Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Institut für Philosophie

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | Institut für Philosophie | Studium | Fachschaftsinitiative | SVR18-19 | SVR: Philipp Kremers: Divine Command Metaethics and the Problem of ›Horrible Commands‹

SVR: Philipp Kremers: Divine Command Metaethics and the Problem of ›Horrible Commands‹

Students’ Lecture Series
  • Wann 19.12.2018 von 18:15 bis 19:45
  • Wo Unter den Linden 6, room 2094
  • iCal

Abstract:
It’s a well-known objection against the divine command theory of metaethics (DCT) that it’s committed to the view that torture of innocents, rape, and murder would be morally obligatory if God commanded them. This is a problem for DCT because we have the strong intuition that these acts can under no circumstances be morally obligatory. To meet this objection, the proponents of DCT insist that it’s impossible for God to command these acts. However, in response, Wielenberg (2005), Sinnott-Armstrong (2009), and Morriston (2009, 2015) have argued that it’s bad enough for DCT to be committed to the view that these acts would be morally obligatory if God per impossibile commanded them. In this talk, I’ll defend DCT against this ›beefed up‹ objection by presenting a range of arguments for the orthodox view on semantics of counterfactuals (Lewis 1973, Williamson 2007, 2016) which renders the propositions that allegedly cause trouble for DCT vacuously true and, therefore, unproblematic for DCT.

 

 

See our Facebook page and our open Moodle course for more info.