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Does theism imply non-consequentialism?

In the comments to the discussion about theism at Richard’s blog (see here), Macht is trying to defend the plausiblity of God’s existence.  Thinking about Macht’s comments led me to this argument:

1. God always acts in accordance with the correct moral code. (Assumption; a consequence of typical versions of theism.)

2. The world contains less value than it possibly could.  (Assumption; a consequence of obvious facts about the world + plausible assumptions about value.)

3. God is omnipotent.  (Assumption; also a consequence of typical versions of theism.)

4. God could maximize the amount of value in the world.  (Consequence of 3.)

5. On a consequentialist moral code, value in the world ought to be maximized.  (Definition.)

6. If a consequentialist moral code were the correct one, then God would have maximized the amount of value in the world.  (Consequence of 1, 4 and 5.)

7. But God has not maximized the amount of value in the world.  (Consequence of 2.)

8. Thus, the correct moral code is not a consequentialist one.

Do any of these premises seem false?  I suppose I might be assuming a somewhat contentious definition of "consequentialism" in line 5.  If you prefer a more nuanced definition of consequentialism, the argument might still be interesting, since it still might work to show that the theist is committed to say that a certain kind of consequentialism is false.   Otherwise, I think the argument works.

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10 responses to “Does theism imply non-consequentialism?”

  1. pekka Avatar
    pekka

    Premise 2 is questionable if we allow for infinite value. Putting one soul in heaven makes for an infinite amount of value. Subtracting the finite amounts of disvalue which exist (the “obvious facts about the world” to which I assume 2 to refer) still leaves an infinity (given how finities are related to infinities). So God has maximized value: the world God has in fact created, with its finite amounts of disvalue, is no worse than any of the other worlds he could have created. (The point can be restated if we think there are smaller and larger infinities.)
    One response is that consequentialism requires us to optimize, rather than maximize, value. But that’s a highly contentious definition of consequentialism. To follow up on your comment, the problem doesn’t arise at all (and hence the appeal to infinite value is unnecessary) for satisficing consequentialism.

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  2. david (E.G.) Avatar
    david (E.G.)

    Pekka-
    Introducing infinite value would certainly complicate matters, but I think 2, or something like 2, would still hold.
    I think it’s intuitively obvious that “sending one person to heaven + preventing the holocaust” produces an outcome with a higher value than “sending one person to heaven + allowing the holocaust.” If so, then I suppose it doesn’t really matter how you count the value attaching to sending one person to heaven. Even if you say it has “infinite” value, that only shows that infinity + (say) 4,000 is more than infinity + 0; it doesn’t, to my mind, cause significant problems for premise 2.
    What do you think?

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  3. Conchis Avatar
    Conchis

    This interacts in an interesting way with another argument I’ve heard described as “the moral argument for atheism”.
    Essentially this argument tries to take examples of moral rules that are “virtually indisputable” (such as “one shouldn’t kill innocents”) and then point to cases where God pretty clearly appears to have violated these rules (such as during the great flood). The argument is that such violations are inconsistent with God’s being a moral being (Assumption 1; though I guess you might be able to wriggle out by rejecting 3).
    It struck me at the time that you could escape this logic by appealing to consequentialism: God, being all-knowing always acts to maximise value (however defined); we mere mortals on the other hand, are obliged to abide by rules such as that against killing innocents on rule-consequentialist grounds – though there might be situations where it would maximise value, lacking God’s omniscience, we can’t be trusted to identify such situations. So there’s a legitimate double standard.
    Now, obviously both these arguments can’t be right, so we’re faced with a dilemma (or a trilemma, or whatever):
    I think the only way out of the anti-consequentialist argument is to reject 2, by somewhat blindly affirming that “everything has a purpose” and that even things like the recent Tsunami will ultimately turn out to be value maximising, we just can’t see how at the moment(although one can imagine possibilites). I would imagine an argument of this sort would also need to maintain that much of the apparent imperfection of the world is a result of the existence of free will, and that free will is valuable enought that the alternative would be worse.
    On the other hand, the only ways out of the pro-consequentialist argument are: (a) to reject moral rules that would, I think, be a part of any deontological moral code; or (b) to reject large chunks of the Bible.

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  4. Conchis Avatar
    Conchis

    P.S. Just found an outline of the moral argument for atheism here:
    http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/raymond_bradley/moral.html
    I seem to remember a more detailed version, but this should give you the flavour.

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  5. pekka Avatar
    pekka

    David-
    The intuition underlying your response is an obvious one, and I certainly feel its pull. But we cannot accommodate the intuition in the simple way you propose to do because of how finities and infinities work. Infinity + 4000 = infinity; infinity + 0 = infinity; and we don’t get a larger infinity by adding finities to an infinity. So we must seek to accommodate the intuition in some other way.
    One question here is how consequentialists can discriminate among actions which each produce an infinite amount of value. If the forms of consequentialism which appeal to infinite value implied that any action with an infinitely good outcome is equally permissible, they would be too permissive. (There’s a fair bit of work on this by Vallentyne and others with which I’m not familiar.) That’s a further question, though, and if answers to it provide ways to accommodate the intuition and defend 2, those ways will be different from yours.
    Let me mention another angle on the argument you’ve set out, because I think it’s equally interesting. The central material of the argument is easily worked into a problem of evil premised on consequentialism being the correct moral code. Appeal to infinite value provides a solution to that problem which a clever Devil’s advocate can push pretty far (as Dan Nolan showed me, donning the advocate’s gown, so to speak).

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  6. david Avatar
    david

    Pekka-
    I didn’t think I’d get off this hook so easily. All right; I agree that premise 2 is questionable. In that case, the argument should be rewritten so its conclusion reads:
    The theist is committed to say that either 1. the correct moral code is a non-consequentialist one or 2. the world does not contain less value than it possibly could.
    As an aside: The idea of infinite value bothers me. My thoughts aren’t yet very clear on this point, but I think the case of a person going to heaven pretty well illustrates the problem I have in mind. It seems to me that if anything should have infinite value, “going to heaven” certainly should. Yet I think it’s clear that there are things of finite value which can be added to “going to heaven” to increase its value. In that case, I guess, going to heaven can’t have infinite value. But if even going to heaven doesn’t have infinite value, I don’t think anything else could; you can’t top going to heaven.

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  7. david Avatar
    david

    Conchis-
    Thanks for the link. I think Richard at Philosophy, et cetera is putting forward a version of the “moral argument.”
    It sounds like you, like Pekka, are considering taking issue with premise 2. Prior to hearing you folks’ reactions, I found premise 2 pretty hard to doubt…

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  8. pekka Avatar
    pekka

    Not so fast, David. At this point, I (speaking, finally, in my own voice) am not prepared to endorse consequentialism of any traditional substantive sort, as opposed to the formal and merely extensional sort of consequentialism you get from “Dreier’s Conjecture” recently discussed over at PEA Soup (unless, perhaps, you get very fancy with the function from the ranking of outcomes to rightness). Nor am I yet prepared to reject 2. All I’ve been saying is that a maximizing consequentialist who appeals to infinite value won’t be moved by your argument, and rightly so unless and until more is said. I myself certainly need to understand the notion of infinite value better in order to make up my mind, so there we seem to be on the same page.
    For what it’s worth, many decision theorists think that we have good reason to accept infinite utilities, and have been working the issue out in impressive detail. There should then be a parity argument that ethical theories which appeal to infinite value are viable to roughly the same degree (whatever degree that may be). So that’s something to consider.

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  9. david Avatar
    david

    Pekka-
    I didn’t think you were prepared to reject 2 or to endorse consequentialism — sorry if I gave that impression. I characterized your position on 2 as being the claim that 2 is “questionable,” by which I only meant: capable of being (reasonably) questioned. I hope that doesn’t misrepresent your point.
    Anyway, your points about the role of infinite value in all this are definitely interesting and worth looking into more deeply. Care to drop any names of papers from decision theory which would be a good place to start?
    I wrote a paper on Dreier’s conjecture last semester, so I have a few weird ideas about that topic, too. Maybe I’ll include them in a future post. If so, I’ll be interested to find out what you think.

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  10. pekka Avatar
    pekka

    David-
    The bibliography for Alan Hajek’s entry on Pascal’s wager in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy should give you good starting-points. Alan’s note 6 refers to most of the relevant entries in the bibliography.
    I’ll be teaching a bit of stuff about Dreier’s Conjecture later this quarter; I’ve postponed thinking more carefully about it until then. I’d be delighted if a post on it came up on my RSS feed reader!

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