The command version of divine command theory

Suppose that morality is grounded in God’s commands. What are God’s commands?

The most obvious idea would be that God’s commands are speech acts of command or legislation like: “Thou shalt not steal.”

But this is implausible. For such speech acts to be binding, they must be promulgated. But where? If we take seriously that these are genuinely speech acts, we have three main options:

1. A text from God

2. One or more human individuals speaking for God

3. A voice in people’s heads, from God or a representative of God.

I don’t think any of these are plausible once we take into account that morality applies to all, but no text has been accessible to all, no human individuals seemingly speaking for God have been audible to all, and lots of people have never heard such a voice in their heads.

So, I think, the divine command theorist needs to understand “command” in some less literal sense. I think the most plausible story would connect with Biblical descriptions of God’s law written in people’s minds or hearts. There will then be a substantive question of what kind of a feature of the mind or heart the commands are, with the two main options being:

4. Emotions (sentimentalist divine command)

5. Intuitions (cognitivist divine command).

(Combinations are also possible.)

But both cases face the following problem: How do we distinguish the attitudes, emotional or cognitive, that constitute divine commands from attitudes of the same sort that do not. Some people have moral attitudes that are screwed up—this might reduce or remove culpability, but nonetheless the screwed up attitudes are not divine commands.

I see three main options for making the distinction:

1. The properly functioning moral attitudes define morality.

2. Morality is defined by the moral attitudes that God has directly instilled either in each individual or in the ancestors of all individuals from whom they are passed on genetically and/or culturally.

3. God’s mental attitudes of approval or disapproval for moral attitudes distinguishes whether the attitudes define morality.

Option (a) pushes divine command theory very close to theistic natural law. Some people will like that (C. Stephen Evans likes to say that natural law is compatible with divine command theory).

Option (b) is interesting and promising.

Option (c) pushes the command version of divine command, which is what I have been exploring, closer to the divine will version. And it has problems with divine simplicity on which God doesn’t have intrinsic contingent features, and the approval/disapproval sounds to me like it would likely need to be an intrinsic contingent feature of God.

A simple moral preference circle with infinities

Here is a simple moral preferability circle. Suppose there are infinite many human strangers numbered ..., −3, −2, −1, 0, 1, 2, 3, ... all of whom, in addition to two cats, are about to drown. Consider these options:

A. Save the strangers numbered 0, 1, 2, ....

B. Save the strangers numbered −1, −2, −3, ... and one cat.

C. Save the strangers numbered 1, 2, 3, ... and both cats.

Option B beats Option A: If we had to choose between strangers 0, 1, 2, ... and strangers −1, −2, −3, ..., we should clearly be indifferent. Toss in the cat, and now it looks like we have a reason to save the second set of strangers.

Option C beats Option B: If we had to choose between strangers −1, −2, −3, ... and strangers 1, 2, 3, ..., we should be indifferent. But now observe that in Option C one more cat is saved, and it sure looks like we should go for C.

Option A beats Option C: Option A replaces the two cats with stranger 0, and surely it’s better to save one human over two cats.

If you don’t think we have moral reasons to save cats, replace saving the cats from drowning with saving two human strangers from ten minutes of pain.

I am now toying with an intuitively very appealing solution to problems like the above: we have no moral rules in such outlandish cases. I think this can be said on either natural law or divine command theory. On natural law, it is unsurprising if our nature does not provide guidance in situations where we are far from our natural environment. On divine command theory, why would God bother giving us commands that apply to situations so far from ones we are going to be in?

Divine command, natural law and arbitrariness

People often levy an arbitrariness objection against divine command theory:

1. If God simply chooses what we ought, why did he choose to command kindness rather than cruelty?

It occurs to me that an advocate of theistic natural law probably cannot levy the arbitrariness object. For there is a structurally very similar question about theistic natural law:

2. If God simply chooses which natures to create, why did he choose to create beings with our basic physical structure and a nature that requires kindness rather than beings with our basic physical structure but a nature that requires cruelty?

It might be retorted that logical space does not contain a nature that specifies cruelty and yet the same basic physical structure as ours. This is plausible to me, but the main reason to doubt that there could be such a nature is some theistic story such as that all natures are ways of imitating God, and it is incompatible with divine goodness that he be imitable in such a cruel way. And this, in turn, is quite parallel to the standard divine command response to (1), that it is incompatible with divine goodness that he command cruelty to beings like us.

I think theistic natural law does have advantages over divine command theory. But a better resolution to the arbitrariness objection does not seem to be one of these advantages.

From naturalism to divine command theory by way of vagueness

Plausibly:

1. There is a collection K of atoms forming an early stage of the developmental history of a particular human, where it is vague whether it is morally permissible to disperse the atoms in K.

Pro-choice readers might take K to be the collection of atoms in a late fetus or an early newborn. Pro-life readers might take K to be the collection of atoms at some early point during the fusion of gametes. (Note that (1) does not say that the atoms in K form a human.)

It is widely held that:

2. Vague matters always depend on semantic plasticity.

But:

3. Whether it is permissible to disperse the atoms in K does not depend on any semantic questions.

Claims (1)–(3) look incompatible. So we should abandon at least one of them. Personally, as a pro-life Aristotelian dualist, I am happy to abandon (1)—whether it is permissible to disperse the Ks depends on whether there is a human form uniting the Ks, and that’s not a vague matter. But apart from a Markosian-style brute fact view of composition—a view that seems implausible—it seems hard for a naturalist to deny (1).

Claim (2) is pretty plausible.

This means that if we accept (1), we should deny (3). But how to deny (3)? How could the question of whether it is permissible to disperse the atoms at some developmental stage depend on semantic questions? Surely it is a totally abhorrent idea that whether it is acceptable to disperse the atoms in K is determined by our linguistic performances?

Indeed! But it need not depend on the semantics of our linguistic performances. There is exactly one major moral theory that make that allows for a reasonable denial of (3): divine command theory. Commands are linguistic performances. Whether some act violates a command is in part a linguistic matter. Given divine command theory, semantic plasticity in the terms of the commands can ground vagueness in the obligations constituted by the commands. If your commander says: “Shave until you’re bald”, your obligation seems to be vague precisely because of the vagueness of language.

And that the semantics of God’s linguistic performances matters to the right to life of K is far from as objectionable as some claim on which our linguistic performances have the determining role. (Though our linguistic performances have some role to play, since they may help define the words that God is using if God speaks our language.) Thus, we can imagine that God says: “Thou shalt not murder.” But perhaps “murder” is vague. And the vagueness in this word then translates to vagueness as to whether the dispersal of the atoms in K is permissible.

If the above is right, then we have an argument for a very surprising thesis:

4. If physicalism (about us) is true, then divine command theory is the correct moral theory, and hence God exists.

This is yet another in a series of observations that I’ve been making over the years, that theistic naturalism has resources that its atheistic cousin lacks.

All that said, I think physicalism (even about us) is false, and divine command theory is not the correct moral theory. Though I do think God exists.

A constraint on metaethics

Suppose that we lived lives like ours in a world (possible or not) whose metaphysics included nothing like moral duties except that there was a loving God and he issued commands. If in that world we used the phrase “morally wrong”, that phrase would refer to the property of being forbidden by God.

Or suppose that we lived lives like ours in a world (possible or not) whose metaphysics included nothing like moral duties except that we had Aristotelian forms and they specified what the will should will, the phrase “morally wrong” would refer to the property of being contrary to what our form says the will should will.

But suppose now we lived in a world where there was nothing like moral duties, no God, no forms, but buried underground and unseen by humans there was a stone tablet that arose from a random volcanic process millions of years ago. On these tablets by chance there were markings that looked just like French sentences, and when interpreted as French sentences, they stated imperatives, like the Golden Rule, that that fit very well with our intuitions about what are the core moral duties. I doubt that the phrase “morally wrong” would refer to the property of being contrary to what the stone tablet would enjoin if it were interpreted as French. (I am careful in my wording, because strictly speaking the stone tablet, being the product of random processes, does not contain any sentences—it only contains markings that look like sentences of French.)

Suppose my intuition is right. What is the difference between the third case and the first two? Here is a hypothesis. In the divine command world, presumably our beliefs about what we call “morally wrong” have some sort of a connection to the commands of that God. In the Aristotelian world, our beliefs about the “morally wrong” presumably come in some way from the Aristotelian forms. But in the stone tablet world, the “morally wrong” beliefs have no connection to the stone tablets, except that the stone tablets happen to fit them.

This suggests an important constraint on metaethics: our beliefs about the morally wrong had better have a real connection—perhaps even a real causal connection—with their grounds. If this constraint is right, then evolutionary debunking arguments against morality cut more deeply than is recognized: if the arguments correctly show that our “moral concepts” lack a relevant connection with any grounds, then our “moral beliefs” not are not knowledge, but they are in fact just nonsense.

Of course, I want to turn this around: given that our moral beliefs are not mere nonsense, it follows that they have a real connection with grounds, and this undercuts the idea that we are mere products of completely unguided evolution.

The coincidence between the right and the beneficial

One of the earliest and most important discoveries in Western philosophy was:

1. Doing the right thing is sometimes bad for you (in non-moral ways).

This precludes any easy reduction of morality to self-interest. But at the same time, the philosophers could see that:

2. Doing the right thing is usually good for you (even in non-moral ways).

This leads to an interesting problem that has occasionally been discussed, but not as much as one might hope:

3. What explains why acting morally well tends to be good for you (even in non-moral ways).

Living in accordance with one’s conscience, while having that conscience be well-formed, tends to lead to a kind attractive happiness that we can often see in people. There is that smile which reflects both a kindliness of nature and an inner joy. Why is there this harmony between the right and the beneficial?

If we were non-realists about morality, we might give an evolutionary explanation: our moral beliefs evolved to benefit us. But if we are realists about morality, then that only makes it puzzling: why is it that the true moral beliefs are the ones that tend to benefit us?

Divine command ethics has a plausible story grounded in God’s loving desire that we live under moral rules that are good for us. Natural law ethics has a different story: our natures are harmonious, and hence the many ends we have are mutually supportive. That story, of course, only shifts the problem to the more general question of the mutual support of our ends, and I suspect that this more general question cannot be answered without bringing in theism, either by positing that God is more likely to instantiate harmonious natures or that because created natures are way of participating in the God whose inner life is a harmony of love, they tend to be (or maybe even all are) harmonious.

Divine command theory and atheism

Suppose that the captain impersonates an admiral and yells: “Turn hard to starboard!” The sailors ought to turn hard to starboard and the captain had the authority to command them this. But nonetheless the captain has failed to issue a valid order. For in order to issue a valid order, the captain needs to make herself heard as the captain. The sailors’ obligation to turn to starboard is not a command-obligation but rather is an obligation of conscience to do what one believes, correctly or not, to be the commands of legitimate authority. A sailor who refused to turn would be acting badly, but would not be disobeying an order: she wouldn’t be disobeying the captain’s order, since the captain did not order anything qua captain, or the admiral’s order, since the admiral didn’t order anything.

The same thing would be true, though perhaps less clearly, if the admiral impersonated the captain and told the crew to turn to starboard. The admiral had the authority to issue the order (or so I assume), but to do that she would have to have made herself heard as the admiral.

Similarly, if the captain is a telepath and induces in the helmsman a strong moral belief that he should turn the ship to starboard, no order has been issued to the helmsman. If the helmsman refuses to turn, he is disobeying conscience but he is not disobeying the captain.

Now, consider the command version of the divine command theory: God’s commands (rather than will) define moral obligation. Now we have a prima facie problem with atheists. The atheist believes in an obligation to refrain from stealing, but is not aware of it as a divine command. Therefore, it seems that no command has been validly issued to the atheist: the case seems relevantly like that of the telepath captain. Thus it follows that on the command version of the divine command theory, the atheist has no obligations.

This was a bit too quick, however. For a promulgation condition on commands that requires actual cognitive uptake is too strong. If the captain is yelling orders as captain but the helmsman has deliberately plugged her ears so as not to hear the orders, the helmsman’s failure to hear does not impugn the validity of the orders.

But suppose instead that the helmsman is hard of hearing due to a recent explosion, and the captain whispers the order while knowing the helmsman won’t hear it. In this case, the order is invalid. It seems, roughly, that if the captain could easily make the command heard as her command but does not do so, and the failure to hear it as her command is not something the other party is antecedently at fault for, then the command is invalid.

Now, it seems that there are atheists who are not at fault for their atheism, and whose failure to hear divine commands as divine commands is not something they are at fault for. But God could easily (everything is easy to an omnipotent being) make them hear them as such. So, on the command version of divine command theory, these atheists have never been validly commanded, and hence have no obligations—which is clearly false.

Maybe I will get some pushback on the claim that there are atheists who are not at fault for atheism. Let’s consider, then, the case of Alice, a life-long atheist who is at fault for her atheism and who was never aware of any divine command as a divine command. Then, at some point t₁ of time, Alice did the first thing that made her be at fault for her atheism and/or her failure to be aware of divine commands as divine commands. Perhaps an argument for theism was being offered to her by Bob, but she refused to listen to Bob out of racism.

Now to be at fault, you have to culpably do something wrong. And, according to divine command theory, the wrong is always a violation of a (valid) divine command. So, at t₁, Alice’s action was the violation of a valid divine command. But at t₁, Alice wasn’t aware of the command as one from God, since we’ve assumed that Alice was never aware of any divine command as a divine command. And Alice’s failure to be aware of the command as one from God was not due to any antecedent fault of hers, since we have assumed that t₁ is the time of Alice’s first action that made her be at fault with respect to this failure.

Thus, it seems that the divine command theorist who takes the command part of the theory seriously has to say that those who are now atheists are atheists because they disobeyed a command from God which they were aware of as a command from God. This is deeply implausible. It is way more implausible than the already not very plausible response to the hiddenness argument that says that all atheists are morally guilty for their atheism.

But perhaps we want to distinguish epistemic from moral fault, and say that a command can still be valid if it fails to be heard due to an epistemic fault that the commander could have easily overcome, even when that epistemic fault does not correspond to a moral one. I do not think this is plausible. Being unable to parse complex sentences might be an epistemic fault. But if I issue a complex command to someone I know to be incapable of parsing such complex sentences, when I could easily have used a simpler sentence with the same content, I do not validly command.

Divine command and natural law epistemology

I am impressed by the idea that other kinds of beings from humans can appropriately have different doxastic practices from ours, in light of:

1. a different environment which makes different practices truth-conductive, and

2. different proper goals for their doxastic practices (e.g., a difference of emphasis on explanation versus prediction; a difference in what subject matter is more important).

Option (a) is captured by reliabilism, but reliabilism does not by itself do much to help with (b), and suffers from an insuperable reference class problem.

I know of two epistemological theories that nicely capture the differences between epistemic practices in the light of both (a) and (b):

• divine command epistemology: a doxastic practice is required just in case God commands it (variant: commands it in light of truth-based goods)

• natural law epistemology: a doxastic practice is required just in case it is natural to its practitioner (variant: natural and ordered towards truth-based goods).

Both of these theories have an interesting meta-theoretic consequence: they make particularly weird thought experiments less useful in epistemology. For God’s reasons for requiring a doxastic practice may well be linked to our typical way of life, and a practice that is natural in one ecological niche may have unfortunate consequences outside that niche. (That’s sad for me, since making up weird thought experiments is something I particularly enjoy!)

(Note, however, that both of these theories have nothing to say on the question of knowledge. That’s a feature, not a bug. I think we don’t need a concept of (propositional) knowledge, just as we don’t need a concept of baldness. Anything worth saying using the language of “knowledge” or “baldness” can be more precisely said without it—one can talk of degrees of belief and justification, amount of scalp coverage, etc.—and while it’s an amusing question how exactly to analyze knowledge or baldness, it’s just that.)

Theistic Natural Law and the Euthyphro Problem

Theistic Natural Law (TNL) theory seems to be subject to the Euthyphro problem much as divine command theory (DCT) is. On DCT, the Euthyphro problem takes the form of the question:

1. Why did God command what he commanded rather than commanding otherwise?

On TNL, the Euthyphro problem takes the form of the question:

2. Why did God create beings with the natures he did rather than creating beings with other natures?

In both cases, one can respond by talking of the essential goodness of God, by virtue of which he makes a good choice as to how to fittingly match the non-normative with the normative features of creatures. In the DCT case, God makes the match by benevolently choosing what sorts of creatures to create and what sorts of commands to give them. In the TNL case, God makes the match by benevolently choosing the non-deontic and deontic features of natures and then creating creatures with these natures. Thus, in the DCT case, God has reason to coordinate the sociality of creatures with the command to cooperate, while in the TNL case God has reason to actualize natures that either both include sociality and the duty to cooperate or to actualize natures that include neither.

So in what way is TNL better off than DCT with regard to the Euthyphro problem? The one thing I can think of in the vicinity is this: TNL allows for there to be deontic features that necessarily every natural includes, and it allows for there to be some deontic features of creatures that are entailed by the non-deontic features. For instance, perhaps every possible nature of an agent includes a prohibition against pointless imposition of torture, and every possible nature of a linguistic agent includes a prohibition against lying. But I am not sure this difference is really relevant to the Euthyphro problem.

I do prefer TNL to DCT, but not because of the Euthyphro problem. My reason for the preference is that many moral obligations appear to be intrinsic features of us.

Of course, the above arguments presuppose a particular picture of how natural law works. But I like that picture.

Command ethics

I think one of the most powerful objections to divine command theory is MacIntyre’s question as to which divine attributes make it be the case that the obligatory is what God commands. It’s not God’s creating us: for imagine a naturalistic universe where a crazy scientist creates people—surely the crazy scientist’s commands do not constitute obligations. It’s not God’s being omnipotent—that just seems irrelevant. Omniscience also doesn’t seem to help. Etc.

Here’s a theory that just occurred to me which avoids this problem:

• the obligatory is what is validly commanded by someone.

This is a command theory instead of a divine command theory. The difficulty with this theory is giving an account of a valid command that does not proceed by saying that a valid command is one that it is obligatory to obey. Perhaps, though, one could suppose that there is a fundamental property of non-derivative authority (actually, a relational property: non-derivative authority over x with respect to R) that some persons have. For instance, God has this property in a very broad and non-derivative way, but God might not be the only one (maybe parents have it with respect to children, and governments with respect to people). This theory solves the MacIntyre problem with divine command theory. And while there is a cost to having a primitive account of non-derivative authority, there is some reason to think that even if we grounded obligations in something other than commands, we might still have to take non-derivative authority to be primitive.

Of course, without God the command theory is just implausible: clearly there are ordinary obligations we have that do not come from the commands of other ordinary persons.

I certainly don’t endorse the theory. But it’s worth thinking about, and in particular it’s worth thinking whether it’s not superior to divine command theory.

Free parameters in physics, ethics and epistemology

It looks like the laws of physics include "free parameters", constants that we feel could well have had other values than they do. It does not appear that these parameters can all be derived from more fundamental laws that have no free parameters.

Analogous phenomena occur in ethics. If to save your life, I must suffer a minor pain for a second, it is my duty to make the sacrifice. If to save your life, I must suffer constant torture for decades, it is not my duty to do so. As one increases the amount of my suffering to be weighed against your life, at some point one transitions from duty to supererogation (and perhaps eventually to just imprudence). Similar phenomena come up when deciding between goods to people with whom one has different relationships (saving n of one's cousins versus m strangers), when deciding between risks and certainties, etc. It does not appear that these parameters can all be derived from more fundamental laws that have no free parameters. (The best proposal for doing so is utilitarianism, and that just doesn't fit the moral data.)

And there are analogous phenomena in epistemology. For instance, there is the question of how quickly one should make inductive generalizations (in the Bayesian setting this comes to questions like: how high should be one's priors for generalizations).

In physics, the existence of free parameters is strong evidence for some sort of contingency in the laws. There are two ways to have such contingency. The first is to say that there could have instead been other laws. The second is an Aristotelian story on which the laws of physics are necessary but are conditional on the natures of things (e.g., if x is an electron, it behaves thus-and-so), and there could have been other things in the universe with other natures (e.g., shmelectrons instead of electrons) and then other laws--those with antecedents concerning the things with the other natures--would have been relevant.

The first approach raises a problem of explanation: Why are these the laws? The second approach reduces the explanatory question to a different explanatory question that we had anyway: Why are these the entities that exist?

In ethics and epistemology there are two options that can't be taken seriously in physics. One might, for instance, be a subjectivist of some stripe about the parameters (say, by being a subjectivist about all of ethics or epistemology, or just about the parameters). Or one might try to bring in vagueness to solve the problem--maybe it's vague at what point the needs of a larger number of strangers take precedence over a smaller number of cousins.

Vagueness does not, I think, solve the problem. For even if it's vague what the parameters are, it's not completely vague. It's non-vaguely true, for instance, that one should save a billion innocent strangers over one close relative. And subjectivism gives up too quickly.

It would be nice if one could give the same account of the free parameters problem in all three disciplines. Some accounts do not have much hope of doing that. For instance, one might solve the free parameters problem in physics by supposing that there is a multiverse with many different laws, either selected at random or with all possible laws exhibited, and it's just rock bottom that these laws are the laws where they are laws. The idea that there would be such variation in the moral or epistemological laws, with no explanation of the variation, is very unattractive.

There is a uniform Aristotelian story about all three free parameter problems. The parameters are necessarily what they are given the natures of the beings (physical beings, moral agents and epistemic agents) involved. The explanatory burden then shifts to the question of why these are the beings that exist. There is also a uniform divine choice story: God sets the parameters in the laws of physics, ethics and epistemology in a way that makes for a particularly good universe.

But there are, of course, non-uniform stories. One might, for instance, take the Aristotelian story about laws of physics, and a divine choice story about ethics and epistemology. But uniform stories are to be preferred.

Reverse engineering conscience

I was thinking about the method of cases in ethics, and it made me think of what we do when we apply the method as a reverse engineering of conscience. Reverse engineering of software has been one of the most fun things in my life. When I reverse engineer software, in order to figure out what the software does (e.g., how it stores data in an undocumented file format), I typically employ anywhere between one and three of the following methods:

1. Observe the outputs in the ordinary course of operation.
2. Observe the outputs given carefully crafted inputs.
3. Look under the hood: disassemble the software, trace through the execution, do experiments with modifying the software, etc.

In ethics, there are obvious analogues to (1) and (2): looking at what our conscience says about actual cases that come up in our lives and looking at what our conscience says when fed carefully crafted imaginary cases. Reverse engineering of conscience suffers from two difficulties. The first is that method (3) is largely unavailable. The second is that conscience malfunctions more often than production software typically does, and does so in systematic ways. We can control for the second by reverse engineering the conscience of virtuous people (assuming we have--as I think we do--some independent access to who is virtuous).

But now suppose that this all works, that we really do succeed in reverse engineering conscience, and find out by what principles a properly functioning conscience decides whether an action is right or wrong. Why think this gives us anything of ethical interest? If we have a divine command theory, we have a nice answer: The same being whose commands constitute rightness and wrongness made that conscience, and it is plausible to think that he made it in order to communicate his commands to us. Perhaps more generally theistic theories other than divine command can give us a good answer, in that the faculty of conscience is designed by a being who cares immensely about right behavior. Likewise, if we have a natural law theory, we also have a nice answer: The faculty of conscience is part of our nature, and our nature defines what is right and wrong for us.

But what if conscience is simply the product of unguided evolution? Then by reverse engineering conscience we would not expect to find out anything other than facts about what kinds of behavior-guiding algorithms help us to pass on our genes.

So if all we do in the method of cases is this kind of reverse engineering, then outside of a theistic or natural law context we really should eschew use of the method in ethics.

Another argument against divine command theory

1. If Divine Command Theory is true, necessarily, A is obligatory if and only if God commands A.
2. Necessarily, if there are created persons, obedience to God is obligatory.
3. Possibly, God creates persons but does not command them to obey him.
4. So, if Divine Command Theory is true, possibly obedience to God is not obligatory. (1 and 3)
5. So Divine Command Theory is not true. (2 and 4)

Premise (2) seems quite intuitive. Premise (3) seems to follow from divine freedom and the fact that God is under no obligation to command creatures.

Necessary and sufficient conditions

Both philosophers and mathematicians attempt to give nontrivial necessary and sufficient conditions for various properties. But philosophers almost always fail—the Gettier-inspired literature on knowledge is a paradigm case. On the other hand, mathematicians often succeed by the simple strategy of listing one or two necessary conditions and lucking out by finding the conditions are sufficient. And they do this, despite the fact that showing that the conditions are sufficient is often highly nontrivial.

Why do mathematicians luck out so often, while philosophers almost never do? Think how surprising it would be if you wrote down two obvious necessary conditions for an action to be morally wrong, and they turn out to be sufficient. And can philosophers learn from the mathematicians to do better?

1. Subsidiary conditions: Mathematicians sometimes "cheat" by only getting an equivalence given some additional assumption. A polygon has angles add up to 180 degrees if and only if it's a triangle, in a Euclidean setting. And such limited equivalences can still be interesting. While some philosophers accept such limited accounts, I know I often turn up my nose at them. I don't just want an account of knowledge or virtue that works for humans: I want one that works for all possible agents. Perhaps we philosophers should learn to humbly accept such incremental progress.

2. Different tasks: Philosophers often don't just ask for necessary and sufficient conditions. We want conditions that are prior, more fundamental, more explanatory. It may be true that a necessary and sufficient condition for an action to be wrong is that it is disapproved of by God, but that doesn't explain what makes the action wrong (assuming that the Divine Command theory is false). Moreover, sometimes we even want our necessary and sufficient conditions to work in impossible scenarios: we admit that God has to disapprove of cruelty, but we argue that if per impossibile he didn't disapprove of it, it would still be wrong (I criticize an argument like that here). This would be an absurd requirement in mathematics. "Granted, being a Euclidean polygon whose angles add up to 180 degrees is a necessary and sufficient for being a Euclidean triangle, but what if the Euclidean plane figure were a triangular circle?" The mathematician isn't looking to explain what a triangle is, but just to give necessary and sufficient conditions.

It is no surprise that if philosophers require more of their conditions, these conditions are harder to find. Again, I think we philosophers should be willing to accept as useful intellectual progress cases where we have necessary and sufficient conditions even when these do not satisfy the stronger conditions we may wish to impose on them, though I also think these stronger conditions are important.

3. Ordinary language is rich and poor: There are very few perfect synonyms within an ordinary language. There are subtle variations between the properties being picked out. Terms vary slightly in their meaning over time. But now necessary and sufficient conditions are very sensitive to this. Suppose that it were in fact true that x knows p if and only if x has a justified true belief that p. But now reflect on how many concepts there are in the vicinity of justification and in the vicinity of belief. Most of these concepts we have no vocabulary for. Some of these concepts were indicated by the words "justification" and "belief" in other centuries, or are indicated by near-synonyms in other other languages. If the English word "belief" were slightly shifted in meaning, we would most likely have no way of expressing the concept we now express with that word, and we would be unlikely to be able to give an account of knowledge. It can take great linguistic luck for us to have necessary and sufficient conditions statable in our natural language. Only a small minority of possible concepts can be described in English. (There are uncountably many possible concepts, but only countably many phrases in English.) What amazing luck if a concept can be described twice in different words!

I may be overstating the difficulty here. For sometimes the meanings of terms are correlated, in the way that vaguenesses can be correlated. Thus, "know" and "belief" may be vague, but the vaguenesses may neatly covary. And likewise, perhaps, "know" and "belief" can shift in meaning, but their shifts might be correlated.

Final remarks: The point here isn't that giving explanatory necessary and sufficient conditions won't happen, but just that it is not something we should expect to be able to do. And I should be more willing to accept as intellectual progress when we can do partial things:

1. give conditions that are necessary and sufficient but not explanatory
2. give conditions that are necessary and sufficient in some limited setting
3. give necessary but not sufficient conditions, or vice versa.

A dilemma for divine command theory

Either God does or does not have moral obligations.

If he has moral obligations, divine command theory seems to be false. Divine command theory comes in two versions: command theory and will theory. On command theory, an action is obligatory if and only if God commands it to one. But no one can impose obligations on himself by commands (one can impose obligations on oneself by promises, of course). On will theory, an action is obligatory if and only if God wills (in a relevant sense) one to do it. But what one wills oneself to do does not impose an obligation. That's all I'll say about this horn, though more can probably be said.

If God has no moral obligations, however, then in particular he has no moral obligation to keep his promises and reveal only truths to us. But the Western monotheistic religions are founded on an utter reliance on God's promises and revelation. Without God having moral obligations, why think that God's promises and revelation are trustworthy? (It would obviously be circular to think so on the basis of God's promises and revelations.) So if God has no moral obligations, Western monotheistic religions are in trouble. But most divine command theorists accept one of the Western monotheistic religions.

Perhaps, though, it is impossible for God to break promises or lie, even though he is under no obligation to keep promises or refrain from lying. But if it is not wrong for him to do these things, why can't he do it? If it's just a brute limitation in what he can do, then that seems to conflict with his omnipotence. Maybe, though, God's inability to promise or lie follows from some other essential attribute of God.

Perhaps his goodness? But goodness in a context where duty is not at issue, i.e., deontologically unconstrained goodness, does not seem sufficient to rule out breaking promises or lying.

Maybe in the case of an omnipotent being, though, it does. Goodness is opposed to inducing false beliefs in others, since false beliefs are intrinsically bad. So in our case, deontologically unconstrained goodness might lead one to break a promise, because one made the promise in ignorance of some aspect of the consequences of keeping it, and to lie because there is no other way of achieving some good. But an omnipotent and omniscient being is not going to suffer from such limitations. Sometimes the only humanly possible way to save someone's feelings from being hurt is by lying to him, and deontologically unconstrained goodness may lead one to do that. But God can directly will to have someone's feelings not be hurt.

But this line of thought is a dangerous one to the theist. For it is pretty much the same line of thought that leads the atheist to conclude that God, if he existed, would prevent various horrendous evils. In response to the atheist, the theist has to insist that there may very well be goods—perhaps but not necessarily beyond our ken—that are served by not preventing the horrendous evils. But if we are impressed by this line of thought, we will likewise be unimpressed by the thought that whatever end might be accomplished by lying or breaking of promises can be accomplished by an omniptoent and omniscient being without these. In particular, a sceptical theist cannot give the response I gave in the preceding paragraph.

There is a different line of thought, though, that might work better, inspired by Steve Evans' version of divine command theory. In addition to the distinction between permissible and impermissible actions, there is a distinction between virtuous and vicious actions, and it is only the permissible/impermissible distinction that is grounded by divine command theory. God, one can say, is essentially virtuous. But lying and breaking promises is vicious. Hence God can't do these actions, not because they are wrong, but because they are vicious. I think this is the best response to the dilemma, but I am not convinced.

One reason I am not convinced is this line of thought. Suppose that what makes lying and promise-breaking vicious is that these things are wrong. This is actually plausible. Consider this line of thought. A lot of people think that in extreme circumstances it is permissible to lie or break a promise (we might, though, argue that an omnipotent being doesn't end up in such extreme circumstances—this may be a subtly different line of argument from one that I argued against above, I think). They aren't going to say that lying or breaking promises is always vicious—only that it is vicious when it is wrong, and then because it is wrong. A minority of people, including me, think lying is always wrong (I don't know the promise literature, so I won't talk about promises here). They presumably think lying is always vicious. But surely it is always vicious precisely because it is always wrong. If so, then it is quite plausible that lying and promise-breaking are vicious because, and to the extent that, they are wrong. But the divine command theorist who says that they're vicious but not wrong for God cannot take this line.

Another plausible view is that lying and promise-breaking are wrong, when they are wrong, because they are vicious. But again a divine command theorist cannot take this line of thought, because that would allow one to ground wrongness facts in non-deontological virtue fact, and would make divine command theory unnecessary.

What the divine command theorist needs to hold here is that there is no explanatory relationship between the wrongness of lying and promise breaking and the viciousness of these. And that doesn't seem very plausible, though I do not have a knock-down argument against that.

A simple argument against divine command theories

A standard line of objection against divine command theories is centered on the counterfactual:

1. Even if God commanded it, torturing the innocent would be wrong.

But here it is extremely plausible that the antecedent is necessarily false—that God cannot command torture of the innocent. There is still a line of argument against divine command theories that continues past this roadblock, but I think it fizzles out.

But if we replace "God commanded it" with "God didn't forbid it", we actually get a much stronger argument. Actually, let's avoid counterfactuals, since we don't understand them well enough. We can give this argument:

2. (Premise) Necessarily, torturing the innocent is wrong.
3. (Premise) Possibly, God does not forbid torturing the innocent.
4. (Premise) If divine command theory is true, then it is the case that: necessarily, something is wrong if and only if it is forbidden by God.
5. Therefore, divine command theory is not true.

The argument is valid. Premise (2) is pretty plausible. It is justified by the same kinds of intuitions as (1) was. Premise (4) is uncontroversial, though it highlights the fact that the argument is specifically being aimed at divine command theories. Pure divine will theories are unaffected by the argument.

Interestingly, I think that if the argument works, it continues to work even if one replaces "God" with "a loving God", as in Robert M. Adams divine command theory.

The big question now is with regard to (3). A quick move to defend (3) is this. Possibly, God creates a world with no agents other than himself. In such a world, God wouldn't have any reason to issue any commands. So, possibly, there is a world with no agents other than God where no such commands have been issued. (Maybe you might object that God can issue a command to himself. But why would he need to? After all, the same loving character that might lead him to issue such a command would lead him to refrain from torturing the innocent.)

Now, this particular argument might make one worry that the assent to (2) was too quick. Perhaps instead the divine command theorist should have said:

6. Necessarily, for every created agent x, it is wrong for x to torture the innocent.

However, I don't think the quantification in (2) should be restricted to created agents.

But suppose we do grant such a restriction. I think my argument can be rescued. Add:

7. (Premise) Possibly, there is a created agent x who is not forbidden to torture the innocent.
8. (Premise) If divine command theory is true, necessarily: for every created agent x and action-type A, A is wrong for x if and only if A is forbidden to x.
9. So divine command theory is false. (By 6-8)

How can I defend (8)? For an initial line of defense, imagine that God created persons whose character is such that it would be unthinkable" for them to torture the innocent. Then God might reasonably refrain from forbidden them to torture the innocent not to give them the idea.

When I tried an argument like this on our graduate students, they came up with a very nice line of defense. God might command more fundamental things, such as to love God and neighbor. Torturing the innocent is incompatible with these fundamental commands. And it might be necessary that God command these more fundamental things because being subject to such commands might be constitutive of being an agent (or at least a created agent, I guess).

We can run this line of thought in two ways. First, we might say that what is incompatible with a command counts as forbidden. Second, we might modify (8) by saying that if divine command theory is correct, then it is necessary that something is wrong for a created agent if and only if it is incompatible with some divine command. For convenience, I will consider the first line—it won't matter, I think.

But what one is commanded by God is an extrinsic characteristic of a created agent, while being an agent is an intrinsic characteristic. So it seems problematic for divine commands to partly constitute our being agents. Imagine a being just like you, with the same nature, beliefs and other intrinsic features, but whom God did not command to love God and neighbor. Such a being still believes that she should love God and neighbor to the same extent as you believe it, and has the propensity to deliberate in light of love of God and neighbor as much as you do. Wouldn't she be an agent just as much as you?

Still, one might wonder what kind of reasons God might have not to command someone to love God and neighbor. But I think answers are possible. First of all, if it were possible to have persons who love God and neighbor with any obligation to do so, there plausibly would be a value in there being such persons—and it is hard for a divine command theorist to deny the possibility of such persons. Second, it could be that by giving an agent the command to love, God might be putting in the agent's head the idea that it is possible not to love. And there could be a value to creating agents who do not have any such idea. Third, if it were possible to do so, there would be a value to creating agents who cannot sin—and creating agents who are under no commands would be a way to do that if divine command theory is right. In fact, given divine command theory, God might create a mix of agents: some who are under commands, as we are, and some who aren't.

I don't know how strong this line of thought is. And like I said, it does nothing against theories that involve solely divine will considerations and have no command (or promulgation of will) component to obligation.