[1] It is wrong to kill a human being without justification;

[2] A fetus is a human being;

[3] In the case of feticide (at least in the majority of cases) insufficient or no justification is forthcoming.

I argued that defenders of feticide cannot rationally reject this argument unless they reject one of the premises. I argued further that attempts to refute [3] are successful only if one assumes that a fetus is not a human being. It follows then that defenders of abortion laws cannot rationally avoid the question of whether [2] is correct, whether a fetus is a human.

Is the Fetus a Human Being?

The first thing to note is that the claim that feticide is homicide has considerable prima facie plausibility. Consider this, a hunter is in the woods and notices some rustling in the bushes. Looking through his scope he sees a six-foot high, bi-pedal being with brown hair, blue eyes, wearing a red and black swanndri. He refrains from shooting. Here, the hunter makes the sensible and reasonable judgement that in firing he would risk engaging in homicide. He bases this on what the target looks like. In the absence of reasons for thinking otherwise, he has good grounds for this claim.

This example has application to the status of the fetus; “[there is] a general consensus that the fetus is recognisably human after six weeks, and certainly after eight”[1] This fact, conjoined with the above illustration, entails that, in the absence of good reasons to the contrary, there are good grounds for thinking that feticide is homicide.

The second thing to note is is that good reasons for thinking the fetus does not have human status are not forthcoming. Here I will focus on four common examples: viability, sentience, birth and person-hood.

Viability
A common argument contends that a fetus is not a human because it is not viable. Susan Sherwin argues that feticide differs from killing children because a fetus “is wholly dependent on her [the mother’s] unique contribution to its maintenance, while a newborn is physically separate, though still in need of a lot of care”.[2]

There are several problems with this position.

The fact that a fetus cannot survive independently of its mother does not mean it is not a human being. Fetal viability is contingent upon the medical technology of a given culture. A fetus that is not viable in Chad is viable in Los Angeles. If viability is necessary for something to be a human then a woman pregnant with a viable fetus in Los Angeles who flies from Los Angeles to Chad carries a human being when she leaves but this human being ceases to exist when she arrives in Chad and yet becomes human again when she returns.[3]

Another implication of the viability criteria is that it entails that conjoined twins are not human. Consider conjoined twins Bob and Scott. If Bob is a human being then since Scott cannot live independently of Bob, Scott must not be a human being. It is difficult to see what property Bob has that Scott lacks which would justify considering him human but not Scott. By this reasoning, one would be forced to conclude both that they are and are not, human.[4]

In addition, the property Sherwin points to – dependence – is not something that ends at birth. David Oderberg puts the point well;

A born baby is also totally dependent on its mother, only instead of being fed and sheltered by the mother’s automatic internal processes, it is fed and sheltered by the mother’s consciously controlled external, behaviour. How can that make a difference to whether or not a foetus is a human being? [5]

A newborn is totally dependent on its mother if it happens to be born in an isolated area where there are no other lactating women and there are no means of bottle-feeding. An elderly woman may be totally dependant on her children looking after her. A hiker who breaks her leg a week’s walk from a road will die if her companions do not bring help. In these situations, it would be homicide for the mother to kill her baby, the children to kill their mother or the hikers their companion. The fact of dependence does not change this; one could not plausibly say that the baby, the elderly women or the hiker are not human beings.[6] Consequently, it is not plausible to suggest that the dependence of the non-viable fetus upon its mother makes it non-human.

Sentience
Because of these problems the more common response is to ground humanity in certain psychological capacities. Killing an organism is not homicide unless the organism’s brain has developed enough for it to acquire sentience, the ability to perceive pleasure and pain. This criterion will mean abortion is permissible up to 24 weeks.

Despite its pervasive appeal, there are some prima facie problems with this position. On the face of it, lack of sentience does not make a being non-human. If it did, then human beings cease to exist when asleep or unconscious and then pop back into existence upon awakening. Shooting someone would cease to be homicide as long as the victim was asleep or unconscious.

But setting this objection aside, there are other serious problems with this position. David Boonin notes that those who attempt to ground humanity in the amount of brain development an organism has undergone face a dilemma. “Any appeal to what a brain can do at various stages of development would seem to have to appeal to what the brain can already do. Or to what the brain has the potential to do in the future.”[7]

Either option leads to problems for a defender of the permissibility of abortion who does not also want to endorse infanticide. This is because “by any plausible measure dogs, and cats, cows and pigs, chickens and ducks or more intellectually developed than a new born infant.”[8]

Suppose, then, one takes the first horn and appeals to what the brain can already do.  However, unless one wishes to affirm that cats, dogs and chickens are human beings, “appeals to what the brain can already do” will “be unable to account for the presumed wrongness of killing toddlers or infants.”[9]

Suppose, then, one takes up the second horn of the dilemma and appeals to “what the brain has the potential to do in the future;” Boonin notes that this will entail that feticide is homicide. “If [such an account] allows appeals to what the brain has the potential to do in the future, then it will have to include fetuses as soon as their brains begin to emerge, during the first few weeks of gestation.”[10]

Birth
A third, position is that the fetus is not human until it is born. Aside from entailing feticide up until birth, this position has other problems. A premature, 30-week infant in a hospital intensive care unit would be a human being, whilst a 40-week fetus in utero would not be. Doctors would hypothetically struggle in one room to keep a human person alive while in the other, a physiologically-identical or more developed being is referred to as a non-human product of conception that can be killed. One gets the distinct impression that an ad hoc arbitrary judgement has been employed here purely to justify abortion.

Personhood
A final line of argument contends that while fetuses are clearly physiologically human they are not not “persons” –  where person is defined as  “a thinking, intelligent being that has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking being, in different times and places.”[11] The point is that fetuses lack advanced psychological attributes such as self-awareness, rationality or autonomy which are typical of human persons. This position excludes the animals mentioned above as well as excluding human fetuses.

The problem is that by this account newborn infants are not persons either.

In a definitive study of infanticide, Michael Tooley compiled an impressive array of neurological and physiological data which demonstrated that infants are not persons in this sense until some time after birth.[12] The price of this line of inference is the reduction of newborn infants to the ethical level of cows. A newborn cow, and certainly a mature cow, is more person-like than an infant is. It is difficult to understand by this view why killing and eating infants is any more problematic than consuming a Big Mac.

Of course one can avoid this by claiming that it is the potential to acquire properties such as rationality, self-awareness, autonomy and not their actuality that matters. This enables one to claim that infants are protected by the moral rules against killing but it still permits us to kill and eat animals. The problem with this, of course, is that fetuses would also be covered by this rule, because fetuses also have the potential to possess these properties.

Conclusion
In summation, the arguments for the claim that a feticide is justified show that, except for a few rare cases, abortion is justified only if feticide is not homicide. However, there are good prima facie grounds for thinking feticide is homicide and these prima facie grounds are not overridden by reasons to the contrary. Almost every attempt to show a feticide is not homicide, has the implication that infanticide is not either.

[1] David Boonin A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 95.
[2] Susan Sherwin “Abortion a Feminist Perspective” in Bonnie Steinbock & John D Arras (Eds)  Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine 5^th ed (Mountain View CA: Mayfield Publishing Co, 1999) 364.
[3] Peter Singer “Taking Life: the Embryo and the Fetus” in Writings on an Ethical Life (London: harper Collins, 2000) 148.
[5] David Oderberg Applied Ethics: A Non-Consequentialist Approach (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Co, 2000) 5.
[6] Peter Singer “Taking life: The Embryo and the Fetus” 148-149.
[7] David Boonin A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 125.
[8] Ibid 121.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] John Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding I.9.29.
[12] Michael Tooley Abortion and Infanticide (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) Ch. 11.5.

RELATED POSTS:
Abortion and the Morality of Feticide: Part I

Back in 2009 I wrote “Abraham and Isaac – Did God Command the Killing of an Innocent?” This post addressed a dilemma several philosophers have raised for those Christians who take the patriarchal narratives in Genesis in literal manner. It seems plausible that Christians who do this are committed to an inconsistent triad,

1. If God commands an action x then x is morally required;
2. It is wrong to kill innocent human beings;
3. God commanded Abraham to kill an innocent human being.

These three propositions are inconsistent; 1 and 3 entail the denial of 2.

To respond to this triad, I appropriated a thought experiment provided by John Hare; I wrote:

One example Hare notes, is particularly interesting, “Perhaps (to get more bizarre) God could have willed that we kill each other at the age of 18, at which point God would bring us immediately back to life.” Hare asks us to imagine a world, in which, when people of a certain age are killed they immediately come back to life. He opines, quite plausibly, that if this were to be the case then killing people at this age would not be wrong or at least, not seriously wrong. One of the reasons that killing people is wrong in the world we live in is because people stay dead. If they were only unconscious for a split second and came back to life in full health then arguably killing a person would not be the serious wrong we believe it is.

I suggested that, a careful examination of the text reveals that Abraham’s actions occurred in a context where he knew his son would not stay dead but would come down the mountain with him and live on to adulthood to father children of his own. I argued this fact resolves the dilemma,

Once this is realised, I think it is evident that [1], [2] and [3] are consistent. If one assumes, for the sake of argument, that the Patriarchal Narratives are literally true then it follows that [3] is true only if a certain context is assumed. God commanded Abraham to kill his son in the highly unusual context where Abraham knew that his son would not stay dead but would come down the mountain afterwards and live on to adulthood to father children of his own. Proposition [2] is defensible only in a context where people do not know these sorts of things; the rule to not kill the innocent applies to a world where people do not come back to life after they have been killed. Hence, the story of Abraham and Isaac, if taken literally, does not entail that God commanded something immoral or contradictory.

What I later discovered is that Paul Copan sometimes reads this blog and he, on reading my post, summarised my argument and appropriated it (with acknowledgements)  in chapter 5 of his latest book Is God a Moral Monster: Making Sense of the Old Testament God.

Enter Randal Rauser. In the paper he presented for the SBL panel, Rauser made a remark on the Abraham and Isaac issue. Copan responded by summarising his argument, which was an appropriation of my argument. Rauser responded with an analogy, which he has since put up on his blog:

“Yeah, what if?” I thought cynically. But that was my inside voice. With my outside (audible) voice I replied: “So what if a virgin child could be raped and then miraculously made a virgin once again? Would the rape of the child still be evil?” That didn’t go over well, I think. But I don’t see the difference.”

Here was my point. Let’s grant, for the sake of argument, that God demanded the killing of a child and then immediately resurrected that child. Would that make it all better? Well there would still be that little matter that the child was killed by dad… “Dad, it’s good to be alive again and all, but you did decapitate me, and that kinda stinks, you know?” (Talk about an awkward moment at the Thanksgiving dinner table.)

And likewise a child that was devotionally raped and then had their virginity miraculously restored (physiologically and psychologically) could still say, “Dad, it’s great to be a virgin again and all, but you did rape me, and that kinda stinks, you know?”

My recollection is that Rauser’s comment did go down well initially. It was after a few exchanges that the audience became less enthusiastic. But putting audience reactions aside, does this response work?

As I noted in my response to Rauser on the night, I do not think it does. That is because I think there is a difference between killing someone and their being immediately restored to life and raping someone and their virginity being immediately restored. It is this: what makes rape wrong is not that it takes away a person’s virginity, the act is still a grave moral evil if a non-virgin is raped. What makes rape wrong is some other feature of the act. Killing is different. It is quite plausible to say that one of the major things that makes killing wrong is that when you kill someone you deprive them of their life. In fact, several of the most prominent analyses of the morality of killing in the literature make this point.

Michael Tooley and Peter Singer, for example, argue that killing is wrong because it frustrates a being’s desire to continue in existence. If a person is killed and yet continued in existence then this wrong-making property would not be instantiated and so, on this analysis, killing would not be wrong. Similarly, Don Marquis argues that what makes killing wrong is that it deprives a victim of a future of value, a future the victim would have experienced had they not been killed. David Boonin argues that what makes killing wrong is that it frustrates a being’s ideal desires to continue living. Some Kantian views assume this too; the reason killing is considered disrespectful or demeaning on their view is because it shows a desire to destroy the person, to deprive them of all the goods of their future and so forth. I am not endorsing any of these theories, I am simply pointing out that it is plausible to say that, whatever it is that makes killing wrong, is tied up with the fact that killing ends a life.

This fact makes all the difference because when you kill someone who immediately comes back to life, the property central to making killing wrong has been removed from the act – the person is not dead. When someone is raped and their virginity is restored the property that makes rape wrong is still there. This is why I think Rauser’s example does not work and this is what I said to him at the SBL panel; when a person is raped and their virginity is restored, they have still been subjected to a horrific wrong, the wrong of being raped. But when a person has been killed and their life has been restored, they have not been subjected to a great wrong — yes they have for a split second been killed but the act occurs in a context where the properties which make killing a great wrong were not present. So I think Rauser’s critique of Copan and myself on this issue fails.

There are numerous other issues here that I could go into such as the fact that raping a person and restoring their virginity is logically impossible in a way it is not with killing. Also, the fact that God intervened to prevent Abraham killing Isaac and so on but here I simply wanted to address the main difference between us.

The first is that the typical arguments in favour of abortion succeed only if it is assumed from the outset that feticide is not a form of homicide. A couple of examples will illustrate this. It is frequently asserted that women have a right to do whatever they like with their own bodies. This assertion is false. Women do not have a right to do whatever they like with their bodies; no one has such a right. Women cannot use their bodies to rape or commit homicide or set fires. The right to do as we please is limited by the morality of our actions, thus whether abortion falls into the category of an action we are free to choose depends on whether feticide is homicide. If it is, then this argument fails but as currently used it is just assumed that it is not.

Some might object that such an interpretation is an uncharitable reading of this contention. What is important from this perspective is that all people have a right to control what happens inside or to their own bodies. I have a right to control what happens to mine and you have a right to control what happens to yours. Hence, provided the decision I make does not involve me using your body in a way that you do not consent to then I have a right to do it. However, implicit in this argument is the claim that a fetus, at least until born, is part of a woman’s body, that it is not a separate, bodily-living, human being on its own. However, this claim is erroneous. To suggest that a fetus is part of a woman’s body entails that the mother of a male fetus has two heads, four arms and a penis. Once again this argument is successful only if one assumes a fetus is not a human being from the outset because if the fetus is human then it too has a right to not have its body harmed.

The infamous illegal “back-street” abortion argument fares no better. The allegation that “hundreds” (I put this in scare-quotes because actually the figures show it was significantly a lot less than this) of women died from illegal abortions can justify legalisation only if feticide is not homicide. If it is homicide then this argument reduces to the bizarre assertion that we should kill eighteen thousand children each year in order to prevent “hundreds” of women from harming themselves by breaking the law.

Typical consequentialist arguments also fail. Abortion prevents unwanted children who are likely to be poor, abused or engage in crime. It is hailed as a solution to over-population and the existence of more handicapped people. It prevents adult and teenage women from falling into economic hardship and stress. It enables them to complete their education, pursue their careers. However, all this is equally true of infanticide. Infanticide prevents the existence of unwanted children and their associated social costs, lowers the population, prevents the handicapped existing and saves women and teenagers from the economic and emotional stresses of parenthood. Yet infanticide, as convenient as it is, is condemned because it is homicide. Again, all these arguments assume that the fetus is not human without actually arguing for it.

This is not to say feticide can never be unjustified. Utilising the justification of self-defence, I think a case can be made for feticide where pregnancy constitutes a threat to a woman’s life or perhaps in cases of rape (space prevents me elaborating the casuistry here). Such cases are extremely rare and make up less than 0.5% of all cases (according to figures compiled by the Abortion Supervisory Committee). So, if feticide is homicide, the vast majority of abortions lack justification. To defend permissive abortion laws on these grounds is a bit like allowing people to murder on demand on the grounds that there exist rare cases of justifiable killing in self-defence.

My second point is the claim that feticide is homicide has considerable prima facie plausibility. Consider this scenario. A hunter is in the woods and notices some rustling in the bushes. Looking through his scope he sees a six-foot high, bi-pedal being with brown hair, blue eyes, wearing a swann-dri. He refrains from shooting. Here, the hunter makes the sensible and reasonable judgment that in firing he would risk engaging in homicide. He bases this on what the target looked like. In the absence of reasons for thinking otherwise he has good grounds for this claim. However, “[there is] a general consensus that the fetus is recognisably human after six weeks, and certainly after eight” (D Boonin A Defense of Abortion (2003) 95). This fact, conjoined with the above illustration, entails that, in the absence of good reasons to the contrary, there are good grounds for thinking that feticide is homicide.

My final point is that good reasons to the contrary are not forthcoming. Here I will focus on three common examples starting with the fetus not being viable.

The fact that a fetus cannot survive independently of its mother does not mean it is not a human being. Fetal viability is contingent upon the medical technology of a given culture. A fetus that is not viable in Chad is viable in Los Angeles. If viability is necessary for something to be a human then a woman pregnant with a viable fetus in Los Angeles who flies from Los Angeles to Chad carries a human being when she leaves but this human being ceases to exist when she arrives in India and yet becomes human again when she returns (Peter Singer Writings on an Ethical Life (2000) 148).

Similarly, while the fetus lacks consciousness, lack of consciousness does not make a being non-human. If it did, then a human being ceases to exist when asleep or unconscious and then pops back into existence upon awakening. Shooting someone would cease to be homicide provided we render him or her unconscious first.

Appeals to fetal consciousness face other problems. David Boonin notes that those who attempt to ground humanity in the amount of brain development an organism has undergone face a dilemma. “Any appeal to what a brain can do at various stages of development would seem to have to appeal to what the brain can already do. Or to what the brain has the potential to do in the future.” (David Boonin A Defence of Abortion (2002) 125). Either option leads to problems for a defender of the permissibility of feticide who does not also want to endorse infanticide. This is because “by any plausible measure dogs, and cats, cows and pigs, chickens and ducks are more intellectually developed than a new born infant”.(Boonin, 121)

Suppose, then, that one takes the first horn of the dilemma and appeals to what the brain can already do. However, unless one wishes to affirm that “dogs, and cats, cows and pigs, chickens and ducks” are human beings then “appeals to what the brain can already do” will “be unable to account for the presumed wrongness of killing toddlers or infants.”

Suppose, then, one takes up the second horn and appeals to “what the brain has the potential to do in the future.” Boonin notes that this will entail that feticide is homicide. “If [such an account] allows appeals to what the brain has the potential to do in the future, then it will have to include fetuses as soon as their brains begin to emerge, during the first few weeks of gestation.”(Boonin, 121)

Finally, while it’s true that fetuses are not ‘persons,’ where person is defined as “a thinking, intelligent being that has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking being, in different times and places,” (J Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding) neither are newborn infants. In fact, a newborn cow is more person-like than an infant is. The price of a cogent pro-abortion argument is the reduction of newborn infants to the ethical level of cows. It is difficult to understand, on this view, why killing a newborn infant is any more problematic than killing a calf.

In summation, except for a few rare cases, abortion is justified only if feticide is not homicide. However, there are good prima facie grounds for thinking feticide is homicide and these prima facie grounds are not overridden by reasons to the contrary. Jointly, these contentions demonstrate that feticide constitutes unjustified homicide, and, hence, should not be a practice that is tolerated or sanctioned by the state.

I write a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled Contra Mundum. This blog post was published in the January 10 issue and is reproduced here with permission. Contra Mundum is Latin for ‘against the world;’ the phrase is usually attributed to Athanasius who was exiled for defending Christian orthodoxy.

Letters to the editor should be sent to: editorial@investigatemagazine.DELETE.com

RELATED POSTS:
Is Abortion Liberal? Part 1
Is Abortion Liberal? Part 2
Sentience Part 1
Sentience Part 2
Viability
Abortion and Child Abuse: Another Response to Farrar
Abortion and Brain Death: A Response to Farrar
Abortion and Capital Punishment: No Contradiction
During, Sherwin & Hutchison on Backstreet Abortion
Imposing Your Beliefs onto Others: A Defence
Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part I
Boonin’s Defense of the Sentience Criterion: A Critique Part II

Some modern theists have attempted to extricate themselves from this type of dilemma by maintaining that God is good and so could not possibly approve of torture; but these theists are caught in a trap of their own making, for what can they possibly mean by the assertion that God is good? That God is approved by God?[i]

The problems with this response have already been demonstrated. Singer suggests that the modern theists who propose this response hold that ‘good’ means approved by God. However, this is not what they propose. Some, like Quinn and Weirenga, suggest that what makes actions right or wrong are the commands of God. Adams holds that wrongness is the property of being contrary to God’s commands. Neither of these views entails that ‘God is good’ means ‘God is approved’ by God.

In order for Singer’s objection to be something other than a straw man, it needs to be reformulated to deal with theories like the ones actually proposed by defenders of divine command theory. One such formulation is suggested, though not endorsed, by Edward Weirenga.

[I]f to be morally good is to do no wrong, and if what is wrong is what is forbidden by God, then to say that God is good is just to say that he never does what he forbids himself to do. But there is no moral value in never doing what one forbids oneself to do.[ii]

This objection is problematic. Firstly, the last premise affirms that there is no moral value in never doing what one forbids oneself to do; i.e. there is no moral value in living by the standards you set yourself, so to speak. This is false. There very clearly is moral value in avoiding hypocrisy and hypocrisy involves, in part, not following the standards one lays down for one’s own behaviour. Moreover, the very notion at the heart of much contemporary, ethical theory is that of autonomy. Autonomy refers to the act of regulating one’s own behaviour in light of the laws or principles of which one approves.

Finally, note that Weirenga’s objection begins with “if to be morally good is to do no wrong … then”. [Emphasis added]. The argument assumes that goodness is defined purely in terms of doing one’s duty. This was not claimed in the theory proposed and this assumption is at best controversial. Many ethical theories define ‘right’ in terms of a relationship to what is good and others see rightness as involving side constraints upon the quest for good. At best, what is needed is an argument as to why a theist must accept such a definition and none has been offered.

Paul Faber notes that within Presbyterian tradition there are strong precedents for not characterising goodness this way. He notes how God’s goodness is characterised in the Westminster Confession.[iii]

[M]ost loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him; and withal, most just, and terrible in His judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.[iv]

Here God’s goodness is not defined so much in terms of conformity to duties but in terms of various character traits or excellence. Virtues such as being loving, truthful, forgiving, etc, hating actions that are wrong, praising and rewarding what is right. Nothing in divine command theory entails that God cannot have such attributes. The theory might have this implication if it also maintained that God has such traits because he is required to or if the virtues mentioned cannot be attributed to God without defining them in terms of various commands he has issued. However, none of this is necessary. God does not have to have a duty to have something in order to have it and such things as being loving, truthful, forgiving, etc. can all be understood without specifying any divine command.

[i] Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 3-4.
[ii] Edward Weirenga, The Nature of God, 222.
[iii] Paul Faber, “The Euthyphro Objection to Divine Normative Theories: A Response” Religious Studies 21 (1985): 564-567.
[iv] Westminster Confession of Faith, Ch. 2, Article 1, 145.

RELATED POSTS:
The Euthyphro Objection Part I: Against Divine Commands & Avoiding Strawmen
The Euthyphro Objection Part II: Arbitrariness

Some theists say that ethics cannot do without religion because the very meaning of “good” is nothing other than “what God approves”. Plato refuted a similar view more than two thousand years ago by arguing that if the gods approve of some actions it must be because those actions are good, in which case it cannot be the gods’ approval that makes them good. The alternative view makes God’s approval entirely arbitrary: if the gods had happened to approve of torture and disapprove of helping our neighbours, torture would be good and helping our neighbours bad.[i]

In my previous post, The Euthyphro Objection Part I: Against Divine Commands & Avoiding Strawmen, pointed out that his version of the Euthyphro argument relies upon a straw man. Divine command theory is not typically proposed as a theory about what is good but is usually restricted to deontic properties such as right and wrong. Its worth noting however that, this fact is not fatal to Singer’s position; it is possible to develop analogies to the Euthyphro that do not rely on this straw man. James Rachels is an example, in The Elements of Moral Philosophy he suggests that an action is right either because God commands it or he commands it because it is right. He then offers the same arguments Singer does to suggest that only by embracing the second horn of the dilemma which amounts to giving up divine command theory, can one escape absurdity.[ii]

The key argument Singer raises against divine command theory is, “if the gods had happened to approve of torture and disapprove of helping our neighbours, torture would be good and helping our neighbours bad”.[iii] Singer couches this objection in terms of goodness and badness but the same objection can be raised with regards to claims that Gods commands constitutes what is right and wrong. Rachels for example states that divine command theory “leads to trouble” because “it represents Gods commands as arbitrary. It means God could have given different commands just as easily. He could have commanded us to be liars, and then lying, not truthfulness would be right.”[iv]

The objection is that divine command theory entails a certain counter-factual conditional; to use Singer’s example, if God commanded torture then torture would not be wrong. While Singer does not state that this conditional is false, he appears to take it for granted that it is. After all, if the conditional were true then the fact that divine command theory entails it would not constitute an objection to the theory. Unfortunately Singer provides no reason for thinking this conditional is false. He appears to think that it is obvious.

Phillip Quinn has given reasons for questioning this assumption. Quinn notes that a counter-factual conditional such as ‘If God commands torture then torture is not wrong’ is false only if the antecedent is true and the consequent false.[v] In other words, the conditional is only false in a situation where God in fact does command torture and torture in that situation is wrong. In order for Singer’s objection to be sound there needs to be a logically-possible situation in which God does offer the command in question and the action he commands is wrong. Is such a scenario logically possible?

It is doubtful it is. God is perfectly and maximally good. Hence, the first premise is true only if a perfectly-good being would command an action such as the torture of children. This is unlikely. The claim that a perfectly-good being would command something morally abhorrent is on the face of it incoherent. Hence, it is unlikely that such a situation is possible.

A former teacher of mine, Mane Hajdin, suggested to me that this assertion is too hasty a few years ago he offered me the following criticism,

[I]t is assumed that being good involves being loving, forgiving, etc, in all possible worlds. But why should we assume that? Why aren’t there worlds in which being good involves being cruel, ruthless, etc? To simply assume that, in this context, may leave the impression of begging the question.

Roy Perrett suggested to me that that there are possible states of affairs where the contingent and factual structure of the world would be so different that what we take as paradigms of virtue in fact are not. In such a world, torture may be conducive to human flourishing or be, in fact, a virtuous activity.There may be something to this response. The problem with this response is that it still fails to provide reasons for thinking that the above-mentioned conditional is false. In order for this conditional to be false it must be logically possible not just for God to command an action but for that action to be wrong in the given situation. Perrett and Hajdin provide us reasons for thinking that it is possible for a perfectly-good being to command actions such as torture or cruelty. However, the situations envisaged are ones in which torture is not, in fact, wrong. In the situation Perrett envisages, torture is, in fact, virtuous and in Hajdin’s torture is good. In such examples it is the virtuous nature of torture that makes it plausible to assume that a perfectly-good being could command it.

It remains doubtful whether a logically-possible situation in which God commands an action and that action is wrong could exist. This is because a perfectly-good being would not command wrongdoing. To the extent that we think a perfectly-good being could command a particular action, we have reasons for thinking the action permissible. On the other hand, to the extent that we think it is impossible for the action to be wrong we find it impossible to envisage how a perfectly-good being could command it.

In Part III I will look at the emptiness objection.

[i] Singer, Practical Ethics, 3.
[ii] James Rachels, Elements of Moral Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) 42.
[iii] Singer, Practical Ethics, 3.
[iv] Rachels The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 42
[v] Phillip Quinn, “Divine Command Theory,” in Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, ed. H Lafollette (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 2000) 70.

RELATED POSTS:
The Euthyphro Objection Part I: Against Divine Commands & Avoiding Strawmen
Euthyphro Objection Part III: The Redundancy of God is Good

[E]thics is not something intelligible only in the context of religion. I shall treat ethics entirely independent of religion. Some theists say that ethics cannot do without religion because the very meaning of “good” is nothing other than “what God approves”. Plato refuted a similar view more than two thousand years ago by arguing that if the gods approve of some actions it must be because those actions are good, in which case it cannot be the gods’ approval that makes them good. The alternative view makes God’s approval entirely arbitrary: if the gods had happened to approve of torture and disapprove of helping our neighbours, torture would be good and helping our neighbours bad.[i]

Several features of this critique are noteworthy. Singer identifies a position known as the divine command theory of ethics. He construes this position as the view that “the very meaning of “good” is nothing other than “what God approves.” He bases this on the testimony of “some theists”. Singer’s argument here consists of three stages. He proposes the famous dilemma proposed by Socrates in Plato’s dialogue, Euthyphro. He then claims that divine command theory makes God’s commands arbitrary. He asserts that acceptance of divine command theory entails that paradigmatically-evil actions such as torture could be good. He concludes that divine command theory makes God’s goodness redundant,

Some modern theists have attempted to extricate themselves from this type of dilemma by maintaining that God is good and so could not possibly approve of torture; but these theists are caught in a trap of their own making, for what can they possibly mean by the assertion that God is good? That God is approved by God?[ii]

In this three part blog series I will respond to the Euthyphro dilemma. In this post I will comment upon Singer’s description of his opponents’ position and suggest it is a straw-man. In the next two posts I will assess the arguments he proposes and argue they are unsuccessful. Contrary to what is commonly asserted in ethics textbooks and first year philosophy lectures, I do not think the Euthyphro dilemma is sound.

As I stated above, Singer’s argument is an attack upon a position known in the literature as divine command theory or voluntarism. Schneewind notes that in the late Middle Ages two schools emerged as to the relationship between God and the existence of an objective law. The first and older position is known as Intellectualism. In this view, God does not create morality; rather, God’s will is guided by his intellectual knowledge of eternal moral standards. The second position is divine command theory. This position grounded the moral law not so much in God’s intellect but in his will. God himself creates the moral law.[iii]

It is worth noting at this juncture that divine command theory is only one possible way of construing the nature of divine law and since Singer only offers an argument against this position, even if his argument is sound it fails to establish that the idea of divine law is problematic. Nevertheless, even as a critique of this theory the argument appears to attack a straw man.

Singer construes divine command theory as claiming “the very meaning of ‘good’ is nothing other than ‘what God approves.’” It appears then that Singer characterises divine command theory as a theory about the meaning of the evaluative term “good”; however, this is a caricature.

Few, if any, notable defenders of divine command theory propose it as a theory about the meaning of the term ‘good’. This is demonstrated by examining the literature of those contemporary theists who do defend versions of the theory. A notable, contemporary defender of divine command theory is Robert Adams. In Divine Command Ethics Modified Again and later in his monograph Finite and Infinite Good, Adams puts forward the view that “ethical wrongness is (i.e., is identical with) the property of being contrary to the commands of a loving God”.[iv] [Emphasis original]

Note two things here; firstly, Adams does not offer a theory about ‘the good’ but explicitly limits his theory to deontological properties such as wrongness. Secondly, his theory is not about the meaning of terms; rather it is a metaphysical claim about identity.

This last distinction is important. Contemporary philosophy of language offers several examples of this distinction between two terms having the same meaning and two things being identical. One of the most famous is the relationship between water and H20. Water is H20. This is a claim of identity. The liquid on earth that we call water is hydrogen hydroxide. However, this is not a claim of meaning. The claim that water is H20 is not an analytic truth that is true in virtue of the meaning of the words, rather it is a claim discovered by empirical investigation. Moreover, a competent language user could refer to water and understand the meaning of this term without needing to know about the atomic structure H20. Similar examples are available with such claims as ‘the morning star is the evening star’ or ‘Superman is Clark Kent.’ In each case, we have a statement of identity that is distinct from the claim that two words have the same meaning. Adams then explicitly denies he is proposing the position Singer attributes to modern theists.

Similar things can be said about the other major defenders of divine command theory. William Alston holds that divine commands are constitutive of deontological properties and notes Adam’s identity claim as a paradigm of the type of relationship he is defending.[v]

Philip Quinn defends a version of divine command theory that is limited to the deontological status of actions.

In speaking of the deontological status of an action, I mean to refer to whether it has such properties as being morally permitted, being morally forbidden or prohibited, and being morally obligatory or required.[vi]

Quinn argues that God’s commands cause or bring about these properties. He specifically denies that he is offering a theory of ‘the good’ in general or that the relationship between God’s commands and moral properties is one of meaning. In fact, he argues against such a view.[vii]

Edward Weirenga defends a similar theory proposing that divine commands are those properties of actions that make them possess deontic properties such as right and wrong. He does not affirm that the word ‘good’ means commanded by God.[viii] Similarly, John Hare argues, “that what makes something obligatory for us is that God commands it”.[ix]

This is not just true of contemporary defenders of divine command theory. In a survey of the historical literature, Janine Marie Idziak notes that, historically, divine command theory was usually understood as a theory about what makes actions right and wrong and not a theory about the meaning of moral terms.[x] Moreover, historically, divine command theorists such as Locke[xi] and Puffendorf limited it to deontological properties and not to broader axiological properties such as goodness.

Robert Adams did defend a semantic theory in some of his earlier writings but, as noted, he later rejected his theory in favour of the one I sketched above. Moreover, the semantic theory Adams did initially defend bears little resemblance to the interpretation of divine command theory made by Singer. Adams explicitly asserted that his theory was limited to analysing the meaning of the word wrong and not broader notions such as goodness. Moreover, it was limited to an analysis of what the word means in Judeo-Christian discourse not what the word meant in general.[xii]

It is difficult then to ascertain to whom exactly Singer is referring when he states “Some theists” hold this view and he fails to provide any citations as to whom he is referring. He appears to attack a straw man that has little resemblance to the theory as it has usually been articulated and defended in both historical and contemporary literature.

Not only does Singer attack a straw man but attention to the arguments he uses reveals that in the very next sentence he changes his interpretation from a theory of meaning to a dependence or causal theory. Immediately after stating, “the very meaning of “good” [is nothing other than] what God approves”, Singer follows Plato in suggesting that either something is good because God approves of it or God approves of it because it is good.[xiii] However, this presupposes that the relationship between divine approval and goodness is some kind of asymmetrical relationship where one entity in the relationship is temporally or ontologically prior to the other.

If, as Singer maintains, divine command theory is the claim that “the very meaning of ‘good’ is nothing other than ‘what God approves’,” then the relationship between divine approval and goodness is not an asymmetrical relationship but rather a relationship of meaning so this dilemma simply does not apply.

Consider the following example. A person tells you that a bachelor is an unmarried man because the word bachelor means unmarried man. It would not make sense to respond to this claim ‘yes, but is he a bachelor because he is unmarried or is he unmarried because he is a bachelor?’ A person’s unmarried-ness is not prior to or the cause of his bachelorhood nor is his bachelorhood the cause of his being unmarried. His being unmarried is just a different way of referring to his bachelorhood. The relationship between a bachelor and an unmarried man is not causal; the relationship is one of meaning.

Immediately after stating that divine command theory is a theory about the meaning of terms, Singer offers an objection that presupposes it is not a semantic theory but a causal one. However, only a few lines later he offers the following objection to the theory “what can they [theists] possibly mean by the assertion that God is good? That God is approved by God?”[xiv] Here Singer’s objection relies on the claim that good means approved by God in order to generate the trap he refers to. Not only does Singer attack a straw man but also his target appears to change throughout the discussion. In fact, it appears to change in order to fit the objections raised.

In Part II I look at arbitrariness.

[i] Singer, Practical Ethics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 3.
[ii] Ibid., 3-4.
[iii] Jerome Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 8-9.
[iv] Robert Adams, “Divine Command Meta-Ethics Modified Again,” Journal of Religious Ethics 7:1 (1979): 76.
[v] William Alston, “Some Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists,” in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy, ed. Michael Beaty (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 303-304.
[vi] Phillip Quinn, “An Argument for Divine Command Theory,” in Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy, ed. Michael Beaty (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 291.
[vii] Ibid., 293.
[viii] Edward Weirenga, The Nature of God: An Inquiry into the Divine Attributes, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 215-27. See also “Utilitarianism and the Divine Command Theory,” American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984): 311-318 and “A Defensible Divine Command Theory,” Nous 17 (1983): 387-408.
[ix] John Hare, God’s Call: Moral Realism, God’s Commands and Human Autonomy, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001), 49.
[x] Janine Maree Idziak, “In Search of Good Positive Reasons for an Ethics of Divine Commands: A Catalogue of Arguments,” Faith and Philosophy 6:1 (1989): 60.
[xi] For a defence of the claim that Locke was a voluntarist see Francis Oakley & Elliot W. Urdang, “Locke, Natural Law and God,” Natural Law Forum, 11 (1966): 92-109.
[xii] Robert Adams, “A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness” In Divine Commands and Morality, ed. Paul Helm (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 83-108.
[xiii] Singer, Practical Ethics, 4.
[xiv] Ibid., 3-4.
[xv] Ibid.
[xvi] Ibid., 40.

RELATED POSTS:
The Euthyphro Objection Part II: Arbitrariness
Euthyphro Objection Part III: The Redundancy of God is Good

How is killing a whale any different from fishing for marlin or shark or tuna?

Of course, whales are more intelligent than sharks. But as Peter Singer infamously pointed out pigs are more intelligent than newborn infants yet we should not consider killing infants and newborns as on par with pig farming.

True some whales are endangered but so are some other forms of sea animals. Some species of shark are endangered and some species of whale are not endangered. Of course, whales are beautiful, wondrous creatures, but I happen to think this is true of numerous animals and landscapes. Sharks are incredibly slick and beautiful.

Harpooning is arguably cruel causing a long and painful death but that is not an issue of whaling. It is an issue of the method. So find a quicker method of killing them. Moreover, many methods of spear fishing and fishing with a hook are arguably cruel as well.

As I see it, provided one kills animals in a humane manner and one does not hunt them to extinction, then there is nothing wrong with whaling. Not just for ‘research,’ but for commercial purposes.

Further, I fail to see why one would ram boats over this issue. After all our government kills over 16,000 unborn humans in state hospitals every year. Now if a person were to damage equipment and ram heavy machinery into clinics over this. What would we call such a person? A fanatic? A terrorist? After all it is not like it is a blue whale it is only a human.