problematic. But even so, the statement about spinach sounds like a joke to me, and the one about bugs does not, even though both are matters of taste and not claims of objective fact. That means that for me, the fact that something in this structure is not a joke does not prove that we are dealing with a claim of objective fact.
It may be that I am unusual and that David Enoch’s test works for other people. But that is not my impression.
You teach classes to audiences, so you could try an experiment: say to them the three statements about spinach, bugs, and slavery, and see what they regard as a joke and what not.

Such an experiment would prove nothing. Whoever thinks it is not a joke simply does not see it as a matter of taste—including you yourself, even if you are not aware of it.

A joke

I think he wrote something important here that symbolizes an earlier disagreement,
and that is that he says one can justify belief in two ways.
1. Is there someone or some reason that justifies the belief?
2. Is it justified to hold it even if there is no such reason?
And he says the critical point is that justification in the second sense does not necessarily require justification in the first sense.

As far as I know, in your examples—for instance the argument from epistemology, Truth and Stability, and so on—you argue that if we have no reason to assume there is a coordinating factor in the background, we have no reason to assume that we can achieve knowledge of the world.
Likewise, if there is no God then there is no morality, etc. etc.—you always connect 2 to 1 through a theological argument.
But he accepts axioms, like other philosophers, and that things do not require an additional reason.
And I think that is where the disagreement between you lies.
So too from an epistemic standpoint regarding knowledge of morality: while you explain it through ideal intuition or God (a factor), he requires no explanation whatsoever. Even if he has none, from his point of view it is justified.

I did not understand what it means that it is justified to hold it without justification.

Sorry—I’m replying somewhat hastily.

3. I do not think that a proof from premises I accept shows something that I had already accepted, in any sense, not even implicitly. That is certainly true regarding good non-deductive arguments from premises I accept. But also deductive arguments. Among other things: there is no inconsistency in accepting premises without accepting what follows from them. There is inconsistency only in accepting premises *and rejecting* what follows from them.

And I also think there is a problem in describing God as abstract. First, it is not clear to me that abstractness is compatible with intentionality. Second, until now I thought that when you argued here for a thin God, you were not yet committed regarding His other attributes, which left you free later to add more attributes (according to other arguments). But if here you say He is abstract, then later you can no longer say, for some other reason, that He has (for example) causal powers.

4. So as not to repeat myself, only two points:

First, the accusation of moral fetishism does not depend on neutralizing feelings of compassion and the like. That accusation applies (supposedly) to every de dicto moral motivation, because it is not sensitive to what matters morally, but only *to the fact* that it matters morally. (And the term is in no way mine. It is a common criticism. I think the one who introduced the term in this context was Michael Smith.)

Second, there is no naturalistic fallacy whatsoever in declaring something naturalistic to be a reason for action. A reason for action is what counts in favor of the action. Almost always these are naturalistic things—the sweetness of ice cream is a reason to eat it, the dog’s suffering is a reason to relieve it, the fact that the claims are contradictory is a reason to reject one of them, and so on. This is a common and accepted (and correct) point in the literature—the reasons themselves are almost always not normative. *That they are reasons* is a normative fact (which, according to non-naturalists, is not reducible naturalistically).

6. By “basic” I did not mean anything connected to indispensability. I mean claims that have the status of default reasonableness—in the absence of a defeater, it is justified to believe them even without any other positive support.

I agree, of course, that usefulness is generally not a reason to believe. I have a long and extensive story (partly in the book, partly in an old article with Josh Schechter) about why the case of indispensability arguments is importantly different (both when they appear in science and when they appear in meta-ethics).

8. I do not understand what you are saying about wishful thinking. Much of what you say could be part of the explanation of why it is not rational to form beliefs by WT. But you still agree that it is not rational to form beliefs that way, right? That claim captures a normative truth—about how one ought, or it is right, or it makes sense, to form beliefs. There are no clearer examples of normativity than this. Ethics is only a special case of normativity.

Just as for you an evident thing does not require justification (or that itself is the justification),
for them every other basic assumption, axiom, or postulate counts as something self-evident.
And the point is that it does not need an additional reason… for example, in the argument from epistemology, it is justified to hold onto the cognitive system even without an additional belief in an entity that justifies it.

Have a good week (I do not write on Shabbat, so I am replying only now).

3. I am speaking only about deductive arguments, of course. Though one can also make the same claim regarding non-deductive arguments, since one can always add a premise that will make them deductive. For example, when you assume X and make an analogy to Y, if you add the further premise that there is an essential similarity between the two that necessitates this conclusion, you will see that this is really a deduction, and therefore here too, as in a deduction, if you adopted the premises you ought also to adopt the conclusion. Take the physico-theological proof for God’s existence:

Premise A: the world is composite. Premise B: there is no composite without a composer. Conclusion: there is a composer.

Whoever accepts the two premises necessarily also accepts the conclusion (and not merely does not reject it). It is impossible to accept the two premises without accepting the conclusion (even if you do not reject it but merely suspend judgment, you are in contradiction).

Now note that you can also formulate this as an analogy (this is how many atheists argue against this proof):

Premise A: the world is composite. Premise B: in the systems known to us there is no composite without a composer. Conclusion: the world has a composer. This formulation is not deductive, since you transfer a claim from systems known to us within the world to the world as a whole. And still, if this is acceptable to you now, then it seems that you accept this additional premise. If so, one can add premise C to the original argument: what is true of all systems within the world is also true of the world as a whole. Now you have a deduction, and we are back to my earlier claim (regarding deduction).

You yourself mentioned in the discussion a similar claim of your own regarding people who hold that there is valid morality and yet do not believe in moral realism. You said they are inconsistent or hidden realists. That too rests on a claim similar to mine, according to which if you adopt premises then one may infer that you implicitly adopt the conclusion as well.

I did not understand your point about my description of God as abstract. Nor did I address that in this section. But in order not to enter into that discussion, which does not seem important to me, I will say that the abstractness I am speaking about is the “thinness,” i.e. not loading Him with certain religious attributes (He is not the “ordinary” God, in your terminology). Even so, I emphasize that the abstract God I am speaking about in this context is the minimal God required for the validity of morality. That does not prevent me from adding other attributes to Him as I wish on other grounds (religious, traditional, or others), only that those are not necessary for my argument here. Why do you see a contradiction if I add attributes to Him on other grounds?

Your remarks about His having causal powers are not clear to me (I noted this in an earlier letter). It is not clear to me where you saw in my words the assumption that He has causal powers, and even if so, I do not understand what is wrong with that assumption. But it seems to me that this is not an essential issue in our discussion.

4. First, I will repeat what I wrote. I can be very sensitive to what matters morally, but I would do it even without the sensitivity, by virtue of respect for the command. I am not claiming there should be no sensitivity. On the contrary, I am entirely in favor of sensitivity. I just think that action on the basis of sensitivity has no moral value. The sensitivity, even if it exists (and it is desirable that it do so), cannot be the motivation for action. I explained why, in my opinion, it has no moral value. If sensitivity itself moves me to action, then I act like a sheep (perhaps an aware one, but that does not matter), for sensitivity is a fact that cannot generate a norm (is-ought). And if I decide to act in accordance with the sensitivity, in which case I do not act like a sheep, then there is a command here instructing me to act in accordance with the sensitivity (which solves the is-ought problem), and we are back to action on the basis of respect for the categorical command.

That sensitivity is chiefly what makes me feel comfortable with this fellow in the boat (because we are sailing with a good person), but it is not what grants the act its moral value (does not justify moral credit).

Second, I completely agree with your point, and I explained this in my previous message. When I say that the reason for my action is the emotion of compassion or sensitivity, it is like the sweetness of the ice cream being the reason to eat it. The problem is that eating is not an action that requires ethical justification. I feel like eating something sweet, and that’s that. When I am speaking about obligation, it is not enough to say that I feel sensitivity. That is a psychological fact. When I want to derive a norm from it (an obligation to act), I must add a premise: what I am sensitive to imposes on me an obligation (commands me) to act. This is a normative premise, or a categorical command. That is what I explained in the previous section as well.

In short, my claim is that although in many cases the reasons are facts, in addition to the fact there must be a command instructing me that given such a fact there is an obligation to act. Without this we are back to the is-ought problem. Therefore, in my opinion, without respect for a categorical command there is no possibility of a normative foundation.

Let me put it differently. Suppose you see a person who is not sensitive to the situation. He does not act. By virtue of what do you judge him and demand that he act? If sensitivity as such is a sufficient reason, then he has no sensitivity, and therefore from his point of view there is no reason to act. You are forced to assume that there is an obligation to act in such a case (indeed, here one sees that sensitivity is not even a necessary condition for moral action). If you demand that someone without that sensitivity act, or condemn him for not acting, that means sensitivity is not the only reason for action (unless you say that your sensitivity is a reason that justifies action by every person in the world. That sounds very problematic).

6. If you mean to argue that intuition is a sufficient reason to hold some claim when there is no good reason to give it up, I entirely agree.

Applied to ethical facts, I completely agree that the moral intuition instructing me that the prohibition of murder or helping another person, for example, has validity (two ethical facts) is a sufficient reason to act accordingly. Obviously. After all, this is precisely the point on which we both agree. What I claim is that it does not stop there, and on that we disagree. I now go on and ask what can underlie the validity of these facts. My assumption is that floating facts (=facts without connection to some basis that bears them—a term from electricity theory) have no validity. And if intuitively it seems to me that they do have validity, that proves that in my eyes they are not floating. My claim is that without a source of validity (a legislating factor), they have no validity. Therefore, if in my view they do have validity, that proves that I am assuming the existence of such a legislating factor.

So we have no disagreement over whether intuition is sufficient justification. By the way, I have written several books on that point.

By the way, I have read your distinction between the two kinds of indispensability, and in my view it overlaps considerably with the distinction I made between an inferential argument and a revealing argument (in the earlier part of the fourth conversation in my book, the relevant part of which I sent you before the discussion).

8. We apparently have different definitions of the concept of “normativity.” Clearly normativity is broader than ethics. There are norms of professional guilds, of sports associations, of etiquette, of halakhah, and so on. All these are norms, and therefore, for example, none of them can be derived from facts. But the “prohibition” on deriving beliefs by way of WT is not considered normative by me at all. It is like the claim that one cannot distinguish the shape of an object by means of taste, hearing, or smell (but only by touch or sight). Is that a normative rule in your opinion? In my view, the rule not to form beliefs by WT is of exactly the same sort. I claim that forming beliefs by WT is simply a category mistake: WT is not the relevant tool for forming beliefs (as I wrote, speech is not the right tool for building a house). This is not a normative matter but a purely factual one. Just as one does not form scientific conclusions via emotion or by means of one’s rear end, but by observations and their analysis. Is that a normative instruction? If you do it, you will simply be mistaken (and this can be tested in the laboratory).

But even if you wish to call this a normative matter for some reason, there is no point arguing about definitions. Still, as I argued, this rule has simple empirical justification (on the basis of experience), and therefore I do not understand how you bring it as an example of a norm that needs no external justification. Our experience shows that whoever formed beliefs on the basis of WT erred (that is, it is no better than a blind shot. Of course sometimes you hit a true belief by chance). That is excellent justification. I do not see how this serves for you as an example of a norm that needs no justification.

By the way, it now occurs to me that a better example might be Popper’s rule of falsifiability. This is ostensibly a normative instruction to scientists not to engage in theses that cannot stand the test of falsification (it is not a factual statement that they are false, but a normative instruction). But that rule too has excellent justifications, and therefore it too is not a norm that needs no justification. And in fact, someone who takes this rule too far and sees it as binding normative guidance (even outside the realm of science, for example regarding claims about God) is, in my opinion, mistaken (the justifications for that rule really do not exist outside the realm of science. The logical positivists, in my opinion, are muddling their own minds and others’).

That is obvious. So what?
See my reply to David further on in the discussion here (the one that has just gone up).

So it seems to me that this is where the point of disagreement lies: how much things that seem true to us need to be justified—whether an entity is needed or not.
Yes, I see that you really did write this. And I also saw that you mentioned it briefly in the article.

It sounds to me as though the rest of the argument is about different moral understandings and different approaches to morality.
I assume that on your view, Kant’s particular understanding is not crucial, and one can think of a softer morality, for example one in which there is a command but it can also be fulfilled not for its own sake.

Morality as proof of God, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-REgLugu44U

David wrote (I have omitted the beginning of his remarks, where he relates to the discussion with the moderator, Jeremy Fogel, about Kant’s position):

Presenting Huck Finn as though he acts this way because “he feels like it” is, in my view, highly misleading. If this were not a fictional character, I would say that it is downright disrespectful as well. Since it is a fictional character, I will say that it is simply blind to what is important in this example. There is nothing here of “what he feels like.” What there is here is sensitivity on his part precisely to the things that matter morally—the slave’s humanity and their friendship. You can, of course, claim various things about the example different from what I claim (and I think all the possibilities appear in the literature). But this must be done by grappling with the example in all its exemplary force, not with a weakened version of the example that has been diluted so that it will be easier for you to handle.

What I argued regarding Kant is, first, that the question whether an action is morally appropriate or morally wrong does not depend on whether it was done out of duty. And second, that when a conscientious person is deliberating in a morally difficult case, he does not ask himself which action will have moral value of that sort, but rather how one ought to behave. In other words, talk of moral value is not relevant from the point of view of the person who is deliberating how to behave. I do not think Kant claims this, but I certainly think that nowhere does he say anything that commits him otherwise. (And all the better, because that would be a foolish position.) If you know how one ought to behave, then you know, period. To start asking yourself whether—when you act as one ought to act—you will do so out of duty or not, is a strange question that may suit your therapist’s couch, not the moral deliberation itself.

I do not usually talk about moral actions (or not), or moral people (or not), because such talk seems to me misleading and highly ambiguous (and in the case of moral people, also presupposes a false assumption, namely that people are coherent in such matters). So let us simply speak of actions that are morally right (or wrong, or permitted, etc.), and actions that have moral worth. That is enough, isn’t it? According to Kant, talk of action from duty is relevant only to moral worth, and that is what I said in the discussion. So do not say that Huck Finn’s action cannot be called a moral action—because I have no idea what that means. You can say, as Kant does, that it does not have the special moral value that interests him (incidentally, for entirely different purposes, according to the interpretations I know—as part of the motivational inquiry that reaches its peak in the derivation of the categorical imperative in its first formulation). And note that even from the quotation you brought it emerges plainly how the comparison to the sheep is not merely misleading, but also completely un-Kantian. For the sheep is not worthy of praise.

In addition, I of course do not agree with Kant (read literally) that there is no difference between various inclinations—I think inclinations that are sensitive to morally important things are utterly different from those that are not. (And I am not sure that the best reading of Kant here is literal either—it may be that all this simply explains why *for the purpose of his motivational inquiry* all inclinations are treated the same. After all, he thinks that in this case the person is worthy of praise, but in the case of an inclination toward respect for human dignity he is not worthy of praise.)

A quick return to Michi’s remarks:

3. When I attribute to people an implicit belief in realism, I do not do so because I believe that for every person A, and every two beliefs B and C, if A believes B, and B entails C, then A believes C. That seems to me, as stated, a false assumption. In the book I propose substantive (and much more restrictive) tests for attributing an implicit belief, and I try to show that this case meets them.

In the circles in which I read and write, abstractness is taken as a property that rules out causal powers. Therefore, if you claim that God is abstract, you cannot afterward add causal powers to Him—that is a contradiction. But perhaps you mean by the word “abstract” something different from what I know.

4. Regarding the sheep example, I returned to this above.

But here you ask what I would say to a person who has the right sensitivity but does not act. By virtue of what do I demand that he act? Let me assume for a moment that your description is coherent (though in its extreme version it is clearly not—someone who is sensitive to the right things acts accordingly. That is part of what it is to be sensitive—sensitivity is a complex dispositional property, and a disposition to act is a constitutive part of it.) The important point here is that there is a confusion between two completely different claims. One question is whether it is appropriate to act in a certain way. The answer to that question is a normative claim—of the kind that you think requires a legislator and I think does not. In any case, distinguishing between is and ought is relevant to that claim, and I am with you, as you recall, in rejecting naturalism here. But another question is from what motivations it is appropriate to act. I claim—often there is nothing lacking in behavior all of which is motivated by de re moral motivation, and that’s it. This does not contradict the fact that the claim that it is appropriate to act in this way is true, and not reducible naturalistically.

8. The literature—including me—distinguishes between formal normativity and “real” normativity (there is more than one terminology here). Formal normativity is simply a matter of criteria of correctness—for example, all constitutive rules of games create this kind of normativity. Real normativity, as a first approximation, is categorical normativity, or something to which we owe allegiance. My claim, of course, is that ethics is a special case of real normativity—formal normativity alone can be set aside. (And of course there are those who dispute even this distinction.)

Of course the claim against forming beliefs by WT is a normative claim. Unlike the statement that one cannot discern shape by means of taste, the claim about WT can be violated, and when someone violates it we tend to criticize him. (Perhaps you mean a different claim—say, that there is no point in trying to discern the shape of an object by smell. Okay—and that is, of course, a normative claim.)

It may very well be that simple empirical truths play a central role in justifying the normative claim about WT. But then so what? Simple empirical truths also play a central role in justifying the claim that it is not rational to get too close—or bring others too close—to bonfires, for example.

(And in all these cases, by the way, I think the empirical claims alone are not sufficient to justify the normative claim in question. Is and ought, anyone?)

Precisely Popper’s example I do not like—as far as I understand him, he offers this criterion as a criterion of scientificity, and no more. That does not impress me. So it seems that on this point we agree.

Hello David (and everyone).

First I will summarize, so that we do not lose the thread of the discussion. At this stage it seems we have a double disagreement: A. whether a de re action deserves moral credit; B. whether a de dicto action (out of respect for the moral command as a binding norm) requires belief in God. In the oral discussion the dispute was defined only with regard to B, but within it point A also arose and is continuing here in full force. I will begin with your introductory remarks, addressed to both of us (to Jeremy and to me), which focus entirely on the dispute over point A.

I think I did fully grapple with the Huck Finn example. I raised there an analytic argument, and to the best of my judgment you did not answer it. I asked whether the sensitivity moves him to action by virtue of its very existence (in which case there is an ought-is problem, i.e. this is a sheep’s action—admittedly an aware sheep, but passive awareness is not important), or whether there is an obligation here by virtue of an additional principle: one should act on the basis of moral sensitivities. If there is such a further principle, then this is behavior worthy of moral credit, but it is a kind of categorical imperative (without entering into its content: do what we would want to be a universal law, or any other command). That is to say, your description is indeed not like a sheep, but if it is not like a sheep then it necessarily returns through the back door to my model (respect for the command, sometimes implicit and sometimes explicit).

My claim is double: either you act by virtue of sensitivity without commitment to a command (de re), in which case you are a sheep (albeit an aware one), and then this is not an action worthy of moral credit. Or you act out of commitment to a command (de dicto), in which case it is my model. I do not see in your remarks, or at all, any third option.

It is important to sharpen that in my previous letters I distinguished between the action being good (that is, not immoral) and the claim that the doer/agent deserves moral credit (that is what I call a moral action, as distinct from a good one). To the best of my understanding this is entirely parallel to what Jeremy brought from Kant, in different terminology (which I like less). I do not understand what you (David) answer to this. Is there a moral action (and not merely a good one) that is not out of respect for the command? Without the command there is a problem of the naturalistic fallacy.

I will not get into interpretation of Kant (I am certainly no expert, and it is not important anyway. We are dealing with the question what is true, not what Kant said), but I certainly think like Jeremy does (taking into account the distinction I presented above, which Jeremy also made in his remarks).

As for your question whether a person at a point of decision asks himself consciously what the command says—that is a question for a psychologist (on the therapist’s couch, in your phrase). The important question is whether this ought to stand in the background of his decision (sometimes implicitly, as with the elder Huck) in order for it to count as a moral action. Definitely yes. We are discussing a question on the normative plane, not psychology. For the same reason I do not enter into the question of people’s coherence. I am not dealing in psychology. My claim concerns the normative question: what and how a coherent person ought to act (not what people in fact do).

In short, my claim is that an action like Huck Finn’s as you describe it (if one ignores his implicit motives, as I claim), has no moral value. It is a conscious sheep. Therefore there I did not claim that one needs God. I fully accept that psychologically people do act this way even without belief, but I claim that this is not behavior that expresses moral obligation.

Now to your comments on my remarks:

3. If you understand my claim on the psychological plane—that that person really believes B—then I agree. It is not true as a psychological description (of course depending on how one defines what it means to believe, and I suggest we not open that minefield here). What I am claiming is that premise B is contained in his position, and if not then he is inconsistent. This is a tautology, and I do not see how you can dispute it. A person cannot (logically-philosophically, not psychologically) believe C and not B, if B is a necessary condition for C. Needless to say, if B is a necessary condition for C, then C is a sufficient condition for B.

As for abstractness, we evidently have different definitions. But it does not seem to me essential to the discussion.

4. Regarding the sheep example, I repeated my main claim above.

My description too assumes the dispositionality of sensitivity. But the meaning of dispositionality is that there is another principle in the background: an obligation to act on the basis of moral sensitivities. See my analytic claim above. Are you suggesting stuffing this principle into the ethical fact itself? That changes nothing essential, because the question of validity remains in place (just as the logical mechanism that turns an argument from premises to conclusion into a claim of entailment).

The question of motivations is vague and does not seem important to me. I am committed to the moral command. I do not understand why the question what my motivations are is different. And if it is different, in what sense is that relevant to our discussion? I suspect (but am not sure) that here you are moving from the plane of the normative to the psychological plane (is), and then again I will tell you that it is irrelevant to the discussion. Psychology is a fact like any other fact. I am not dealing with the question why people act, but by virtue of what they ought to act.

8. Regarding WT, I really cannot understand your claim. I cannot even see what I am supposed to disagree with. There is no other option. A person who claims that he discerns that the object before him is triangular because of its smell—what would you say to him? That he is forbidden to proceed that way? You would surely say to him (that is what I would say) that he is simply making a categorical mistake (using the irrelevant tool) and a factual one (in his conclusion). What does this have to do with normativity? The claim that one ought not form beliefs by WT is exactly the same kind of claim as the claim that one should not diagnose shapes by means of smell. No justification is needed for this, because it has factual justification (you will err in the conclusion) and categorical justification (you are making a category mistake). Therefore this is not a good example for your claim that ethical facts are plainly normative and nevertheless have no justification.

Let me sharpen. If you insist that this too is a kind of normativity, I will not enter into semantics with you. I will only ask why in your view this has no justification. Of course it does. Therefore it is not similar to ethical facts, which demand something of us (they are dispositional, as you wrote in previous sections, or prescriptive) and therefore require justification, but cannot be justified naturalistically (see what I will write immediately). So what could the justification be if not God?

I already wrote in earlier letters that facts certainly play a role in justifying ethical norms. For example: it is forbidden to strike because the beaten person suffers. Almost all ethical facts can be justified similarly (except perhaps the specific examples I gave of the categorical imperative, taxes, and voting in elections, where there are no factual consequences that one can point to). What I claim is that facts alone are not enough to justify norms. You need to add to the justificatory argument the premise that it is forbidden to cause suffering (unless you behave de re, in which case it is not a moral action but merely a conscious sheep). You yourself wrote this in your penultimate sentence. Therefore I cannot understand why, in your opinion, forming beliefs by WT is an example of there being no need for justification for the validity of ethical facts. It has excellent naturalistic justification.

Until next time,

David wrote:

Thank you.

I’ll soon be on my way to the airport again. Later this week I’m giving three different lectures in three different departments, and also two classes in Israel (by Zoom). So things are very busy, and therefore with your permission I think I’ll take a break from this excellent correspondence.

I’ll just note regarding your treatment of Huck Finn and your claim that I didn’t address the argument: there is no is-to-ought fallacy at all in the thought that action from de re moral motivations—out of sensitivity to the things that matter morally—has moral worth. The fallacy is a fallacy of inferring normative claims from descriptive claims. But here there is no such inference, and nothing is being said here about how one ought to behave. The question is which motivations are worthy. The claim that de re moral motivations are worthy is no more problematic from the standpoint of the is-to-ought fallacy than the claim that any other motivation, including de dicto moral motivation, is problematic from that standpoint.

(And as a sociological matter in the field—as mentioned, the “battle” over de dicto and de re moral motivations has been going on in the literature for at least two and a half decades. No one raises the claim that the is-to-ought fallacy is relevant.)

That is perfectly fine. Completely understandable.
I will only remark on this last point.
I have already written that motivation is a vague term. If a person wants to do good because he feels like it, that too is a motivation. And in my eyes it is not a bad motivation either. But it does not deserve moral credit (in the terms of my previous message: such a person behaves well but not morally). If it is done causally by virtue of sensitivity (deterministically)—then it is certainly not an act worthy of moral credit. What remains to us, then, is only acting out of sensitivity when in the background there is a command instructing us that we are obligated to act in accordance with sensitivity. But that is of course de dicto conduct, not de re. There, and only there, does the act have moral value; but I claim that in the background of such a command one needs God in order to give it validity.
In our discussion, indeed, the issue is not how one ought to behave, but only why one should behave as one ought. That is a normative question, and there is no answer to it in terms of a de re mechanism (there is such an answer on the psychological plane, but not on the plane of philosophical validity).
Regarding the sociological remark, I am a little embarrassed to sound condescending, but from my experience I have seen quite a few discussions in philosophical literature that assume premises accepted there that were not accepted by me, and vice versa. So from my point of view this ad hominem remark has enough weight to make me consider my position more seriously (since people working in the field do not think this way). But of course it is not decisive if I have reached a reasoned conclusion that I still hold my own.
To conclude: it was a great pleasure for me, both the face-to-face discussion and its continuation by email. It certainly sharpened points for me (though it did not change my positions). A worthy continuation of the “encounters” I previously had with you through your writings.

Much success in everything, and goodbye for now.

Huckleberry Finn can also be understood as a hidden or unconscious Kantian.

In the book (spoiler!!) you can see this in the contrast made between him and his longtime friend Tom Sawyer, who also helps him free the slave. The difference is revealed on the last page of the book, when Tom Sawyer discloses that the slave, Jim, is actually not a slave, because the aunt had already freed him before her death. That is, if the aunt had not freed him, Tom Sawyer would have been the first to enslave him. Huckleberry Finn does not know this, and from here his moral superiority over Tom Sawyer becomes understandable. Huckleberry Finn really does try to free the slave because he thinks he should be free. It is not only empathy but an opposing stance. Mark Twain illustrates this well when he describes Huckleberry Finn’s pangs of conscience over the fact that he is dragging Tom Sawyer into bad culture by involving him in the slave’s escape attempt. He understands his own position as stemming from his rascality, which does not obey society’s rules. He does not understand that he is actually disagreeing with society’s values, perhaps because it is hard for him to conceptualize this in the way Kant could—but it is still clear to me as a reader that this is not just empathy. It is a covert counter-position.

An interesting remark, but the discussion is not about the “real” Huck Finn, but about the act as David describes it, regardless of whether that is what Huck did or not.

I’m trying to understand—do you both agree that the source of the ethical fact is the sensitivity that leads to de re action?
Or in other words—without the de re sensitivity that some of us or most of us have, would we even be capable of noticing ethical facts, fixing them, and acting de dicto?

(I mean the “de re” of human beings. Not the kind a harmless sheep has, nor the kind a predatory lion has toward its prey, but the specific kind most normal human beings have.)

Rabbi Michi, do you mean that the proof of God is the ability to act “de re”? Or some other ability to discern the existence of ethical facts?

*In the line before last: the ability to act morally “de re”

Perhaps one could formulate another proof from that. I very much doubt it. I spoke only about de dicto. The legislator of the command.

Since there is no search function here, I don’t know how to get to your discussions about providence nowadays and divine intervention, in the sense that God has abandoned the earth, so I’ll write here: yesterday on Channel 12, after the evening news, there was an episode of Nesli Barda’s One in a Million, and in the second story she tells there about a soldier who saved three female soldiers from under fire, which is somewhat similar to the case you had long ago in Yeruham when your car broke down—except that in Nesli Barda’s case there is a plot twist there that, in my view, has no explanation other than active divine intervention. Perhaps you will solve this by saying it is one of those sporadic cases in which God does indeed intervene after all—not every day does a miracle occur—and since according to your view this is so rare, therefore it deserves credit from your side (it seems to me that deep down you long for a proof against this view of yours nowadays, when the possibility of a third world war including the threat of nuclear weapons is hanging in the air).

With God’s help, Tuesday, in the portion “a male lamb without blemish” 5782

Both disputants claimed that sheep should not be regarded as moral, since their good behavior is not chosen. But in my humble opinion there is “morality in the subject,” where the human being is moral because of his choice of the good, and there is “morality in the object,” where the deed is good—and in this sheep excel.

Regards,
Ro’i ShePasal Zigler

Leaving aside the proof concerning God, it seems to me that the dispute over whether a human action is either “de re” or “de dicto” is unnecessary. A human action will always lie on a spectrum between them.
Pure compassion will always be interrupted. There will always also be de dicto thinking involved at some level. That is true of Huckleberry Finn as well.

When it is described as a spectrum, it is also easier to analyze the “moral credit.”

I think emotion functions only as the context of discovery and not as the context of justification. Emotion alerts the person that there is a human problem here that demands attention, but without the context of justification it is hard to act. In slave societies there was compassion, but it did not lead to action against the moral wrongs, because the context of justification justified slavery and its wrongs. Only the principled moral stance against slavery changed the situation. The analysis I brought regarding Huck Finn indicates that Huck Finn had an anti-slavery stance that, for social reasons, was not explicit. To my taste, part of our humanity is the demand for a context of justification and not merely making do with a context of discovery. Sheep might make do with a context of discovery and instinctive actions. Human beings demand more than that.

https://www.facebook.com/noam.oren/posts/10158397123741479?comment_id=10158397125951479&reply_comment_id=10158397272236479&__cft__%5B0%5D=AZVtbhUGW5pLYiK598duxLbcilMRsRmGfnW7WAOg_-58eXNU46vLbUNfbHUusJrxDbQoSp3Eo_spXYtgbWDXA0uQ3UJwQve4Lufiob5Ppegl6OoOCr7SvjJYmIo93BylvZr5JZQcx-WLTCXXIEgIJW-VGEIexSP3lBhAMoMe2nPVBQ&__tn__=R%5D-R