species as that; and so on. In each case, the demonstrative term “that” refers to an entity
to which the person doing the defining refers directly, typically by pointing. One of the
main reasons for proposing defini-tions like this was that Kripke and Putnam believed
that often we do not know the nature of the thing we are defining, and yet we know how
to construct a definition that links up with its nature and continues to do so after its nature
is discovered.
A person possesses moral properties in a greater or a lesser degree, but it is unlikely that
something is more or less gold or more or less water. The exemplars of gold and water,
reference to which is used in defining gold and water, are not paradigms in the sense of
especially good instances of the kind defined. Virtually any instance of water or gold will
do for defining a natural kind term. This is a respect in which moral concepts are
disanalogous, for I propose that the latter are defined by reference to exemplary instances
of goodness. Like the Aristotelian person of practical wisdom, some moral exemplars
must be identifiable in advance of defining the concept they exemplify.
Divine motivation theory is an exemplarist virtue theory. It is exemplarist because the
moral properties of persons, acts, and outcomes are defined via an indexical reference to
an exemplar of a good person. It is a virtue theory because the moral properties of
persons (virtues) are more basic than the moral properties of acts and outcomes. But I
will say little in this chapter on the details of the theory. My purpose in this section is
merely to show that God can have a foundational role in ethics as an exemplar rather than
as a lawgiver. This approach has advantages for Christian ethics as well as for the task of
constructing a common morality.
Here is a brief outline of divine motivation (DM) theory. The paradigmatically good
person is God. Value in all forms derives from God, in particular, from God's motives.
God's motives are perfectly good, and human motives are good insofar as they are like
the divine motives as those motives would be expressed in finite and embodied beings.
Motive-dispositions are constituents of virtues. A virtue is an enduring trait consisting of
a good motive-disposition and reliable success in bringing about the aim, if any, of the
good motive. God's virtues are paradigmatically good personal traits. Human virtues are
those traits that imitate God's virtues as they would be expressed by human beings in
human circumstances. The goodness of a state of affairs is derivative from the goodness
of the divine motive. Outcomes get their moral value by their relation to good and bad
motivations. For example, a state of affairs is a merciful one or a compassionate
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one or a just one because the divine motives that are constituents of mercy, compassion,
and justice, respectively, aim at bringing them about. Acts get their moral value from the
acts that would, would not, or might be done by God in the relevant circumstances.
The relation of being like an indexically identified instance of water is obviously much
clearer than the relation of being like a trait of God or being like an act God would do in
relevantly similar circumstances. To say that a human is or is acting like God is much
different from saying that a portion of liquid is like another portion of liquid. We may
have to investigate the chemical constitution of the liquids in order to determine whether
one is like the other, but even before we do that we have some idea of what it means to be
alike in nature. It is much harder to understand what it means for a human to be like God