Conversational implicatures cannot save divine command theory from the counterpossible terrible commands objection

Bibliographic Data

ID20310666
AuthorsFrederick Choo (0000-0002-8425-4096, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume59
Issue4
Pages852-858
Publication date2023-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligious Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-4125 • E-ISSN: 1469-901X
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034412522000440
OpenAlexW4289869138
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited14

Critics of Divine Command Theory (DCT) have advanced the counterpossible terrible commands objection. They argue that DCT implies the counterpossible ‘If a necessarily morally perfect God commanded us to perform a terrible act, then the terrible act would be morally obligatory.’ However, this counterpossible is false. Hence, DCT is false. Philipp Kremers has proposed that the intuition that the counterpossible above is false is due to conversational implicatures. By providing a pragmatic explanation for the intuition, he thinks that DCT proponents can then maintain that the counterpossible is actually true. In this article, I argue that Kremers's conversational implicature response fails because (a) there is good reason to think that no conversational implicature arises given what critics of DCT have expressed, (b) a competent reader would not understand the critics' utterance that TCC is false as implicating that TCC* is false, and (c) the counterpossible terrible commands objection can be easily modified to be immune to the conversational implicature response by cancelling any potential implicature. Thus, an appeal to conversational implicatures cannot save DCT from the counterpossible terrible commands objection

Appeal · Assertion · Epistemology · Implicature · Intuition · Linguistics · Pragmatics · Utterance · Computer Science · Free Will and Agency · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Theology and Philosophy of Evil · War, Ethics, and Justification