A Critical Survey of Adams’ Divine Command Meta-ethics

Authors : Mustafa POLAT

Pages : 53-68

View : 45 | Download : 29

Publication Date : 2023-06-29

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :The divine command meta-ethics insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(hereafter, DCM); promote non-naturalist realism about the ontological status of moral properties while depending on this ontological status on a such-and-such divine being’s moral roles derived from some relevant divine characteristics. As DCM typically contends, our moral discourse depends on God’s commands and prohibitions to the effect that an action A is morally right if and only if God commands A. Robert M. Adams insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(1979, 1987a); offers a modification that explicates the dependency relation between a loving God’s commands and moral properties on metaphysical grounds to the effect that some action A is morally right if and only if it is not logically but metaphysically necessary for a loving God to command A. In this paper, I discuss whether Adams’ modification stands for a cogent account of DCM in a few respects. Firstly, Adams fails to provide robust reasons for grounding moral realism so that his commitment to the reality of moral properties merely expresses a theoretically unwarranted assumption hinging on a presumptive case in our moral discourse. Particularly, his assumption on the pervasiveness of strongly held moral beliefs is unwarranted and it inherits a vague notion of certainty. Secondly, Adams\` response to the Euthyphro dilemma does not satisfactorily sort out the concerns accompanying this dilemma, mainly because his response relies on a vague notion of divine love that allegedly necessitates God commanding morally permissible acts while this notion cannot be trivially reducible into a moral aspect.
Keywords : İlahi Buyruk Teorisi, Meta Etik, Ahlaki Gerçekçilik, Psikolojik Kesinlik vs Epistemik Kesinlik, Euthyphro ikilemi

ORIGINAL ARTICLE URL