Reading:

1. Plato, Euthyphro (continued; where Plato is concerned, re-reading is always a good idea!)
2. John Arthur, "Religion, Morality, and Conscience" (PDF file)

The writings by Paley and Ewing that were specified on the syllabus for this day will not be assigned.

Notes and questions on the reading (Arthur):

1. In his opening paragraph, Arthur proposes "to explore the connections, if any, between morality and religion." I think that it would be more informative, however, to describe him as exploring the question whether morality is dependent on religion. His thesis (not made clear until later in the essay) is that it is not.
   
2. Arthur's essay is organized in three sections. Section 1, "Morality and Religion," sketches a conception of what morality and religion, respectively, are. The section is not of great importance to the argument of the essay. Its concluding paragraph, however (p. 2), does state the main question that is addressed in the remainder of the essay.
   
3. Section 2, "Religious Motivation and Guidance," presents and criticizes two conceptions of how morality might depend on religion: one concerns the motivation for moral conduct, the other concerns guidance in moral judgment. You should be able to state in a few sentences what each conception is, and what Arthur's criticism of it is.
   
4. Section 3, "The Divine Command Theory," is, for purposes of this class, the most important section of the essay. You should be able to say what the divine-command theory of morality is. What is the analogy supposed to be between moral rules and legal statutes (p. 4)?
5. On p. 5, Arthur quotes from an exchange between Bertrand Russell (author of "The Value of Philosophy," assigned earlier) and Father Frederick Copleston, an English philosopher and Jesuit. In this exchange, Russell is defending the view that moral values are to be understood as mere feelings; Copleston is attacking this position as having unacceptable implications. What are these implications? What is the connection between Copleston's criticism of Russell and the divine-command theory? (Note that Copleston only makes the connection in his very last sentence; Arthur, however, elaborates on it in the paragraph that follows.)
   
6. (You may be interested to know that Russell was never comfortable with the position that he tries to defend here. On another occasion, he wrote: "I cannot see how to refute the arguments for the subjectivity of ethical values but I find myself incapable of believing that all that is wrong with wanton cruelty is that I don't like it." I have not been able to discover the source of this quotation, so I don't know if he wrote it before or after the exchange with Copleston.)
7. Arthur opines that "theists should reject the divine command theory," partly because of what it implies (p. 6). What does the divine-command theory imply that, according to Arthur, makes the theory unacceptable? (Be sure to take note of the paragraph that follows the quotation from Euthyphro on p. 7.)