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Religion
Reading Anne Jeffrey's God and Morality with Yaser Mirdamadi
A six-session course on Anne Jeffrey's *God and Morality*, taught by Yaser Mirdamadi, examines theistic accounts of moral ontology and the objections raised against them. The book's ideas and forms of explanation are analysed across the sessions.
The reading course on the book God and Morality by the American philosopher Anne Jeffrey will consist of six sessions, and attendance is free and open to all. Dr. Yaser Mirdamadi will teach approximately ten pages of the book in each session.
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Reading of the Book God and Morality by Anne Jeffrey, Led by Yaser Mirdamadi
Hosted by The New Perspective Circle
Instructor: Yaser Mirdamadi
Download the PDF of the book God and Morality by Anne Jeffrey
God and Morality (Elements in the Philosophy of Religion)
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Session One | February 3, 2022
The first session of the discussion on "God and Morality," based on the book of the same title by Anne Jeffrey. The text file of the discussion is also attached. If you wish to briefly familiarize yourself with its content before or instead of listening to the discussion, reading the text file will serve this purpose. In this session, we introduce the book and the series under which it was published. We then introduce the author and explain the two main ideas of the book: 1. That theism explains morality better than agnosticism or atheism, 2. That religious (maximal) theism explains morality better than philosophical (minimal) theism.
Direct download of the audio file
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Session Two | February 10, 2022
The second session of "God and Morality," a reading of a book by the American philosopher Anne Jeffrey. In this session, we explained what constitutes the "best explanation." We then addressed the disagreement over the best explanation of morality. Next, we formulated the general form of the theistic explanation of moral ontology. We then explained that this general form is built upon objectivism. Subsequently, we formulated a well-known objection to the theistic explanation of moral ontology: the objection based on "Error Theory," which claims that objective moral values do not exist. We then presented and critiqued an argument in favor of Error Theory, namely the Argument from Queerness.
Direct download of the audio file
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Session Three | February 17, 2022
The third session of the reading of Anne Jeffrey's book God and Morality. In this session, we address another objection to the theistic account of moral ontology: the objection from queerness, which claims that moral objectivity cannot be explained. We will then present the second version of the theistic account of moral ontology, which focuses on moral obligations. The first version focused on moral values. We then outline one example of the moral obligations version: the account by the American philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff on the theistic foundations of human rights. We then turn to the objections to this version.
Direct download of the audio file
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Session Four | 24 February 2022
In the fourth session of the reading of Anne Jeffrey's book God and Morality, I discussed the objections raised against the theistic account of the ontology of moral obligations. The first objection was the objection from the inviolability of the divine will. The second objection was the objection from autonomy. The third objection was the objection from the insufficiency of the will. And the fourth objection was the objection from the arbitrariness of morality. After presenting each objection, some responses to it were also discussed.
Direct download of the audio file
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Session Five | 3 March 2022
In this session, we addressed the hybrid view, a view that attempts to keep morality rooted in God while also responding to the objection from the arbitrariness of morality. We then presented several objections to the hybrid view: 1. The objection from God's knowledge of possible non-actual beings, 2. The objection from God's lack of indexical knowledge, 3. The objection from divine hiddenness, 4. The objection from the sufficiency of contractualism in explaining the origin of moral obligations. We then explained the third version of the theistic account of moral ontology. The two previous versions were the moral values version and the moral obligations version. The third version is the moral goodness version. Objections to this version will be discussed in the next session.
Direct download of the audio file
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Session Six
The sixth (and final) session of the series of meetings reading the book God and Morality by Anne Jeffrey. In this session, the Anselmian argument in favor of a theistic explanation of the ontology of moral goodness was discussed. We then addressed various objections to this explanation: 1. the inconsistency objection, 2. the objection from the worldly sufficiency of goodness, 3. the objection based on negative theology, 4. objections based on postmodern theology. We then explained two different theistic explanations of moral ontology: the innī explanation (from effect to cause) versus the limmī explanation (from cause to effect). A limmī theistic explanation of moral ontology was then proposed. Two objections were then raised against it: 1. the pantheistic objection, 2. the objection based on the relationship between God and time.
Direct download of the audio file
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