Critique of Andrew Loke's New Moral Argument for the Existence of God

Dr. Andrew Loke recently furnished A New (deductive) Moral Argument for the existence of God. Loke’s strategy is to examine the space of logical possibilities for grounding moral realism (objective moral facts) and eliminate all but the theistic one. The paper is interesting and worth reading, but there is one section I take issue with, which undermines Loke’s argument. That section concerns his critique of natural law.

Surprisingly, Loke’s consideration of natural law is just three paragraphs and fails to consider its strongest contemporary proponents – thinkers such as David Oderberg, Edward Feser, and David Alexander. This is a serious omission and substantially weakens Loke’s project.

Anyway, Loke’s aim is to render as untenable any non-personal ground for moral facts — and this would include natural law, which seeks to explain certain moral truths in relation to the natures (essences) of things. Because it is relatively brief, let me quote Loke’s section concerning natural law in full, then offer my critique.  

Some contemporary proponents of natural law ethics have claimed that objective morality can be grounded in impersonal natural law or natural facts, such as the kind of beings we are. For example, ‘it is good to eat and to give others food, because we are the kind of beings which need food to stay alive’ (Swinburne 2007, p. 89).

One problem with this view is that, while it is true that nutrients is necessary for the flourishing of living things because of the kind of things they are, by itself this does not account for the relevant moral differences between pestilential creatures and human beings. As Baggett and Walls (2016, p. 130) ask, ‘if moral value does not follow from the teleologically significant natural normativities of pestilential creatures or animals, then why does it do so in the case of human beings?’

Others have claimed that goodness can be based on the notion of proper function and purpose. For example, ‘to call x good is to say that it is the kind of x which someone would choose who wanted an x for the purpose for which x’s are characteristically wanted’ (Jordan 2011, p. 47, citing MacIntyre 1984, p. 59). Thus, a good soldier would be one who can shoot well, etc., and to be a better soldier one ought to practice his shooting, etc. ‘But surely we can’t leave it at that. For what if this soldier is a German in World War II in charge of sending innocent Jews to their unjust death?’ (Baggett and Walls 2016, p. 287). What this shows is that objective moral properties cannot be ontologically grounded solely on natural properties such as (say) the property of proper function. While proper function is an objective account and can ground an evaluation (e.g., a ‘good’ soldier), by itself it cannot ground a moral evaluation as such (i.e., the ‘goodness’ of the Nazi soldier is not moral goodness). Similar objections led to the current widespread rejection of the once-popular Social Darwinism which, following the views of Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), had elevated alleged biological facts (such survival of the fittest) to prescriptions for human moral conduct (McGrath 2008, pp. 304–305).

Let us take Loke’s objections in reverse order. The objection related to proper function and the Nazi solider is something of a strawman, since the natural law theorist can maintain the Nazi solider is good insofar as he is combatant in war and an accurate shot, but bad insofar as he is a human being, if, given certain facts about human nature, it is bad for us to kill innocent members of our own kind, or partake in an unjust war, etc. In fact, that is just what natural law theorists say: there are facts about human nature such that our objective flourishing crucially depends upon the just treatment of our fellow human beings, such that our acting contrary to that is just as objectively detrimental to us (if not worse) as eating tacks (even if not as immediately obvious in negative physical effects). In other words, facts about human nature don’t just fix what we need concerning nutrition but also what we need concerning human relations, of how our behavior toward fellow citizens either conduces us toward happiness or frustrates it. One can put all that in terms of proper function if they like, though I prefer the more traditional articulation of natural directedness (final causality), as the former might imply that human beings are artefacts that could have had different ends depending on the intentions of the creator, which, according to traditional natural law, is definitely false. Different ends imply a different creature. But that is a minor point, so I note it and set it aside.

The goodness of the Nazi solider is not moral goodness, Loke claims. Fair enough. But no natural law theorist says that it is, at least not upon that thin of analysis. Here, it is important we get clear on what moral goodness is for the natural law theorist. Morality is a rational enterprise, something which comes online only once a substance can access the space of reasons, deliberate about means and ends, and ultimately self-determine which path to pursue. Morality is not something which concerns sea slugs because sea slugs are not rational; sea slugs cannot access the space of reasons. Of course, sea slugs can still be good or bad concerning their natural ends and how well each sea slug has attained such ends, but they cannot be spoken of as being morally good or bad, because sea slugs are not rational (and, by extension, moral) agents.

For the natural law theorist, moral goodness (or badness) is just an extension of natural goodness concerning creatures with access to the space of reasons: i.e., that can contingently self-determine to pursue some apparent good which either promotes or frustrates what is really good for them. Thus, if for whatever bizarre reason I make the judgement to ingest a handful of tacks, perhaps only to make a philosophical point, I will have acted immorally – in fact, stupidly – since I have failed to consider relevant, overriding facts about my human nature in this instance. Same if I chose to murder an innocent person if only because I wanted to (say) advance my academic career. Both involve moral miscalculations, because they cause me to act in ways that objectively frustrates my natural flourishing, and both flow from mistakes in reasoning (which is not relevant to sea slugs), which often involves engaging in voluntary ignorance (i.e., failing to consider what I habitually or intuitively know, and applying that knowledge to some particular judgment).

Moreover, I am under a categorical imperative to follow the dictates of the natural law, because I inescapably want to flourish, want to be happy, etc. In other words, if I want to flourish and be happy, says the natural law theorist, then I ought to follow the dictates of the natural law, since that is literally the blueprint of my flourishing. However, I do, unconditionally, as a matter of human nature, want to flourish and be happy. Therefore, I ought to follow the dictates of the natural law, which includes not eating tacks, murdering innocent people, striving to acquire knowledge, and so on.

I am not going to defend all this now. Ultimately, Loke is at fault for not even mentioning these common points made by natural law theorists, so the onus is on him to accurately represent these positions in their strongest form and then refute them. Rather, he ignores them and gives the impression that natural law is far weaker and less equipped than it is for making sense of moral reality.

What has been said above defuses the objection of Baggett and Walls as well, though that objection seems to be ignorant of another important aspect of traditional natural law theory, which is this. If what Loke, Baggett, and Walls are after is a grounding of inherent moral value – that is, of some reason why human beings have more inherent worth than, say, an earthworm or ball of pocket lint -- the answer to that, following traditional natural law, is found in 1) the convertibility between being and goodness and 2) the hierarchy of being. We have more value, more goodness, because we have greater actuality, which is convertible with goodness, and are thereby higher on the scale of being. A critic of traditional natural law may contest these claims – and many have. (I offer a brief defense here, Oderberg a far more substantial one here.) But Loke fails even to mention them, and particularly how the natural law theorist could maintain, entirely apart from our special relationship to God, that there is something about human beings that makes them objectively better (more valuable) than earthworms or pocket lint. That, in conjunction with the demands our nature, provides ample reason for treating every human person with special dignity. And while God may provide further reason that humans are possessed of special (especially supernatural) dignity and worth, the convertibility principle between being and goodness and the hierarchy of being for the natural law theorist nevertheless provide their own reason. Thus, to suggest that the natural law tradition lacks the resources here, is ignorant. Loke fails to represent TNL fairly.

Again, facts about human nature demand we treat each other with higher priority and respect than beings lower on the chain of being: that is, natural law provides resources for equal treatment of all human beings, and of prioritizing the welfare of human beings over lesser animals or plants. This means, if given the situation of either saving a human or a dog from a fire, natural law demands saving the human; though it must be stated that natural law also provides resources for the humane treatment of animals as well – that, however, is far beyond the scope of what I’m examining now.

Again, Dr. Loke’s paper is worth reading, and has interesting things to say about the failures of other attempted accounts for objective morality, many which I agree with. His response, for example, to Dr. Oppy’s account of moral brute facts in premise 6 is worth considering, though I would suggest a traditional natural law perspective can give a stronger reason for moral brute facts, since the classical theist can explain why God is perfectly good given the principles articulated above (transcendentals, i.e.).

Nevertheless, since Dr. Loke failed to adequately represent TNL in his paper, I see his project as unsuccessful — at best, incomplete.

PS - Does this mean I don’t think there is any successful moral argument for the existence of God? Not exactly. While natural law can make good sense of moral facts and moral obligation natural law itself – which is pillared upon essentialism and teleology – does not make good sense on naturalism. Thus, my thought is moral arguments ultimately bleed into cosmological arguments, moving from essentialism to God. That isn’t to say moral considerations are irrelevant to the existence of God. Instead, moral considerations open a unique path to cosmological reasoning.