God and stance-dependence

Twitter Tuesday #44

Is Divine Command Theory (DCT) a form of moral antirealism? Well, that’s going to depend on precisely what a proponent of DCT says about their view.

Moral realism is the position that there are stance-independent moral facts. Moral antirealism is the position that there are no stance-independent moral facts. It is consistent with moral realism for there to be stance-dependent moral facts, but this is not a requirement, since there could be no moral facts at all.

Some proponents of DCT may seek to carefully craft an account of the way in which God grounds moral truth such that God’s stances don’t literally make the moral facts in question true. If so, these accounts are not antirealist accounts. But if the proponent of DCT (or whatever one wants to call the position in question) does think God’s stances make moral facts true, and these facts constitute all of the moral facts, then one’s position amounts to the view that there are no stance-independent moral facts, since all moral facts are stance-dependent. This would make the view in question a form of moral antirealism, as per the definitions above.

Some proponents of theistic accounts of morality don’t like this taxonomy, or wouldn’t if they knew of it. They may wish to construe the distinction between moral realism and antirealism in terms of whether moral facts are stance-independent or dependent on the stances of non-contingent beings whose standards would be non-arbitrary, i.e., God.

There’s no law prohibiting someone from using terminology this way. Theists who think moral facts depend on God’s stances but want to call themselves moral realists are free to do so. But none of the rest of us are obliged to go along with this and think of them as realists. By what is probably the more common construal of the terminology in contemporary analytic metaethics, there are no special exclusions for God: if moral facts depend on God’s stances, then your account is antirealist. This does not mean “DCT is an antirealist position.” Proponents of DCT may have the conceptual resources to offer some different account of what makes moral claims true. But this cannot reasonably be denied:

If “moral realism” = “there are stance-independent moral facts” and your account of moral truth is that “all moral facts depend on God’s stances,” then as per this definition you have an antirealist position.

Having said all this, I recently reviewed parts of the exchange between Danny and Parker representing atheism and Andrew Wilson and Jay Dyer representing theism. For context, part of what’s relevant to the exchange took place here:

Dyer uses the phrase “subjective” here. The term “subjective,” is used in a handful of ways among philosophers. The two most relevant ways it may be used are to refer to:

(1) Individual relativism. On this view, it is the position that moral claims are true or false relative to the standards of individuals.

(2) Stance-dependent cognitivism: moral claims are made true by stances, possibly by the stances of individuals.

These might look like the same position, but they are not. The first is a claim about moral language; in particular, it holds that the truth of moral claims is indexed to the standards of individuals. This would be consistent with both agent and appraiser forms of relativism at the individual level, which carry different implications. However, since it includes indexing, it allows the truth of moral claims to vary based on which standard they are indexed to. If Sam thinks stealing is wrong, and Alex does not, then the statement “It’s wrong to steal” is true when Sam says it but false when Alex says it.

In contrast, if “subjectivism” refers to stance-dependence, this could refer to forms of stance-dependent cognitivism where there is only a single correct moral standard, such as the stance of God or an ideal observer. If so, the truth of moral claims couldn’t be indexed to different moral standards because there is only one moral standard.

This illustrates that, technically speaking, there is a distinction between two orthogonal distinctions:

(1) Whether the truth of moral claims is indexed or non-indexed.

(2) Whether moral claims are made true by stances or not.

In practice, many people think both that moral claims are true relative to the standards of each individual, and that it is the stances of those individuals that make those moral claims true. Thus, the two positions tend to coincide in practice. But it is not that difficult to give examples where they come apart:

Example #1: Indexicality without stance-dependence

Moral facts are true or false relative to one’s astrological sign, e.g., Leos are subject to one set of moral standards, while Geminis are subject to a different set of moral standards. On this view, when someone makes a moral judgment it would be true or false relative to their astrological sign. Critically, we cannot choose our astrological signs and they are not our stances, so the truth of moral claims would vary from one individual to another, but they’d be stance-independent. This is both a form of relativism and a form of realism.

Example #2: Non-indexicality without stance-independence

Conversely, suppose one believes all moral facts depend on the stance of a single individual: the two most common examples would be God and an “ideal observer”: a hypothetical fully informed and perfectly rational being. If so, moral facts would depend on a being’s stances, but there’d be a single correct set of moral standards. So the truth of moral claims would not be relative.

Richard Joyce outlines this distinction here.

Now, if Dyer meant “subjectivism” in the sense of some form of individual relativism, this wouldn’t make much sense, since the moral facts wouldn’t necessarily be arbitrary and this would still be consistent with moral realism.

If, instead, Dyer meant that moral facts would be dependent on stances (and, possibly, relative to various stances), this would give us a type of stance-dependence and relativism, what we might call individual relativism/subjectivism. And it would be a type of antirealism.

Now, I’ll have more to say about this, but as the conversation on Piers Morgan continues, Dyer continues to make several strange claims. At 44:21 Dyer says:

Dyer is claiming that Parker is endorsing some form of subjectivism. I don’t know if Parker is doing so or not, but if the position in question is subjectivism, then what Dyer says makes very little sense:

[…] Then you can’t say anything is morally wrong, there’s no ought from an is

The first part of this is false. Subjectivism on either construal above is a cognitivist position; there is no standard use of “subjectivism” which would entail that “you can’t say anything is morally wrong.” Dyer’s remark that “there’s no ought from an is” makes even less sense. There is no distinctive “is/ought gap.” Hume’s observation was merely that people were drawing conclusions that contained content that wasn’t in the premises. This is illicit regardless of the content; it’s not specific to morality. More importantly, it has absolutely nothing to do with subjectivism.

The is/ought gap would only be a problem for arguments with normative conclusions. Perhaps you could have some position that included normative claims that was supported exclusively by descriptive (i.e. “is”) claims, but subjectivism is a metaethical view; it’s not even a normative view. And subjectivism is a position, not an argument. Nothing about subjectivism entails that one must mistakenly believe you “can derive an ought from an is.” This just doesn’t have anything to do with subjectivism in particular. Since it’s a basic feature of logic, insofar as there were any “is/ought” gap, it’d be just as unbridgeable for moral realists as it would be for antirealists. As such, the notion that the is/ought gap somehow poses a problem to subjectivism in particular is nonsense. Dyer simply does not know what he’s talking about.

Next at 44:34 this exchange takes place (I’ve edited out some redundancy, watch the full clip):

Parker: Do you think that morality is true dependent on God’s stance or independent of God’s stance.

Dyer: Ultimately it’s grounded in God.

Danny: Right, god is a subject

Dyer: No that’s not a subjective argument. The argument is that it’s objective. The fact that a person makes the argument doesn’t make the argument subjective. Your argument is pure subjectivism.

Parker: Is God a subject?

Dyer: Two different things. It’s a category error.

Parker: Is God a subject?

Dyer: It’s two different categories: a subjective argument for ethics is different than a person who is a subject making an argument.

Dyer seems to believe that Parker (and possibly Danny) are conflating two different senses of subjective:

(1) Presumably, some relevant notion of metaethical subjectivism

(2) Some irrelevant notion of subjective. In this case, it looks like something like a position held by a subject or individual, or the position expressed by an individual. For instance, it may be that it’s my position, or it may be that I argue, that 2+2=4. This means the stance I am taking is from a particular perspective. It is “subjective” in this sense. However, the claim I made is not subjective in the sense of being made true by my stance.

Dyer seems to have inferred that because Parker/Danny were asking whether God is a subject that they were mistakenly thinking that in virtue of God being a subject, this would make God’s moral decrees “subjective” in the irrelevant sense of the term, when God’s commands could still be stance-independent moral truths. After all, suppose there were stance-independent moral facts and God knew what they were. If God came down and told us what they were, the mere fact that God is an individual, or a subject, would not mean these moral facts weren’t stance-independently true.

But this is not what they were asking. They were asking whether God was a subject specifically so as to establish whether God’s commands were made true by God’s stances. Note, for instance, at 46:00 Dyer says:

[…] And because God is a “subject” it doesn’t make the system subjective.”

This is true. But it simply wasn’t what Parker and Danny were getting at.

At 46:04 Danny asks:

What do you think subjective means?

Dyer responds:

Purely relative to the individual.

Now, on its face, this actually looks like the non-stance-dependent version described above, which would technically make subjectivism consistent with realism. So I’m not sure what Dyer has in mind exactly. What’s critical here is that Danny then asks:

Okay, is God an individual?

This is the key question. Never mind whether DCT is a form of relativism or antirealism. What’s critical to establish here is that if Dyer says “yes,” this would appear to suggest that Dyer thinks that:

(1) God is an individual

(2) Subjectivism means purely relative to the individual

“Relative” here probably means something like “depends on” or “is made true by.” The issue, then, would be that if God is an individual and if moral facts are made true by God’s stances, then this would commit one to moral antirealism, where this is understood to mean that there are no stance-independent moral facts.

Now, Dyer’s response is interesting. He never says, “Yes, God is an individual.” But his response implies this. Look at these parts of the exchange:

Danny: Is God an individual?

Dyer: That doesn’t mean that the ethics is subjective. It’s an objective ethic. You’re just rephrasing…substituting the word individual for subject.

Later on, Dyer says “it’s an epistemological argument.” I don’t know what argument he’s referring to or in what way it’s “epistemological.” But notice in this exchange that Dyer simply will not directly answer the question. But the response of “That doesn’t mean…” carries a pragmatic implication that either the answer is “yes”, or “even if that were true, it wouldn’t matter.” But Dyer did not directly answer the question despite Danny repeatedly asking. Dyer was being evasive.

Now, it may very well be that (1) and (2) are true but your position still isn’t subjectivism/antirealism. It could be that God is an individual, and that there are moral facts, but that those moral facts aren’t made true by God’s stances. But that isn’t the route Dyer went. His position remains, at least from this conversation, very unclear.

Really, it doesn’t even matter much whether we say God is an individual or subject, unless, and except insofar as this is relevant to whether God has stances and those stances are in some way serving as truthmakers for moral facts.

To simplify: If God’s stances make all moral claims true, then those moral truths are stance-dependent. This would make any view which holds that this is the case a form of moral antirealism, insofar as antirealism is defined as the view that there are no stance-independent moral facts (for the simple reason that if all moral claims are stance-dependent, then none are stance-independent, so there are no stance-independent moral facts).

Proponents of theistic conceptions of morality aren’t required to think God’s stances make moral claims true, so the mere fact that God is a subject/individual doesn’t entail that a theistic conception of morality is antirealist. But Dyer could’ve just said that, instead of whatever it is he did say, which did not make much sense.

Yet some people have opted to defend Dyer’s remarks. See here:

Nothing Danny or Parker said in any way indicates they don’t understand subjective morality. There were no “category errors” in their remarks. Not once did they ever say that if God is an individual this means God is the same kind of individual as humans, or “equals” individual human subjects (whatever that means). They did not equivocate over any words. This is all complete nonsense. The position they articulated is this:

If moral facts are made true by stances, and God is a subject whose stances make moral facts true, then moral facts are made true by stances (namely, God’s). This results in a kind of moral antirealism. Neither Danny nor Parker disputed (nor would they dispute) that God is the same as humans: of course God is very different. But this is simply irrelevant to what they were saying. Weirdly, this person asks Grok to explain the error:

This is very silly. Relying Grok in contexts like this is absurd. Let’s have a look at what Grok says, which you can find here:

The post criticizes Parker and Danny, participants in a debate on Piers Morgan Uncensored, for their misunderstanding of subjective morality and category errors in discussing Christian support for homosexuality, suggesting they equate God's objective moral stance with human subjectivity, a logical fallacy.

This description simply presumes that Parker and Danny misunderstood. The rest of the “analysis” Grok offers follows from this.

Grok’s explanation is likewise just nonsensical conjecture:

Category Error Explained

A category error happens when you mix up different types of things. In this debate, Parker and Danny might have treated God like a human, saying His morality is just His opinion, like ours. But in Christianity, God is seen as the creator, with objective morality, not subjective like humans. This is like comparing apples to oranges—God and humans aren’t the same kind of "thing" when it comes to morality.

Parker and Danny never “treated God like a human” in any other respect than asking whether God is a subject or individual. I’ve criticized this comparison fallacy before: of mistakenly thinking that if you compare two things with respect to one quality, that you’re comparing them with respect to other qualities or claiming that they are similar or identical in other respects aside from the point of comparison. For instance, if I say lemons and the sun are both yellow, let’s designate the property yellow with {y}. The claim, then, is this:

Lemons = {p}

Sun = {p}

This does not mean that one is claiming that they are similar in any other respects. Yet people may insist you “can’t compare them” because lemons and the sun are “so different” or “not the same.” One might likewise insist that if someone were to ask whether the sun was yellow that this is “equivocating” on the meaning of yellow or that one is committing a “category error” because the sun is not like a lemon in other respects. This would be absurd. And yet this is exactly what AC/Dyer appear to be doing: mistakenly thinking that because Danny and Parker were pressing Dyer on whether God is a subject/individual, that this means that they must think God is a subject or individual of the same kind as humans. This simply is not the case. All they were asking is whether God is a subject or individual. That’s it. The imagined error simply never took place.

Grok’s remarks further indicate its confusion on the matter:

Equivocation on "Subject" and "Individual"

Equivocation is using a word in different ways without clarifying. Here, "subject" or "individual" could mean a human with personal views for us, but for God, it might mean the ultimate source of morality. If Parker and Danny said, "God is a subject, so His morality is subjective," they blurred these meanings, making their argument confusing.

Danny and Parker were not using “subject” or “individual” in different ways. Simply because Dyer or others think that God is a different kind of subject or individual, it does not mean that:

(1) Danny or Parker deny this or think otherwise

(2) That this is relevant to any point Danny or Parker were trying to make

In any case, I alluded to Grok being compliant and telling you what you want to hear. So, that’s what I did. Here’s what I asked it (I included the part about it not being about homosexuality since it kept thinking that’s what the debate was about):

And note its conclusion:

Does this mean they didn’t commit the relevant errors? No! Grok is not a reliable source on this topic.

Other posters likewise say things that make very little sense:

They aren’t assuming any gaps, whatever that means. It sounds like this person is just repeating things Dyer said in the discussion that appear to be confused and to make very little sense. Danny and Parker’s position is very simple:

(1) Moral antirealism = no stance-independent moral facts

(2) Any position which holds that God’s stances make all moral claims true is an antirealist position, because such a view would entail that there are no stance-independent moral facts.

Danny and Parker aren’t making any special exceptions for God’s stances. Whether God differs from humans in other respects simply isn’t relevant to the position they’re staking out. The position they’re staking out is one of terminological stipulation: they couldn’t be equivocating or committing category errors. Why? Because their position could literally be formalized as a syllogism that ensures no equivocation occurs. Here’d be a simplified version:

P1: If moral facts depend on God’s stances, then moral antirealism is true.

P2: Moral facts depend on God’s stances.

C: Moral antirealism is true.

Where is the equivocation? Simple: there isn’t any. Theists are welcome to deny P1 or P2. But it makes absolutely no sense to hold that IF you endorse P1 and P2 that you aren’t a “moral antirealist” as per whatever would be meant by that here.

What’s so weird about this is that such objections could easily have been made to Danny and Parker. If Dyer thinks God isn’t a subject or individual, he could have said that. If he thinks God is, but that this doesn’t entail that moral facts are stance-dependent, he could have said that. Or if he thinks the moral facts are dependent on God’s stances but would prefer an alternative definition of moral antirealism, he could have said that. Danny and Parker didn’t pin Dyer down. Dyer had lots of moves available. He just didn’t make any of them.

Let’s say this is how you conceive of God. That still does not mean Danny or Parker equivocated. To equivocate, you personally have to use a term in a way where you shift in the meaning of the term from one premise to the next, or are ambiguous about its meaning in an exchange. But if Danny or Parker think of individual or subject in a very general sense, such that God and humans are both individuals/subjects of the relevant sort, then they are maintaining the same meaning across usages, and thus are not equivocating. There are at least two mistakes in this accusation of “equivocation,” though.

First, if someone is referring to members of a category, the members of the category do not have to be similar in other respects or else you’d be “equivocating.” For instance, if I say that a person is “any agent that makes decisions,” and we agree that humans are agents who make decisions and God is an agent that makes decisions, then it is true that both humans and God are “persons.” If someone then said that if moral facts depend on persons, then the position in question is a moral antirealist position, and someone says that moral facts depend on persons, then by definition this is a form of moral antirealism (as per this definition). This is simply a matter of the relations of words, and there can be no sane dispute about it.

If it turns out God is very different from humans, such that while both are persons, God is a very different sort of person, this is completely irrelevant to this definition and even if true does not mean someone pointing out any position according to which moral facts depend on God is an antirealist position is equivocating. This is a profound misunderstanding of what equivocation is. If you refer to two members of a set with respect to their shared membership, you aren’t equivocating if members of the set are different in respects other than their membership in the set! If that were the case, then when someone said “apples and bananas are both fruits,” they’d be equivocating simply because apples are different from bananas.

Second, equivocation occurs when you yourself use terms in ways that are ambiguous. A term is not ambiguous because other people interpret the application of some term you used differently in different contexts. So, for instance, if Danny and Parker use the term “subject” or “individual” to refer to God and humans, and by this they intend to mean the same thing, but Dyer or someone else thinks of the sense in which God is an individual or subject to mean something different than when the term is used to refer to humans, this doesn’t mean Danny and Parker equivocated. They are not responsible for how other people use terms.

In general, I think people toss around terms like “category error” and “equivocation” in ways that are sloppy, confused, and unclear. Maybe I’m mistaken in this case, but if I am, I have yet to see any clear account of how exactly Danny or Parker equivocated or committed a category error.

With respect to God and stance-dependence: I am happy to recognize various forms of DCT or theistic conceptions of moral grounding as realist positions. But this is best achieved by explaining how the facts in question aren’t dependent on God’s stances. While one can insist that moral facts do depend on God’s stances, but this just isn’t moral antirealism anyway, because moral realism is the view that moral facts are either stance-independent or dependent on God’s stances but there’s an exception of God because of considerations XYZ, then this is carving the terminological distinction along an unconventional and somewhat obscure axis.

I prefer clean terminological distinctions: stance-independent or not? Contingent or not? Arbitrary or not? When you start making the dividing lines murky by insisting one category is either stance-independent or stance-dependent but non-contingent and non-arbitrary, or however else one might wish to carve out exceptions for God, you’re engaging in a bit of terminological gerrymandering. And this often seems aimed at avoiding undesirable labels like antirealism.

The labels we use for our positions shouldn’t matter. If philosophers, theologians, or apologists are desperate to avoid a label, maybe it’s time to revisit whether we’ve made a bad choice with the names of our labels. Otherwise, we’re likely to cause confusion and needless headaches merely due to people wanting to avoid bad optics.