The ‘traditional’ objections to a wholly naturalistic metaphysics, within the modern Western philosophical tradition, involve the vexed notions of freedom and consciousness. But there is, I think, a much deeper and more interesting line of criticism to naturalism, and that involves the notion of intentionality and its closely correlated notion of normativity.
What is involved in my belief that I’m drinking a beer as I type this? Well, my belief is about something — namely, the beer that I’m drinking. But what does this “aboutness” consist of? It requires, among other things, a commitment that I have undertaken — that I am prepared to respond to the appropriate sorts of challenges and criticisms of my belief. I’m willing to play the game of giving and asking for reasons, and my willingness to be so treated is central to how others regard me as their epistemic peer. But there doesn’t seem to be any way that the reason-giving game can be explained entirely in terms of the neurophysiological story of what’s going on inside my cranium. That neurophysiological story is a story of is the case, and the reason-giving story is essentially a normative story — of what ought to be the case.
And if Hume is right — as he certainly seems to be! — in saying that one cannot derive an ought-statement from an is-statement,and if naturalism is an entirely descriptive/explanatory story that has no room for norms, then in light of the central role that norms play in human life (including their role in belief, desire, perception, and action), it is reasonable to conclude that naturalism cannot be right.
(Of course, it does not follow from this that any version of theism or ‘supernaturalism’ must be right, either.)
I have some sympathy with this and would like to discuss it further but I think this should be pursued in the “Moderation Issues” thread. So I’m moving your comment there.
Not against the rules. But the implication is that someone lacks reading comprehension.
Oxymoron! If anyone believes magicians are subverting the laws of the universe, they should get out more.
Not to me. Petrushka carefully states his own impression. He does not assert you are “sincerely self-deceived”.
Not to me. Where is Petrushka saying you are not posting in good faith?
Not to me. Describing of the impression you are giving someone is an opportunity to correct that impression, if it’s wrong.
Well, all communication channels are open here. If you want to pursue any particular point, the “moderation issues” thread is there.
I think that William, on numerous occasions, has stated that his world view is of his own making, and that he is not trying to convince anyone that it can be universally applied.
I merely point out that science is the business of finding models that can be universally applied.
If William sincerely believes he can bend spoons with his mind, I cannot disabuse him of that notion, and I will not try. But I will point out that he is wasting everyone’s time by suggesting we are wrong not to try it.
It doesn’t travel beyond the confines of your skull, William. The work of stage magicians and of novelists is entertaining, but adults learn to compartmentalize fantasy and restrict it to moments of relaxation.
On the other hand, inventors and engineers tend to use fantasy as goals. So it has its uses.
Wow, Walt.
That was a bizarre and irrational comment.. Emotions are fine, but they can severely impair reasoning if you don’t keep them under control.
I claimed that Bruce agreed with me because he said so himself:
That is what I mean by “free-floating”, and so I take Bruce’s word that he therefore agrees with me. Why shouldn’t I?
I challenged you on the supervenience question because you wrote this:
Bruce said he agrees with me if by “free-floating” I mean “not supervening on the physical”. That is what I mean by “free-floating”. Therefore, unless you think that Bruce is lying or deluded, he does agree with me that free-floating oughts do not exist.
ETA: <snip> at Alan’s request.
On the Moderation Issues thread, William wrote:
William,
There is no evidence in those videos that anything supernatural is happening. Metal does begin to give like putty when it’s sufficiently fatigued. Have you ever bent a stiff wire?
Someone mentioned Feynman’s dictum upthread: the easiest person to fool is yourself. The beauty of science, and the reason we need it in the first place, is that purely first-hand, anecdotal evidence is a poor way of getting at the truth. We need something much better, and science is the best truth-finding tool available. Science is enormously successful precisely because it helps compensate for our human foibles.
Here are some things that a competent scientist might do when testing the spoon bending phenomenon:
1. Pick a standard spoon to use for the experiments — same manufacturer, same model, etc. Randomly sample the spoons and test them with lab equipment to determine the average force required to deform them, and how much it varies from spoon to spoon.
2. Rig up a spoon-like force meter so that you can test the force that random individuals are able to apply to a spoon.
3. Carefully control access to the spoons so that no one can pre-fatigue them before the actual test.
4. If the hypothesis is that the mind causes the metal to become putty-like, then test it: Rig up a spoon and invite a subject to concentrate on puttifying it, while at the same time you apply a gradually increasing force to it using test equipment. If the person is able to puttify it, it should require less force to deform it than when no one is concentrating on it. (This should be done without allowing the subject to touch the spoon, of course.)
5. If the hypothesis is that the mind causes the metal to heat up, then test it. Rig a spoon up to a sensitive thermometer, and then have a subject concentrate on it while measuring the temperature. Again, the subject should not be allowed to touch the spoon.
In the Shermer video, they did test this hypothesis by studying the crystalline structure of the deformed cutlery. It showed evidence of mechanical deformation, but not of heating, as expected.
6. To test the adrenaline hypothesis, measure the ability of subjects to bend objects of varying rigidity both before and after receiving adrenaline intravenously.
7. If the hypothesis is that the psychokinesis works through the hands, and that the hands must therefore be in contact with the spoon, then fine. Allow the subjects to touch the spoon, but not to apply force to it (the test equipment can apply the force).
You might allow the subject to touch the spoon at one point with a fingertip, with the finger aligned orthogonally to the direction of deformation, so that it can’t “help” the spoon to bend. Or you could allow the subject to hold the spoon in the normal way, but use electromyography to verify that the subject isn’t applying any force to the spoon via his or her muscles.
Those are just off the top of my head. I’m sure everyone here could come up with more.
Why would we want to trust first-hand anecdotal evidence when we can do so much better?
We don’t want to be duped, William. You, on the other hand, don’t care if you’re duped, because you’ve said that you don’t care if your beliefs are true, as long as they “work” for you.
For you the extra tests might be a waste of time and effort, since you don’t care about the truth. For those of us who do care, rigor is essential. We’d be crazy to adopt your lax standards of evidence.
I don’t say the above is wrong, but I am still considering constructivism and pragmatism (I’d stop considering them if they seemed unable to avoid relativism).
I’m not sure why you emphasized biology; I think one could argue that any social, rational creature would share our values and we would owe each other moral duties. (Some details like reproduction and the resulting moral duties to family might vary).
I won’t comment on the all possible worlds aspects of what you say because of my limited knowledge of modal logic.
So, even though I have a feeling I am just setting myself up for something, here goes: Assuming what you say is true, why do you have to be a theist to believe it? Many secular philosophers would seem to believe something similar to what you espouse and still claim to be atheists. Why are they all wrong? (Or if you have already explained that somewhere, if you remember the thread, I will look for it).
In metaethics, your theory is called “deflationism”.
(Sort of, but qualifying it ruins the joke)
I think one could be a constructivist and still claim one set of moral values was better than another, eg by analysing how the process was being followed or the results implemented.
And deflationists could argue that even though there is no general concept of moral truth or facts, argument and comparison is possible for individual questions of morality. Since moral codes could be viewed as reflecting a set of answers to such questions, they would be comparable (at least that is what I glean from the SEP summary of quasi-realism).
I know you have said you do not know the answer as to what norms are, but would you be happy to accept nihilism or relativism?
It’s slow going on the Kitcher stuff so it may be a while. I think people will have stopped commenting on this thread by the time I feel comfortable trying to paraphrase his ideas (although possibly the resulting Moderation Issues stuff will never die.)
You can find a summary of his ideas here, although there is not a lot of detail about avoiding the naturalistic fallacy.
What is wrong with simply enjoying the journey?
Of course, that is easy for me to say as a retired person.
Not so easy for a philosophy department leader in competition for limited funding.
My advice to such a person? Whatever you do, don’t fire any tenured professors.
I’d be afraid to take on any batch of professors. I think Harvard faculty had a big role in preventing Summers from getting the Fed job here and I was surprised that Kagan made it onto the Supreme Court with so many professors there really hating her.
BTW, continuing in off-topic mode, there is a Canadian school, Lakehead University, which was once as close to being a hotbed of Hallianism as any school is ever likely to be, because of the late Charles Sims Ripley, who taught there (after getting his Ph.D. at the Univ. of Western Ontario). Ripley did his thesis on Hall in the late 1960s.
Oh, also, the guy I mentioned on another thread who wrote a book according to which pretty much all argument is ad hominem was Henry Johnstone, and the book is _Philosophy and Argument_.
According to Bertrand Russell (I’m quote-mining from Philosophy – The World’s Greatest Thinkers by Philip Stokes) John Dewey “is [in 1946] generally admitted to be the leading philosopher of America”. I see his seminal work, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry is available on line. Seems some consider pragmatism so much developed by US thinkers that it is referred to as “American pragmatism”. I wonder if that’s why Kitcher moved there from the UK?
Well, I don’t think you **have** to be a theist. But, once again, it comes down to simply not avoiding the most obvious & rational conclusion because one doesn’t happen to like it.
Oughts (the kind that are not simply personal preferences recategorized with naturalist terminology) only exist in relationship to a goal, purpose or plan, which only exist in mind. If what morality refers to is taken as an existential aspect of reality (like logic and math, with self-evidently true statements and actually, objectively right and wrong behaviors) that sufficiently sentient and sane entities can sense and successfully interpret, then existence has an intrinsic purpose. This indicates existence was created for a purpose in some mind. “God” seems an appropriate term to apply to a mind that creates existence for a purpose.
Honestly, I think that many atheistic philosophers resort to jargon and sophistry simply because they don’t like the obvious rational conclusion. Like “intersubjective”. Who is that term supposed to fool? Or “norms”. I mean, what the hell? Like “compatibalism”, these (it seems to me) are terminological tools specifically generated for self-deceit, to hide one from the fairly obvious ramifications of certain premises.
If one is honest enough to admit that moral relativism is unacceptable, and that the only acceptable version of a morality worth the term is an objective morality that has components that are true even if all of society thinks otherwise – even if **you** think otherwise, because **you** could be mistaken about what is morally true, then what’s the point of all that jargon and sophistry when even atheists and moral relativists act as if morality is objective in nature?
Honestly, again with all due respect, it seems to me an enormous amount of jargon and sophistry concocted to do nothing more than prevent one from having to admit that the best moral model (given what we find acceptable and unacceptable) is that a being (that is mind or has mind) of some sort created this existence for a plan, purpose or reason.
Since divine command morality is unacceptable as well, “goodness” must be an unalterable, fundamental characteristic of that being and would necessarily be imbued in the purpose of existence. That being (which could appropriately be called “god”) cannot make an immoral thing moral just by commanding it any more than it can make 1+1=3.
Also, I don’t think that the god of the bible or the god of the koran or any of the gods man has worshipped are relevant to this philosophical discussion and conclusion that a god of some sort is necessary to ground a meaningful morality worth caring about.
Further; even if there is a good god, and even if there are objective oughts and a purpose, if there are no necessary consequences (not heaven and hell, not eternal consequences, not god-sticks his finger in your eye, just non-arbitrary, necessary, inescapable ones – you know, like the consequences of ignoring gravity) … if there are no necessary consequences, who gives a crap? Why bother? Do whatever the hell you feel like.
The whole idea of subjective, relative morality where all consequences are arbitrary is, IMO, nothing but big pile of who-gives-a-crap sophistry invented by people to justify whatever the hell they want to do anyway.
First, moral relativism does not necessarily mean the sort of laissez faire chaos you so clearly abhor. It could simply mean being honest enough to recognize that there is no objective morality but there could be a negotiable morality. In other words, if we want a society in which all can live in reasonable comfort and security, we have no alternative but to work something amongst ourselves, however messy that might be.
Second, claiming – or claiming to be able to infer – the existence of an objective morality doesn’t get you out of the bind. Whose is the objective morality? Yours? Salafist Islam’s? Boko Haram’s? Scientology’s? Mine? How do you decide? I say there is no way.
You may deny that you are invoking the authority of the Christian or any other god as the foundation of your objective morality and I will take you at your word. Your other words, however, make it clear that you crave the same certainty for the truth of your chosen morality as do all other believers. You want what, in my view, you can never have although you may pretend to yourselves that you do.
For you, moral relativism may mean that there is no way to distinguish between the morality – or amorality – of the psychopath and your or my moral beliefs. I agree, although only in the sense that there is no objective standard of morality against which the many different beliefs can be measured. But I do have my beliefs and so do most other people. The psychopath may not feel a shred of guilt about the grisly crimes he commits, he may even have the arrogance to congratulate himself on living out his life unbounded by the petty, bourgeois morality of the crowd, but we of that crowd beg to differ. All the relatives and friends of his past victims, all potential future victims and their relatives and friends along with all other members of society who believe that they should not be raped and murdered take a different view and stand against him. We all believe he should be tracked down, arrested, tried and, if convicted, pay for his crimes at least with his freedom and, in my view, with his life. That is what works against the sort of chaos you fear.
I don’t abhor it at all. It’s a case built on the logic that follows premises, not upon emotion or fear. I certainly don’t “fear” a world where morality is subjective. I lived with that view a long time. However, I realized that it didn’t match what I actually experienced, and also I didn’t find that view satisfying.
You haven’t thought your rebuttal through; if I’m correct and there is an objective morality built into the fabric of reality, it doesn’t really matter what people claim to believe nor not believe; they’ll still have a moral sense (conscience) and they’ll still, more or less, do what’s moral (within their framework of moral sentience, acting in accordance with their sense of morality), and the necessary consequences will occur regardless of their belief. Their model of what morality is may be self-contradictory nonsense, but so what? They’ll still behave more or less as morally as they are capable.
One doesn’t need to know what gravity is or understand in detail the principles to be able to navigate it well enough to make it through life successfully without falling or jumping off cliffs.
I have no idea what words you’re talking about, since I have repeatedly, in this forum, stated that “the truth” about what “really exists” is utterly irrelevant to me. I’m only interested in what appears to work for my purposes. It doesn’t matter to me one bit if it is a fact of reality that god doesn’t actually exist or that morality is in fact nothing more than personal preferences and subjective feelings.
I think you might be arguing against a stereotype, because your “rebuttal” doesn’t match the long moral arguments I’ve presented in this forum.
My argument has nothing to do with “what truly exists”. My argument is that there are logical consequences to holding certain premises about morality.
When I say that subjective morality is unacceptable to me, it means (1) it doesn’t match my experience, and (2) there’s no reason for me to care about it if it is subjective. It doesn’t mean I “abhor” or fear the alternative.
Building on logic that follows premises, one can build wonderful castles in the sky. However, reality has a nasty habit of intruding on those ideas and demolishing the castles.
It still argument from consequences. The philosophical equivalent of fiddling with data until you get the desired graph.
I agree that morality is closely tied to human purposes, for example, the correct morality will ensure people have equal opportunity to find and achieve their life purposes.
I don’t agree that human purposes require God for explanation or that human purposes require or imply an intrinsic purpose to the universe. But discussion of those points has been well-explored here and is not a discussion I am interested in repeating.
It’s a side point, but if your point is that philosophers are intellectually dishonest and have created a lot of argument and jargon to cover up a need to justify their atheism, then I don’t agree. In fact, such an argument reminds me of a similar argument that other blogs make about faith and theology (that theology is just jargon made up to cover a need to justify faith).
Or if you are just saying that philosophy is pointless argumentation, then I don’t agree with that either, but at least you are in good company: many scientists, including some who post here, seem to think that too. Anti-philosophy makes strange bedfellows, I guess.
I’m not sure if there is much more to say in this exchange, but I enjoyed it, and I think I understand your viewpoint better.
(ETA: “theology” for “theism”)
Petrushka said:
No. It’s fiddling with assumed premises (not data) until (1) the resulting graph matches the actual data of one’s experience (we all act as if morality is objective) and (2) the resulting graph describes a morality worth considering in the first place.
Neil Rickert said:
The reality is that all sane people act as if morality is an objective commodity in the first place. My model accounts for that. If reality is intruding on and demolishing a sand castle, it’s the sand castle of the self-deceiving notion of moral subjectivism, propped up by nothing more than anti-theistic denialism and the jargon of sophistry.
BruceS said:
If morality is about subjective human purposes, then there’s just no way to claim that there is a “correct” morality at all. It is only if certain human purposes are closely aligned with some objective existential purpose that one can make a valid claim (like the one you made) about the moral correctness value of various subjective human purposes.
You can’t have it both ways. If the objective value you expressed (“ensure people have equal opportunity to find and achieve their life purposes”) is not just your subjective (or some group’s intersubjective) moral perspective, then what is it? If some other such claim about what is the “correct” value – like exterminating the jews, or slavery – is not valid, by what arbiter of moral values is it not?
I’m not saying philosophy is useless. I’m saying there are obvious conclusions that people will use philosophical wranglings to avoid. Theists, for example, will use philosophical contortions to avoid the obvious problems of divine command morality, and atheists will use them to avoid the obvious problems of subjective morality.
Only if morality refers to an objective, independently existent, fundamental commodity that even god cannot change is there a resolution to these issues, and only if there are necessary consequences is morality worth caring about in the first place. There’s no intellectually honest way around it for either theists or atheists.
I think one would have to unpack the “about” you use to discuss human purposes and morality in detail; I used the more ambiguous “tied to” because it is a relationship I agree exists but not one I understand well enough to discuss in detail.
There are many philosophers who believe there can be a correct moral philosophy based on objective standards with no need to invoke God.
For example, such standards might be natural features of the world (so the analogy would be to science) or they might be abstract but existing a priori (the analogy then would be math Platonists), So I don’t agree with a use of “no way” that means “no way without God”. These philosophers are rational and hold the position that objective standards can exist independent of people but with no need to invoke God (as well, I suspect they are not all atheists, FWIW) .
Another approach to objective morality is that standards can be objective but still constructed, with the objectivity relying on the nature of the construction process. The analogy would be math fictionalists.
But I suspect all of these approaches depend on a definition(s) of objective which you reject and I do not.
And that is definitely it for me for this exchange.
BruceS,
Absolutely right, Bruce.I don’t think a God could provide much help here, actually.Socrates put that argument pretty well, IMO.
I certainly can’t argue against the “well, other philosophers disagree with you, so …. ” rebuttal.
I don’t reject the definitions, I reject that those definitions solve the problem. Such as KN’s “intersubjective” definition of “objective”. Or the “norm” definition. They do not solve the problem. They just hide the same problem behind jargon and sophistry.
Are you calling me “insane”?
This depends on what we mean by “objective”. If all you mean is that people can discuss and argue about morality, then I’d agree that it is objective in that sense. But if you mean that there is some ideal or perfect morality that we should strive to find — well, I just don’t see that. The evidence is all against it.
I grew up in Australia. There, it is moral to drive on the left side of two way road, and immoral to drive on the right side. I now live in USA, where it is moral to drive on the right, and immoral to drive on the left. So which of those is the objective ideal morality of driving (and why)?
I’d like to make a general point about that reply.
I am not trying to rebut your argument so much as to give my epistemic standards for coming to a conclusion.
I value arguments that show a detailed understanding of opposing arguments and try to include a detailed rebuttal of those points.
Now I understand the points about a necessarily good God as attempting to deal with Euthyphro, so if that is correct understanding of this point, then that is the sort of thing I would be looking for. But there is much more to the philosophical discussion that I would want to see addressed in any complete argument.
Of course, your epistemic standards may differ.
Are there correct, objective epistemic standards? Well, that’s an argument for a different day (although maybe it is actually what the OP was about!).
William,
You haven’t answered my oft-repeated question about this. Here’s one of the many repetitions, from last August:
William,
Subjective morality is not the same thing as moral relativism. From a comment I made a couple of months ago:
I can be a “beauty subjectivist” without holding that all things are equally beautiful, so obviously I can be a moral subjectivist without holding that all actions are equally moral. William’s “all is permissible” objection against subjective morality is bogus.
Bruce,
“Equal opportunity is morally desirable” is itself a moral axiom, and a subjective one. You and I both hold it, but others do not.
I mentioned the Hindu caste system in a previous thread. Inequality is enshrined as moral under that system, and it is one’s moral duty to accept one’s unequal predicament. It’s karma.
Theistic moralities are notorious for promoting inequality. Consider the silly Old Testament law that forbade men with damaged genitals from entering the temple, or the New Testament prohibition on women speaking in church.
Given that there are many moral systems that do not hold equality as a moral desideratum, how can it not be subjective?
I certainly have no argument for anyone that thinks “which side of the street you drive on” is a moral question.
BruceS said:
Yes, it’s my view that an innate, eternal quality of the god that created existence is what we refer to as “good”. Thus, god cannot change what is good by command. This solves the Euthyphro issue and sets the table for a rational, intersubjective discussion on what is moral based on what we would observe and categorize as self-evident moral truths. It also provides the framework for meaningful moral rights and obligations.
Such as?
William,
It doesn’t resolve the Euthyphro dilemma, which can be restated as: “Is God’s nature good because it conforms to an external standard of goodness, or is the standard good because it conforms to God’s nature?”
keiths:Is God’s nature good because it conforms to an external standard of goodness,
Yes,the particular assumptions about what constitutes the divine ” good” conforms the standard self evident truths reveal.
“Thus, god cannot change what is good by command.” W
or is the standard good because it conforms to God’s nature?”
Yes, those assumed self evident truths exist because they reflect the assumed nature of God.
Self evident truths are both the father and son of the divine ” good”
keiths said:
The dilemma is that (1) god must be subject to some exterior moral law, or (2) god can make X moral one day and not-X moral the next day.
What keith said isn’t a “restatement” of the dilemma because stated that way, there’s no dilemma. The standard is good because it conforms to god’s nature, and god cannot change its nature. What would be the dilemma?
The Euthypro Dilemma is a false dichotomy solved by nature-of-god natural law.
I’m glad to see you have a sense of humor, William.
SEP is a good starting source
Keith:
There are many ways one could argue this axiom is correct and people who do not accept it are wrong. See the SEP article on metaethics,
Because acting correctly, as opposed to acting in accordance with your culture, are two different things
Just to be clear:
Yes, people’s actual moral actions are subjective: the proximate cause of what they do is mainly due to their emotions and partly due to reasoning. Both those emotions and that reasoning will be mainly caused by their cultures (partly by genetics, too, I think, but mainly culture).
The moral codes of cultures actually vary. That is descriptive relativism. People DO act in accordance with their cultures (unless they have come to a conclusion that their culture is wrong, but let’s ignore that for now).
Moral relativism is different from descriptive relativism. Moral relativism is about correct actions: what you ought to do, not what you actually do. It says any action which is aligned with your culture is morally correct. According to moral relativism, someone that says “My actions are morally correct” has made a true statement if those actions agree with the cultural code, whether that code be Nazism, Aztec baby sacrificing, or 1830s US slavery.
I think moral relativism is wrong. I think most at this forum would agree.
.
If you’re not willing to present your own argument here, why bother participating?
Because I am interesting in learning, not winning or rebutting.
I also think I can learn more on morality and epistemology from people who have studied the thinking of philosophers and understand those arguments. That is just me. I am not trying to convince you that you should think that as well.
I suggested SEP because I understood the question to be about how to explore the arguments and counter-arguments.
I have already presented my understanding of the issues and the possibilities in many posts (eg see metaethics of software quality above) . I have also outlined my understanding of the pros and cons of many of the positions, eg the difficulty of learning moral truths if they are abstract objects or the difficulty of expressing moral truths in scientific terms due to Hume’s guillotine.
Despite not have a settled position overall, I do believe that:
1. Moral relativism is wrong.
2. Whatever the right metaethics is, the only way people can know it must involve the right kind of intersubjective interaction.
First, whatever motivational quality informs the purpose of what is created is what determines what “good” means for the created. For example, for the purpose of creating a deadly gas to kill one’s enemies, the deadlier it is to enemies, the better. We may not call it good ourselves, but that has nothing to do with how “good” the gas is in meeting its purpose.
Second, we’re not talking about “a” creator, but “the” creator, as in the ground of being. If the ground of being had a purposeful quality it imbued in what it created so that torturing children for fun was self-evidently good, that is the kind of reality we would be living in, and my “self-evidently” true moral statement would be the opposite of what it is now. What we call “good” relies upon that quality which is part of the ground of being.
That depends on what you mean. I assume that god has characteristics that necessarily inform everything it creates. One of those characteristics is what we refer to as “good”. We are only “obligated” to “obey” god, in terms of moral behavior, in the same sense that we are “obligated” to “obey” the fundamentals of math and logic, or “obligated” to “obey” gravity.
Morally obligated by what? Morally obligated to what?
You can easily assume anything you wish. Whether or not one’s assumptions, however, make sense, result in conclusions that are rationally consistent with other beliefs and are coherent with experience are the important questions.
I don’t have to make such a case because there is no necessary de facto assumption that god’s morality is subjective in the first place.
The argument is about whether or not morality should be assumed objective or subjective. If one agrees it must be objective (in the absolute sense), then if one is going to ground that morality in god (which seems to be the only rational perspective for an absolute morality), and avoid divine command morality, that means the goodness of god must be constructed a certain way . To solve these problems of morality, what we call goodness must be an absolute characteristic of god, and god must be the existential grounds of being and purpose.
What I’ve done is provide a reason (argument) why one should assume that morality originates from an objective (absolute), natural law, unalterable source. To serve the argument/reason, that source must be the ground of being and creator of existence, and also have a purpose in mind. Whatever you call it, “god” seems a reasonable label.
Already answered. God is the ground of being, the source of mind, the source of existential purpose, that necessarily infuses its characteristics in that which it creates.
God is what it is, including the characteristic we refer to as “good”. If god’s characteristics were different, 1+1 might equal 3, A might equal not-A, and torturing infants for fun might be good, and you’d be attempting to make a case against those self-evidently true statements.
Since there is no necessary de facto assumption that god’s goodness is subjective in the first place, I don’t need to make such a case. Also, “objective” is not an “elevation” or a “promotion” from subjective; they are two opposite things. What morality refers to is either objective or subjective, and each view carries with it logical ramifications.
William,
You seem to believe that the Euthyphro applies only if God can capriciously change his mind about what’s moral, but that’s not true. Even if he is unwavering, the dilemma still applies.
The question is whether God conforms to an external standard of morality, or whether the standard emanates from him.
The dilemma is that if God, by his unchanging nature, regards something like gratuitous child torture as good, then you claim that it necessarily is good.
You explicitly acknowledge this in your comment just above, to which I’ll respond later today.
keiths:
BruceS:
Do you think that any of those arguments can establish it as objectively correct without smuggling in a free-floating ought? I think the answer is no, by Hume’s Guillotine, but I would be interested in looking at any specific counterexamples you have in mind.
That may be your question, but it’s not the Euthyphro dilemma.
God doesn’t consider or regard things as moral or immoral any more than god considers or regards about math, or considers or regards about logic. God is those things.
keiths said:
The Euthypro dilemma shows that divine command morality is false. I agree that divine command morality is false. My morality is not divine command morality. God does not, by the power of its will or command, make thing good any more than god can, by the power of its will or command, make 1+1=3.
Keith:
A lot turns on how you take “objectively”, but, leaving that aside, here are some of the approaches I am aware of which attempt to account for Hume’s point:
1. You can say moral truths ARE things that can be found by science. Sam Harris tries this but not successfully according to most reviewers, eg Moore’s open question argument is a standard approach to denying that moral statements can be routed in real-world properties discoverable solely by science.
2. You can say mortal truths are about abstract entities similar to the abstract entities that math Platonists embrace. Then you try to find a way of accessing those objects and proving truths about them which is analagous to the way mathematicians use proofs.
3. You can deny that moral statements are propositions but say rather they are expressions of emotion or prescriptions for action. Hence Hume’s dilemma does not apply directly. But to avoid relativism, you still need a way to evaluate the aptness of emotions or prescriptions.
4. You can say there is no such thing as a general concept of truth (that is there is no difference between “p” and “p is true”). Only individual cases matter. I think if you do not claim Truth as a property of moral statements, you may be able to get around the dilemma.
5. A very common approach is to claim that moral truths can be deduced solely by rational means. Trying to justify rationality is futile, it must be a given. So if we can deduce moral principles rationally, we are done. The principles are constructed rationally and must therefore be true. Kant tries this with individual reasoning and Rawls with reasoning based on groups. Non-privileging of anyone affected by a moral situation can be taken as a rational guideline: how could anyone accept a process which might result in himself being disadvantaged from the start with no reason? (Sort of like you cut the pie and I’ll choose which piece I want).
6. You can say that moral progress is pragmatically justified: morality is a technology for societies to optimize some obviously correct criterion or set of criteria. Kitcher settles on “increasing effective altruism” as the criterion. Pat Churchland goes in a similar direction in her book on neuroscience and morality but is not as detailed as Kitcher. Objectivity results from choosing the best solution to optimization (this amounts to something like the practical reasoning examples you gave). Of course, you have to explain why your choice of criteria does not commit the naturalistic fallacy. Churchland tries but Kitcher has a much more detailed approach which is on my to-be-studied list.
I personally am not attracted to any approach which is tied solely to abstract reasoning. Since we are working with improving the lives of real humans, I think reasoning has to be informed by understanding of human society. The pragmatic approach is attractive, supplemented by reasoning to justify proposed changes and evaluate their results. But I cannot say in detail how its proponents avoid Hume’s challenge.
William:
Well, the original Euthyphro dilemma was about piety, not morality, so your version isn’t really the Euthyphro dilemma, either. However, philosophers use the term more broadly these days.
I don’t care what you call it. My point is that your proposed solution does not escape the dilemma I pose:
And:
It’s the same dilemma posed by the ‘pimply-faced teenager’ scenario: