Theistic Natural Law (TNL) theory seems to be subject to the Euthyphro problem much as divine command theory (DCT) is. On DCT, the Euthyphro problem takes the form of the question:
- Why did God command what he commanded rather than commanding otherwise?
On TNL, the Euthyphro problem takes the form of the question:
- Why did God create beings with the natures he did rather than creating beings with other natures?
In both cases, one can respond by talking of the essential goodness of God, by virtue of which he makes a good choice as to how to fittingly match the non-normative with the normative features of creatures. In the DCT case, God makes the match by benevolently choosing what sorts of creatures to create and what sorts of commands to give them. In the TNL case, God makes the match by benevolently choosing the non-deontic and deontic features of natures and then creating creatures with these natures. Thus, in the DCT case, God has reason to coordinate the sociality of creatures with the command to cooperate, while in the TNL case God has reason to actualize natures that either both include sociality and the duty to cooperate or to actualize natures that include neither.
So in what way is TNL better off than DCT with regard to the Euthyphro problem? The one thing I can think of in the vicinity is this: TNL allows for there to be deontic features that necessarily every natural includes, and it allows for there to be some deontic features of creatures that are entailed by the non-deontic features. For instance, perhaps every possible nature of an agent includes a prohibition against pointless imposition of torture, and every possible nature of a linguistic agent includes a prohibition against lying. But I am not sure this difference is really relevant to the Euthyphro problem.
I do prefer TNL to DCT, but not because of the Euthyphro problem. My reason for the preference is that many moral obligations appear to be intrinsic features of us.
Of course, the above arguments presuppose a particular picture of how natural law works. But I like that picture.
5 comments:
(2) is only a Euthyphro problem if it is possible for creatures to have had different natures than they do. But it isn't. Change of specific identity entails change of numerical identity. So (2) isn't a Euthyphro problem at all.
Also, the fact that it isn't possible for creatures to have different natures than they do is another reason that corruptionism is true. :-)
I was of course assuming that creatures with other natures would be numerically different. But I don't see how this makes a difference.
Also, by the strong essentiality of origins, if God issued other commands, everybody except maybe the first humans would have been different.
But I can see how my wording may have seemed to ask why God created *these* creatures with these natures rather than with other natures, so I reworded to make it clear that I don't endorse this formulation.
It makes a difference because unless there is a single creature for whom the moral norms could have been different, there is no Euthyphro problem. DCT gives us a scenario in which a creature could have been subject to different norms, which then gives rise to a Euthyphro problem because there seems to be no satisfactory account of what would ultimately ground those alternative norms without undermining DCT. But TNL blocks the possibility of any such scenario, and so we never even get to ask the Euthyphro question of what would ultimately ground God's alternative choice of norms for this creature.
We get to ask what grounds God's choice of norms for creatures: why did God create creatures with these norms and not others. We can't ask what grounds God's choice of norms for Socrates, since had God chosen other norms, Socrates would not have existed. But the Euthyphro question isn't put in this individual way.
Maybe a more parallel way to ask the question is: Why did God not create beings with the same non-normative (variant: non-deontic) features of the nature but other deontic features?
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