For sonship: On Childishness
12 Feb '14 23:051 editIn another thread, Thread 157510, sonship and I were debating whether or not his theistic moral view conduces to moral development. He maintains that it does, whereas I disagree. Here are some elements of his and related moral views that I think are essentially childish. From the outset, it should be noted that this commentary is specific to theistic views that hold that God is simply definitive of the good (as sonship has asserted), or to some versions of theological voluntarism, such as divine command theory. As such, much of it will not be transferrable to other moral views. An example of an influential background reference for this would be Morality: Religious and Secular by Patrick Nowell-Smith.
(1) The idea of moral error as disobedience to God. This is fundamental to the notion of sin as transgression, or as missing the mark in terms of living up to God's will. The childish aspect is taking the fundamental error to be disobedience to an authority, per se, as opposed to a more explanatively reasonable basis. This plays into guilt-based childish motivators, such as the motivation to be moral in order to appease some authority. For a child, it is understandable that to the question of why something is wrong you may get the response "Because daddy says so." For an adult, this type of answer should indicate an alarming lack of moral development.
(2) Surrendering of the will and reason in deference to an authority. This is a heteronomous act where one just reads off his reasons for actions from a supposed authority. Done blindly, this is pretty much exactly the opposite of moral autonomy, since 'autonomy' is literally about self-governance. This is what children do when they do not know any better.
(3) The taking of moral commands as utterly inviolable. This is precisely the stance children of a certain age (roughly ~5-9) take when they are provided rules to a game. The mere idea that a rule could be questioned is alien and stupefying to them. The childish aspect here is the blind reluctance, or inability, to critically inspect rules or moral norms. As an adult, one is supposed to understand that moral norms codified into rules are best viewed as mostly reliable generalizations that stand amenable to refinement or counterexamples where contextually appropriate.
(4) Punishment or reward as a moral motivators. Fixation on retribution and recompense. If you talk to a theist who holds some version of theological voluntarism to be true, he or she will often proffer (avoidance of) punishment or (reaping of) reward as moral motivators. I suspect they have some idea that these are inadequate but what other choices do they really have? Take sonship's view that God is simply definitive of goodness. You can ask him "But why should I be good on your view?" He can say because you would be thereby more Godlike. "But why is it good to be Godlike on your view?" He can only say that this is definitional. He cannot say that it is for this or that God-independent explanative reason, pace the Euthyphro dilemma. This is pretty much a vacuous and meaningless response with respect to any sincere moral inquirer. So what is he left with? He would only be left with prudential reasons to offer, by suggesting this or that will come to you if you do this or fail to do that. This is not so different from a child whose early moralistic behaviors are basically pressed into service by reward and punishment programs of some guardian.
(5) Relationship of utter dependence on some authority figure. These theists will also claim we are utterly dependent on God for goodness. All goodness, they will claim, is sourced from God. (Curiously, they typically will not claim the same for evil, even though the primary explanative vehicle they give for the existence of evil – human free will – is supposed to give rise to moral desert in both ways, for praiseworthiness as well as blameworthiness.) This is something like the child who depends on his parents for even the most basic tasks.
(6) Doctrines of original sin. This is the bizarre doctrine of ancestral sin, where one has a sin nature of sorts and is inevitably disposed to sinfulness. This mirrors the state at which the child is bewildered about what behaviors are right or wrong and assumes a default position that pretty much everything he or she does must be wrong.
(7) Salvific doctrines surrounding grace. One is either saved or damned, and salvation is not something one can achieve through merit. Nowell-Smith points out that this mirrors a state where the child is under sole control of a confusing and seemingly arbitrary, capricious parent:
(8) Heteronomous and restraint-based hallmarks. These religious moral views are marked by heteronomy (morality as something externally imposed by an outside agency) and restraint (priority on codification of proscriptions and emphasis placed on introspection on one's putatively lowborn characteristics). This is essentially how moral modification proceeds initially in children, through an authority figure constantly telling and correcting them what not to do and how not to be. A much more mature approach is to reflect positively on what sort of persons we should strive to be; but this fails in child-behavior correction below a certain age because they are not yet able to assimilate such considerations.
(9) Incompatibility with moral development I would also submit that a view like sonship's has specific core commitments that are in principle incompatible with moral development. Moral development is a process whereby one progressively achieves moral autonomy in the sense that one's evaluative commitments become a genuine reflection of his or her character traits. The only real way this is achieved is through reflection on what underlying considerations justify (or not) one's moral actions. A child, for example, may have moral behaviors that are simply pressed into service through the external agency of his parents. However, as he or she matures, he or she will come to understand through reflection why the moral guidance he or she received is good guidance and why the stances impressed on him or her are good ones to hold; or else come to abandon what he or she was taught for something else that has stronger support of his or her reason. This reflection on underlying justification is the only way to obtain genuine traction between one's moral behavior and one's actual value set, thereby achieving autonomous moral agency. However, the type of justifying reasons at issue here are incompatible with the commitment that God is simply definitive of goodness. Again, this is something the Euthyphro dilemma shows: the existence of such reasons would contradict the claim that God is explanatorily prior to goodness. This is not to suggest that supporters of a view like sonship's do not in fact undergo some manner of moral development. But it seems to me that such development would come at the cost of some internal dissonance in their moral view. This is similar to Nowell-Smith's thesis, which is that in such cases "these childish attitudes survive…as an alien element, like an outcrop of igneous rock on an alluvial plain."
Thinking preemptively, one of the rebuttals I have seen a lot is that the child analogy is not an apt one, since although it is a failing for an adult to think like a child it is not a failing for an adult not to think like God. That is, the child to adult maturation process is one where the child starts out subordinately but eventually is expected to reach equality; whereas the human to God dynamic is never one where the human is eventually reaching a state of equality to God. Okay, but if you say that this is a relevant consideration in regards to moral knowledge, then what does that say about morality? The implication here is that God is fundamentally different in terms of amassing knowledge regarding moral matters, such that humans can never expect to reasonably say they are on equal footing. But this basically means that morality becomes a thing of mystery. This is similar to the case where one responds to the problem of evil by saying, well, it's possible there are justifying reasons beyond our capacity to understand; or similar to saying, well, it's possible that there are justifying reasons beyond our capacity to understand that explain God's sanctioning genocide at various places in the OT. Uhm, okay, but running further with this basically commits one to some mysterious doctrine of the good; and so much for God being a reliable moral exemplar. Secondly, and more importantly, this type of objection just completely misses point (9) above. The point is that on a view like sonship's (where God is simply definitive of good), there can be no such reasons (mysterious or otherwise) in the first place: again, that would be at pain of contradicting that God is explanatorily prior to goodness, indeed definitional of goodness. A much more mature, adult view would hold that some (presumably non-mysterious) account of goodness is conceptually prior to any account of what makes for a moral exemplar.
(1) The idea of moral error as disobedience to God. This is fundamental to the notion of sin as transgression, or as missing the mark in terms of living up to God's will. The childish aspect is taking the fundamental error to be disobedience to an authority, per se, as opposed to a more explanatively reasonable basis. This plays into guilt-based childish motivators, such as the motivation to be moral in order to appease some authority. For a child, it is understandable that to the question of why something is wrong you may get the response "Because daddy says so." For an adult, this type of answer should indicate an alarming lack of moral development.
(2) Surrendering of the will and reason in deference to an authority. This is a heteronomous act where one just reads off his reasons for actions from a supposed authority. Done blindly, this is pretty much exactly the opposite of moral autonomy, since 'autonomy' is literally about self-governance. This is what children do when they do not know any better.
(3) The taking of moral commands as utterly inviolable. This is precisely the stance children of a certain age (roughly ~5-9) take when they are provided rules to a game. The mere idea that a rule could be questioned is alien and stupefying to them. The childish aspect here is the blind reluctance, or inability, to critically inspect rules or moral norms. As an adult, one is supposed to understand that moral norms codified into rules are best viewed as mostly reliable generalizations that stand amenable to refinement or counterexamples where contextually appropriate.
(4) Punishment or reward as a moral motivators. Fixation on retribution and recompense. If you talk to a theist who holds some version of theological voluntarism to be true, he or she will often proffer (avoidance of) punishment or (reaping of) reward as moral motivators. I suspect they have some idea that these are inadequate but what other choices do they really have? Take sonship's view that God is simply definitive of goodness. You can ask him "But why should I be good on your view?" He can say because you would be thereby more Godlike. "But why is it good to be Godlike on your view?" He can only say that this is definitional. He cannot say that it is for this or that God-independent explanative reason, pace the Euthyphro dilemma. This is pretty much a vacuous and meaningless response with respect to any sincere moral inquirer. So what is he left with? He would only be left with prudential reasons to offer, by suggesting this or that will come to you if you do this or fail to do that. This is not so different from a child whose early moralistic behaviors are basically pressed into service by reward and punishment programs of some guardian.
(5) Relationship of utter dependence on some authority figure. These theists will also claim we are utterly dependent on God for goodness. All goodness, they will claim, is sourced from God. (Curiously, they typically will not claim the same for evil, even though the primary explanative vehicle they give for the existence of evil – human free will – is supposed to give rise to moral desert in both ways, for praiseworthiness as well as blameworthiness.) This is something like the child who depends on his parents for even the most basic tasks.
(6) Doctrines of original sin. This is the bizarre doctrine of ancestral sin, where one has a sin nature of sorts and is inevitably disposed to sinfulness. This mirrors the state at which the child is bewildered about what behaviors are right or wrong and assumes a default position that pretty much everything he or she does must be wrong.
(7) Salvific doctrines surrounding grace. One is either saved or damned, and salvation is not something one can achieve through merit. Nowell-Smith points out that this mirrors a state where the child is under sole control of a confusing and seemingly arbitrary, capricious parent:
"Salvation in the form of parental smiles and damnation in the form of parental frowns will come to him, like grace, in a manner that both seems and is wholly unconnected with any inwardly felt guilt. The mystery of God's ways to man is the mystery of a father's ways to his children."
(8) Heteronomous and restraint-based hallmarks. These religious moral views are marked by heteronomy (morality as something externally imposed by an outside agency) and restraint (priority on codification of proscriptions and emphasis placed on introspection on one's putatively lowborn characteristics). This is essentially how moral modification proceeds initially in children, through an authority figure constantly telling and correcting them what not to do and how not to be. A much more mature approach is to reflect positively on what sort of persons we should strive to be; but this fails in child-behavior correction below a certain age because they are not yet able to assimilate such considerations.
(9) Incompatibility with moral development I would also submit that a view like sonship's has specific core commitments that are in principle incompatible with moral development. Moral development is a process whereby one progressively achieves moral autonomy in the sense that one's evaluative commitments become a genuine reflection of his or her character traits. The only real way this is achieved is through reflection on what underlying considerations justify (or not) one's moral actions. A child, for example, may have moral behaviors that are simply pressed into service through the external agency of his parents. However, as he or she matures, he or she will come to understand through reflection why the moral guidance he or she received is good guidance and why the stances impressed on him or her are good ones to hold; or else come to abandon what he or she was taught for something else that has stronger support of his or her reason. This reflection on underlying justification is the only way to obtain genuine traction between one's moral behavior and one's actual value set, thereby achieving autonomous moral agency. However, the type of justifying reasons at issue here are incompatible with the commitment that God is simply definitive of goodness. Again, this is something the Euthyphro dilemma shows: the existence of such reasons would contradict the claim that God is explanatorily prior to goodness. This is not to suggest that supporters of a view like sonship's do not in fact undergo some manner of moral development. But it seems to me that such development would come at the cost of some internal dissonance in their moral view. This is similar to Nowell-Smith's thesis, which is that in such cases "these childish attitudes survive…as an alien element, like an outcrop of igneous rock on an alluvial plain."
Thinking preemptively, one of the rebuttals I have seen a lot is that the child analogy is not an apt one, since although it is a failing for an adult to think like a child it is not a failing for an adult not to think like God. That is, the child to adult maturation process is one where the child starts out subordinately but eventually is expected to reach equality; whereas the human to God dynamic is never one where the human is eventually reaching a state of equality to God. Okay, but if you say that this is a relevant consideration in regards to moral knowledge, then what does that say about morality? The implication here is that God is fundamentally different in terms of amassing knowledge regarding moral matters, such that humans can never expect to reasonably say they are on equal footing. But this basically means that morality becomes a thing of mystery. This is similar to the case where one responds to the problem of evil by saying, well, it's possible there are justifying reasons beyond our capacity to understand; or similar to saying, well, it's possible that there are justifying reasons beyond our capacity to understand that explain God's sanctioning genocide at various places in the OT. Uhm, okay, but running further with this basically commits one to some mysterious doctrine of the good; and so much for God being a reliable moral exemplar. Secondly, and more importantly, this type of objection just completely misses point (9) above. The point is that on a view like sonship's (where God is simply definitive of good), there can be no such reasons (mysterious or otherwise) in the first place: again, that would be at pain of contradicting that God is explanatorily prior to goodness, indeed definitional of goodness. A much more mature, adult view would hold that some (presumably non-mysterious) account of goodness is conceptually prior to any account of what makes for a moral exemplar.
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