Normative Reasons and Theism

Gerald K. Harrison

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319907963
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Normative reasons are reasons to do and believe things. Intellectual inquiry seems to presuppose their existence, for we cannot justifiably conclude that we exist; that there is an external world; and that there are better and worse ways of investigating it and behaving in it, unless there are reasons to do and believe such things. But just what in the world are normative reasons? In this book a case is made for believing normative reasons are favouring relations that have a single, external source, filling this significant gap in the literature in an area within contemporary philosophy that has quickly grown in prominence. Providing a divine commandmetanormative analysis of normative reasons on entirely non-religious grounds, its arguments will be relevant to both secular and non-secular audiences alike and will address key issues in meta-ethics, evolutionary theory - especially evolutionary debunking threats to moral reasons and the normative more generally - and epistemology.

© The Author(s) 2018

Gerald K. HarrisonNormative Reasons and TheismPalgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religionhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90796-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. The Question

Gerald K. Harrison¹

(1)

Massey University, Palmerston North, Manawatu-Wanganui, New Zealand

Gerald K. Harrison

End Abstract

1.1 Introduction

Where you start can affect where you end up. When it comes to investigating the nature of reality, Descartes’ advice was to begin your inquiries with those aspects of the world that exist with the highest degree of certainty . That seems eminently sensible to me, and it is why I have focussed my attention on normative reasons.

Normative reasons are reasons to do and believe things. They seem to exist as certainly as anything can. For instance, if you think you have reason to believe you exist then you think there are normative reasons; as you do if you think you have reason to believe you do not exist. If you think you have reason to believe you are thinking, then you think there are normative reasons; as you do if you think you have reason to believe you are not thinking. If you think you have reason to believe there is an external physical world then you think there are normative reasons; as you do if you think there is reason to believe there is no external physical world. If you think there are better and worse ways of investigating the world, then you think there are normative reasons; as you do if you think there is reason to believe one way is as good as any another. If you think there are better and worse ways of behaving in the world, then you think there are normative reasons; as you do if you think you have reason to believe all ways are equal. In fact, even if you think you have reason to believe there are no normative reasons, then you think there are normative reasons. In short, if you think you have reason to do or believe anything whatsoever, then you think there are normative reasons. So the question I think it best to start with is “just what in the world are normative reasons?”

It is fair to say that at present a good deal of confusion surrounds the matter. John Turri (2009) points out that it is easy enough to find passages in which, often within the span of a single paragraph, “we are told that reasons are beliefs, propositions, and facts” (p. 491). And David Velleman (2004) comments that in his view “practical reason [reasons to do things] is a subject on which philosophy is in a backward state of ignorance” (p. 297). However, we should not be dispirited. The debate is young—normative reasons have hidden in plain sight for the longest time—and the confusion largely unjustified. Indeed, it is a product of a widespread mind-blindness or normative autism that has rendered the normative aspect to reality an order of magnitude more perplexing than it needs to be. Or so I will try to show in what follows.

1.2 Theism

Theism is the belief that a god of some sort exists. This book is called Normative Reasons and Theism because my best attempt to follow the evidence has led me to the conclusion that normative reasons are the attitudes of a god . As normative reasons exist indubitably, and as attitudes cannot exist absent a bearer, I have also concluded that the god in question exists, hence theism. However, I want to forestall a potential source of misunderstanding.

What follows is a disinterested inquiry into the nature of normative reasons. Religious considerations have not informed it in any way. I was raised in a non-believing household. I have never read the bible or any other religious text. I do not attend a church or engage in religious practices. Indeed, until relatively recently I would have described myself as a fully paid-up atheist. I do now believe a god exists, and if you want to insist upon a definition of ‘religious’ according to which that alone makes me qualify, then I am religious in that very broad sense of the term. But I want to emphasise that I have come to believe in a god on the basis of the arguments contained in this book. What follows is not, then, an attempt at providing rational underpinnings for a view I am already convinced is true. It is, for better or for worse, my attempt to follow arguments where they lead.¹

It is also worth stressing the principle of intellectual inquiry according to which when it comes to evaluating a view we should focus on the most defensible versions of it, not weaker ones. This is true even if, as it happens, most defenders of a particular kind of view are committed, for independent reasons, to defending more complex, less prima facie plausible positions. In point of fact, my kind of theism—that is, the theism the arguments in this book have led me to—is far simpler than the kind typically defended by those with religious convictions. For instance, the conclusions of my arguments do not describe a god who is omnipotent , or omniscient , or morally perfect, or the creator of everything (which I take to be the kind of god normally denoted by a capitalised ‘God’ ). I hasten to add, I do not think my conclusions are positively incompatible with any of those theses either. Nor am I suggesting that nothing can be said in support of them. The point is just that you would be bloating my conclusions if you put ‘God’ —that is, an omnipotent , omniscient , perfectly good god who has created everything apart from himself—into them.²

1.3 Untangling the Reasons

This book is about normative reasons. However, in everyday language there are at least three different senses of the word ‘reason’ that it is important to distinguish and keep apart.

If I say that you have reason to make walnuts a bigger part of your diet, then I am saying that this is something you have normative reason to do That is, I am saying you have a reason to do something—namely, eat more walnuts—and reasons to do things are normative reasons. And if I say “the fact it is true gives you reason to believe it” then I am once more talking about normative reasons, for I am saying you have reason to believe something, and a reason to believe something is a normative reason.

Note, normative reasons are what justifications are made of. To be justified in doing or believing something essentially involves there being normative reason for you to do or believe it, whatever else it may involve besides this.³ So, if you have reason to make walnuts a bigger part of your diet, the existence of such a normative reason can, in principle, justify you in increasing your walnut consumption.

By contrast, if I say that the reason the front bedroom of my house is breaking away from the rest of it is that its piles have sunk, I am not saying that ‘breaking away’ is something my front bedroom has reason to do. I am not justifying it, but explaining why it is, in fact, breaking away. So, the sense of the word ‘reason’ in “the reason the front bedroom is breaking away is that its piles have sunk” is that of explanation, then. That is, in this context the word ‘reason’ denotes an explanatory reason, not a normative reason.

Matters become a bit murky due to the fact that sometimes normative reasons are also explanatory reasons. Why? Because we often do things because we recognise that we have normative reason to do them, and believe them because we recognise we have normative reason to believe them. For instance, let’s imagine you really do have reason—normative reason—to make walnuts a larger part of your diet, and you recognise this and duly start eating lots of them. In this case the normative reason is going to feature in an explanation of your behaviour. Thus, in this case a normative reason also features as an explanatory reason.

Nevertheless, we do not always recognise and respond to what we have normative reason to do and believe. Sometimes we fail to recognise what we have normative reason to do X. Sometimes we recognise we have normative reason to do X, but fail to do it. Sometimes we recognise that we have normative reason to do X, and do X, but not because we recognised the normative reason to do it. Sometimes we recognise that we have normative reason to X, but recognise and act on a stronger normative reason to do something different (see Heuer, 2004, p. 44). In all such cases there will be normative reasons that are doing no explanatory work, and thus not operating as explanatory reasons. So, although normative reasons can be explanatory reasons, they are not necessarily explanatory reasons, and explanatory reasons are not necessarily normative reasons.

Another meaning of the word reason is motivation. For instance, when detectives search for a killer’s reasons for murdering his victim, they are not searching for a justification of the killing—which is what normative reasons could supply—but the killer’s motives. In “What reason did he have for killing her?” the word reason denotes a motivating reason.

Motivating reasons—motives—are capable of explaining why people do what they do. So motivating reasons, like normative reasons, often feature as explanatory reasons. However, one can have a motivational reason for doing something that one is not doing (Huemer, 2005, p. 155). For instance, I have a motivating reason to eat the doughnut in front of me, because I really want to eat it. My desire just is the motivating reason. But I am not eating it. Th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. The Question
• 2. Normativity
• 3. Mentality
• 4. Unity
• 5. Externality
• 6. Mente Divina
• 7. Euthyphro
• 8. Predictions
• 9. A Miscellany of Objections
• 10. Conclusion
• Back Matter