“I mean that many actions or states are categorized as good or evil,”—you’re using the passive voice here. Categorized by who? I can categorize things as good or evil. So can you. Do you mean to write into your definition of “moral world” that god must be the one doing the categorizing? If so, then you have defined your terms in such a way that there cannot be a “moral world” without a god, but also in a way where I at least don’t particularly care for a moral world. If not, then you should think out who can do the categorizing and why.
”and that this is a good measure to evaluate whether we should do these actions of reach these states, regardless of other measures such as expected utility or pleasure.”—this part of the sentence pretty much hides the entire issue inside the word “should”. To my mind, we should do things precisely because they maximize expected utility.
The classic argument I have to point you at is called Euthyphro’s Dilemma, and it goes like this. Are things moral because god categorizes them as good, or does god categorize them as good because they are moral? Which direction does the causality go in?
Option #1 is to say that things are moral because god categorizes them as good. This is a logically coherent position, but also an enormous bullet to bite. It implies that god could have said “murder is good” just as easily as “murder is bad”, and that would make it so. Which things are good or bad becomes completely arbitrary, a matter of god’s random whims. It turns the statement “god is good” into a meaningless tautology. It implies that we can’t worship god out of any kind of admiration, as the choices god made are no better than any other choices god could have made. Our only basis for worshiping god is fear of god’s power.
Option #2 is to say that god categorizes things as good because they actually are good, by some standard other than god’s say-so. This avoids all of the problems with option #1 described above. There is an actual standard of morality, outside of god, by which we can look at god’s actions and evaluate them to be good. “God is good” is no longer a tautology, it is a meaningful claim, and a basis for worship. “Murder is bad” isn’t just an arbitrary choice god made, god had to say that, because that is what this morality-outside-of-god says. But this option moves god into the role of a reporter of what is moral, rather than a chooser, a judge, not a legislature. It doesn’t actually answer the question of why murder is bad, it just removes “because god said so” as an explanation. And if there is such a reason why murder is bad, then this opens up the possibility of humans knowing this standard of morality and applying it without going through god. It asserts that there can be a godless moral world, without explaining how.
The other answers out there for where morality comes from are basically consequentialism (which I think most here, including myself, favor), and deontology, and maybe virtue ethics, all of which you can look up and read about. I particularly recommend Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape.
“I mean that many actions or states are categorized as good or evil,”—you’re using the passive voice here. Categorized by who? I can categorize things as good or evil. So can you. Do you mean to write into your definition of “moral world” that god must be the one doing the categorizing? If so, then you have defined your terms in such a way that there cannot be a “moral world” without a god, but also in a way where I at least don’t particularly care for a moral world. If not, then you should think out who can do the categorizing and why.
”and that this is a good measure to evaluate whether we should do these actions of reach these states, regardless of other measures such as expected utility or pleasure.”—this part of the sentence pretty much hides the entire issue inside the word “should”. To my mind, we should do things precisely because they maximize expected utility.
The classic argument I have to point you at is called Euthyphro’s Dilemma, and it goes like this. Are things moral because god categorizes them as good, or does god categorize them as good because they are moral? Which direction does the causality go in?
Option #1 is to say that things are moral because god categorizes them as good. This is a logically coherent position, but also an enormous bullet to bite. It implies that god could have said “murder is good” just as easily as “murder is bad”, and that would make it so. Which things are good or bad becomes completely arbitrary, a matter of god’s random whims. It turns the statement “god is good” into a meaningless tautology. It implies that we can’t worship god out of any kind of admiration, as the choices god made are no better than any other choices god could have made. Our only basis for worshiping god is fear of god’s power.
Option #2 is to say that god categorizes things as good because they actually are good, by some standard other than god’s say-so. This avoids all of the problems with option #1 described above. There is an actual standard of morality, outside of god, by which we can look at god’s actions and evaluate them to be good. “God is good” is no longer a tautology, it is a meaningful claim, and a basis for worship. “Murder is bad” isn’t just an arbitrary choice god made, god had to say that, because that is what this morality-outside-of-god says. But this option moves god into the role of a reporter of what is moral, rather than a chooser, a judge, not a legislature. It doesn’t actually answer the question of why murder is bad, it just removes “because god said so” as an explanation. And if there is such a reason why murder is bad, then this opens up the possibility of humans knowing this standard of morality and applying it without going through god. It asserts that there can be a godless moral world, without explaining how.
The other answers out there for where morality comes from are basically consequentialism (which I think most here, including myself, favor), and deontology, and maybe virtue ethics, all of which you can look up and read about. I particularly recommend Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape.