E.G.

Basl and Coons memorably worry about inferential movements from ought to is. Such movements constitute attempts at what they call moral science. There seems to be something fishy about such inferences in general, and they want to explain why.

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Here's an argument that Basl and Coons don't discuss:

A theistic moral science argument
(1) If there is no afterlife and no God, then there's no moral order in the world.
(2) There is a moral order in the world.
Therefore, there is an afterlife and there is a God.

I associate this sort of argument with Kant, though I'm not enough of a Kant scholar to say whether the above rendition represents a fair distillation of his thought. In any case, I suppose there are many who want to argue in this way.

I'd say that (1) and (2) are moral claims, and that the conclusion is a non-moral claim. If so, the argument is an attempt at moral science. And it's theistic moral science because it's got a theistic conclusion.

***

The moral order is just the familiar realm of objective moral facts. So, e.g., the fact that Donald Trump is a bad person is part of the moral order. The fact that we have a moral obligation to look after those who are vulnerable is part of the moral order. And so on. The second premise of the theistic moral science argument says that such a moral order exists, and I'd say we should all agree to that.

I suppose there are many ways to try to argue for the first premise. For example, one can say that

(i) if there's no such thing as virtue and vice, then there isn't any moral order at all,

and

(ii) if virtue isn't ultimately rewarded, and vice isn't ultimately punished, then there really isn't any such thing as virtue and vice,

and

(iii) in this life, virtue isn't ultimately rewarded, and vice isn't ultimately punished (bad people get away with murder, good people die of cancer, etc.),

so

(iv) there must be an afterlife, and a God to provide one for us, in order for there to be a moral order.

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Basl and Coons say that moral science is generally faulty because it (always?) faces a dilemma, which they present as follows:

(I) Either [the moral scientist is] committed to treating all the moral premises as necessary or they are not.
(II) If [they are committed to treating] any moral premise [as] contingent, then the inference is circular or rests on a false assumption.
(III) If they are committed to treating all the moral premises as necessary, they are forced to deny the contingency of a claim known to be contingent.

I suspect that the person who gives the theistic moral science argument will want to say that the premises are necessary, so I suppose the Basl-Coons view implies that the argument will face the second horn of their dilemma.

***

Here's their example of an argument that faces the second horn:

(A) (Necessarily,) it is never morally wrong to do what maximizes utility.
(B) (Necessarily,) it is always morally wrong to kill an innocent child.
Therefore, (necessarily,) killing an innocent child will never maximize utility.

It does indeed seem that the conclusion of this argument is false, and false because it denies the contingency of a claim known to be contingent. So, as Basl and Coons say, the conjunction of the premises shouldn't be asserted (even if it's unclear which of the premises should be given up). This is Basl and Coons's diagnosis of the problem with this argument, and I think their diagnosis is correct.

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But I doubt the theistic moral science argument that I presented above falters in the same way. Or at least, I'm not sure we can say so without begging any questions.

If the conclusion of the theistic moral science argument is taken to be necessary, i.e., if it is rendered as

Necessarily, there is an afterlife and there is a God,

the theist probably won't be particularly bothered by this. 

I somewhat doubt the Basl-Coons framework is very useful for diagnosing what's wrong with the sort of theistic moral science I am discussing here.

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I do reject the conclusion of the theistic moral science argument. I accept the second premise, and deny the first premise. And I reject (i) and (ii) of the argument for the first premise.

But that's not because I don't feel the pull of that first premise. I see that there is something absurd about a world in which, on the one hand, there is a moral order—but on the other hand, wrongs go eternally unaddressed, and moral saints go to their graves without reward. A moral order that is never empirically fulfilled is hard to believe in. Such belief requires some kind of faith: the moral realist's faith.