In Part One, I expounded the Psychopath objection to divine command meta-ethics (DCM) that has recently been defended by Erik Wielenberg. Wielenberg argues as follows:

R1) If God commands a person S to do act A, this command imposes an obligation on S to do A, only if S is capable of recognising the requirement to do A as being extremely authoritative and as having imperative force. [1] There are some psychopaths who are incapable of grasping the authority and force of moral demands. (empirical premise) [2] So, there are some psychopaths to whom God has issued no divine commands. (from 1 and R) [3] So, if DCT is true, then there are some psychopaths who have no moral obligations. (from 2 and DCT). [4] But there are no psychopaths who have no moral obligations. [5.] Therefore, DCT is false. (from 3 and 4)

In my last post, I contended this argument is crucially ambiguous; the word “obligation” occurs in both R1 and [3] and [4]. However, one can use the word “obligation” in an objective and a subjective sense. Objective obligatoriness (or rightness or wrongness) is the deontic status that an action has in virtue of its actual circumstances and consequences” By contrast, “Subjective obligatoriness (or rightness or wrongness) is the deontic status an action has in virtue of the agent’s beliefs about its morally relevant circumstances and consequences” (Smith (2010), 4)

I contend that the distinction between objective and subjective obligation makes trouble for the Psychopath Objection. For the argument to be logically valid, and avoid committing the fallacy of equivocation, the word “obligation must be used the same way in both premise [R] and premise [4]. When one examines Wielenberg’s argument; however, we find this is not the case. If we interpret the word obligation in the “subjective sense” premise [4] is not justified by the evidence Wielenberg offers. By contrast, if we interpret obligation in the objective sense, then [R] is unjustified.

The Subjectivist Interpretation

Let us begin first by interpreting [R] and [4] in the subjective sense:

(R1 Subjective) If God’s commands a person S to do act A, this command imposes a subjective obligation on S to do A, only if S is capable of recognising the requirement to do A as being extremely authoritative and as having imperative force.

[1] There are some psychopaths who are incapable of grasping the authority and force of moral demands. (empirical premise) [2*] So, there are some psychopaths to whom God has issued commands that generate no subjective obligations. (from 1 and R) . [3*] So, if DCT is true, then there are some psychopaths who have no subjective moral obligations. (from 2 and DCT). [4S] But there are no psychopaths who have no subjective moral obligations. [5.] Therefore, DCT is false. (from 3 and 4)

If we interpret [4] in terms of [4S], then Wielenberg must contend not just that Psychopaths have objective obligations’ but also that they are subjectively obligated to refrain from immoral activity. He must hold that Psychopath’s act contrary to their own non-culpable recognition of what morality requires. The data he cites, however, does not support this. Consider the following examples, which Wielenberg cites to support premise [1]

The mainstream view of psychopaths in contemporary psychology and philosophy has it that they have significant neurological deficits that leave them with an absent or significantly diminished capacity for love, compassion, and guilt. They are often described as lacking conscience and are incapable of grasping the authority and force of moral demands…(emphasis added) (Wielenberg (2018), 5) ‘Since their dysfunctional conscience does not stimulate moral feelings, psychopaths do not become aware of the constraints required to understand that they have obligations. Their conscience does not make them responsive to the constraining power of morality’..(Emphasis added) (Ibid., 6) About one in twenty-five individuals are sociopathic, meaning, essentially, that they do not have a conscience … The intellectual difference between right and wrong does not bring on the emotional sirens and flashing blue lights, or the fear of God, that it does for the rest of us. … ‘[Psychopaths] do not appear… to be aware of the need to justify actions which infringe moral rules … [and] do not really understand the concept of morality’… ‘Psychopaths do not merely behave contrary to moral standards . . . but seem in some sense not even to understand the notion of a moral standard in any “serious” sense. (Emphasis added) (Ibid., 5-6)

Even more, telling is the conclusion Wielenberg draws from this data.

Notice that the problem here is not that DCT implies that psychopaths are not responsible for their immoral actions. There are robust philosophical debates about the extent to which psychopaths are legally or morally responsible for their actions (see, e.g. Malatesti & McMillan (2010) ). ….However, as far as I can tell, all parties to these debates would accept the claim about psychopaths upon which the argument of this article depends: psychopaths cannot grasp the authority and force of moral demands. As Erick Ramirez puts it, ‘psychopaths are said to suffer from moral blindness. Philosophers disagree on whether this moral blindness exempts them from responsibility for their bad behavior’ (Ramirez (2013), 244). As this remark suggests, the moral blindness of psychopaths is widely taken for granted – and that moral blindness of psychopaths is the foundation of the central argument of this article. Accordingly, the problem for DCT that I have advanced here is not that it implies that psychopaths violate moral obligations but are not (legally or morally) responsible for doing so; rather, the problem is that DCT implies that psychopaths have no moral obligations to violate in the first place. (Wielenberg (2018), 8)

This data, if accurate, undermines the claim that Psychopaths have subjective obligations. The evidence does not-unequivocally support the idea that they do what is wrong, given what they non-culpably believe about the situation. Wielenberg concedes Psychopaths are “morally blind” may “lack a conscience” “do not understand the concept of morality” and “lack the constraints necessary constraints required to understand that they have obligations.” His claim they have obligations carries no implications that they are culpable of their actions or culpably act contrary to what they discern to be obligatory. Consequently, [4S] is unjustified. [4] is only justified if Wielenberg is using obligation in the objective sense.

Objectivist Interpretation

This leads us to consider next an “objectivist” interpretation of the argument.

(R1 Objective) If God’s commands a person S to do act A, this command imposes an objective obligation on S to do A, only if S is capable of recognising the requirement to do A as being extremely authoritative and as having imperative force. [1] There are some psychopaths who are incapable of grasping the authority and force of moral demands. (empirical premise) [2**] So, there are some psychopaths to whom God has issued commands that generate no objective obligations. (from 1 and R) . [3] So, if DCT is true, then there are some psychopaths who have no objective moral obligations. (from 2 and DCT). [4O] But there are no psychopaths who have no subjective moral obligations. [5.] Therefore, DCT is false. (from 3 and 4)

If [4] is interpreted in terms of [4O], then [4] is plausible. Even if Pscyopath’s suffer from “a moral blindness” which prevents them from recognising their objective obligations, it is implausible to think Psychopaths lack objective moral requirements.

The problem is that now (R1 Objective) is no longer plausible. We saw above that Wielenberg argues for R by contending that standard responses to the promulgation objection rely on it. Wielenberg argued:

A distinctive feature of DCT is that a given human being has moral obligations only if a divine command is somehow communicated to that human being. This aspect of the theory is emphasised by many proponents of the theory. For example, Adams writes: ‘A command does not exist or have any force unless it is issued – that is, unless, it is in some way communicated’ (R. Adams (1999), 263). In defence of this position, Adams memorably remarks that ‘[g]ames in which one party incurs guilt for failing to guess the unexpressed wishes of the other party are not nice games. They are no nicer if God is thought of as a party to them’ (ibid., 261) (Wielenberg (2018), 2)

He immediately continues:

Stephen Evans similarly emphasises the importance of divine communication in this passage: A law that was passed in secret and never revealed to anyone would hardly be binding on the citizens of a state. It is true that it is often said that ignorance of the law is not a valid excuse for not obeying the law, but this principle surely assumes that the law in question is a matter of public record and that the individual who should obey the law could have known about it. Something similar must hold for moral laws as well. (Evans (2013), 37) In accordance with Adams’s view that ‘[i]n order to exist, a command… .must be communicated to those who are subject to it’ (R. Adams (1999), 263), I shall henceforth use ‘command’ to mean obligation-bestowing command. On this usage, no divine command is issued unless it imposes some moral obligation on those to whom it is issued (Ibid.)

This argument does not, however, seem plausible if by R we mean (R1 objective). On the face of it, Adam’s and Evan’s are using the word “obligation” in the subjective sense in these paragraphs.

Consider Adam’s first, Adam’s repudiates a “picture of divine-human relations, one in which the wish of God’s heart imposes binding obligations without even being communicated, much less issuing in a command.” This is because “Games in which one party incurs guilt for failing to guess the unexpressed wishes of the other party are not nice games. They are no nicer if God is thought of as a party to them.” In this passage, the phrase “binding obligation” is being used synonymously with “incurring guilt”. The problem he is addressing is that that one cannot incur guilt unless one non-culpably knows what is required. This best fits the concept of a subjective obligation.

We can say similar things about Evan’s. Evans states that a law “passed in secret” would not be “is binding” on citizens. However, he explains what he means next sentence; it is about whether someone has a valid excuse due to non-culpable ignorance. Evans is talking about an obligation of which one is not culpably ignorant and so incurs guilt for violating. So, Evan’s is plausibly talking about a subjective obligation.

Conclusion

My conclusion, therefore, is that Wielenberg’s latest round in the dialectic on divine command meta-ethics is unsuccessful. His new Psychopathy objection commits the fallacy of equivocation. When he claims that God’s commands, do not impose an obligation unless the commandee is capable of recognising the requirement as both authoritative and as having imperative force he uses the word objective either in a subjective or objective sense. If he has in mind the former, then the very data he cites does not support his claim that Psychopaths have moral obligations. If he uses the word in an objective sense, then divine command theorists are not committed to denying Psychopaths have moral obligations.

Adams Robert Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics [Book]. – Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1999.

Evans C Stephen God and Moral Obligation [Book]. – Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2013.



Smith Holly The Moral Clout of Reasonable Beliefs [Book Section] // Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics / book auth. Timmons Mark. – Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2010. – Vol. 1.

Wielenberg Erik Divine command theory and psychopathy [Journal] // Religious Studies. – 2018. – pp. 1-16.

Tags: C Stephen Evans · Erik Wielenberg · Psychopathy · Robert Adams