What makes murder wrong?
I think for these kinds of questions, it’s good to appeal to the man on the street. What, without any deep ethics knowledge, would a person answer? Well, they’d say something like “it kills someone”. “It destroys a life”. “It leaves grieving loved ones”. Etc etc. And most ethical theories align with this. The ultilitarian agrees murder is wrong because of the grieving loved ones, the deonotologist on the violation of the respect for others lives, the virtue ethicist the ruthlessness of someone willing to destroy a life for their own benefits. DCT, uniquely, doesn’t.
Under divine command theory, the answer to what makes murder wrong is, ultimately, nothing to do with murder. The destruction of lives, the grief, the cruelty, the fear, the pain…all irrelevant. Whether things hurt people, degrade people or destroy people is irrelevant to morality. What makes something wrong is that there’s a guy who says he doesn’t want people doing it- not a *victim*, to be clear, he’s not involved in the murder in any way. He’s just in charge, and has told people not to do it. Murder is wrong, fundamentally, not because it causes misery and death but because it is *against the rules.*
Ignoring the Euthyphro Dilemma or appeals to arbitrariness or problematic bible verses or other such sophisticated objections, just think about this. This is *literally* a small child’s approach to ethics. Ask a three year old about morality, and they’ll give the exact same answer- things are bad if they make daddy yell at me. We expect children to grow out of this approach, naturally. We should move to not hurting people because its bad to hurt people, not because you’ll get in trouble. This is a core component of growing up.
But under Divine Command Theory? The toddler was *right*. They admittedly misidentified exactly who they needed to avoid getting in trouble with, but they got the core of ethics down pat. Morality *is* fundamentally based around not being yelled at by authority figures, and the people who grow out of this approach are actually getting more incorrect about morality. There’s nothing actually, inherently wrong about hurting or killing people, all that matters morally *really is* whether or not daddy will be mad at you for doing it.
Simply, this is absurd. I refuse to believe that little Timmy, who hasn’t yet learnt to use the toilet, understands ethics more then every philosopher working today. Obviously, murder isn’t wrong because its against the rules and we’ll get in trouble for it. Whatever grounds murder’s wrongness must be something inherent to the act of murdering people, not the approval or lack thereof of a cosmic father figure.
Careful not to couple Divine Command Theory that’s _independent_ on God’s will to Theory that’s _dependent_ on His will. Whereas the former claims that God’s Commandments are based primarily on commonsense morality, ie what’s right and wrong (in other words, it’s not wrong because God says it’s wrong, God says it’s wrong because it’s wrong), the latter is indeed what you refer to here in your post. But note that not all Christians believe & practice said theory.
I want to say as a caveat that *most* “divine command theorists” do *not* think that the content of the moral law is determined arbitrarily by a divine command. Most of the sophisticated defenders of divine command theory, such as Scotus or Suarez, believe instead that God wills the good precisely because it is good, but that it is God’s willing the good which supplies the ground of *obligation* for human beings to will the good. In other words, the refined position of late divine command theorists tends to accept an intellectualist approach to the content of the moral law (murder is bad because of what murder consists in), but a voluntarist approach to the form of the moral law (murder is contrary to our duty, because God imposes a law against it through His act of willing the good). So divine commands are not supposed to explain why certain things are good or bad, but instead, beyond this, why they are necessary or prohibited. If obligation expresses command, then there must be a commander, etc.
Anyway, even for those divine command theorists who think that the divine will plays a more direct and significant role in determining the content of morality, they would generally think that there are at least some things that are willed for their own sake and not simply because they are commanded by God (e.g. the love of God is good not because God commands it but because God is the highest good and final end of all things), that God has good reason for issuing commands as He does (because, e.g. they accord with the natures of things; murder being bad for human beings, God prohibits it in light of this fact; his prohibition is what makes murder unlawful, but not what makes it bad for us), and that human beings have difficulty discerning the content of the moral law apart from God’s influence. This last part is especially responsive to your post: divine command theorists are in general much less sanguine about our ability to know right from wrong without some revelation of the intentions of the divine will. The fact of pervasive moral disagreement among and within cultures supplies some evidence for this claim.
How is it childish to not do wrong because it breaks the law?
Some people naturally have lower regard or care for others but still completely understand right from wrong because they know what consequences are. If we could depend on people and their empathy to correct their behavior, prison systems wouldn’t exist. A lot of people stop themselves from doing something stupid because of *direct* consequences, not a *feeling* for right or wrong. When you’re angry and really want to hit someone in the face, you no longer rely on empathy and what would stop you is the law/being charged with assault.
In short, if it’s bad for you don’t do it. If it’s good for you, do it.
That’s a valid morality used by adults who don’t share the same level of neuron activity in their amygdala or prefrontal lobe as others (the areas of the brain that we measure empathetic responses). It’s not good for you to murder the man your wife cheated on you with, because you will likely go to prison, so don’t do it. Simple as that.
Friedrich Nietzsche describes two different types of [morality](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality), here is an excerpt:
Nietzsche argues that there are two fundamental types of morality: “master morality” and “slave morality”. Master morality values pride and power, while slave morality values kindness, empathy, and sympathy. Master morality judges actions as good or bad (e.g. the classical virtues of the noble man versus the vices of the rabble), unlike slave morality, which judges by a scale of good or evil intentions (e. g. Christian virtues and vices, Kantian deontology).
If you ever go to a 3rd world country with no rule of law, you might respect the idea divine rule more.
Edit: not sure what logic argument this falls under, but even if you don’t believe in dt, the consequences of not having it are worse.
Murder is against the rules because it it wrong, not wrong because it’s against the rules.
/s2
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I think this is incomplete definition of DTC.
DTC (again, ignoring the Euthyphro Dilemma) suggests, as you indicate, that (1) our moral duties come from divine commands; however, you fail to note (2) divine commands, on perfect being theism, are necessary reflections of God’s perfect nature.
Therefore, the reasons the “man on the street” may provide for why murder is wrong — it needlessly takes a life, it causes suffering to loved ones, etc. — my run *contrary* to God’s perfect nature (i.e., a maximally great being would not command “thou should murder” because the resulting outcomes would not be consistent to their perfect nature); and hence, are the *reasons* why God commanded that we not murder.
I think your failure to engage with (2) produces an incomplete description of divine commands.
Murder is “wrong” because cultures that murdered failed more often than those that did not. We have developed a tendency over many years. Those cultures that murder more casually not only mentally damage those doing the murdering, but create a class of people being murdered that resist the culture as a whole.
Greed can and has overcome this aversion. If you can dehumanize an entire population that is separate enough from the societal norms this aversion can be a voided for a while.
I think you’re confusing Divine Command Theory with Bob Command Theory. Under BCT, there’s some guy, who we’ll call Bob, and morality is just following the rules Bob lays down. BCT is, as you’ve said, the morality of a two-year-old, if Bob is their parent. And, as you say, BCT is utterly absurd to hold as a moral framework. To be blunt, you’d have to be an idiot to follow it.
If you think BCT and DCT are the same, this leads to an inescapable conclusion: Thomas Aquinas was an idiot. A consequence of this is that all the people who call Thomas Aquinas a great philosopher are, also, idiots. Even people who disagree with Aquinas, but nevertheless spend years engaging with his works and ideas, are idiots, because we can trivially see that he is so outrageously wrong that even engaging with him is idiotic.
Of course, what’s really going on isn’t that these people are all idiots. It’s that they are _not talking about BCT_. They are taking about a moral theory grounded in the details of classical theist philosophy. It is essential to an understanding of DCT to understand what its adherents think God is, what they think revelation is, and how those things relate to morality. At the very least, DCT adherents have arguments for why God’s will is not arbitrary or capricious, which of course is the main problem with BCT.
You also make a puzzling statement: “Whatever grounds murder’s wrongness must be something inherent to the act of murdering people.” On both DCT and BCT, the wrongness of murder is that murder contravenes a commandment; it is inherent to the act of murder that it _is_ an act of murder, and thus the subject of the commandment. It is not clear how the other items you mention, like the grief felt by survivors, are inherent to the act of murder. If the murder victim had no friends or family and nobody grieves for them, that doesn’t make it not a murder, so it is not inherent to the act of murder that someone must grieve. You could follow Kant and say that murder is wrong because it _generally_ causes people to grieve, and so is worth adopting as a moral principle, but this distances you even further from your goal of having morality be directly grounded in the inherent properties of immortal actions.
If killing were wrong then soldiers would go to jail and then hell.
A community disallows murder because it is the best way to prevent me from getting murdered. Thus it protects the community.
Killing members of other communities is allowed when the other community threatens my community.
Morals are just evolved social contract to protect and improve the quality of life for one’s own community.
> I think for these kinds of questions, it’s good to appeal to the man on the street. What, without any deep ethics knowledge, would a person answer? Well, they’d say something like “it kills someone”. “It destroys a life”. “It leaves grieving loved ones”. Etc etc. And most ethical theories align with this.
I’ve yet to see any ethical theory argue something as banal as “murder is wrong because it kills someone”. Most ethical theories seem to argue that there are situations wherein killing someone is right (or at least not wrong), so that’s not a meaningful argument for why murder is wrong. Rather it seems to me that most ethical systems seem to approach murder as being specifically killing of others *that is wrong*.
> Murder is wrong, fundamentally, not because it causes misery and death but because it is *against the rules*.
This on the other hand is something that is in line with a whole bunch of ethical theories; anything involving social contracts for one, or natural law. Plenty of ethical systems argue that we have a moral duty to *obey the rules*, just with a slightly different take on where the rules come from.
Who actually holds to divine command theory? Who are you specifically debating and can you provide a quotation or summary of beliefs?
>The ultilitarian [sic] agrees murder is wrong because of the grieving loved ones, the deonotologist [sic] on the violation of the respect for others lives, the virtue ethicist the ruthlessness of someone willing to destroy a life for their own benefits.
I do not think you understand these normative ethics.
>Under divine command theory, the answer to what makes murder wrong is, ultimately, nothing to do with murder.
Can you give an example of such a divine command?
>What makes something wrong is that there’s a guy who says he doesn’t want people doing it-
A guy? I thought this was Divine Command theory.
>Murder is wrong, fundamentally, not because it causes misery and death but because it is against the rules.
What is the fundamental moral principle? And if you are concerned with “rules” you are edging into Kantian Deontology, not Divine command theory.
>Ignoring the Euthyphro Dilemma or appeals to arbitrariness or problematic bible verses or other such sophisticated objections, just think about this.
Should not sophisticated arguments be presented first on a debate forum?
>This is literally a small child’s approach to ethics. Ask a three year old about morality, and they’ll give the exact same answer- things are bad if they make daddy yell at me. We expect children to grow out of this approach, naturally. We should move to not hurting people because its bad to hurt people, not because you’ll get in trouble. This is a core component of growing up.
>But under Divine Command Theory? The toddler was right. They admittedly misidentified exactly who they needed to avoid getting in trouble with, but they got the core of ethics down pat. Morality is fundamentally based around not being yelled at by authority figures, and the people who grow out of this approach are actually getting more incorrect about morality. There’s nothing actually, inherently wrong about hurting or killing people, all that matters morally really is whether or not daddy will be mad at you for doing it.
How does this aid your thesis? What is your thesis? What does this have to do with Divine Command theory?
>Simply, this is absurd.
We can agree on this. However, we also must agree that you do not understand varieties of normative ethics nor how to present and defend a thesis.
Another related issue is asking god for forgiveness when the people you injured are on earth or worse dead. You can’t get forgiven by someone you’ve murdered. How many people ask god for forgiveness without asking for forgiveness from the people they’ve hurt.
Murder is abhorrent to all societies. It was just codified in the bible and presented as coming from god.
>What makes murder wrong?
Classifying the killing in question as murder.
>Whatever grounds murder’s wrongness must be something inherent to the act of murdering people, not the approval or lack thereof of a cosmic father figure.
If you call an act of killing murder you have already judged it to be wrong.
When commenting on divine command theory, there’s no way to skirt around Euthyphros dilemma and moral ontology. Divine command theory doesn’t just say “do what God wants” without any moral framework to back it. They believe that morality is based on God’s commands and/or God’s nature. When looked at in this way, they believe divine command theory covers both sides of Euthyphros dilemma so either way it is the basis for moral ontology. There’s obvious problems with this on both sides of the dilemma, however, taking the side of “it is good because God says so” is the more problematic stance for any supposed solid framework for morality (this is the stance your arguing against). We are told that God’s nature is love, but if under divine command he suddenly decides that rape is good, the theist must embrace this stance. If taking the stance “God commands it because it is moral”, it inherently makes God subject to that morality and would precipitate a monsoon of criticism about how an all loving God could do the many monstrous things stated in the Bible.
However, your problem in the argument is the failure to address the ontological inherent to divine command and its ultimate source. You can’t by fiat just say your ignoring Euthyphros dilemma then proceed to talk about morality in any objective way without recourse to something ontological. Your argument only addresses one side of the dilemma while also not grounding your own claims. In your view, why is murder wrong? Do you believe in objective moral values and duties? If so, what is the ontological source of that?
Just so we’re clear, I believe in objective morality based on well being ala Sam Harris’ moral landscape idea.
From the theist perspective allow me to first just dispense of “the guy”, there is no guy out there making commands. That would be a childish approach to theology, literally the kind of stuff they teach children so they might have a child’s understanding.
The root of divine command theory is the understanding that there is no particular consequence which makes something right or wrong. There is a host of consequences which reveal the moral condition of the antecedent action. And so when we make an ethic out of this understanding we cannot make it on the basis of an appeal to suffering or an appeal to equality or any relative consequence. Instead we must recognize that the proper frame of understanding is that all of reality exists in such a way as to produce moral consequence. Is not simply the existence of suffering or the existence of equality or the existence of your relative and fleeting experiences of those things but rather the coordination and participation of all those things. And when you are talking to a theist and you are talking about the rational antecedent of universal logic you are talking about God.
>What makes murder wrong?
The degraded human intellect. In DCT the only ‘wrong’ is to violate Dharma, thus even neglecting or refusing an act of murder may be ‘wrong’. Neither rules nor retribution are a factor.
*As if there were some finality in the civility of mores: this is our hypocricy, imputing everywhere and always a moralizing function for exchanges. But the law inscribed in heaven is not at all one of exchange. It’s rather the pact of alliance and seductive connections.(Baudrillard)*
*”But those who have seen through the superficiality of phenomenal reality recognize that Tormentor and tormented are one. The former is mistaken in thinking he does not share the torment, the latter in thinking he does not share the guilt.” (Schopenhauer)*
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