Q&A: What, Are You the Gods of Morality?!
What, Are You the Gods of Morality?!
Question
In your column (228) you discuss an article by David Enoch and his colleagues about statistical and practical reasoning in the legal context. In order to reject their rationalization of our intuition, you write, among other things:
"Moreover, even if this consideration were correct (here is a counterfactual of my own), I do not think it offers an explanation for our intuition that distinguishes between these two types of evidence. I very much doubt that people who feel one should not convict on the basis of statistical evidence actually performed this kind of practical calculation. Certainly this does not justify the universality and validity that we feel regarding the distinction between these two types of evidence. It is therefore more reasonable that the difference between the two types of evidence is a legal reasoning. We have a sense that it is not right or not appropriate to convict on the basis of general evidence that does not directly address the defendant, even if its degree of certainty is similar."
I would like to apply this argument to another disagreement of yours with Enoch regarding the validity of morality. You argue that we need God as the one who commands (or wants) morality in order to give it binding validity; otherwise, why should I do it?
Why can one not challenge your view in exactly the same way? There are masses of people who grew up and were educated as atheists; God was never part of their lives, and yet they still intuitively feel obligated by morality. It is not at all likely that subconsciously they are hidden believers. Their intuition is that the very ontological existence of moral norms (which you too acknowledge as a fact) is their validity, and there is no need to arrive at some additional being who wants them from us (God).
Answer
I no longer remember the details of that discussion. Even if I have some intuition, that does not exempt me from justification. If I have an intuition that morality is binding, then it is indeed binding. But now I can ask how that could be, since without God it cannot be that morality is binding. So I explain that deep in their hearts they apparently feel that there is a God, even if they are not aware of it.
In the case of statistical evidence, it is not likely that people actually conduct themselves this way without having some justification for it. With morality, we grew up with it and became accustomed to it, and people tell us stories about atheistic morality and so on. In the legal sphere, this is just an invention, and it is unlikely that people have no underlying basis for it. As for the basis he proposes, it did not seem plausible to me that it exists in the depths of people’s consciousness.