Abstract
Erik Wielenberg has presented an objection to divine command theory (DCT) alleging that DCT has the troubling implication that psychopaths have no moral obligations. Matthew Flannagan has replied to Wielenberg’s argument. Here, I defend the view that, despite Flannagan’s reply, the psychopath objection presents a serious problem for the versions of DCT defended by its most prominent contemporary advocates — Robert Adams, C. Stephen Evans, and William Lane Craig.
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Notes
Adams’s version of DCT is of central importance here, as the versions of DCT defended by Evans and Craig are heavily influenced by and incorporate many elements of Adams’s version.
This is a consequence of the fact that contemporary DCT-ists hold that only moral rightness, wrongness, and obligation are grounded in divine commands. Good and evil, according these thinkers, have a different ground and so acts can be good and evil even in the absence of divine commands. See Adams 1999, 105; Evans 2013, 26, 90; and Craig 2020a, 31.
Please note that I do not mean to imply that Flannagan takes DCT to be a theory of subjective moral obligation. The goal of the present discussion is to get clear on how Adams, Evans, and Craig understand DCT, which is turn relevant to the question of whether they are committed to Wielenberg’s Principle (see below).
References
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Craig, W. L. (2020a). William Lane Craig’s opening speech. In A. Johnson (Ed.), A debate on God and morality (pp. 31–38). Routledge.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to two anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Wielenberg, E.J. The Psychopath Challenge to Divine Command Theory: Reply to Flannagan. SOPHIA 63, 35–42 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-023-00949-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-023-00949-0