56 Questions on Morality

1) Descriptive metaethics: What do people mean when they make claims about what is good or bad, better or worse, right or wrong, good or evil, okay or not okay, fair or unfair, deserved or undeserved, justified or unjustified, reasonable or unreasonable, obligatory or prohibited, blameless or blameworthy, supererogatory or non-supererogatory, a duty, a right, a responsibility, a moral failure or success, a moral mistake, faulty or sound moral reasoning, a moral truth or falsity, a moral fact or opinion, a virtue or vice, or what someone should or should not do?

2) Self-descriptive metaethics: What do you mean when you use the above moral terms and make claims using those terms?

3) Prescriptive metaethics: What should people mean when they use the above moral terms and make claims using those terms?

4) What does it mean for something to be good or bad? What is the good-maker of good things and the bad-maker of bad things?

5) What is well-being? What does it mean to live a good life?

6) Can goals be good or bad, better or worse? What should the ultimate goal of the human being be?

7) What does it mean for something to be objective or objectively true? (More generally: What does it mean for something to be true?) What does it mean for something to be subjective or subjectively true? What does it mean for something to be true in a relative sense versus true in an absolute sense? What does it mean for a truth or claim to be stance-independent or judgment-independent? What is a stance or a judgment?

8) What is value? Are there facts about value? (Generally: What are facts?) Is value objective or subjective?

9) If there are judgment-independent value facts or moral facts, does this mean there are judgment-independent gustatory facts or aesthetic facts? Why or why not?

10) What are mistakes? Can someone be mistaken about what’s good or bad?

11) What is poor reasoning? Can someone exercise poor reasoning over determining what’s good and bad?

12) What is normativity?

13) What does ‘should’ and ‘ought’ mean?

14) Can we derive an ought from an is? Why or why not?

15) How does description differ from prescription?

16) What is a categorical imperative? What is a hypothetical imperative?

17) Is there a categorical imperative?

18) Is there an irreducible normative property? What would that look like?

19) Are moral claims meaningful? If yes, then what makes moral claims meaningful? (Generally: What does it mean for a statement to be meaningful?)

20) What are moral intuitions, and what role do they play in our moral theories? (Generally: What are intuitions, and what role do they play in our philosophical theories?)

21) Are moral intuitions data? Are our intrinsic goods and evils data? Why or why not?

22) How does moral normativity (what we ought to do) relate to epistemic normativity (what we ought to believe)?

23) What does it mean for something to be right or wrong? What is the right-maker of right actions and the wrong-maker of wrong actions?

24) Is there a difference between epistemic wrongness and moral wrongness? “The sun is smaller than the moon” is wrong. Sending a person to prison for a crime they did not commit is wrong. Does ‘wrong’ mean the same thing in both cases?

25) Are there moral facts? If so, what are they?

26) Are there moral mistakes? Can someone be mistaken about what’s right or wrong?

27) Is morality objective or subjective?

28) Is there objectively good and bad moral reasoning? (Generally: Is there objectively good and bad reasoning?)

29) If there is moral knowledge, how do we obtain it? If there are moral facts, then how do we discover them? (Generally: If there is knowledge, how do we obtain it?)

30) Are there morally justified and unjustified actions?

31) What does it mean for an action to be justified, and how does that relate to holding a justified belief?

32) Are there external reasons, or are reasons only internal? (Generally: What are reasons?)

33) How can we tell whether a reason for acting is motivating versus justifying?

34) If someone has a reason to act, must they be motivated to act?

35) Are humans ultimately always motivated by their own pursuit of happiness? Does this make all humans implicit egoists? Is genuine altruism possible? If not, does this threaten the moral value of our actions? Why or why not?

36) What is the difference between moral reasoning and prudential reasoning?

37) How do reasons relate to moral justification?

38) Why be moral? Why be a good person? Why care about these things? How do these questions relate to the question: Why be rational?

39) What are rights?

40) Who has rights or should have them?

41) What are moral obligations? Who has them and when? How do we discover what our obligations are?

42) Which actions are supererogatory, and how can we tell?

43) How great should the moral burden we place on ourselves be? How hard should we strive to be moral, and why?

44) What is justice and injustice?

45) Does anybody deserve anything? What are just deserts? What does it mean to deserve something?

46) How does punishment relate to justice?

47) What is moral responsibility? How does it relate to blameworthiness, blamelessness, and free will?

48) What does it mean to be a moral agent or to have “agency”?

49) Is it possible to knowingly do what’s wrong? Or does everybody always do what they think in the moment is best, in some cases making highly conflicted choices, and in some cases coming to believe that they made the wrong choice?

50) What does it mean to forgive? When should we forgive or withhold forgiveness?

51) If actions are made wrong by something, what is it? Are they made wrong by their consequences, or by the nature of the actions themselves (e.g. a lack of good will behind the action), or by the viciousness of the kind of person who would engage in that kind of action? Or is it all of the above depending on context (pluralism)? Or is it something else (e.g. rationalism)?

52) Can we subsume moral concerns surrounding good will and treating people as ends unto themselves under consequences? Why or why not? 

53) What is virtue? What is vice? Are some actions knowably virtuous or knowably vicious? If so, how?

54) Can we subsume moral concerns surrounding virtue under consequences? Why or why not?

55) Where does morality come from? To what degree is morality selected for by evolution? In what ways, if any, is morality a social construct? Do debunking arguments give us reason to doubt the existence of moral facts, or to doubt the objectivity of morality?

56) How would a best Divine Command Theory—or any theistic metaethical system—spell out God’s relationship to goodness and badness, right and wrong, the objectivity of morality, God’s obligations—or lack thereof—toward creation, and God’s status as a moral agent?

Seven Questions for Christians

1) Are you certain that Christianity is true?

2) If not, why not?

3) Do you believe that if someone has anything less than certainty in Christianity, then that implies they are not regenerate / born again / saved / baptized in the Holy Spirit (or whatever your description of a "true Christian" is)? Why or why not?

4) If you are certain Christianity is true, then do you feel intellectually satisfied with your answers to questions pertaining to the following doctrines:

a) The Doctrine of Divine Revelation and God's Covenants

b) The Doctrines of the Inerrancy, Infallibility, and Historicity of Scripture

c) The Doctrines of Biblical Canon, Sola Scriptura, and Hermeneutics

d) The Doctrines of Faith, Truth, the Rationality of Faith, Christian Epistemology, and Christian Methods for Discerning Truth

e) Doctrines surrounding God and God's attributes, including

i) God's existence and natural theology (arguments for God's existence),
ii) God's relationship to perfection,
iii) goodness (especially, God's goodness in light of the problems of evil, suffering, and divine hiddenness),
iv) transcendence vs immanence,
v) incorporeality,
vi) aseity,
vii) necessity,
viii) omnipotence,
ix) omniscience,
x) omnipresence,
xi) simplicity,
xii) impassibility,
xiii) immutability,
xiv) and time.

f) The Doctrines of the Trinity and the Holy Spirit

g) The Doctrines of the Incarnation and Christology

h) The Doctrine of Creation and Soli Deo Gloria

i) The Doctrine of Angels, Demons, Satan, and the Divine Council

j) The Doctrine of Man, the Imago Dei, and the Historical Adam

k) The Doctrine of Divine Providence and Free Will

l) The Doctrine of Sin, the Fall, and Original Sin

m) The Doctrine of Salvation and Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Solus Christus

n) The Doctrine of the Atonement

o) The Doctrine of Eschatology ("The Last Things", including judgment, heaven, and hell)

p) The Doctrine of Ecclesiology (the authority and nature of the church, denominations, and church creeds)

q) The Doctrine of Sanctification, the Christian Life, and the Sacraments

5) If you are intellectually satisfied with your answers to all reasonable questions that could be asked about the above doctrines, then: 

 

5a) How could this be possible? How could you possibly be satisfied with your answers to all reasonable questions that could be asked about the above doctrines given the sheer complexity – the breadth and depth – of these questions? Have you comprehensively surveyed all alternative answers to yours and do you have principled reasons for preferring your answers to these alternatives? Have you had space in your life and the training, access to books, and time needed to think, read, and write enough to accomplish this?

 

5b) Where are these answers of yours? Have you written them down?

 

5c) Do others trained in philosophy or theology also find your answers to be satisfying? Do they have any critiques of your answers or penetrating questions about your answers? Have you addressed these critiques or questions?

 

6) On the other hand, if you are not intellectually satisfied with your answers to all reasonable questions that could be asked about the above doctrines, and indeed if you feel unsure about your position on some or all of these doctrines, then why are you certain that Christianity is true, or that Christianity makes sense or that Christianity is a coherent worldview?

 

Scratch that—why have the slightest bit of confidence at all that Christianity is true or that Christianity makes sense or that Christianity is a coherent worldview if you don't know that your best attempt to make sense of each of the above doctrines—and of how they coherently fit together—would result in success? For all you know, attempting to make sense of each of the above doctrines—and of how they coherently fit together—would result in your concluding that Christianity does not make sense – or even that Christianity is likely false. So until you have completed an investigation with such success, why not adopt a more cautious, agnostic, and open-minded mentality?

 

7) If you are certain that Christianity is true, are you willing to change your mind and have that certainty overturned?

 

Let's say there's a Muslim who is certain that Islam is true. You preach the Gospel to them, but they respond, "I'm certain that Islam is true; I have no need to read the Bible." In your mind, the Muslim is stuck in their false beliefs because of their certainty. Are you worried that you could be stuck in your false beliefs in the same way? What should the Muslim do to guarantee that they are not stuck in their false beliefs in this way? Perhaps they should adopt an open-minded way of thinking and be willing to change their mind, even their deepest beliefs about their own identity, heritage, and community—even their most cherished beliefs that they want more than anything to be true.

 

If you think the Muslim should adopt this radically open-minded attitude, do you adopt this same attitude? Have you read the Quran, or Hadith, or Sira? Have you read books written by naturalists defending naturalism (i.e. the view that there are no supernatural things) or challenging theism or Christianity? Wouldn't it be hypocritical to hold others to a standard of open-mindedness, investigative rigor, and internal scrutiny that you don't hold to yourself?

 

Christians always misunderstand my point here, so I'll try to spell it out: The question is not about the evidence for Islam versus the evidence for Christianity. The question is not "Why are you not a Muslim?" 

 

The point is about the mentality that the Muslim (who is certain that Islam is true) adopts. The Muslim adopts a mentality of certainty. Therefore, from the Christian point of view, the Muslim is stuck in their false beliefs because of their mentality. But if you are a Christian and you have the same mentality, then you are making the same mistake of being epistemically stuck that the Muslim is making. The Christian would recommend the Muslim—so that the Muslim does not get epistemically stuck—to adopt a mentality of radical open-mindedness. But the Christian who is certain that Christianity is true fails to adopt that same mentality of radical open-mindedness. And so the Christian who is certain that Christianity is true is guilty of epistemic hypocrisy—they expect Muslims (and atheists, etc.) to adopt a mentality that they refuse to adopt themselves.