In recent posts I’ve been exploring the idea that wrongdoing imposes on us a debt of a normative burden.
This yields this argument:
Whenever one does wrong, one comes to have a debt of a normative burden to one who has been wronged.
A debt can only be owed to a person.
One cannot owe a debt to oneself.
Therefore, every wrongdoing includes a wrong to a person.
This has some interesting consequences.
First, it is possible to do wrong to future generations, but one cannot owe anything to the nonexistent. So either eternalism is true, and future generations exist simpliciter, or God exists and we owe a normative burden to God when wrong future generations, or both. So we get the disjunction of eternalism and God’s existence.
Second, we simply get the existence of God. For it is wrong to engage in cruelty to animals even if no human is wronged, other than perhaps oneself. But one cannot be in debt to a non-person or to oneself (debts are the sort of thing one can be released from by the one to whom one owes them; this makes no sense if the creditor is oneself, and impossible if the creditor is a non-person). So the only explanation of whom one can owe the normative burden to is that it’s God, who creates and loves the animals.
If one thinks that it is possible to owe a debt to animals, or one is unconvinced that cruelty to animals is wrong, there is yet another argument for the existence of God. Suppose Alice is the only finite conscious thing in the universe. However, Alice comes across misleading evidence that there are many other finite persons, and that there is a button that, when pressed, will result in excruciating pain to these persons. She then maliciously presses the button. Alice has done wrong, but the only finite conscious thing she can be counted as wronging is herself. She doesn’t owe a normative debt to herself. So she must owe it to something other than a finite conscious being. One cannot owe a debt to anything but a conscious being. So there must be an infinite conscious being, i.e., God.
"I owe it to myself" is a pretty common phrase. Do you take it to be incoherent or just a fanciful way of expressing a belief that oneself should do something?
ReplyDeleteI think it's a way of expressing the view that one should do it because of one's own dignity, or one's relationship to oneself, or the like. So it's describing a particular kind of reason that one has. However, it is not strictly speaking an _owing_, because an _owing_ is something that the person you owe it to has the standing to release you from.
ReplyDeleteHere's an objection to my argument. Distinguish owing and owing*, where owing* is like owing without making the claim that the creditor has the standing to release the debtor. Then we can explain the data of the "felt burden of wrongdoing" by saying that we owe* being punished to the victim. We can add that in cases where the victim is a person other than ourselves, there is not just owing*, but also owing.
ReplyDeleteNow, stipualte that owing# is when you owe* but don't owe: in other words, the credit lacks the standing to release.
But this has the odd consequence that you are worse off normatively if you engage in cruelty to a non-human animal than if you engage in cruelty to a human. For in the case of cruelty to a non-human animal, you owe#, but in the case of cruelty to a human, you owe. And it's worse to owe# than to owe.
Alternative view: Wrongdoing imposes no moral debt whatsoever. However, it's socially awkward to release a criminal back into a society without rehabilitation and reintegration.
ReplyDeleteEmotionally it's impossible to get along with someone who has seriously wronged you. (Indeed, ignoring their wrongdoing would itself be wrong.)
"Repaying the debt" is doing what it takes to change the emotions of the wronged person (or community) such that they now can get along with you.
For some animals, maybe you can re-earn their trust after wronging them. (I think of a cat owner who accidently steps on their cat, and then gives them treats to try to make up for it.)
For most animals, neither social awkwardness nor integration applies anyway.