Sometimes UD’s comment exchanges are highly informative.
In this case, in a Quote of the Day thread:
DK, 15: >> [To WJM]
[WJM to Seversky, 14:] If I can one minute decide for myself that a moral code is binding on me, and decide for myself the next minute that it is not, exactly how is any moral code, the “binding” nature of which we decide for ourselves, binding?
Strawman erected by misrepresentation. Seversky said that his moral code is “binding,” which means that it is not changeable at a whim.
You have chosen to have an authority “bind” you. You chose that for yourself, using free will.
You have nothing to feel superior about.>>
DK, 16: >>Barry:
[to Seversky] Under your worldview the strongest prevails; the weak succumb.
Under your worldview, God (the strongest) prevails. You (the weak) succumb.
Where is your moral superiority?>>
In general reply:
WJM, 17: >>Daniel King said:
[To BA] Strawman erected by misrepresentation. Seversky said that his moral code is “binding,” which means that it is not changeable at a whim.
Sure it is. He decides for himself whether or not his morals are binding; it is in fact, and by definition, changeable at a whim.
What’s the penalty if Seversky breaks his moral code? Or changes them on a whim? In what sense are they “binding”?
You have chosen to have an authority “bind” you. You chose that for yourself, using free will.
What authority have I chosen to “bind” me? I’d be careful about making assumptions here.
You have nothing to feel superior about.
You’re right.>>
I thought, there were deeper worldview issues lurking and — with a gap imposed by Erica causing a power outage — responded at 18:
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KF, 18: >> [To DK:] With all due respect, it is a strawman tactic, fallaciously cheap rhetorical shot to try to project “might makes right” unto God.
Such is a classic example of a too-neat answer that should make you ask yourself, if it’s so quick and simple why have a lot of very serious thinkers across time disagreed with my neat little Euthyphro dilemma-rooted point?
Is good independent of the gods or just another label for the capricious wishes of the gods imposed by will and power to back it up?
Do you see the gaping hole that is there?
As in, making up and knocking over one or more straw-gods, AND TURNING YOURSELF INTO YOUR OWN STRAW GOD BY CONTRAST IN A “MIGHT/ MANIPULATION MAKES ‘RIGHT’ . . . ” NIHILISTIC MORAL CHAOS?
(As in, “I” get to select and choose just which moral rules I wish to be bound by . . . backed up of course by my will to power.)
Reductio, ad absurdum; induced by implicit assumption of inherently amoral a priori evolutionary materialism or its influence on its fellow travellers.
Back to basics, instead.
Do you have a right to your life, to liberty, to innocent reputation?
If not, instead of arguing with you, why not simply shoot you, or lock you up or lock you out [and bleating “censorship” is of no account as on your a priories there is no basis for an ought-not] or simply lie and smear to rob you of your reputation. Oops, “rob” is freighted with ought-not, so it’s more like pin you down, drag down your drawers rhetorically and “take” your reputation if I have a fancy to it, enjoying your screams and futile pleas for pity or respect as part of the fun.
(Resemblance to rape is wholly intended, and I ask you to look very carefully at how often those on your side have resorted to raping the innocent reputations of people on our side then posted whole web sites full of outing — targetting — information, arguing that we asked for it. If you don’t feel ashamed at the routine resort to tactics of violation by your side, you better ask yourself, why. As they say back in my homeland, the frog told the boy approaching it, stone in hand: fun for you is death to me.)
But, but, but, a community that falls into such circumstances will disintegrate!
Shades of Kant and the point that evil, when it spreads, disintegrates the community and/or — strictly logically equivalent as Kant showed — uses others of like value as mere objects and means to my ends rather than respecting them as ends in themselves.
That’s a first clue.
One, that points to a key point about us: we are responsibly free, morally governed creatures, who have RIGHTS, which implies that others have duties to respect our life, liberty, innocent reputation, etc.
That is, we have excellent reason to recognise that for people to thrive, rights must be recognised and respected as inhering to beings who have intrinsic, quasi-infinite value and a dignity that demands justice, despite adverse balances of power.
Might does not and cannot make right.
Further, we only can thrive (which implies that we ought to value human thriving) in a community that strives to sustain the civil peace of justice.
And along the way, the very fact that we here have reasoned argument, implies that we intuit and accept that we do have responsible freedom of thought and action — something that cannot obtain on a priori evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers, as Crick for instance acknowledged in his 1994 The Astonishing Hypothesis, in a stunning bit of self-referential incoherence clad in a lab coat badged with a Nobel Prize:
. . . that “You”, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased: “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.” This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people today that it can truly be called astonishing.
In short, we have every good reason to see that we are responsibly free, reasoning, morally governed creatures.
That is, we are patently under government of OUGHT.
Which, points to the step by step iterative chain of questions, what grounds OUGHT-X (Y, of course), then OUGHT-Y (Z of course), then OUGHT-Z . . . ?
Thence, we are in the territory of the IS-OUGHT gap.
Is there an infinite regress? Circularity? Or, a finitely remote foundational level?
Of these, only a finitely remote foundational set of first plausibles is a serious candidate.
Infinite regress is absurd and dodges the issue of warrant, and circularity (as opposed to coherence) is question-begging.
Thus, we are looking at comparative difficulties across main foundational alternatives, on factual adequacy, coherence and balanced explanatory power (vs. ad hoc patchworks or simplistic force-fitting).
And yes, we are looking at worldview roots and philosophical issues and approaches.
Just what a world dominated by scientism is wont to despise, disregard, dismiss.
Ill-advisedly, not least as the notion that all serious knowledge is scientific is a self-refuting philosophical claim.
We are back to: how can we bridge the IS-OUGHT gap?
For which, the only sound answer is, we must find a world-root IS properly capable of bearing the weight of OUGHT, grounding a world of responsibly free, morally governed creatures who genuinely have a claim to justice as they have rights that go beyond might/manipulation and ‘rights’ as convenient rhetorical clubs.
That takes us to matters ontological as well as moral, as that is what IS and OUGHT demand.
So, in a nutshell, first, the world we experience is rooted in necessary being. For non-being has no causal powers and if there ever were an utter nothing such would therefore forever obtain. Something is unconditioned and primary, tied inextricably to the existence of a world.
There is a world-root IS.
Is it an infinite regress or a circular, self-causing entity? The latter instantly collapses as something must exist in order to have effects. The former simply postpones the problem, and introduces the super-problem of counting down from infinity to reach an origin for our observed world, in finite successive causal steps:
minus-infinity –> minus (infinity less one) –> minus (infinity less two) –> [and yes, I know this is absurd, that is precisely the point] . . .
– 2, – 1, 0 [origin of our world], +1, + 2, . . .
+ us here today [say at 0-point + 13.7 BY] –> . . .
We can call this, the getting to zero problem.
(Or, equivalently, the leaving minus infinity problem. [Hint: In Mathematics, infinities are either pointed to as in principle present but not feasible of reaching in finite steps, or are manifested by subdivision/implication of the continuum such as a line segment, or are presented all at once as a Set such as N, Z, R or C.] )
The way to bet is, a finitely remote world-root IS.
How can such an IS bridge to OUGHT?
Only by being in itself inherently moral, and particularly morally good.
In short — as I have noted here at UD ever so many times — the only serious candidate IS to root the world and bridge to/bear the weight of OUGHT is: the inherently good Creator God, a necessary and maximally great world-root being, worthy of ultimate loyalty and our reasonable service of doing the good in light of our evident nature.
If you doubt or dismiss, kindly provide and justify a serious alternative: ________________ . . .
(Predictably, setting distractors, patently non-serious candidates and side-tracks aside, there will be none.)
How can such answer Euthyphro’s dilemma?
By first noting that such a being is radically different from ourselves and from the sort of nihilistic supermen gods projected unto Mt Olympus or wherever.
Next, we see that good and God are inextricably mutually involved, so the project of separating good from God collapses.
A conceptual failure to understand what God inherently is.
Nor is God simply imposing arbitrary will and power, as his creatures with natures that manifest evident value, dignity and purpose, we owe and are owed mutual duties of justice, both to one another and to our Creator.
Hence, the too often repeated project of trying to pretend that the tail of a sheep is a leg and demanding that such must now be treated as a leg collapses for the same reason that we cannot create a new primary colour, such is not in our remit. We are not God, and the inherent natures of tails and legs so diverge that a sheep’s tail simply will not work as a leg.
Might/manipulation do not and cannot make ‘right.’
And, as a bonus, we see why a doctrine of eternal audit/judgement makes sense — God owes us the duty of justice and a final hearing.
Which, we most assuredly will face by the same eternal justice that is a part of that inherent goodness of God.
Guaranteed to us by “the man ordained,” and shown to be such to all, by his resurrection from the dead as “first-fruits of them who sleep.”
And of course, this all comes full circle to the force of the point Locke cited from Hooker in his 2nd treatise on civil govt as he founded in thought what would become modern liberty and democracy:
. . . if I cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every man’s hands, as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire which is undoubtedly in other men . . . my desire, therefore, to be loved of my equals in Nature, as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to themward fully the like affection. From which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn for direction of life no man is ignorant . . . [Hooker then continues, citing Aristotle in The Nicomachean Ethics, Bk 8:] as namely, That because we would take no harm, we must therefore do none; That since we would not be in any thing extremely dealt with, we must ourselves avoid all extremity in our dealings; That from all violence and wrong we are utterly to abstain, with such-like . . . ] [Eccl. Polity, preface, Bk I, “ch.” 8, p.80]
It is time for fresh thinking.>>
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So, what do we think, why? END
Is God the ultimate case of might makes right? NOT — and, why not.
Kids, students, people, should SHUT UP, and learn how choosing works.
Everybody can talk in terms of choosing things, this common discourse has a structure to it, a set of rules by which it works, and in this logic the connection between ought and is, is made plain.
In stead of shutting up and learning, studying the structure in your own common discourse, what you are doing is…. using your fantasy to imagine how things work, providing you with an understanding different from commmon discourse. So then you have not explained the connection between ought and is, then you have simply redefined the words ought and is.
Then you have duplicity between what you say is true intellectually, and what you implicitly say is true in dalily life, with common discourse.
And the structure in common discourse is between what chooses, which is a matter of opinion, and what is chosen, which is a matter of fact. The spirit chooses which way the material turns out.
All material is created by choosing it, therefore the existence of it is a contingency. But this does not mean that in contrast the spiritual is neccessary. Neccessary is the relationship between a cause and it’s effect, a simple material relationship, and not a material property of the spirit.
DK’s “might makes right” used to be the lynch-pin of my own atheism many years ago. In fact I even wrote a book titled “Might Makes Right” that my prior publisher declined because it was too radical (and they had even published “The Anarchist’s Cookbook”.
It wasn’t until I was introduced to the concept of intrinsic, necessary good on this very site, by this post’s author, several years ago that I was able to become an intellectually satisfied theist. I finally understood that there could be a god, and the immutable, absolute nature of that god would necessarily instantiate absolute good as an aspect of whatever it created without it being a case of might makes right, because not even god could change what “good” was, It’s an immutable aspect of the nature of that which generates all of existence.
Perhaps DK has the capacity to understand that the only way “might makes right” cannot ever be a good in any situation is if something absolute grounds it as not good.
The only sufficient grounding available for that is god.
MNY, try to propose a world in which two-ness does not exist. Similarly, try to posit a world in which error exists is false. Such are examples of necessary beings, and being immaterial it undermines any attempt to lock down reality to the material. Where, in fact much of what seems common-sense to us is more a reflection of worldview implications than actual reality. KF
WJM, thanks. KF
“Is God the ultimate case of might makes right? NOT — and, why not.”
No. God not only endowed mankind with a universal conscience, though many ignore it, He set up a standard with consequence, came to earth as a man, submitted himself to and fulfilled the standard perfectly, then died unjustly on the cross. Taking the penalty for all that violated the standard. That’s hardly “might makes right”. On top of all that, the one that designs and builds the system, and all its components, gets to decide how all those components should behave, and eliminate the components that foul up the system. He also gets to decide the error tolerance.
kairosfocus:
Replying at length to your OP, beginning with:
A valid response. Even believers choose the authority they believe in. Perhaps this is not a “straw man” exactly, but the point is valid: if you choose the authority whose commands bind you, then that is no different from chosing the code that binds you.
True enough.
kairosfocus, this one undermines your entire thesis. If materialists must provide a penalty for immoral acts, that must be because penalties are necessary to moral systems. If penalties are required then moral codes are all about the might of the authority making them right. Is there a penalty from your God if someone breaks His moral code? If yes, then your God invokes “might makes right”. If no, then materialists need provide no penalties either.
I take Seversky to be assuming WJM’s deity is the authority that binds them. Since there are many claimed deities, and many claims about deities, which precise moral code WJM considers binding is actually a choice UNLESS WJM CLAIMS THAT HIS DEITY TOLD HIM FACE-TO-FACE WHAT THEY EXPECT.
After these exerpts, you launch your general argument.
Actually, no.
I admit I can make no sense of this.
A right to an “innocent reputation”? No.
Life and Liberty? Yes.
Because if anyone can do this, then anyone can be shot, locked up or out, etc. You ought not shoot or lock up because you almost certainly don’t want to be on the receiving end of these. The quote from Locke which you end this OP with expressly states that idea.
Agreed, but the solution does not require a deity to impose order.
Agreed. None of us want to be used as means to an end, so we ought not use others that way.
Agreed, except I don’t think having an innocent reputation is a right.
Agreed. We have excellent reasons to treat others well because we want to be treated well. No deity is required.
Agreed.
No. There is ZERO evidence of this claim.
Until Crick becomes Pope, no one has any obligation to care what Crick said. If you are trying to prove a point about Crick, this applies. If you are trying to prove a point about materialism, you may as well be quoting the Three Stooges.
Agreed.
Then you launch into your mathematical argument:
This looks good until you look closer.
Agreed. And the Facts of Nature is that Finitely Remote Foundation.
We have seen the totally-satisfactory, materialist solution before; it is based on the idea found in YOUR OWN CITE OF LOCKE: Reciprocity. The Golden Rule. The “IS” of the human condition imposes an “OUGHT” of treating others as we wish to be treated.
A “world-root” foundation introduces incoherence: it applies a moral code to all that exists and thus asserts that even quantum forces, atoms, molecules, and rocks are capable of evil and act under moral obligation. This is an absurd notion; is there a hell for naughty molecules?
If inanimate things are exempted from moral duties, how can a morality that exempts most of what exists claim to be binding at all?
Agreed. You’re working too hard to make an obvious point.
Agreed. And the Facts of Nature is that Finitely Remote Foundation.
Invoking a morality that is binding on rocks and molecules is not the way. It is manifestly obvious that only things with volition, knowledge, foresight and reason operate under the “government of OUGHT” which are obligations imposed by the facts of their existence.
Reciprocity (A.K.A. the Golden Rule) bridges the gap easily.
This claim is not logically connected to anything that precedes it. You need to provide a great deal of logic and evidence to make this anything other than a bald, unsupportable assertion treated as if a fact.
No, the only one YOU TAKE SERIOUSLY is yours, but there are other serious candidates.
I have done so, and many times here at UD. The only objection you have raised is that my alternative is not your preference.
You knew this was false when you wrote it; you and I have done this topic many times.
From this point on your argument is a litany of religious claims unconnected to the careful logical structure you started with. It appears you could only keep the rigor up for a while, and then you just started shoveling in your personal favorites.
You must have been tired at the end because you finished with the very quote from Locke which describes the solution to the problem you cannot seem to find. YOU EVEN PUT THE CRUCIAL THOUGHT IN BOLD AND/OR ITALICS. Wow.
sean s.
SS:
I will pick up a point or two for the moment:
1 –> Moral truth is either binding, period or it is not.
2 –> Is it or is it not wrong, even demonically evil to kidnap, bind, gag, sexually assault and murder a young child on the way home from school?
3 –> If you imagine this is a matter of oh, you pick which authorities or principles, you are an enabler of evil. Period.
4 –> You keep on missing the point on the neighbour-love principle, imagining it is good enough to try to ground it on hoped for reciprocity.
5 –> As has already repeatedly been shown to you (but ignored), such does not address the IS-OUGHT gap at the only level it can be resolved at . . . the ontological root of reality must be simultaneously morally grounding. Otherwise, you are still at the wrong end of Hume’s I see is, is then suddenly (without adequate basis) ought, ought.
6 –> In short, you are ducking the issue and insistently repeating a fallacy.
7 –> Now, as Hooker points out, when we sense our own moral worth and expect others to respect us, that then teaches us that we should reciprocate to others of like nature. That is valid but pivots on our having real rights and a real nature that is in common with others, tied to responsible freedom.
8 –> Those must be grounded, and as the US DoI famously sums up, they are grounded at world root level, as I outlined in the OP.
9 –> As to the incoherence and self-falsification of evolutionary materialism, I have repeatedly pointed to an introductory outline, cf here: http://iose-gen.blogspot.com/2.....ml#slf_ref (Crick is simply a capital example of a much broader problem.)
KF
bb, interesting thoughts, care to elaborate or clip and/or link? KF
sean semis @7
Golden Rule?
What’s that?
Dionisio, That is the English Language name for love neighbour as self or do to others as you would have them do to you. It pivots on fundamental moral worth and equality of nature setting up duties of care, but that then points to, where does such moral worth and equality of nature come from? KF
Murray:
Are you a robot? You didn’t decide for yourself that your morals are binding? What makes it impossible for you to change one of your moral positions in light of new information? Do you currently know everything that you might possibly learn in the future?
What penalty would you like to impose? What’s the penalty if you break your moral code?
Don’t be coy, identify your authority.
DK, acknowledging — word usage is very important here — that one is under an existing moral law, i.e. a binding moral obligation testified to by conscience, common sense, our sense that we are owed duties responsive to our rights [rooted in our core nature] and then recognising reciprocity for others of like nature, is a different thing utterly from one imagining that he determines which moral principles he will follow . . . implicitly, for the moment. KF
PS: I think the above exchange between WJM and the OP author should make it clear that WJM acknowledges the force of the ontological-moral frame of thought and so also how morality can be philosophically grounded in world-root reality antecedent to any particular theology or religious tradition. WJM’s non-capitalised reference to deity should make that clear.
Exactly, KF.
One has to choose one’s moral principles.
If you did not so choose, you were an automaton or an impaired person.
We all must live with our choices, for better or worse.
By the way, KF, what is “world-root reality?”
DK, you know quite well the difference I have highlighted between acknowledging being under evident moral law and imagining that one determines what moral principles are or are not to be “binding” . . . implicitly, for the moment. This is of course deeply tied to the errors of moral subjectivism, those of radical relativism, the cultural agenda influences of inherently amoral evolutionary materialism dressed up in a lab coat and the nihilist credo that might/ manipulation makes ‘right.’ KF
DK, kindly, read the OP, on the interconnected ontological and moral factors, to understand why the world has a root reality (as in, were there ever an utter nothing . . .), and why that reality is an IS that properly grounds OUGHT. KF
DK, what about a person who embraces the moral code they learned as a child, without ever re-examining it with the faculties of an adult? Would you say they made a choice as a child, or that their failure to re-examine it is a choice, or something else?
“bb, interesting thoughts, care to elaborate or clip and/or link? KF”
Most here are way beyond me. I’ll do my best.
Since KF started the comments asking if God is the ultimate case of might makes right, Christian theology is the subject at hand and the Bible the proof text.
God endowed mankind with a universal conscience. Paul refers to this in Romans 2 (NKJV Bible throughout):
Solomon too:
In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis digs into the almost universal morality that all human societies share. Murder, adultery, theft and lying are always bad. There are those that ignore morality and conscience, and even some entire groups. But those that do come to ruin. Even if there is initial success. The vast majority very much regard the principles laid out in Old Testament law and the basic idea supporting it: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Love your neighbor as yourself.”
God dictated his laws and their consequence to Moses. Israel agreed to follow the law. That was the old agreement, or testament. But God is universal and so is his moral law. Throughout the OT are stories of God judging non-Israelite nations and individuals for getting too far out of line. Sodom, Gomorrah, Egypt, Canaanite city-states, Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon, etc…
With our sinful nature it is impossible to live up to God’s standard. It isn’t in the Bible, but I believe God submitted himself to his own law lest we claim He’s unfair. John opens his gospel explaining the deity of Jesus Christ:
So God became a man and suffered like we do. Hebrews 2:
Jesus died unjustly on the cross, but that death paid the penalty for all that violated God’s standard, which includes all but Christ who was perfect. Hebrews 4:15 “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
That’s hardly “might makes right”, which according to Nietzsche, means the strong are beyond good and evil, can impose their arbitrary will, change it at any moment, and refuse to live by the same standard. This isn’t exhibited by God whose very nature exhibits the standard he laid out. Matthew 5:48 “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
The one that designs and builds the system, and all its components, gets to decide how all those components should behave, and eliminate the components that foul up the system. He also gets to decide the error tolerance.
If I were a billionaire mechanical engineer that wanted to build an automated assembly line, it’s up to me what kind of assembly line, whether components are powered electronically, with pneumatics or hydraulics. If I’m a great engineer, my designs will fit every need without need to go back to the drawing board. I dictate how components behave and what qualifies as a malfunction, as well as what is to be done with the object that does. If it is repaired, recycled and replaced, or to be upgraded. The assembly line I design and build is my universe.
God designed and built this universe for mankind, a component that he endowed with a conscience and free will. That He did so is readily apparent. Because we used our free will to violate God’s intention, we’re at His mercy. He apparently allowed tolerance for error because malfunctioning mankind wasn’t destroyed in the beginning, even though we fouled up the system. He also set up a system for repair through Jesus Christ and His holy spirit.
KF @11
Did ss @7 refer to:
(1) the ancient Laozi (Chinese) enunciation of the sage’s virtues (unrestricted kindness, faithfulness), or
(2) the ancient negative (passive) formulation, or
(3) the NT gospels (Matthew, Luke) command for us to be positively proactive in relation to others?
This is why my question @10 was addressed at ss @7, but I appreciate your clarification @11.
Perhaps my question @20 can only be answered by ss?
SS,
As a further short note, you seem unable/unwilling to distinguish a worldview analysis case and a “religious” — theological one; which you dismiss on obvious hostility (with the implication of projected necessary irrationality driven by underlying errors of scientism lurking).
This also raises the even older question of distinguishing dialectic discussion from rhetorical persuasion or manipulation.
My essential and longstanding approach is dialectical, talking of worldview foundations, and matters ontological and moral.
It is in a worldviews context that I would point to Jesus of Nazareth as a start-point for a more specific and personal knowledge of God, but surely you will recognise the phrase, God of the philosophers.
FYI, the world root requires a necessary being.
That we are morally- governed- and- responsibly- free — on pain of letting loose grand delusion and fatally undermining rationality — points to that root, necessary being also being able to ground moral government.
There is just one serious candidate, and it is to be noted that when the flash and smoke of rhetoric clears, you still do not have a serious root-level alternative on the table.
Precisely as predicted.
KF
Dionisio, I think SS can speak for himself, but I believe a generic (often negatively stated . . . do no harm) form of the GR is possible and can be seen as what is in mind. My point is, such pivots on moral worth, recognition of binding duties [first as owed to us], and recognition of fundamental equality of valuable nature and dignity leading to acknowledgement of mutual duties in community with others of like nature. I hardly need to note that a standard tactic of those hell-bent on great evil is to dehumanise, denigrate, demonise and alienate the targets for oppression or murder. With what is now happening to children in the womb by the hundreds of millions globally, as a capital current case. KF
LH, the foundations of morality go beyond particular moral codes and take grounding in something deeper than family or community traditions, indeed, it is on such that genuine reform (not its manipulative counterfeit) will be built. That said, it is intuitive for us to recognise our own dignity and rights thus that we are owed fairness etc. Then the key commonsense step is to recognise — as Hooker points out — that others are of like nature, leading to reciprocity. However, this has not resolved the underlying worldview root issues, and that requires a deeper level of analysis that the vast majority of people are ill equipped to address. But that does not mean it is irrelevant, just that the issue is significantly technical. KF
bb, I see your theological argument and engineering design analogy. That has its important place, though this discussion is primarily philosophical. We deal here with a generation that has been increasingly steeped in dismissive suspicion and hostility to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, and which has been robbed of a serious education that would equip people to appreciate a worldviews level discussion. That renders us extremely vulnerable to manipulators of radical secularist bent, and it is obvious that the blood-bought lessons of the past 100 years about radical secularist and/or linked neo-pagan ideologies have been widely distorted and suppressed by those who should have known and done better as part of their duties of care of intellectual and educational leadership. Those who refuse to properly learn the lessons of history doom themselves to repeat its worst chapters. (And, the current failure of duties of leadership over Iran simply beg for comparison with the 1930’s . . . but this time nukes are far more readily in hand; a hidden context of a lot of WW II was that it was, at top policy-maker levels, a nuke threshold war.) KF
PS: To put the Judaeo-Christian tradition seriously on the table today, you have to address the Mars Hill challenge. Cf my 101 here on: http://nicenesystheol.blogspot.....l#u2_intro
DK said:
I sense binding moral rules in various situations (or hypothetical situations) with my conscience. I certainly do not “choose” what any of my senses tell me; I choose how I respond to that information. Just as my senses tell me that gravity is a binding force that carries with it necessary consequences depending on my actions (to the point of harming myself and others), my conscience tells me there are harmful consequences if I do not obey its binding restrictions.
I am certainaly fallible and I do not claim to perfectly understand morality, just as I do not perfectly understand gravity. I understand it well enough, however, to successfully navigate my life so far. I am always open to learning new things and changing my views.
That’s the difference between morality being an absolute commodity with necessary consequences, and morality being a subjective commodity with arbitrary consequences. With the former, we must act morally even if we think nobody else will find out because we understand there is still harm that is being done to ourselves and others, whether we can rationally explain it or not. This is the difference between a truly good person and a person that is just acting good when it serves their purposes.
With the latter, the idea that moral justice is arbitrary can eat away at the moral fabric of individuals because they think there are no necessary consequences. It all becomes nothing more than manipulation for personal or political reasons because there is no higher, binding concept of morality considered to be binding on us all even when nobody is looking and even to the detriment of our own safety and comfort.
In an absolute moral system with necessary consequences, the primary harm I do is to myself; but I also harm others and I impede the purpose of creation (however minutely in the grand scheme of things). IMO, a person can utterly destroy themselves and cause extensive harm to others by going down the path of evil. Existence is defined and generated by the purpose of creation; to defy it is to become, eventually, non-existent.
Self-evident moral truths I sense with my conscience, which provide the basis for a rationally consistent moral structure. IOW, a form of natural moral law arbited and extrapolated logically.
WJM, you raise the very interesting concept of self-evident (thus foundational) moral truths perceived through conscience. Care to elaborate a bit on self evidence, self evidence in moral thought, and the implications? KF
There’s two ways of looking at what “conscience” is; it’s either a completely subjective feeling in the sense of other emotions, or it is a sensory capacity that is perceiving and interpreting incoming data. If the former, then we can indulge or ignore our conscience without worrying about any actual, objective ramifications. We might feel bad, for example, if we chop up babies and sell their parts, but it’s nothing more than a bad feeling that can be ignored and we can even train ourselves to not have that feeling. We can just find some way to justify what we immediately recognize as very, very wrong.
If the latter, then our conscience is giving us information about the state of an objective, external world like any other sensory organ. Morality, then, would refer to something analogous to gravity; an unseen force or commodity that is sewn into the fabric of the universe, our lives and our minds.
Just as there are observable, physical facts of our physical existence apparent through our physical senses, there are also “observable”(experience-able) mental facts about our mental/spiritual existence. These are recognized as self-evident truths, such as “error exists” and the fundamental principles of logic. Without those self-evident truths, absurdity follows.
It would be like living as if gravity may or many not work; you simply cannot live (for long, anyway) as if “gravity” was nothing more than a subjective feeling or concept. You necessarily assume gravity works the same and applies to everyone around you.
Similarly, we cannot act nor argue as if logic, or certain moral principles, or other self-evidently true mental principles are not universally binding. Sure, we can intellectually argue (and even convince ourselves) that they are not absolute; but we cannot act as if they are not (not if we’re sane). As I’ve pointed out before:
If you do not assume the law of non-contradiction, you have nothing to argue about. If you do not assume the principles of sound reason, you have nothing to argue with. If logic is not assumed to be a causally independent, authoritative arbiter of true statements, there’s no reason to apply it. If you do not assume libertarian free will, you have no one to argue against. If you do not assume morality to be an objective commodity, you have no reason to argue in the first place. If you do not assume mind is primary, there is no “you” to make any argument at all.
When it comes to morality, which can be considered a “theory of good and evil”, unless that theory refers to a presumably objectively existent commodity that is binding on all humans at all times whether they agree to it or not, human behavior (outside of the insane) cannot be accounted for. Why would moral subjectivist be morally outraged about anyone’s behavior? Why would they feel compelled to intervene in some event due to their sense of moral responsibility? Why would people put their own safety and comfort at risk for a presumably subjective commodity?
All sane people can recognize certain fundamental moral truths, such as it is wrong to gratuitously torture babies . We can also all see that in all possible morally comprehensible worlds, when we understand what is meant by that phrase and its terms, it is wrong, evil in all possible morally comprehensible worlds to gratuitously torture babies. Morality is absurd if it can be good to gratuitously torture an innocent baby.
We also immediately recognize that it is harmful to ourselves if we were to engage in such behavior. We may not know exactly how it is harmful, but we know that it is extremely harmful mentally/spiritually. We know there is something wrong with someone who would do such a thing – factually wrong.
We sense that there are inescapable consequences for such behavior. We are so convinced that we will risk our own lives in order to intervene because of the harm we will do to ourselves if we try to talk ourselves out of it using some subjectivist justification.
These self-evident moral truths can be extrapolated and arbited by logic in order to develop our moral theory of good and evil – of course, under the humble recognition that our conscience and use of logic is a fallible state of affairs.
Thus, we are not fundamentally relying on any written tome or proclaimed revelation from some prophet about “what is good” to inform our theory of good and evil, but rather like a scientific theory, we are using our sensory and mental faculties to develop an objectively valid and supportable moral perspective and to evaluate moral claims made in tomes or by any individuals or groups.
If a scientist says “if you jump out of this plane without a parachute, you will float down to the ground unharmed”, we know that he is wrong. Should we change our minds just because he is a scientist? Similarly, we know flying planes into buildings full of innocent people and burning people alive for any reason (like the burning of witches) is wrong, regardless of who does it or what society they are a part of. But that knowledge is an erroneous misconception if morality does not refer to an objective commodity.
What is good is not “commanded by god”; it is an innate, immutable quality of god and so a quality of whatever god creates necessarily. This is not “might makes right”, but rather an existential necessity not even god can change. Good is just what it is, period. Nobody can change it; all you can do is discover and properly understand it as best you can, beginning with self-evidently true moral statements.
In closing: if morality is subjective and there are no necessary consequences, why should I care about it? Why shouldn’t I just consider it an inhibiting evolutionary, emotional artifact (like any other emotion or feeling) and overcome its inhibiting interference with my capacity to act in this world for my own benefit?
Yet, we know we shouldn’t do that, and we know that such intended sociopathy is wrong. Unfortunately, unless there is at least a classical god as grounds for an absolute, objective good that informs an universally applicable morality, then intentional sociopathy is just another personal choice as valid and as good as any other.
kairosfocus @22
I see your point and appreciate your insightful comments.
But is it possible that ss is not aware of the fact that he has tried to back his arguments with nothing less than Christ’s command to His people? That would be an ironic situation ss might be disappointed with.
Years ago, when leftovers of my strong atheist past still lurked in my mind, years before I accepted Christ as my Savior and King, I witnessed at work a conversation that left me wondering for a long time.
A few engineers from other towns were in our office for a meeting or training. At lunch time my supervisor invited my fellow programmers and me to join the visiting engineers for lunch.
One of the visiting engineers told an interesting story about his visit to a university. He said that in their cafeteria, when he approached the cashier with his food on a tray, the cashier asked him to describe what was on the tray. He was shocked to find the cashier was visually impaired and could not see anything on the tray, but somehow could operate the cash register!
The cashier told him the total to pay. I don’t remember the amount, but let’s say it was $4.50.
The engineer gave the cashier a $5 bill while saying what it was. The cashier gave back the $0.50 change right away.
Right after we heard the interesting short story, one of my colleagues jokingly asked the storyteller if he really told the cashier what was on his tray. The engineer did not understand the question. I knew that engineer well, and considered him very smart, hence I was shocked by his apparent lack of capacity to understand that simple joke. Trying to make the joke funnier, my colleague asked the storyteller if he really told the cashier the real value of the bill. Some of us there laughed at the joke, but the engineer and another fellow engineer who also was visiting from another town remained serious with faces that revealed their complete misunderstanding of the funny joke.
At that point my colleague explained his joke, saying that the storyteller could have told the blind cashier that he had just one cheap item on his try, that cost less than a dollar, and then give the cashier a $1 bill while saying that it was a $20 bill. Thus the engineer could have made over $19 on top of an almost free lunch.
The other engineer who had not laughed at the joke said that no one could do that. My joking colleague argued back that the cashier would not have noticed the difference and according to the storyteller no one else was around them at that moment, hence there were no potential witnesses to that moneymaking transaction.
Then I heard something I had not heard before: the second engineer said that they could not do that because God was seeing everything. For many days I thought about that incident, trying to make sense of it to no avail.
Perhaps this current discussion somehow relate to that conversation too?
I made similar arguments in:
Psychopath as Übermensch or Nietzsche at Columbine
Follow Up on Psychopath as Übermensch
The materialist response was large on howling outrage; small (as in “non-existent”) in logical rebuttal. Your statement is obviously true. Materialists deny it anyway. Add that to the list of truths you have to deny to be a materialist.
Empathy.
Why should I do what empathy indicates? Why shouldn’t I desensitize my empathy as well as my conscience?
hrun0815, I address the appeal to empathy in these articles.
Psychopath as Übermensch or Nietzsche at Columbine
Follow Up on Psychopath as Übermensch
Take a look at them and then come back and tell us if you still think appeals to empathy work.
Re #32: Yes.
Re #31:
Because empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. So if our actions cause others to feel bad, empathy compels us to share those feelings and also feel bad.
Why you shouldn’t? I guess due to my empathy with you and the potential victims of your actions I’d tell you that you’ll likely suffer consequences you will not like. If you don’t care about that then I’ll thank my lucky stars one more time that we live in a society were certain actions are not tolerated.
William J Murray @ 27
Because while there may be no logically necessary consequences, there would be consequences. If our imaginary psycho-WJM were to embark on a spree of rape and murder, the consequences, once the family and friends of the victims discovered the culprit, would be, hopefully, both painful and permanent.
Why is it so hard to understand that while psychos and Nazis and Communists might believe they are morally justified in committing their atrocities, the rest of humanity that is threatened by them is also just as morally justified in thinking them wrong and doing whatever is necessary to destroy them?
If you want some absolute and objective measure of morality you aren’t going to find it.
Why is a god’s take on morality any better than yours or mine?
Seversky, re:
are you a necessary, maximally great and inherently good being, the root of reality?
Failing such a claim you are like a fourth former challenging Einstein over Relativity. And, you must know that, so all we see is stubborn clinging to absurd self-will.
Precisely why I choose what I accept as moral falls to pieces of its own weight, when coming from the mouth of a creature knowing himself to be finite, fallible, morally struggling (at best) and too often blindly stubborn and ill-willed.
KF
hrun0815
Do you deny that a person can condition himself to suppress his empathy?
Seversky
Then you must believe that under some circumstances torturing an infant for pleasure is good. Otherwise, the absolute statement “it is always wrong to torture an infant for pleasure” would be true.
Get ready for the backpeddling and doublespeak to begin.
Then you must believe that under some circumstances torturing an infant for pleasure is good. Otherwise, the absolute statement “it is always wrong to torture an infant for pleasure” would be true.
To say that something “is good” or “is bad” without an explicit or implied frame of reference is an objectivist belief, not a subjectivist one. So what’s the frame of reference when you say that Seversky must believe that TAIFP “is good”? Himself? Every other human being? Some hypothetical baby torturer?
We can assume that Seversky doesn’t think that TAIFP is ever good, no matter who is doing the torturing. But that doesn’t create an objective standard, or put one in his mouth—he merely believes, subjectively, that it’s a wrong thing for anyone to ever do, without reference to a transcendent universal standard.
Learned Hand:
You’re right. Blanket statements are almost always mistaken. I suspect that very few children are capable of conceiving such questions (I certainly was not).
The same is probably true for most people on the planet at every age.
If one doesn’t vote, one accepts majority rule. It’s the easy way.
William J Murray,
According to your comment @25, you are accountable to your conscience. What makes you think that anybody, such as Seversky, is not accountable to his?
(I saw no mention of God or a punishment of eternal torment in that comment, so it seems that such an authority and his power to torture eternally is irrelevant to you.)
KF @35
That question alone answered your interlocutor’s interrogation @34, which -by the way- denoted lack of understanding about the monotheistic concept of God, because it said “a god’s take on…” instead of “God’s take on…”.
You graciously added a very insightful explanation in your comments,
but your question alone would have sufficed.
How will your interlocutor respond this time?
Does he understand what you wrote?
Does he care?
LH,
Then Seversky believes that if anyone in the world disagrees with him, they are wrong and he is right. Therefore, he believes that the statement “TAIFP is wrong” is not merely his subjective preference. He believes it is an objective moral norm.
Suppose you say it is possible for Seversky to be wrong about that. Then you would be wrong. Because it is self-evident that it is not possible in any conceivable universe.
Then Seversky believes that if anyone in the world disagrees with him, they are wrong and he is right. Therefore, he believes that the statement “TAIFP is wrong” is not merely his subjective preference. He believes it is an objective moral norm.
Does he? Would he agree with that statement? And if not, which one of you is more likely to misunderstand his beliefs?
This appears to be your argument:
1. Seversky does not believe that an objective moral standard exists.
2. Seversky believes (I assume) that TAIFP is never good, no matter who is doing the torturing, by his own subjective standards.
3. Seversky therefore believes that an objective moral standard exists.
This doesn’t make any sense to me, so I assume I’ve misunderstood something. But I’m not sure what I’ve got wrong. Can you explain?
Maybe you could do it this way. Is “I believe, subjectively, that this standard should apply to all people” a statement of an objective moral standard? I don’t think so, because it comes from one person’s subjective frame of reference–it acknowledges that other people could disagree, without any external frame of reference to which we could appeal.
In other words, it sounds like you’re saying the belief is objective because it applies to everyone. But can’t someone have a subjective belief that applies to everyone? Isn’t objectivity/subjectivity about the source of the standard, rather than the people to which it applies? After all, if I say that all people should always agree that chocolate is tastier than vanilla, that’s obviously a subjective standard, even though I’ve applied it to all people in all circumstances.
(Seversky, I apologize if I’ve mischaracterized any of your beliefs. Although/because I’m also a subjectivist, we may disagree on these things, and I’ve filled in my beliefs where yours aren’t clear to me. Hopefully that hasn’t confused anything.)
LH (attn, Sev, WJM, SS etc & Dionisio):
Knowledge — warranted, credibly true belief — patently requires a subject, as do reasoning, perceiving etc. That is, these are actions of an actor, and to be credible such require a responsibly free agent.
The point of the subjectivist claim on morality, is that the perception of being under binding law and specific duties is delusional. The direct problem is that such immediately engages so much of our inner world that grand, spreading delusion is let loose, implying utter self-referential incoherence and collapse of rationality as well as responsible freedom with it.
WJM’s core points hold, that conscience is a major internal life factor, and projects to us that it is a flag register in effect: trips when wrong is in prospect or actuality. Perhaps, trips to different levels, not just go 1 in the good old HINZVC 6800 etc family.
The question is, is that flag tripping mere noise or delusion, or does it respond to real states of affairs?
As in, kidnapping of a child, binding, dragging to a conveniently secluded site, gagging, sexual assault with obvious implication of murder are in progress and you chance across same.
Flags trip all over the place, adrenaline surges to put you on overdrive, an inner voice tells you, intervene instantly; even lethal force — otherwise unjustified — is hereby authorised, to protect the victim from brutal violation and murder. (Doubtless, other flags trip: situation dangerous.)
What do you do, why?
Unlike a 6802 MPU, you find you have a perceived choice and responsibility; the processor is determined to act on flags HINZVC per microprogramming, absent a breakdown.
Now, is that cluster of perceptions unconnected to realities of a morally governed creature in a world where s/he is responsibly free?
Does such a world exist, or is it simply a silly dream unconnected to anything other than odd internal neural networks firing off in pulsed waves?
Move along, there’s nothing more to see there.
Just some silly chemicals programmed by mindless, blind watchmaker processes utterly unconnected to other dubious perceptions: truth, right/wrong, logic, etc, empty internalised mouth noises one and all.
Or, is there?
WJM is right to point out, yet again:
In short, to save an ideology, many are burning down that whole inner life that is pivotal to a rational, responsibly free person. Self-referential incoherence, yet another manifestation of a critical breakdown of evolutionary materialism and its fellow travellers.
Call the fire brigade and put out the fire before all is lost.
Start afresh: it is through the inner life of self-aware (I dare say, en-souled) responsibly free, rational, often enough accurately perceiving mindedness, that we access the outer world, including atoms, molecules, neurons and networks etc. I have no more reason to doubt the reality of an inner world than that of the outer one that appears before me through my eyes as lamp of my body, and by extension other senses.
It is as Jesus so profoundly said in his most famous sermon:
There is no good reason for me to doubt that my inner life speaks the truth, pretty nearly on utterly clear, self-evident moral matters. Those who profess not to hear that voice, are lying outright, or are broken inside, or have become benumbed, or are delusional.
Locke was right to cite Hooker in Ch 2 of the 2nd treatise on civil govt:
We can resort to hyperskeptical denial, but we soon see the fatal contradiction, such rhetoric implicitly relies on the very credibility of the inner life it would fatally undermine.
That is, we are here staring at self-evident truths of morality and linked rationality that we can deny only at the cost of instant reduction to utter absurdity.
But, we live in an age where many cling to the most patent absurdities for ideological reasons, once they imagine they can get away with it.
And here, the anti-theistic motivation should not be under-estimated.
Where, too, again: good does not become good because God capriciously issues an edict or rescript, good is integral to and inextricably intertwined with the roots of a world in which we live as responsibly free, rational creatures.
IS and OUGHT are inextricably integrated in the root of reality.
KF
<…it’s a wrong thing for anyone to ever do, without reference to a transcendent universal standard …
DK said:
Unless there are going to be consequences for violating that which one is accountable to, then the term has no meaning.
I don’t believe in such a god or state of affairs.
Seversky said:
There would be consequences, but they would be entirely arbitrary and entirely dependent upon the care one put in how they violated it.
We do not have to look at an “imaginary” WJM because when WJM was a materialist atheist, he indeed experimented for years with violating his conscience, desensitizing both it and his empathy. From experience, I can tell you that you are simply grasping at straws here to avoid what your philosophy ultimately enables, even if your personal makeup would never allow you to go down that road.
Why would I run around doing things that would almost certainly cause me problems and not be in my best interest simply because I desensitized my conscience? Do you think I would also be ignoring my intelligence and sense of self-preservation and my ability to understand how people think and react? Would I also ignore laws and common sense?
There are countless ways to take advantage of people, society, and the law; countless opportunities to manipulate others and situations in one’s favor. A lot of people are attracted to those that treat them badly, or are attracted to those that are not bound to social mores, codes and laws. One psychological aspect of many people is that when you treat them badly, they redouble their efforts to win your approval and affection. I know this from experience and experiment. Other people will simply ignore your bad behavior because they would rather live in denial than face the truth of what is going on.
Do you think people who ignore their conscience never prosper? Never have anyone love them, or never love anyone? Never enjoy life? Do you think people who obey their conscience always have people love them? Always prosper? Never fall into ruin?
Good people can have their entire lives ruined by bad people that live out their life in comfort. Do you not realize this about life? How naive are you? Do you think there is some kind of karmic law that will always deliver negative consequences on people that ignore their conscience, and good consequences on those who obey their conscience?
The opposite has been my experience. Ever hear the phrase “no good deed goes unpunished”? “Nice guys finish last”? There’s a reason those phrases were coined; often in life, good people suffer, get taken advantage of, and get the short end of the stick, while the wicked prosper.
We’re not talking about ignoring your intelligence and common sense and flailing around like a psychopath doing crazy, self-destructive stuff that will get you incarcerated or hunted down with ptichforks and torches, Seversky. We’re talking about not being bound to one’s conscience when your conscience is telling you to do something (or not do something> that is clearly not in your own best self-interest. When the cashier gives you change for a twenty after you hand him a five. When you find a wallet or purse in the parking lot. Not hiding Jews in your attic in Nazi Germany.
In the physical world, Seversky, the consequences of ignoring or obeying your conscience are arbitrary in the sense that they may help or harm you in various ways. Doing good and being a good person often attracts people that would take advantage of you and will often put you in harm’s way. People often get away with doing all sorts of bad things. Lots of crime goes completely unreported, unsolved, and/or unpunished. In some cultures, killing innocent people and serving time for it just increases your standing in the community. There are entire criminal organizations that operate this way.
If there are no necessary consequences, then the outcomes of most behaviors, good or bad, are entirely arbitrary, and there is certainly no reason to put yourself at risk just because your conscience is telling you to do something, and there is no reason not to do a thing that will benefit you just because your conscience insists it is “wrong”.
KF,
I assume that you and I would have fundamentally identical reactions to your horrible hypothetical: horror and shock. That’s obvious, I think. What we disagree about is whether that reaction is the product of ourselves and our backgrounds (my position) or a transcendent external standard (yours, I think). And I don’t see anything in your response that supports the idea that such a reaction must be coming from outside the subjective frame of reference. That is, I think my conscience comes from my biology and my upbringing and my culture and my mind, but not from transcendent space; why is that impossible?
LH:
Please examine the implications of:
In short, ideologically entrenched amorality dressed up in a lab coat and opening the door to naked nihilism. Spreading grand delusion across our whole inner life and exposing the self-referential incoherence, self falsification, intellectual and moral bankruptcy of today’s dominant worldview and cultural agenda, evolutionary materialist scientism, and that of its fellow travellers and enablers.
As, Plato warned 2350 years ago:
It is time to take sober warning.
Our guilt — especially our civilisation’s bloodguilt over the worst holocaust in human history (cumulatively many hundreds of millions of the unborn) — has made us deaf, blind and benumbed.
Paul calls to a higher level of life:
KF
LH,
Please read, Nancy Pearcey’s devastating assessment in Finding Truth:
KF
LH:
Will Hawthorne is also relevant:
KF
Learned Hand said;
The point isn’t about proving or demonstrating that the conscience is a sensory capacity that gets information from an exterior, objective source. Nobody here is trying to prove that is the actual state of affairs.
The point is about taking the two perspectives, assuming they are true, and following them to their logical conclusions – discerning what they must logically imply and result in. Then we ask the question: how do people actually behave? Do they behave as if one is true, or if the other is true? Do people who claim morality is subjective acctually behave as if it is subjective?
The argument isn’t that moral subjectivists/relativists do not behave morally; but rather that their moral behavior, their moral judgements and acting according to moral responsibilities are logically irreconcilable with their concept of what morality is.
I made this case in more detail here in a previous OP.
It’s certainly possible that your morality comes from your evolutionary biology and upbrining and culture. But that’s not the point; the point is, if so, what does that necessarily mean about the world that we live in, and what does that mean about you and your own moral behavior/justificaitons/views?
First, it means that morality is nothing more than a personal preference or proclivity, even if deeply felt. It means that what factually makes a thing moral (or immoral) is simply how you personally respond to it. If a Nazi considers gassing Jews moral, it is as factually moral an act as hiding Jews from Nazis in your attic.
What point is there, then, in using the term “moral”? There is only “what you feel comfortable doing” vs “what someone else feels comfortable doing”. You can’t even call what they are doing “immoral” because it’s not available under your worldview of what morality is (see the post I referred to).
You might have intellectually convinced yourself that morality is what you have described, but you cannot act as if that belief is true unless you are a sociopath.
Looks like someone is trying an account hack — typical.
KF, I don’t see where, if anywhere, you’re supporting the idea that we can show that our consciences are guided by an objective, transcendent power. You seem to have dipped into a library of talking points that are not quite on point.
Nancy Pearcey’s argument is silly. She seems to assume that the assertion that our minds were shaped by and for natural selection, rather than truth, means that the scientists think our minds cannot ascertain truth. If that is their argument, I certainly disagree with it–but I don’t think it is. I think, rather, that they are saying that we are deceivable beings, and our vulnerability to misunderstanding and self-deceit is shaped partly by our biological history.
I think the underlying point is uncontroversial, up to a point: we’d all agree, probably, that human beings are flawed and vulnerable to self-deceit and misunderstanding. But that point is the point at which objectivists assert that we can certainly ascertain an objective standard. At that point suddenly it seems not to matter so much that we’re flawed and often misunderstand things–the feelings, which would normally be understood as the most subjective of things, are suddenly evidence of a transcendent objective guideline. One that, in almost every case, just so happens to agree with the cultural and personal biases of the subjective observer. Curious, that.
If a Nazi considers gassing Jews moral, it is as factually moral an act as hiding Jews from Nazis in your attic.
WJM, you don’t seem to recall what it was to be a subjectivist. You’re falling into the same error that Barry Arrington and StephenB make again and again and again (calling us liars and idiots when we point it out, without ever really engaging it). I am a subjectivist, not an objectivist. So when you attempt to criticize my beliefs by saying that they make an evil act “as factually moral an act as” a good act, it is an incoherent statement. You are assuming an objective standard, which I do not believe exists.
To say that something “is moral” under subjectivism, you must have a subject to do the believing. When we add that to your formulation, it falls apart. The Nazi considers his act moral? Sure, but objectivists and subjectivists alike can agree that Nazis don’t believe it’s wrong to be a Nazi. I consider his act to be moral? I obviously don’t; I condemn it.
You may mean that the Nazi considers his actions moral and I consider hiding Jews to be moral, and those two perspectives are equivalent under subjectivism. But again, in subjectivism, that assessment needs a believer: who believes the two positions are equivalent? No one that I’ve ever met or heard of. Certainly not me. I don’t believe that hiding Jews and exterminating them are equivalent acts; I judge them according to my subjective standards and find one immoral, the other moral.
Nor does my assessment that genocide is evil make me an objectivist, even though it is an absolutist statement. Subjectivism only means that I acknowledge that the Nazi disagrees with my assessment, and that I don’t believe there is an accessible, transcendent standard that will resolve the dispute. If there is anyone taking the more radical approach to subjectivism—that if someone believes an action is moral, it’s impossible to criticize or moral from a perspective other than the actor’s—I’ve never encountered it. Have you? Can you show us?
LH: I am not taking your rhetorical bait at this point. I am instead showing that the underlying worldview — evolutionary materialism and/or its fellow travellers — that creates a sense of plausibility for the notion that conscience is a delusion, is fatally self-refuting and morally as well as intellectually bankrupt. Undermine the foundation and the wall collapses like the wall at a school in Dominica this week swept away by Erika. The foundation is gone, the wall cannot stand and falls of its own weight. KF
PS: It is self-evident that we are morally governed and have no more reason to dismiss that than that we live in a real world that we perceive with our senses and understand with our intellectual faculties, INCLUDING our moral faculties.
I am instead showing that the underlying worldview — evolutionary materialism and/or its fellow travellers — that creates a sense of plausibility for the notion that conscience is a delusion, is fatally self-refuting
That’s what I don’t see anywhere in what you’ve written. How is it self-refuting? The closest I see in what you wrote is the Pearcey excerpt, but as I explained, I find it quite hopeless. It assumes a caricature of the argument it purports to refute. (Unless, of course, there really are people who believe that humans can’t perceive any truths. It’s a big planet, there probably are. I do disagree with that position.)
It is self-evident that we are morally governed
Has anyone claimed otherwise? I think instead that other people have tried repeatedly to help you and others understand that subjectivists also are morally governed; we simply don’t think that the standards which govern us come from an external, transcendent source.
(ETA – I mean that we agree that we’re morally governed, not that it’s necessarily “self evident.”)
LH, now you are in blatant denial of evident facts and linked implications. What do Ruse and Wilson DIRECTLY state about ethics and illusion, on evolutionary Materialism? Dawkins? Provine? Let us hear from you how you suggest that deliverances of conscience are essentially subjective and do not fall under the implications Hawthorne, Plato and Pearcey draw out? “I don’t see nutten” when it is actually bolded right in front of your eyes [ cf 48 – 50 here on: http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-577868 ], does not cut it — except to imply that you have no answer and are denying what you cannot squarely face and address. KF
F/N – FYI: More on the self-referential absurdities of evolutionary materialism, here on, at 101 level: http://iose-gen.blogspot.com/2.....ml#slf_ref KF
LH:
Finally, clarity from LH. “I don’t prefer Holocausts but my preference in that respect is not superior in any way to the preference of those who do prefer Holocausts.”
Madness. Evil madness. Thank you for the clarity though LH.
F/N2: As a starter on self-evident moral truths, an unfortunately real world case: it is self-evidently wrong and evil to kidnap, bind, gag, sexually assault and murder a child that was walking home from school. This concrete case serves as a yardstick, let us see how subjectivists measure up to it. KF
DK,
Calling yourself a moral subjectivist, which means that you consider morality subjective to the individual observer/actor, necessarily means that the morality of a thing lies only in the mind of the individual committing or observing the act.
The problem with your response above is, the subjectivist cannot say that an act is immoral for another person to commit, because the moral relationship is subjective and “observing” and “participating” are two entirely different animals which you are conflating.
You cannot judge the morality of another person’s behavior; you can only judge if it would be right or wrong for you to commit that behavior. Thus, when you observe another person doing someting you find immoral, as a logically consistent moral subjectivist, you cannot say it is immoral for that person to commit the act. You can say it might be wrong for you to watch it; or wrong for you to do that act; but only that person can say if it is good or evil for him to commit the act.
Since you’re not the other person, you don’t know whether or not it is moral for them.
If you were a logically consistent moral subjectivist, you can only say what would be immoral for you, not for anyone else. You are in logical contradiction with your premise to say something like “gassing the Jews is wrong”; all you have access to say is “gassing the Jews would be wrong for me to do.”
You’re trying to have your subjective moral cake and eat it,, too. As I pointed out in that other OP I linked to, you don’t get to act as if your personal, subjective morality is binding on others and not get called out the inconsistency.
Let’s say you really dislike peaches – so much so that the taste makes you vomit and the sight of them makes you queasy. If someone in a restaurant started eating a slice of peach pie, would you go knock the fork out of his hand and throw the pie into the trash?
Of course not, because that is not how we behave with respect to commodities we believe are entirely subjective. No matter how much we dislike peaches, we respect that other person’s personal right to eat peach pie because we know that person may love peaches. We do not act as though our personal predilections are binding on others when we believe them to be entirely subjective.
What does it mean for you to say that the Nazi “shouldn’t” gas the Jews? It means the same thing, under moral subjectivism, to say that the Nazi shouldn’t eat the peach pie. Would you stop the Nazi from eating a peach pie because you personally find eating peaches revolting? Of course not. What then gives you the right, the authority, the motivation to intervene and force the Nazi to stop gassing Jews?
These may seem like widely disparate examples, but if you’re going to assert the position that morality is subjective, then morality and moral behavior must be guided by the same principles as any other commodity we consider matters of subjective predilection and preference, no matter how strongly we feel about them.
Finally, clarity from LH. “I don’t prefer Holocausts but my preference in that respect is not superior in any way to the preference of those who do prefer Holocausts.”
Madness. Evil madness. Thank you for the clarity though LH.
No. Again and again and again you read what someone writes, and then rewrite it to say what you wish they had said in order to justify your disgust. But I didn’t write that. I have, in fact, repeatedly clarified that my standard is superior to that of Nazis. I can assess the Nazi’s moral code just as easily as I can assess his actions. I use subjective standards to do so, but the result doesn’t change: my beliefs are superior to his.
You’re making the same error over and over again: if there’s no objective standard, LH and the Nazi must be on the same plane. But that’s assuming an objective standard! If you’re looking at morality from an external perspective, you’re assuming a kind of objectivism. I’m a subjectivist, not an objectivist. There’s no neutral assessment of standards. I can’t assess anyone else’s morality by any standard but my own, which very much condemns the Nazi. There’s no neutral equivalence.
Again, you can try to understand this by asking, “to whom?” You write above, “my preference in that respect is not superior in any way to the preference of those who do prefer Holocausts.” To whom? Who would believe this? I don’t see an equivalence: I prefer my standard. He doesn’t see an equivalence: he prefers his own standard. Onlookers apply their own standards, and if they see an equivalence, it’s due to their subjective beliefs. There’s no neutral plane on which say, “these two perspectives are inherently equal.”
You may not agree with that position, but you clearly don’t understand it if you can’t articulate it in a way that doesn’t presume objectivism.
You cannot judge the morality of another person’s behavior; you can only judge if it would be right or wrong for you to commit that behavior.
This assertion underlies much of your writing. Why do you think it’s true? Is this a self-evident thing that can’t be explained?
LH @ 54:
LH @ 62:
It would be amusing to watch a materialist squirm in their incoherence if they were not so dangerous.
LH:
On the contrary, a self evident truth cannot be denied without patent absurdity.
Try to deny that error exists or that we are conscious and self aware or that 2 + 3 = 5 or that as a race we are aware of conscience without at once descending into absurdity.
And, a very concrete case has been put on the table, which it is noteworthy that you studiously dance around. From 60 . . . and it has been on the table any number of times previously:
That speaks volumes.
KF
KF @ 65:
LH is dodging you, so I will answer for him based on his prior responses.
I am sure that LH does not personally prefer to kidnap, bind, gag, sexually assault and murder a child that was walking home from school.
I am also sure that he will say that he does not believe there is an accessible, transcendent standard that will resolve the difference between him and someone who does prefer to perform those acts.
There you have it. LH has his preferences. The killer has his preferences. And LH can say nothing other than that he subjectively believes his preferences are superior – i.e., that he prefers his preferences.
Lh isn’t dodging, but taxiing. If the flight had wifi I might be able to respond in a bit, otherwise tonight or tomorrow.
KF, parades of horribles don’t normally do much to clarify disagreements, but this may be an exception. Are you asking me how I react to the awful scenario you describe? With revulsion. I feel strongly that the acts you describe are evil. I can only judge them as such from within my own head, of course; I cannot reliably identify an external, objective, transcendent metric that will condemn the villain for me. I have to do it myself.
I think that actions matter more than sentiments, and here is where subjectivists and objectivists converge. What would we do about it? We’d act to stop the crime. Why? Because we think it’s wrong. Why do we think it’s wrong? Generally the subjectivists think that it’s because we’re raised, evolved, and conditioned to value people other than ourselves. Generally the objectivists think it’s because we’re all governed by an external standard that can be reliably accessed to a greater or lesser extent. But both sides seem to contain both good people and bad, and more of the former.
Learned Hand @68
evil?
What’s that?
Learned Hand @68
What does “good people” mean?
KF
Has your interlocutor responded to your question @35 yet?
LH,
I notice your carefully chosen words. You speak of your preception that the case is evil, then duck away from having any grounding beyond perception.
That speaks loud volumes, and rings louder yet alarm bells.
What I will note for the moment is that your perception is plainly that we are under moral government, and that your onward remarks strongly indicate that you cannot deny the sort of conclusion that Ruse, Wilson et al draw from evolutionary materialist premises.
But that puts you in a very specific corner, as our perceptions and judgements are deeply intertwined with our cognitive, rational faculties and so our ability to be rational.
The sort of delusion Ruse et al let loose does not have firewalls, in short.
On their premises, grand delusion runs rampant through what we perceive as reasoning and though they likely do not acknowledge it, the whole project of rationality collapses like that Dominican school wall undermined by Erica’s flood waters.
Patent absurdity, for rational we must be.
Provine goes further yet, in denying responsible freedom, as that means we cannot choose to follow a logic-chain, we are playthings of our genetic and psychosocial programming such that what we imagine is choice is in reality blind mechanical interactions and/or random noise.
In short, if we are rational, our sense that we are under moral government is inextricably part of that rationality, on pain of patent absurdity.
And that means we have to take very seriously the general perception of humanity that collectively rights, duties and justice, etc — what we refer to as OUGHT — stand as real and binding.
Which points straight to where ever so many in our day are desperate not to go: the world-root IS that grounds OUGHT.
So desperate, that they cling to absurdities rather than go there.
But then, Robert L. Kocher has taken the sad measure of our time:
Professing itself to be oh so wise erudite and brilliant, that is where our civilisation has ended up.
Utter delusional absurdity that now undermines rationality itself.
And that descent into the irrational is eventually going to create such anarchic chaos that the door will be opened to the strong man political messiah who promises to restore order; of course, at the price of freedom.
Those are the matches we are irresponsibly playing with.
That, is what we have to face up to.
KF
Dionisio, nope, Seversky is elsewhere it seems. KF
LH:
In my experience liberals invariable have a naive whiggish view of human nature. Indeed, most of the problems with their philosophy can be traced to that very naivete.
BA, I am on public record here at UD that political-legal systems and communities tend to slide into oligarchy or autocracy, and linked unaccountable power to effectively rule by decree, discarding the force of cumulative wisdom on law and justice. In nominally democratic polities this tends to be masked, and pretending to speak for the marginalised while bullying away is a favourite tactic. A limited govt, constitutional democracy of republican or parliamentary form is feasible but has to be actively defended at all times in the face of determined agendas. Those who pretend to be a part of a grand inevitable progress only retarded from delivering utopia by those right wing theocrats and fascists have missed the mark by a mile and need to understand the implications of the profound undermining of the perceived credibility of morality and the breakdown of respect for the right to life as well as human dignity and moral worth that are at the pivot of this thread. We are fundamentally equal and he who dehumanises one class by clever tactics, dehumanises all in the end. KF
KF @ 72:
Thank you for the link to On the Nature of Debate, Denial and Refutation. I just printed it and read it. Powerful. I needed that.
I do not have the stamina for dealing with irrational evil (and that is what we deal with here at UD, day in; day out) that you and SB have. Kocher’s last sentence rings loudly with me: “What this means is that anyone representing sanity or seeking to hold on to their sanity today must possess emotional ruggedness.”
DK said to Murray:
So, what are the “consequences” for you, William J Murray, if you violate that which you have decided to be accountable for, if not punishment by a god.
You keep referring to “consequences” without stipulating them. And you have not justified your claim that Seversky is not accountable for his ethical lapses, while you, being the morally superior person, are accountable.
DK, Consequence no 1 is obvious: the utter ruin of one’s soul, warping oneself into something ugly and shameful, so shameful that one can only look oneself in the mirror by becoming numb and shameless, in a strange way, less than human. Which, will sooner or later come out in some bizarre manifestation of displaced shame and degradation or other — and a community that is dominated by the utterly warped is hellish. The judgement of consequences is slow but terrible to behold. KF
That applies regardless if morality is objective or subjective.
LH said:
I explained why and gave an example. It is the nature of subjective predilections and commodities vs things we assume or believe to be objective in nature. It is what distinguishes our behavior given a commodity taken to be a subjective predilection vs our behavior given a commodity assumed to be objective in nature.
It is why if you don’t like peaches, you will not attempt to ban others from eating peaches; but if you know a peach has been poisoned with something that you know can kill a person, you will slap it out of someone’s hand about to unwittingly take a bite.
“Deadly poisonous to humans” is an objective commodity that empowers us to intervene in the behavior of other people. “I hate the flavor or peaches” is a subjective predilection that does not authorize to slap peaches out of the hands of people attempting to take a bite.
Under moral subjectivism, all you can ever be doing is simply coercing other people to do what you personally prefer; you have no more fundamental principle than that available. Moral subjctivism logically, necessarily boils down to the principles “because I say so, because I can”, or more succinctly, “might makes right”.
Yet, we all recognize that a morality that is based on the idea that one is simply forcing their subjective predilections on others is wrong. If I force you to not eat a peach, and the principle is nothing more than “because I hate peaches”, we recognize that as an immoral justification for interfering in the freedom of another to live his/her life.
If you can’t see that, I can’t help you. Several people here have pointed the red pen out to you, but you simply cannot see it because you have made a choice not to. Until you are truly open to seeing the problem with moral subjectivism – until you choose to see the problem – nobody here can successfully show you.
Dionisio,
I’ve never sat down and tried to rigorously define “evil” before. I think I use it the way most people do, to mean essentially “very very very bad.” I don’t think I could identify a bright line between merely “morally wrong” and “evil.” I know it when I see it, I suppose. How do you define “evil”?
KF,
I don’t know what to tell you other than that I’m not Provine or Ruse. I’m just me. And my perceptions, flawed as they are, are my only access to the outside world. I don’t see how even self-proclaimed objectivists get around that.
In my experience liberals invariable have a naive whiggish view of human nature. Indeed, most of the problems with their philosophy can be traced to that very naivete.
You do seem to have a highly developed instinct for finding the contemptible in every single person who disagrees with you. Given the uniformity of that contempt, it’s almost as if disagreeing with you is all it really takes.
Also, I’ve never encountered the term “whiggish” before. (The party, but not the adjective.) Thank you!
Under moral subjectivism, all you can ever be doing is simply coercing other people to do what you personally prefer; you have no more fundamental principle than that available. Moral subjctivism logically, necessarily boils down to the principles “because I say so, because I can”, or more succinctly, “might makes right”.
But that is not what you wrote earlier:
You cannot judge the morality of another person’s behavior; you can only judge if it would be right or wrong for you to commit that behavior.
Whether or not I act on my disapproval of another person’s actions, I can still disapprove of them. I think it is wrong to steal; I see X steal; I judge that X has acted wrongly. X’s opinion about her own conduct doesn’t affect my own opinion, nor do I need to access an objective standard to say, “X’s conduct is incompatible with my values.”
Nor, of course, do I concur that “might makes right.” Might, as I’ve said before, only makes things possible. It can conform someone else’s behavior to match your moral standards, but it does not create or justify such standards. It’s the ability to compel, not the underlying moral judgment, that boils down to “because I say so, because I can.” And that’s true of objectivists as well: they can only compel if they have the power to compel.
Yet, we all recognize that a morality that is based on the idea that one is simply forcing their subjective predilections on others is wrong. If I force you to not eat a peach, and the principle is nothing more than “because I hate peaches”, we recognize that as an immoral justification for interfering in the freedom of another to live his/her life.
Neither does this support the idea that subjectivists cannot judge others. You’re simply weighing values and picking referents to drive a rhetorically convenient outcome: the freedom of another vs. your hatred of peaches. Let’s substitute “murder” for “peaches.” X wants to commit murder; I think murder is wrong, so I act to stop him. Is that immoral? I’m weighing one value (my regard for life) against another (my regard for X’s autonomy). Note that the judgment of X and the decision to take action are entirely separate; you seem to be conflating them. I judge X as immoral for his action, and I judge that I can stop that action morally because the value of the life he wants to take outweighs the value of his autonomy. And these are subjective judgments; I do not refer to either an external standard or X’s standard in either decision.
If you can’t see that, I can’t help you. Several people here have pointed the red pen out to you, but you simply cannot see it because you have made a choice not to. Until you are truly open to seeing the problem with moral subjectivism – until you choose to see the problem – nobody here can successfully show you.
Mmm hmm. It’s always the other guy who just can’t see the obvious truth. Funny how that is.
LH said:
That statement is logically not reconcilable with your premise of subjective morality.
That statement is logically not reconcilable with your premise of subjective morality.
However, it appears you are incapable of recognizing your own irrational beliefs, even when they are pointed out.
DK said;
I answered this in #25.
Stipulating the consequences is entirely irrelevant to the point that such necessary consequences must exist or else there’s no reason to give a crap if something is moral or not, and it is irrelevant to the fact that all sane people act as if there are necessary moral consequences to our behaviors.
I don’t consider myself morally superior to anyone here. I do consider myself better at employing logic than you and a few others here.
In my system, if I do an immoral thing, it is my view that the negative consequences to me are inevitable and inescapable. Thus, I am accountable for everything I do. Who or what is Seversky “accountable” to? In what way is he “accountable”? If he commits an immoral act, so what?
WJM, there is no number of repetitions of “you are not allowed to believe what you say you believe” or “you just think might makes right” that will substitute for an actual argument.
LH @ 83:
Good Heavens no man. Context is critical. You say Bonds is the best hitter ever; I say Ruth. Who really cares? I concede your perfect good faith in your position.
I say killing little boys and girls, chopping them into pieces, and selling the pieces like meat is evil. You say it is not. Then you are either unspeakably evil or insane or both, and I hold you in contempt, because you deserve to be held in contempt. See the difference?
BTW, if someone knew about the camps in 1943 and refused to speak out against them, some of the blood would be on their hands.
Look down at your hands right now LH. The blood of those little boys and girls cries out. Are you so deaf that you are unable to hear it?
LH, (et al):
I see you:
First, this is a classic example of Kant’s error of the ugly gulch between the inner world of the sensed perceived and conceived and the outer one of things in themselves.
It was long since corrected on the record by F H Bradley in the 1890’s, when in his Appearance and Reality, he summed up that the one who imagines that he cannot know about the external world, bridging the ugly gulch, is directly implying that he knows a great amount regarding that external world, i.e. its alleged un-knowability due to the claimed ugly gulch. That is, he is implicitly contradicting himself, and his objection falls to the ground.
Courtesy Wikisource, I cite:
In short, to claim to know the existence of an ugly gulch between the inner world of appearances and reflections, and the outer one of things in themselves, is to directly imply a huge and dogmatic knowledge claim about that outer reality. Thus, to contradict oneself.
The reasonable man, conscious that error exists is both undeniably true and itself therefore a major point of knowledge about the external world, would then have a humbled, balanced view that is aware of both the possibilities of error and of apprehending the truth. Then, he would sense a duty of care to seek and serve the truth — yet another point where ought and is must be bridged — and will go forth and so seek and serve, even while being open to correction of errors discovered along the way.
In short, you inadvertently underscore my key point that there is and can be no firewall between the moral domain of perceptions and linked (often implicit) thought, and general perceptions and thought about our common world.
To try to deny the one or the other any objective reference or hope of such, then spreads grand delusion across our whole inner life and ends in self referential incoherence.
Self-refuting, self-falsifying error and absurdity in short.
So, the whole argument against the objectivity of morality beyond subjectivism, relativism and might/manipulation making ‘right,’ falls to the ground.
There is no more reason to doubt the general accuracy of our core moral perceptions of and linked, principled reasoned thought about moral matters than there is to do the same about physical ones.
And if you reject the issue of the significance of self referential incoherence, there is little hope for you, save to tell you that you have inadvertently underscored here, the significance of the issue of self-evident truth, truth understood to be so by reasonably sane and experienced individuals, once they see what is being said, and which cannot be denied save on pain of patent self-contradictory or similar absurdity.
I cite here, WJM on the need to start from first, even ABC, steps of right reason and first principles thereof:
It makes no sense to try to save a favoured ideology of evolutionary materialist scientism dressed up in a lab coat and/or its fellow travellers at the price of burning down the whole house of responsible freedom and rationality in our inner life, our very soul that makes us what we are.
Yet again, we see that there is a loss in trying to gain the whole world, at the cost of one’s own soul.
Second, have you taken time to read the warning from the grave, in the martyr-blood bought words of the White Rose movement?
Let me cite two key clips:
Cf here for their pamphlets: http://www.historyisaweapon.co.....erose.html
The on the ground facts of the past century (which only a mad man would deny, especially on grounds as patently erroneous as the Kantian ugly gulch . . . ) suffice to point out the fallacies and dangers of moral hyperskepticism, subjectivism, relativism, amorality and opening the door to nihilism.
The self referential incoherence induced by trying to reduce morality and conscience to subjective perception pretending to be objectively binding moral government has been laid out. With clear statements from major evolutionary materialist thinkers and key critics ranging back to Plato to show the obvious, that a world of purely material atoms, molecules and particles interacting blindly under forces of chance and necessity would be an IS that has no basis for OUGHT beyond subjectivism, relativism and might/manipulation makes ‘right.’
Your answer (having first tried and failed at the gambit of oh you have not shown)?
Oh, I am not Provine or Ruse.
Sorry, that does not cut it.
Ruse, Dawkins and Provine et al are not merely giving their personal idiosyncratic views, they are outlining consequences of a worldview that are all too evident all around us. Consequences that — elsewhere where the sort of reply now being given is unlikely — are widely acknowledged, are routinely taught in the classroom, are even trumpeted triumphantly on august occasions from strategic platforms such as U Tenn on Darwin day (the same U Tenn that is now trying to impose how dare you against using he or she etc . . . , in the same state of the Scopes Trial of 1925).
So, let me cite Provine in his keynote again, on what you must know is a dominant view on morality based on the power of lab coat clad evolutionary materialist scientism ideology imposed on science, institutions and education in the false name of being science:
Of course, Provine fails or refuses to understand or acknowledge that hoi polloi understand instinctively that if we are not responsibly free, our experience of being rational beings in a shared common objective world collapses in self-refuting incoherence.
So, again, the fact that we find ourselves to be responsibly free, morally governed, sometimes rational beings in a shared, common world, stands as a strong cluster of signs pointing to a world that is real, is sufficiently accurately perceived for us to act responsibly into it, and in which we are responsibly free beings.
Thence, we ought to address the foundations of such a world.
Those foundations must lie in a world-root IS that can adequately ground OUGHT.
Which is a way of saying that the only place where OUGHT can be grounded is in the source of reality, and that source must be something that exists objectively, in reality not just imagination.
As the OP points out, were there ever utter non-being, as nothing has no causal power, such would forever obtain. So, there is a world-root IS that is unconditioned and ontologically necessary.
An examination of possible chains of cause going back to such, implies infinite regress, circular cause or else a true finitely remote terminus in an ultimate, necessary being.
The challenge of descent from minus infinity to get to zero:
. . . and the similar challenge of circular, self-origin where something must exist in order to exert causal influence, point us to the only viable cluster: finitely remote necessary being.
In short, once a world now is, something unconditioned and necessary (thus, btw without beginning or possibility of end) always was, is and is to come.
As I went on in the OP and the underlying comment in a previous thread:
That is, the joint ontological-moral issues lurking in the common experience of being responsibly free, self-aware, reasoning creatures in a shared world, point to an eternal, necessary, maximally great and thus inherently good being as Creator, Lord and Supreme Judge.
Where, reasoning, reasonable access tot he external world and the inner world complete with conscience and its perception of moral law that governs us, cannot be coherently separated. On pain of setting grand delusion loose in our inner world, gobbling up not only morality but mind and responsible freedom with it.
So, we are now responsible to reflect on these clues and the underlying world-root reality they point to.
In that, it may be useful to also reflect on the sign of “the man ordained” highlighted by Paul of Tarsus c 50 AD when he spoke with the Athenian elites at Mars Hill; backed up by the unbreakable testimony of the 500.
In so doing, we are back again at the point underscored by Locke by citing Hooker on how we can come to epistemologically access the framework of core laws written on our heart through perceiving our own moral worth and duties owed to us, then recognising that others who are of equal nature and worth are also owed the same essential duties:
It is high time for fresh, better-advised, utterly reformed thought.
KF
LH said:
LH, this response fully demonstrates that you do not comprehend the nature of the argument at all. Just because you can believe two things doesn’t mean that those two things are logically reconcilable with each other. People hold irrational beliefs all the time. If your premise is moral subjectivism, then the belief that “X is wrong” or “Joe is wrong for doing X” are simply not logically reconcilable statements due to the nature of subjective morality.
Apparently, you think that because something is subjective, it allows you to say and believe whatever you want and it still be logically reconcilable with “subjectivity”. Saying it’s wrong for all people everywhere to do X regardless of what they think about it (which is what “X is immoral” means, and what “Joe is immoral for doing X logically extrapolates into), is objective morality regardless of your desire to have them available to you as a moral subjectivist. Every time you say “X is immoral”, or “it is immoral for Joe to do X” (without even asking Joe), you have logically, necessarily implied moral objecitivism even though you are oblivious to that fact and believe otherwise.
You don’t get to claim morality is subjective in nature on one hand, and then on the other hand act like it is objective and make statements that require it to be objective without the logically irreconcilable nature of those statements being called out. You’re trying to have it both ways.
I’m sure you don’t believe in “might makes right”; I’m sure you think “might makes right” is immoral in principle. I’m also sure that you are oblivious to the fact that moral subjectivism necessarily results, logically, in “might makes right” (“because I say so, because I can”) morality.
Just because you and others are oblivious to the logical ramifications of your premise of moral subjectivity doesn’t mean they don’t exist or are not valid. Just because you can believe in logically irreconcilable things doesn’t mean that they aren’t irrational. People believe irrational things all the time. People are oblivious to the rational consequences of their beliefs all the time.
I don’t for a minute doubt that you actually believe what you are saying; I and others are pointing out that those beliefs cannot be reconciled with each other.
The claim that “morality is subjective” means something. It has necessary entailments and exclusions or else it doesn’t mean anything. One of tne necessary entailments of “subjective morality” is that acts in and of themselves are morally neutral – they are just brute facts. Gassing Jews, under moral subjectivism, only acquires moral status in the mind of each individual.
The statement “Gassing Jews is immoral” cannot be reconciled with moral subjectivism because it makes a claim that the act itself is immoral (meaning, regardless of who does it and what is in their mind). This is excluded by what “subjective morality” means. The only moral statement logically extractable under moral subjectivism is “Gassing Jews is immoral for me“.
Under moral subjectivism, statements about “wrongness” are personal perspectives and point only to personal predilections. Saying it is wrong for Joe to do X is like saying “Joe doesn’t like to eat peaches.” You have no logical access to make such a claim unless Joe informs you of his predilections. “Joe doesn’t like to eat peaches” is the in-principle, moral subjectivism equivalent of “Joe doesn’t like to gas Jews” – which would mean that for Joe, he doesn’t like peaches and he finds gassing Jews immoral. As a subjectivist, you cannot make fact claims about Joe’s predilections unless Joe has told you what they are.
Your statements are blatantly irrational and irreconcilable with your premise. What’s more is that you appear to be oblivious to the actual nature of the debate. Nobody is claiming that you cannot believe what you believe, but rather that what you believe and say is logically incompatible with your premise. Nobody is claiming that you accept “might makes right” as your moral premise, but rather that it is the necessary logical ramification of your premise of moral subjectivism – you are just oblivious to that logic.
WJM:
Very well said:
The ability to reason in some semblance of a logical way, is part of what is being undermined by our civilisation’s march of folly.
KF
Learned Hand @81
“very very very bad” ?
What does “bad” mean?
Dionisio, sorry, I thought you were asking a more basic question. Apparently you mean something like, “how do you form your morals without an objective guide”? I think straightforward questions are much more effective than trying to be clever; faster, anyway.
On the surface, I feel my morals, same as anyone else. I see something like a news report of a murder and I feel revulsion, disapproval, etc. Or I see someone giving generously and I feel that it’s a good thing.
So where do those feelings come from? I don’t see or feel an objective source for them; my primary objection to the existence of such a source is that it is apparently impossible to objectively determine its existence. People disagree about it and cannot use it to resolve those disagreements. So even if such an objective source exists, if it’s inaccessible to us, it might as well not exist.
I think instead that my morals come from my biology, my upbringing, my culture, and my peer groups. I’m more interested in communication and psychology than biology, generally, so I’m probably a little biased in that direction. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that throughout history, virtually all the people who claimed to have access to an objective source of morality just happened to find that the objective source agreed with the morals of their culture or peers.
Those morals are tractable, to an extent. I can (like everyone else) see a new situation and try to figure out how to assess its morality. If someone invented a technology that doubled human lifespan, but cost a hundred million dollars, would it be moral to use? I’d have to think about it, and I think–I hope–I’d use my reason as applied to my moral principles. I know however that I, like everyone else, would be heavily influenced by what my peer groups believe. Dan Kahan at Yale has done some really interesting research on this, in the Cultural Cognition project.
And I think my morals are intractable, to a certain extent. I don’t think I could eradicate my belief that freedom and happiness are good things. I could be wrong about that, I suppose, I’ve never tested it.
Saying it’s wrong for all people everywhere to do X regardless of what they think about it (which is what “X is immoral” means, and what “Joe is immoral for doing X logically extrapolates into), is objective morality regardless of your desire to have them available to you as a moral subjectivist.
As you say, this demonstrates that you truly do not understand what you’re assessing. You are saying that a belief is objective if it is applied to everyone; that is not what the word “objective” generally means. I say a belief is objective if it comes from a source other than the believer. If I say that all people must wear blue shirts, or must be generous to the poor, or must not murder, it is subjective if the only source for those standards lies in my subjective frame of reference. (Or, as people generally use the term, in the material and human world.)
What I haven’t heard you articulate is any serious argument for why a belief that has no objective referent is objective merely because it applies to people other than myself. You assert it plenty, but if you’ve attempted to explain why, that explanation is utterly opaque to the rest of us.
The communication failure might be mine. But I suspect that it lies at least partly in your blithe refusal to consider any perspective other than your own. You keep saying that subjectivism results in “might makes right,” for example, without ever addressing the obvious (and repeatedly made) point that no subjectivist actually sets their moral compass according to the power balance in the world. Might merely makes possible, not morally good, to subjectivists. And it makes possible to objectivists and subjectivists alike. But rather than give up the talking point, you repeat it again and again. And assert that anyone who doesn’t agree with you must be lying or incompetent. But what if you’re just wrong? Humans are fallible, after all. Wouldn’t you be able to show the chain of “might making right” – show how it would actually work from a subjectivist position – if that idea made sense?
One of tne necessary entailments of “subjective morality” is that acts in and of themselves are morally neutral – they are just brute facts.
Another example of your total failure to even attempt to understand the subjectivist position. Subjectivists are subjectivists. To say that acts are “morally neutral” assumes an objective perspective, which subjectivists don’t hold. So how can the subjectivist position assume what the subjectivist position believes doesn’t exist? If you’re articulating a subjectivist perspective, you should be able to say, “to whom.” And I think I’ve asked you this question before, and I think you’ve dodged it in favor of blithe assertions that you’re just plain right and people who disagree with you are too stupid to see it. But if that’s true, why can’t you answer the question?
To whom, WJM? What subjectivist believes that all moral actions are inherently neutral? All actual subjectivists apply their subjective standards to judge acts. None start from the position that all actions are neutral.
If your understanding of subjectivism (a) assumes the existence of the very thing that subjectivism denies, and (b) doesn’t fit the actual practice of any actual subjectivist, then why is your conclusion that you’re right and all subjectivists are wrong? You just don’t understand the perspective.
…………………………Could you?
…………………………Is “the way most people do” the right way?
…………………………BTW, would “very very” or just “very” or no “very” at all make a difference in this case?
…………………………What does “morally wrong” mean?
…………………………Really? How?
…………………………I lack the moral authority to define such a fundamental concept.
BTW, would you mind answering the question @70? Thanks.
LH said;
Then you are then applying your personal morality as if it were an objective morality (as if it referred to an external, objective standard that applies to all humans whether they agree or not). IOW, you are attempting to avoid the logical consequences of what “moral subjectivism” means by making assertions which are logically unavailable to the premise and then simply saying “it’s my subjective view … that X behavior is wrong for others.”
I’m sure you’re not doing this deliberately. I’m sure you think it is perfectly legitimate to make what is necessarily an objective-referrant claim and couch it within a subjectivist premise. But that is precisely wherein lies the logical flaw in your position which you apparently cannot see.
You don’t get to make objectivist claims (universally applicable rights and wrongs warranting responsibility and justification to interfere in the affairs of others), couch them as “just part of your subjective view”, and not be called out for the contradiction. Saying, “that’s just my subjective view” doesn’t buy you a “get out of logic free” card.
Additionally, ‘its just my subjectivist view” as a principle endorses anyone to behave any way they want and attempt to force their values on other for no justification other than “it’s just my subjective view.” Your principle of moral subjectivism necessarily endorses personal preference and subjective views as legitimate authorizations for interfering in the lives of others and coercing those views on them. This means that you have the right to attempt to coerce others into behavior you’d prefer so for no principled reason other than because you say so, because it is your subjective view, and that your right to do so is made manifest by your capacity (might) to do so … or, might makes right.
LH said:
No, LH. If there is no objective, externally existent arbiter of what is an what is not moral, then acts themselves have no moral content whatsoever. Under moral subjectivism, morality is assigned in the mind of the individual. Morality is not a quality of the physical event itself. If it were, then it would be external to the minds of the invididuals and conscience would be a perceptive capacity.
Exactly my point. Nobody (outside of sociopaths) acts, thinks or argues as if moral subjectivism is true. Not you. Not any sane person. You still don’t get that the argument is not about what any self-described moral subjectivist actually does, or actually thinks, or actually believes; it’s entirely about the logical ramifications that are necessarily drawn from the premise of moral subjectivism.
You’re making my point for me here and you don’t even realize it. If moral subjectivists thought as logically demanded by their premise, they’d agree that the acts in and of themselves are just brute, physical facts with no moral content whatsoever, and that the “morality” of the action lied only in the mind of the individual observers.
Yes, that was a basic question. What exactly you did not understand?
No, that’s not it.
That question meant exactly what it explicitly meant.
Why do you think it meant something else?
That question couldn’t be more straightforward.
What exactly you don’t like about it?
Been a few very busy days since I could get to this thread, so I’m catching up on some old business.
kairosfocus @8
Yes. We’ve done this one before.
I don’t, so what’s next?
Reciprocity is good enough to ground morality. More than sufficient.
This “gap” need not be resolved at the ontological level because such “resolutions” are incoherent (imposing moral obligations on inanimate objects) and unnecessary: moral duties don’t actually bind on things lacking volition, knowledge, foresight, and reason.
Hume’s guillotine was out-of-date before he even wrote it.
I have walked right up to the issue and shown it false. No fallacy on my part has been shown by you. You disagree with me; that’s your right, but that does not equate to a fallacy.
Agreed. But this does not need any basis (“grounding”) beyond reason and the facts of nature.
They must be grounded, but doing so at the “ontological” level is unnecessary, does not serve any purpose, and introduces an incoherence.
You have repeatedly pointed this out, and I have repeatedly reminded you that Crick’s comments have no authority. They are just his opinions—opinions that EVEN YOU don’t agree with. Why should I or anyone else?
@11 to Dionisio;
Thanks for answering Dionisio’s question.
Moral worth and equality come from reason and the facts of nature. Reason and Facts need no further “grounding”; reason and facts are the sufficient grounding of all things.
@21
I don’t need an ontological alternative because none is necessary. I know you very much want that to be a requirement, but it is not. A morality grounded on reason and the facts of nature is as grounded as it needs to be.
You do not have a serious argument on the table for why “root-level” grounding is required. Grounding in reason and the facts of nature is sufficient.
@22
Moral worth and equality come from reason and the facts of nature. Reason and Facts need no further “grounding”; reason and facts are the sufficient grounding of all things.
@23 to Learned Hand;
Agreed. THIS IS EXACTLY MY POINT.
Seeking some “worldview-root” for morality is unnecessary and damaging because it introduces unavoidable incoherencies. Reason and the facts of nature (which you utilized above) are sufficient to ground reciprocity and the morality that is based on it.
@35 you wrote to Seversky;
Of course he is not, but fortunately none of that is necessary. All anyone needs to do is obey the Golden Rule and do no unnecessary Harm to others. That is enough.
sean s.
Dionisio
There are many variations on the Golden Rule. You should google it. It is my claim that the very ubiquity of the GR and its variations makes it a reliable moral guide even for those of us who don’t believe in any deity.
@28 you wrote
I am quite aware of this, however since the Golden Rule has many variations outside of Christianity, many of which were around before the time of Jesus, I am not relying particularly on Christian doctrine, but on an idea that is shared by many religions and cultures.
sean s.
William J Murray @27
If our consciences are giving us information about the state of the objective, external world, it is informing us about the CONSEQUENCES of our acts for ourselves or others. These consequences are not an “unseen force”; perhaps they are a “commodity”; but whatever they are, they are part of the fabric of existence, and our consciences lead us to acknowledge them.
I collapsed two paragraphs into that cut; I agree with both.
TThe observable facts of our physical, mental, and/or spiritual existence which are apparent through our physical senses or our rational abilities are recognized as self-evident truths. But it is self-evident that their “universally-binding” nature is uncertain. Our experiences show many exceptions to some of the facts that bind us; and our rationality has determined why some conditions apply to us and revealed circumstances in which these conditions do not apply to us or would not apply to others. Denying the entire lesson of nature and the fundamental principles of logic is the pathway to absurdity.
This much I agree with. But in that ellipsis you had
Well first: even if morality is purely subjective, that would not make it unimportant, certainly not to everyone.
Second: if there are any “objective” facts in nature that we only know because of our reasoning from the facts of nature, then reasoning from the facts of nature can reveal an equally “objective” morality. ON THAT UNDERSTANDING, even a non-believer can assume morality to be “objective”; objectivity would not require any deity.
Agreed, but as you note, only sanity is required, not deity.
With my preceding comments in mind about the meaning of objectivity, I agree with these three paragraphs. Self-evident moral truths can be recognized and extrapolated from by logic into a coherent moral theory under the recognition of the fallibility of our consciences and reasoning.
Ah no. this introduction of god does not follow from all that preceded it. But I agree that “all you can do is discover and properly understand [morality] as best you can, beginning with self-evidently true moral statements” but this does not require any deity’s involvement.
No. You provided the non-Godly basis yourself: the facts of reason and nature ground morality as well as anything can. The very fact that you introduced references to God a few paragraphs above without any logical basis demonstrates how a deity is just not necessary to proper morality.
sean s.
Note how “whether or not we would phrase the matter that way” sounds strangely similar to “how we would describe what we experience doing”.
Ok. Take the conclusion that we should accept ideas because they are justified in some sense.
Warrant, in a philosophical sense, refers to a proper justification for holding a belief. This is known as the Theory of Justification. There are a number of major and minor theories of justification, but there are also critics of the entire idea of justificationism. Namely, from Critical Rationalists that reject justificationism completely.
Furthermore, a key point of CR is the content of ideas, theories or conclusions are not actually out there for us to induce from observations. Rather, they start out as intuitions or guesses.
Of course? The very idea that some B justifies accepting idea A is the conclusion in question.
Repeat, in that C is actually A?
If we accept A, then we have three options. But, again, that’s what’s in question. However, let’s ignore that for the moment.
Agreed.
However, the idea that questions should be “grounded” is what is in question here. That’s circularity.
To rephrase in terminology that KF used above, I’ve suggested elsewhere that what we end up with is conjecture and criticism, in some form or another, “whether or not we would phrase the matter that way” Specially, what KF calls “first plausibles” are better and more simply explained as one of our conjectured ideas that we currently lack good criticism of. There is no special “basic” and “non-basic” beliefs.
Yet, looking at world views is exactly what I’m doing here. Specially, we can give up the quest for justification. In fact, I would suggest it’s not even desirable compared to the alternative. You’re open to looking at “worldview roots and philosophical issues and approaches”, right?
Except, I’m criticizing empiricism, which is the idea that all knowledge comes to us from the senses or experience. And i’m doing so using philosophical arguments.
But, again, the idea that we “we must find a world-root” is based on conclusion A, which is the thing that is in question. So, we’re getting ahead of ourself.
Yes. it is. The idea that knowledge comes from authoritative sources is not “fresh thinking”.
Dionisio and Learned Hand had an exchange concerning the definition of “evil”.
Here’s mine. Not for the first time on UD either.
Evil is any act with respect to another person which
1. causes or threatens to cause Harm,
2. is Intentional and
3. is Unnecessary.
Harm: any physical injury, financial loss, or impairment of liberty; or a substantial risk of any of these against the express consent of the one harmed or placed at risk.
Intentional: includes premeditation, recklessness, or unreasonable negligence.
Unnecessary: not justified by mitigation or prevention of other, greater harms or injustice; nor justified by the uncoerced knowing, and freely-given consent of the one harmed.
There was a time when I would add at this point that this definition “probably covers more than 80% of genuine evil”. But so far, no one has ever given me an example of some obviously evil act that would escape these rules, so now I will say that these rules cover more than 90% of all genuine evil.
It is a good starting point. I do not claim it is complete. Suggestions will be considered.
sean s.
sean semis @102
Would killing simple ants in the house be evil?
At least it seems to meet all your requirements, doesn’t it?
sean semis @99
What is the oldest known reference to the positive (proactive) formulation of the rule given as a command for us to do?
SS, it is quite clear what you have done and it is in particular clear that you have consistently failed to address world-root level grounding and the bridging of is and ought at that level. And before you try Neurath’s raft or the like, notice, a raft has to be coherent, sufficiently strong and is supported by water and the laws of flotation. In short, the issue has not been displaced by the usual objections raised. Drumbeat repetition of a failure to answer the root issue simply inadvertently underscores that failure. KF
Popperian, warrant speaks to objective grounding of claims. Your attempt to suggest that as some object to just about any claim, it casts the project of properly grounding claims or beliefs into serious doubt, or that the import of a chain A –> B –> C etc, that there is infinite regress, or circularity or a finitely remote ultimate that meets the comparative difficulties test simply shows that you are not seriously operating at the dialectic level. I wonder, have you done say basic geometry or better yet a university Math course? Or something like Physics or Chemistry? The attempt to cast doubt on grounding itself speaks volumes, and not in your favour, your attempt implicitly appeals to grounding . . . question-begging circularity, you gessed it, is an issue of inadequate grounding leading to fallacy. The need for proper grounding is one of those things that can only be denied by falling into patent absurdity. KF
sean semis @99
By “golden rule” do you mean
(1) the ancient Laozi (Chinese) enunciation of the sage’s virtues (unrestricted kindness, faithfulness), or
(2) the ancient negative (passive) formulation, or
(3) the NT gospels (Matthew, Luke) command for us to be positively proactive in relation to others?
Or all of the above?
Or none of the above, something else?
Murray:
What does “people act as if there are necessary moral consequences” tell us about WHAT THOSE CONSEQUENCES ARE? They MUST EXIST, but you think that it’s irrelevant to identify them.
It’s like “objective morality.” You say it exists, but you can’t tell anybody what it is. (Except that you obey it. Because of necessary consequences.)
And you consider persons who question your incoherent views irrational? Immoral? Insane? What?
sean semis @102
person ?
What’s that?
Then you are then applying your personal morality as if it were an objective morality (as if it referred to an external, objective standard that applies to all humans whether they agree or not).
No, there is nothing that logically requires that a belief that applies to all people come from an external, objective source. This is an assumption that you’re making, and haven’t been able to explain or justify. Is it one of those self-evident things?
No, LH. If there is no objective, externally existent arbiter of what is an what is not moral, then acts themselves have no moral content whatsoever. Under moral subjectivism, morality is assigned in the mind of the individual. Morality is not a quality of the physical event itself. If it were, then it would be external to the minds of the invididuals and conscience would be a perceptive capacity.
At no point have I suggested that morality arises from the event itself. This is a strong indication that you aren’t engaging, or even following, the arguments here. That would not even really be subjectivism—again, you have a hard time holding the idea you’re supposedly critiquing in your head. You keep defaulting to talking about objectivism, and criticizing subjectivism for being internally incoherent because it doesn’t adhere to objective beliefs.
The acts don’t need to have a moral content in and of themselves. To a subjectivist, the moral character of an act doesn’t come from the act. It comes from the beliefs of the believer, the perceptions of the perceiver. Which means, yes, Nazis think that the holocaust was good. But not that a Nazi’s belief is on the same plane as anyone else’s—because the existence of such a plane, or any such external judgment, presumes objectivism. The lack of objectivism can’t be an internal logical failing of subjectivism.
Exactly my point. Nobody (outside of sociopaths) acts, thinks or argues as if moral subjectivism is true.
True, you’ve made that point in the past—sorry, I’d forgotten. Ironically it’s the mirror image of my own perception. No one really acts as if objectivism is true. No one tried to stop the holocaust by asking Hitler to sit down and check the objective referent to determine whether his actions were good. Rather they proceeded as if he believed his actions were good and would not be stopped without the application of force. Might makes possible, right?
I’m curious, and this is an aside so obviously feel free to ignore it (or anything else I write). Do you think reverence for Jesus Christ as the son of God is an objective moral value?
sean semis @102
person ?
What definition of person does your rule require?
Can it be the 1930s Nazi concept of person?
Can it be a more general definition that equals ‘person’ to any biologically living being?
Would it be ‘evil’ to dig a large hole in the ground, thus killing grass, ants and earthworms, in order to place a nice pool for the neighborhood recreation?
Aren’t grass, ants and earthworms living creatures too?
What would be acceptable in this case? Why not?
DK, it is very interesting how you keep on drumming out suggestions that moral objectivity is non existent, when there is a very concrete candidate on the table: it is self evidently wrong to kidnap, bind, gag, sexually assault and murder a child walking home from school. As in, we are under a binding obligation not to do this, to stop it if we can, and more — on pain of absurdity on trying to deny such. Now, let us hear your specific answer to a specific case which is unfortunately real world. Evasions, will imply, no you cannot deny the point but for ideological reasons refuse to affirm that yes this is self-evident evil. KF
Dionisio and Learned Hand had an exchange concerning the definition of “evil”.
Here’s mine.
I like it. It seems like it’s missing some dimensionality to me, though; I think of “evil” as a very weighty word. If I flicked my dog’s ear to make her yelp, that would be intentionally hurting her unnecessarily, and evil under your definition. But while I would definitely say such a thing was morally wrong, I’m reluctant to say it would rise to the level of “evil.” But as I said above, I think I’ve always just had an “I know it when I see it” approach to defining “evil,” so it doesn’t mesh very well with your more-thought-out approach.
My question, then, would be whether you think such dimensionality is necessary or important to the definition. I have no idea how it could be added, and suspect it couldn’t be without reverting back to that “I know it when I see it” standard. Which is less than ideal, although I think it’s what almost everyone uses in practice anyway.
(My dog is staring at me as I write this. I feel guilty for even postulating the hypothetical.)
Learned Hand @110
I don’t think that reverence is a moral value.
That reverence is the result of having (genuine) saving faith in the unique redemptive power of Christ’s death and (genuine) faith in the unique life-giving power of Christ’s resurrection. Those two unique events make Christ our Savior and King.
Jesus Christ is the embodiment of the ultimate absolute goodness that any objective moral value should be based on.
A Christian is not a better person. A Christian is a repented sinner forgiven through saving faith.
Jesus does not make bad people good. He makes spiritually dead people alive!
He des not change what His people do, but what they want to do.
As true Christians live through their sanctification, surrendering their souls to the Holy Spirit, they can be light and salt in the midst of a dying world.
But just claiming being Christian does not make anyone a Christian. I could claim being an astronaut and fool some of my neighbors and friends to believe me, but that does not make me an astronaut. Only being an astronaut makes my claims legitimate.
There are different philosophical worldview positions, but on one end of the spectrum we find those for whom the ultimate reality is matter and energy, this universe or the multiverse, etc. In the other end of the worldview spectrum we find those for whom the Ultimate Reality is summarized in Christ as the Creator of everything.
Don’t accept my comments here. Read the Bible yourself, perhaps starting from John, then Acts, Romans, etc. You won’t regret it.
God loves you and me and wants to have a personal relation with us. Take His gracious offer to reconcile us with Him. Don’t let it go. Tomorrow could be too late.
Blessings.
@KF#106
First, I’m aware about what warrant speaks to. In fact, when invited to in the OP, that is the conclusion I plugged into your argument.
Second, you’ve confused merely “casting doubt” with taking your own claims seriously for the purpose of criticism. For example, are you saying that “we should accept ideas because they are justified in some sense.” is not a claim or conclusion? If so, why not? Isn’t the idea that we should a philosophical view?
What I wrote was….
Furthermore, I agreed that we could not stepwise get to A from infinity and that and going in circles would be a form of question begging. Accepting things that are justified because justification is our criteria for accepting things would be circular.
I wrote:
I’m not casting doubt on the idea that there is knowledge any more than you were when you said “we end up with foundations for our worldview, whether or not we would phrase the matter that way”
So, on one hand, we’re not serious because we despise, disregard and dismiss world views, philosophical issues and approaches. Yet, on the other hand, I’m not serious because I’m looking at world views, philosophical issues and approaches.
Do you see the problem here? Apparently, discussing world views and philosophical issues is OK as long as they are world views and philosophical issues philosophical issues that you happen to personally agree with.
I wonder, have you taken a course on epistemology? I’m asking because, you’ve just implied the entire field of epistemology is patently absurd.
Learned Hand @110
I don’t think that reverence “per se” is a moral value, but true faith in Christ can have a profound positive effect on our observance of objective moral values, if we let the Holy Spirit guide our acts in all circumstances.
@28 in this same discussion thread, you may read a brief description of a conversation I witnessed years ago, which reflects different moral values understood by people with opposite worldview positions:
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-577732
Compare the objective moral values of the two Christian engineers contrasted against the subjective moral value of my supervisor, who was not Christian.
The engineers’ submission to Christ was not an objective moral value, but definitely it had a visible effect on their observance of objective moral values, to the point of not even getting the point of the funny joke my supervisor had said. To me, who back then had not accepted Christ as my Savior and King, that brief conversation was very intriguing and made me wonder about it for quite some time. Why didn’t those two engineers, whom I knew personally, understand the simple idea of that funny joke my supervisor said, which made me laugh?
A few years later I finally understood why.
sean semis @98
Who are “others”?
Also see the questions to you @103, 104, 107, 109, 111.
@111 I asked you:
sean semis @98
What authority established such “golden rule”?
Why should anyone observe it at all?
Can anyone make their own version of it, so it meets their own worldview position criteria?
Yes – Why?
No – Why not?
Learned Hand @113
Did you miss the questions @70, @95 & @97?
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-577929
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-578021
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-578033
Popperian,
Here is the bit of rhetorical trickery and attempted ridicule in the face of what you knew (as it was directly stated) was a summmary of a chain of warrant A — B — C . . . that exposes the bad faith you have been indulging, clipped from 101 above:
After this, we need no further evidence that you are not acting in good faith, for you are far too well educated not to know what you are doing here.
Rhetorical games of sophistry are over.
KF
Learned Hand
Would I have to come back later and ask you if you missed the questions @119?
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-578104
KF,
Your patience and tolerance seem beyond my limits.
Had I had the power to screen out commenters, this blog would have been a “less noisy” (i.e. more conducive) venue to engage in rational discussions.
Senseless debates between irreconcilable opposite worldview positions, unwilling to be open-minded and think out of the box, usually turn into squandered time after certain point, even considering the potential benefits to the onlookers/lurkers that follow the discussions from the side.
My only way to screen out the insincere commenters is by asking basic bottom line questions. The narrow-minded ones eventually leave the discussion themselves, sometimes upset by what they call “unfair interrogation”. At some point in this UD site someone called me “Spanish inquisitor”. In Russian language “horror show” means “good”. 🙂
It has been attributed to El Hidalgo Señor Don Quijote de la Mancha having said that if dogs bark then it means that we’re moving ahead. 🙂
At the end of the day the genuine true seekers remain in the discussion, trying to respond all the questions and don’t hesitate to humbly admit their lack of knowledge on certain issues.
We are all sharing information and learning together here.
Most probably I’m learning the most, because I know very little.
Thanks.
sean semis
Would I have to come back later and ask you if you missed the questions @117 & @118?
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-578099
Headlined: http://www.uncommondescent.com.....tionality/
@KF#120
Knowing there are distinctions is what it means to be educated. It’s unclear how denying there are distinctions to be made is acting in good faith.
For example, are all reasoned arguments the same? No, there are two forms: modus ponens and modus tollens.
The latter does not imply the theory of justification. Furthermore, it is possible to reformulate an argument expressed in one form into an argument expressed using the other form.
So, again, either there are distinctions to be made, or the theory of epistemology is absurd. Is that what you’re suggesting?
Popperian:
Yet, somehow, your education left you unwilling to condemn the practice of killing little boys and girls, chopping them into pieces and selling the pieces like meat.
Your education left you morally emaciated, and now all you seem to be able to do is employ sophistry in the service of evil.
Here’s a “distinction” for you: Evil/not evil. Sadly, you are on the wrong side of that distinction.
Dear readers,
Have you ever turned over a rock and uncovered a worm? KF and I have been doing some serious rock turning lately. KF has turned over the rock of sophistry and found Popperian squirming underneath. I have turned over the rock of refusal to acknowledge self-evident moral truth, and found the same worm.
Yet, Popperian’s delusion is such that even after being exposed repeatedly to the light, he seems to believe the answer is “more sophistry; more evil.” Madness.
Popperian,
Kindly explain to me why you said the things I have had to correct above, and to headline.
You have tried to collapse the chain of rational warrant, beyond reasonable doubt.
That is burning down the temple of reason in order to try to save your hobbyhorse.
Now as for your onward rhetoric about making distinctions, that is a strawman caricature, and it is false that I have denied the making of distinctions.
You tried to collapse a lightly symbolised discussion of how warrant works, by going from A to its grounds, B then C etc and the implications this points onward to.
In the process, you plainly denied warranting in a sequence of steps, right down to the steps.
Let us look at just one slice, where B warrants A:
It is time for you to seriously, soberly re-think.
KF
Popperian,
way back, I was taught classic geometry as a key way to learn logical thought.
I am convinced no-one brought up properly on that would argue as you did above.
Accordingly, here are the first six books:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/21076/21076-pdf.pdf
I suggest you take a timeout and when you can understand warrant and start points, we can then go on to inductive reasoning.
In that context, the point that we SHOULD have good reasons for our conclusions, will provide a convenient start-point for understanding rights, freedoms, responsibilities and duties, then onwards — having learned to creep — morality.
That is how weakened, blinded, endarkened and benumbed we have become in our day.
KF
PS: You will find it highly relevant to recognise that in modern mathematics, a highly important form of demonstrative proof — a strong form of warrant — is to assert, not P directly, but to put in its place ~P. Then, drawing out: ~ P => {X AND ~X}, so ~[~P], i.e. P. In this case A is of course P and B which grounds it is the chain of reasoning that runs to ~ P => {X AND ~X}, so ~[~P], i.e. P. Then, we can address onward grounding issues on why accept an argument of this form, and proceed to ultimate start-points.
kairosfocus @105
I think you are using the verb ‘to address’ incorrectly.
It means to direct speech or writing to some subject, to deal with or discuss some subject.
I have addressed the world-root level grounding question on this thread and other places and times on UD, as well as extensive comments about the so-called OUGHT-IS gap (bridged by reciprocity and/or the Golden Rule.)
My comments have not swayed you; that is true. But those comments prove that I have addressed these matters.
sean s.
Learned Hand @113
Fair enough. Certainly there are extreme evil acts and lesser evil acts. I see no reason to focus on those distinctions at this juncture.
I think considering such dimensionality serves no real purpose at this point.
… which is one reason to avoid it for now.
sean s.
Dionisio posted several questions.
@103:
For the sake of sanitation and health, ants inside one’s house can be killed without moral problem. If there’s a way to prevent their entry, that should be done, but that will not work all the time. Ants are crafty!
@104:
I don’t know which references are the oldest. I do know the concept of reciprocity was in the Code of Hammurabi (abt. 1780 BCE) and is found in Confusius (d. abt. 479 BCE).
@107:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Treat others as you want to be treated.
Etc.
There are many variants coming to the same thought.
@109:
You appear to have an internet connection. Google it.
@111:
Question for you: would you want others to redefine “person” so as to exclude you and facilitate their doing harms to you?
I’m just going to take a wild guess here and say you’d answer “NO!!”
So the act creating the “Nazi concept of person” fails the test of the GR, its redefinition of “person” is an immoral act.
CAN it be a more stringent standard? That could be. Since the change you ask about makes the GR even more rigorous, I would have no reason to object if a person subjected themselves to that standard; some Hindu might. I don’t, but I’m open to convincing.
Humans need recreation in order to avoid violence among themselves. Digging an in-ground pool for that purpose is not immoral in my opinion.
Of course they are. Any moral system (including the Christian one) has to draw lines. Otherwise we cannot survive.
So here’s the rule to avoid this: would you object if others drew a line that excludes you? If you would, then you must not draw lines that exclude other persons.
Unfortunately, the world we live in is one in which killing something is inevitable. You kill living things when you brush your teeth. We cannot survive any other way.
We cannot avoid killing some things. We can avoid unnecessary killing.
@118:
Reason and the Facts of Nature.
No. The mandate of the Golden Rule is not mere preference. It’s based on reason and the Facts of Nature.
No one has their personal form of reason, nor a personal set of Facts of Nature.
@123:
Dionisio, I have a job, a family, and a life outside this site. I respond to others as I can. Nagging will not hurry me along here.
sean s.
Sean,
Thanks for the reply. I appreciate the practicality of your approach. I don’t feel like I could sign on to it (not that you’ve asked me to), because I’m reluctant to abandon the usefulness of a word like “evil” that encompasses something far beyond an unnecessarily harmful act, in my eyes. Your thoughts on it are very interesting, though–thanks.
sean salís @132
Whose reason? Whose interpretation of the facts of nature?
The Nazi’s reason and interpretation?
The cannibals’ reason and interpretation?
Your reason and interpretation?
My reason and interpretation?
Anyone’s reason and interpretation?
They are different.
Which one is valid? Why?
sean salís @132
Why don’t you spend more time with your family instead of spending it in this site?
sean salís @132
Who can tell the Nazi folks or anyone out there how to define any term (in this case ‘person’)?
I can’t. Can you?
Why should they have to accept your or someone else’s definitions of terms?
sean salís @132
Do you mean that you’re open to consider someone else’s standards…?
Wouldn’t that more rigorous rule render “killing innocent earthworms for recreation purposes” a condemned criminal act?
sean salís @132
Is that true?
How do you know that?
SS, 130,
Not so.
In fact, consistently, you have switched focus from the issue of needing a world-root or foundation level IS that bridges to OUGHT in order to provide a proper basis for moral government (without collapsing our inner life into grand delusion). In short, you have tried to set up a red herring, drag it across the track of dealing with the main issue and have led such across to a distractive strawman.
You have actually been doing so for several weeks, trying to drag thread after thread off-track.
Now, you want to pretend that such properly addresses the underlying issue.
No-one disputes that — for those willing to listen to the inner voice that tells them they are owed duties of care and recognise that others are as themselves — the Golden Rule/Categorical Imperative [GR/CI] will teach a lot on core morality and on lawfulness in community.
(See the strawman caricature substituted for what is actually on the table?)
That is why I took time again and again to cite from Locke’s use of Hooker in Ch 2 of his 2nd treatise of civil govt, which historically was pivotal in the rise of modern, limited govt democracy. But, you latched on to it to try to divert it into what it is not. So, I have added some markups to draw out your errors — of course, unheeded and now we see a bit of piling on by LH glad to find talking points to serve his agenda:
The GR/CI can and does teach the willing, that is not in dispute . . . indeed, I have consistently brought it to the table for just that purpose. However, as the disputes on the focal issue for this thread — with the ongoing holocaust of the unborn as context — show, a pivotal issue is that many are going to be unwilling to accord equality of nature and of worth to those they target for destruction.
In this case the unborn boys and girls being slaughtered to order so their parts can be cut up and organs taken for Mengele-like ghouishly tainted “research.” For cold cash, in at least one case, with the hoped for buying of a US$ 1/4 mn or thereabouts car on the table.
Yes, the pretence is that they are not persons worthy of the full protection of the law.
Shades of untermensch and lebensunwertes leben.
Shades of Jim Crow belt magnolia trees bearing awful fruit with lawless hooded mobs around them rejoicing in imposing lynch-justice, so called, with complicit communities enabling reigns of terror on despised marginalised racial minorities.
We face might/manipulation of law, medicine, science, public opinion, the media etc making ongoing awful wrong seem like ‘right.’
Further to this, many popular schemes of thought and agendas do boil down to the nihilist credo, might/manipulation makes ‘right,’ which should give pause, sobering pause, to any well-intentioned person.
In that context, DK has played the twisted rhetorical card that God is the ultimate case of might makes right.
That has been answered in the OP, but along you come dancing in with your red herring, happy to divert focus and try to create a cloud of confusion through stubbornly insisting on refusal to deal with the ontological roots of morality.
And now you want to pretend that you have seriously addressed the matter? And to hint that I am just being stubborn in the face of rhetorical defeat?
In the face of an ongoing holocaust?
One that in many respects pivots on the notion that the unborn child is not my neighbour so Dr Mengeles can kill them under false colours of rights to choose and then chop up the bodies of these little girls and boys and sell them off like meat to equally ghoulish “researchers” who are placing advance orders for the right cuts of human meat?
Have you no shame?
Are you so benumbed, endarkened and blinded by hardness of heart?
I know, I know, how dare you rebuke me.
Because, SS, you have more than earned it by your stubborn and willful distractions sustained for several weeks in the teeth of correction and in the face of a sobering, ongoing global atrocity, the worst holocaust in history.
The war against posterity.
Yes, war against our own helpless children in the womb.
The most dangerous place to be in today’s world.
I put it to you, again, that an epistemic path of learning and even being disciplined by recognising that we are under moral government and share the same quasi-infinite worth, so that if I have rights so do my neighbours who are as I am by their nature, is not ontologically prior to the world-root level grounding of rights.
That is a long ways around way to say that the GR/CI may teach us about morality but cannot ground it.
Hume is right in this, we too often argue is-is, then switch to ought-ought without adequate grounding.
Nothing contingent, and nothing that does not take in the full span of reality can bridge that gap.
Thus, we need to go to necessary being root of reality to answer to the real challenge.
And we must do so in a way that is not a mere further level of might makes right.
Our confusions and blindness run deep.
Our peril is acute.
We need a world-root IS that adequately grounds ought, a proper fusion of the ontologically prior and the good and just as a part of the good, that can serve at once as root of reality and as the safe and reasonable basis of moral government of responsibly free rational creatures in our world or any credibly possible world.
If that last part is not taken in, a whole world of arguments can be pushed in that would question whether we are in a world in which ought is properly founded.
For, many are looking for a way to evade moral government, not a way to properly ground it. They want libertinism and licence, not liberty framed by the civil peace of justice that properly balances rights, freedoms and responsibilities.
They want every man does what is right in his own eyes anarchy (especially in sexual matters) under false colours of freedom, not realising that the resulting chaos and mob mentality will ruin government and governance, leading to the panic that will welcome the strong man to restore some semblance of order.
We have been so distracted by fallacy-riddled ideological debates over polarised left and right wings that we have forgotten the lessons of how tyrannies come about. Often, to restore order in a chaos so intense that people despair of freedom.
While relevant as a discussion of consequences of our march of bloody folly, that is not a world root issue.
Back on focus: plainly, a necessary being is the only class of being that can be adequate, not only as such is required as unconditioned root of reality, but as necessary being is integral to and inextricably intertwined with the roots of any possible world.
For simple case in point, it is impossible for any world to exist that twoness is not a part of. (And yes, that is a gateway to yet another foundational issue, the problem of the one and the many in a coherent cosmos.)
Likewise, only the utterly good can be an adequate foundation for a world in which we are under binding moral government of ought that grounds the civil peace of justice etc. On pain of dissolving our inner life of thinking, valuing, choosing and acting into a chaos of grand delusion and self referential incoherence.
We need the necessary being root of good that founds the right as our reasonable, responsible service.
Remember, again, there is an ongoing holocaust already in progress that we need solid moral footing to address in a day where many have been deluded to imagine that morality is merely subjective, illusory perceptions imposed by blind forces of survival of the fittest or the like, enforced by the might/manipulation that builds agitprop opinion cascades and imposes its consensus, pushing opponents to the scapegoated fringes.
We have forgotten Plato’s warning in The Laws, Bk X, on where that sort of sophistry and march of folly predictably end:
If our civilisation is to be saved in the face of a rapidly rising floodtide of mass bloodguilt, we have to go back to the roots, the radix.
Yes, we need genuinely radical rethinking.
Back to the roots, back to the foundations. If these are undermined, how can we stand?
We cannot.
That takes us back to the key issues in the OP above, firstly:
It is fair, well justified and richly desrved comment and even rebuke, SS, that you have again put up a side-tracking distraction.
One that was adequately answered already, but you seem to be in the business of serial diversion not serious discussion. And now, doubling down and projection.
FYI, this thread is a place for dialectic, not rhetoric.
For focus on first things in the face of a civilisational crisis of a rising floodtide of bloodguilt, confusion, deception, polarisation, marginalisation of the right and scapegoating/targetting of those who stand up for it, manipulation, wrongdoing and enabling of evil that threatens to overwhelm us.
That is why world-roots and matters ontological and modal as well as moral are openly on the table.
Admittedly, at 101 level.
We must creep before we can walk or run.
We have a holocaust in progress backed by mass deception and manipulation to address before our civilisation is overwhelmed by a floodtide of bloodguilt.
This is not a time for rhetorical games that enable mass bloodguilt.
Or rather, this is a time to expose such for what they are:
The enabling of utterly unspeakable evil that if unstopped dooms our civilisation and in the literal and proper sense, will damn our souls.
And, already, the signs of reprobate minds, darkened and hardened hearts as well as utterly calloused benumbed consciences are evident on every hand.
Our civilisation, heedless of warning signs and literally satanically hell bent on a bloody march of wicked nihilistic folly, is headed straight over the cliff into the abyss.
We need redemption, regeneration, renewal and transformation that addresses Wallnau’s seven mountains and the four R’s of reformation and redemptive transformation.
That is itself a long story in its own right.
But, there is another issue that is much more central to the OP. For that, we need to clip onwards from the OP:
So, we can now see how we get to roots of moral government, and why the issue of ontological roots is properly prior to the question of using the GR/CI to identify principles and rules or at least to validate such.
We have serious matters to address, a holocaust backed by deception and corruption of institutions is already in progress.
And, time is not on our side in the face of a floodtide of bloodguilt tied to the ongoing biggest holocaust in history, already many hundreds of millions and counting.
The war against posterity.
KF
Headlined, with augmentations: http://www.uncommondescent.com.....nds-ought/
More of your “neccessary being” idea.
While all creation is in essence a contingency, it is not right to then contrast this contingency with a being that is neccessary.
It is obvious that “neccessity” attacks faith. Why have faith if the being is neccessary? Why choose of your own free will the conclusion that God is real, when the neccessity argument says you are sort of required to assume it?
That is totally against the constitution in democracies where freedom of opinion and religion is central. Neccessity destroys freedom of religion, and opinion, and forces individuals and government to accept God is real.
One can be down and out, and express a feeling of complete emptiness. Believe that God is not real, and neither man has any emotion, etc.
Your irate condemnation of chopping up dead babies etc. convey a factual certitude that it is wrong. I guess the “neccessity” of the being, produces the factual certitude that it is wrong. God has been quite clear that he doesn’t accept factual certitude on what is good and evil. (what with eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil). Your judgement about chopping up babies, it seems to be some sort of calculation based on “neccessity”, and you are really very angry that the calculations don’t turn out optimal. The judgement lacks emotional depth it lacks an expression of justice, mercy, tenderness etc. I find it very screechy.
KF,
As I mentioned @122 (http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-578107) some folks exit the discussion when it gets a little tough to answer basic questions. Perhaps that’s happening here in this thread now?
🙂
MNY:
The logic of necessary being vs contingent being and possible vs impossible being is actually fairly simple, considered in terms of modes.
An impossible being is like a square circle, contradictory core characteristics mean it cannot be actualised in any world. Other beings are possible, e.g. a fire. This depends on external, enabling causal factors (fuel, oxidiser, heat, combustion chain rxn) and is a contingent being. Now ponder a candidate being with no such dependence. It will either be impossible or else actual in any world that exists. This means it is a part of the framework for a world to exist, it is ontologically necessary. (Such will have no beginning nor end, it just is.)
Now, ponder non-being, a true nothing. Were there ever utter nothing, as non-being has no causal capacity, such would forever obtain. So, if a world now is, something always was, the root of reality, a necessary being. (The issue, as discussed in the OP, is its character.)
As for, oh, that runs against faith, it seems you here reflect the view that faith is belief without reason or evidence.
While that is a common notion today, it is flawed. Faith, in a relevant sense is confident trust. And there can be a ground for it, indeed there usually is, think about your faith in a chair.
Likewise, reasons to see that there is an ontologically necessary being at the root of our world, do not undermine democratic freedom. Such freedom rests, instead — historically — on the understanding that we are responsibly free, valuable persons who share a fundamental equality of nature, being endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights. Governments should protect these, duly balancing rights, freedoms and responsibilities in the civil peace of justice. Which allows us to flourish, freely developing ourselves towards our best.
Ideally, in praxis, there is always a struggle and reform.
When it comes to chopping up and selling unborn babies, the obvious fact is, such robs them of the very first right, life; without which they cannot fulfill their potential.
Where to rob an innocent of his or her life has a name: shedding innocent blood, creating bloodguilt.
This is not arrogance, it is hard reality.
A reality we are wont to deny but which is there, staring us in the face.
Our civilisation is guilty of innocent blood, even as it was guilty of robbing millions of freedom.
This must be acknowledged, faced for what it is, and turned from.
If the value of life is undermined, no one is safe.
KF
The “neccessary” idea does undermine freedom in a very real and practical way. When you object to blind faith etc. what you are really objecting to is reaching a conclusion by choosing it. You object to freedom. In stead you require to be forced by evidence to a conclusion, or forced to a conclusion by a logical philosophical construction about neccessity and being.
True faith is only by choosing it, which means that the conclusion that God does not exist must be just as logically valid as the conclusion God does exist. One expresses emotion with free will, choosing the conclusion.
Fact and opinion are simply totally different from each other. There is no way that what is beautiful can ever be termed fact, and neither can it be termed fact what is wrong, or the existence of God.
Opinion subjectivity is only in reference to the creator category, the agency of decisions, the spiritual domain. Facts do not apply to that category at all. The spiritual domain chooses which way the material domain turns out, facts apply to the material domain only.
MNY,
Again, with all due respect, no. That there is a necessary being root of the world, in no wise forces us to accept such, as is patently obvious. One is free to choose his or her worldview, but is responsible to choose sensibly and soundly.
That is, freedom to choose does not remove the responsibility to choose aright, both on moral and epistemological-logical grounds. Including, choice of what to believe.
We are free to choose to believe in the teeth of what is well warranted, but that does not remove our epistemic duties and perhaps moral ones that we fail in so doing.
Even in the teeth of overwhelming fact and reason, we are still free to say no, we are not compelled to acknowledge truth or evidence or knowledge, if we are so inclined. Of course, we cannot change the implications of such rejection.
In my homeland, there was a man who emerged in the 1920’s or thereabouts, who led a small religious movement which drew an enthusiastic following. At some point, at least according to the song, he felt he would fly up to heaven on the 9th of July.
Having publicly committed himself, he found himself up an ackee tree on said date, and jumped off.
Crash, he broke his arm.
At least according to the story as I learned it.
Probably with specific details garbled but the overall pattern of charismatic leadership and delusional belief leading to ill-advised and self-defeating action is likely to be pretty much so.
He was confined to the lunatic asylum (I think, on court order), where he died I think in 1930.
But, up to my youth, in August Town, next to the local campus of the regional university, there was a remaining group of his followers, by then in advanced years.
That is very different from the Christian foundations:
http://nicenesystheol.blogspot.....l#u1_grnds
But again, there is no compulsion to believe, though there are consequences of willful or foolish, ungrounded belief or skepticism.
KF
F/N: This, from Simon Greenleaf, may be helpful:
KF
Learned Hand @133
I understand your position; I guess what I need to say is that Great Evils are born as lesser evils. Small acts of evil, if overlooked facilitate the next, greater evil. Monsters don’t start with multiple murders, but by torturing insects and pets.
Reserving the word “evil” for greater acts is harmful in itself. The distinction facilitates the growth from lesser to Greater evils. There is usefulness in seeing that all evil exists on a continuum; and treating lesser evil as significant is the best way to prevent the eventual, greater evil.
sean s.
Dionisio had several questions.
@134
There is only one valid kind of reasoning; a fact recognized since the time of the Ancient Greeks. Reason is very much like mathematics; there is no personal form of either. There is just Math and there is just Reason.
You’ll notice that I did not say anything about “interpretation of the facts” which is just opinion. I said reason and facts. Leave opinions at the door.
@136
Since traditional moral systems failed to prevent what the Nazi’s did, any inability on the part of my system to prevent it makes mine NO WORSE than yours or kairosfocus’s. That’s not much of a complaint against my system; which can at least cite Reason and Facts against evil.
@137
Shocking as that may be, of course! That’s essential if one wants to learn! Any rational person accepts that their conclusions must be reevaluated if the information changes.
@138
Because that’s what facts are; they apply to all. No one has a personal set of facts.
Likewise, there is only one valid kind of reasoning; a fact recognized since the time of the Ancient Greeks. Reason is very much like mathematics; there is no personal form of either. There is just Math and there is just Reason. Interestingly enough, others on UD argue that the universality and reliability of Reason is evidence of an intelligent designer; it appears you are arguing against them. Good luck with that.
Hypothetical: how would someone prove they have their own valid reasoning process? They’d have to use the accepted rules of reasoning to show it or no one would believe them.
sean s.
I will reply to kairosfocus’s comment #139, but later today. KF clearly put a lot of feeling into it and I want to respond appropriately. I will note the somewhat cowardly way he double-posted his reply to me, putting it prominently on a site-headline and then blocking any response there. It shows that for all KF’s passion, KF lacks confidence in his argument. As he should.
Until later.
sean s.
You clearly have fact and opinion in a big mess together, which is because you really only understand fact and do not understand opinion. You are consistently emphasizing evidence and fact, and when you mention faith it is an arbitrary and unexplained add-on with no functional logic to it.
Again the functional logic of opinion is that the conclusion must be chosen, and the conclusion must refer to the agency of a decision. Which means that all forced conclusions asserted as opinion (forced by evidence, forced by a logical construct) are therefore invalid.
Creationism has 2 categories, creator and creation. One category for opinion, and one for fact. The spiritual domain chooses which way the material domain turns out.
D, sometimes, it is being busy elsewhere, but I doubt they are happy that I have spotlighted two key examples then pointed back to the discussion in progress. If they had a case on the merits, it could be argued out and if I am wrong, I am willing to publicly accept that. But that has to be shown per substance, not conjured up through empty rhetoric. KF
SS @ 147
.
Well said.
SS, the character attack against me is unwarranted and further revealing. Here, you have ample opportunity to reply, and as I just noted to D, I am perfectly willing to publicly acknowledge merited correction. However, on the core point, it remains patently the case that contingent beings cannot ground moral principles though we may explore, examine and warrant them. An examination of the rooting/grounding challenge will rapidly show that only in a necessary being IS that is at once grounds for OUGHT due to that being’s core character, can the IS-OUGHT gap be bridged. Where, by virtue of necessity of being, such would be embedded in the framework for a world to exist. The GR/CI can help us understand morality between morally valuable peers [–> neighbours] but it does not ground that value ontologically. And if you do not understand that/why ontological grounding is necessary, that is a flaw in your worldview, not an asset. KF
MNY, who are you speaking to? If you intend me, I point out that the core sense of faith proper to the Judaeo-Christian frame, is trust [and especially, trust in God] based on well founded conviction and borne up by his word, multiplied across time by the experience, report and testimony of God’s transforming power in accord with his word. That is in part why the Gk word used in the NT for faith, pistis, is also the word for rhetorical proof. You will further note that I normally speak of warrant and provisionality, as we are not in a position to ground any reasonably complex scheme of thought to absolute certainty as opposed to high confidence, which is a pattern of inductive reasoning and inductively warranted knowledge. For deductive systems, axioms are taken on trust/plausibility and Godel showed that even confidence in Mathematics is a matter of faith. For specific instance, observe the chain of warrant infographic in the OP, which shows how we rest on first plausibles. Some few are self evident or otherwise necessarily so, and esp the LOI, LNC and LEM, serve as plumbline checks, but worldviews are all faith systems, the issue is, which one, why and of what strength on comparative difficulties across factual adequacy, coherence and explanatory power/balance. Where, all significant worldviews will have difficulties. We all walk by faith, the issue is, which one, why. KF
NB: Reasonable faith is not an oxymoron. KF
@kairosfocus
My information is that Godel’s incompleteness theorem has already been solved.
My criticism still remains the same as before.
But simply, do you reject as invalid the procedure to reach a conclusion about what is real, by choosing the conclusion?
That the painting is ugly, and the painting is beautiful are both valid conclusions. “Ugly” is then asserting the opinion a hate for the way the painting looks exists, and “beautiful” asserts the opinion that a love for the way the painting looks exists.
Do you accept such a procedure as valid? Expression of emotion with free will, thus choosing, resulting in an opinion.
sean semis @148
Do you mean that now you would refrain from digging the big hole in the ground to install a swimming pool for recreation purposes, because you agree with the folks who would consider it a criminal act against the innocent ants and earthworms?
MNY,
we are way off on a tangent.
The Godel theorem shows that for no sufficiently complex mathematical entity, can we have a set of axioms that are complete and self-consistent. Secondly, there is no constructive procedure to create a known self-consistent set of axioms, even if incomplete. So, even mathematics is by faith to a material extent.
Second, beauty may be felt or perceived, but in fact there are identifiable coherent axiological and aesthetic principles that are objective.
That is why classically, elegantly beautiful things stand as such for the ages, e.g. Nefertiti’s sculpture or it looks like the two versions of Mona Lisa, or the Parthenon, or the Great Pyramid, or Matterhorn, or even Dunn’s River Falls, or Bob Marley’s Redemption Songs, or Jamaica’s National Anthem.
For instance consider, powerful unity and diversity, elegantly balanced simplicity and complexity (often with fractal scaling), variety & dynamism, pleasant surprise, noble sublimity that inspires awe and enjoyment (or perhaps tears when tragedy is involved) — the shadow of The Beautiful One.
Our emotions are not divorced from our inner life of rationally informed judgements.
Again, there is such a thing as reasonable, responsible faith, it is not all a matter of the will, though that is involved.
KF
sean semis @148
Any particular reason why you skipped the question @135?
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-578187
Learned Hand
Did you miss answering the questions @119?
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-578104
sean semis @148
Who told you I have one? Where did you get that information from?
sean semis @148
Are all moral systems equally valid and acceptable?
Are some of them ranked higher than others?
Where does yours fit in within that ranking?
How do traditional moral systems differ from yours?
Is there any moral system that could prevent what the Nazis did?
Is there any moral system that would keep me from doing what I do? Yes? How? No? Why not?
Is there any moral system that would make me integral, i.e. not a hypocrite?
I understand your position; I guess what I need to say is that Great Evils are born as lesser evils. Small acts of evil, if overlooked facilitate the next, greater evil. Monsters don’t start with multiple murders, but by torturing insects and pets.
Reserving the word “evil” for greater acts is harmful in itself. The distinction facilitates the growth from lesser to Greater evils. There is usefulness in seeing that all evil exists on a continuum; and treating lesser evil as significant is the best way to prevent the eventual, greater evil.
That makes sense. The substantive point you’re making is far more important than my quibbling over vocabulary.
sean semis @148
How do they apply to all?
Do all people interpret the same facts exactly the same way?
Do all draw the same conclusions from the same facts?
sean semis @132
Don’t you like to be reminded about things to do that you may overlook unwittingly?
Do you consider reminding as nagging?
Does reminding necessarily mean nagging?
Don’t you use electronic reminders in some situations?
Don’t corporations pay big bucks for having efficient executive secretaries to remind the CEOs about their agendas?
BTW, I appreciate that you’re keeping our chat going.
Someone else in this same thread quit not long ago. 🙁
I’m learning a few things from this.
Let’s keep it up. 🙂
kairosfocus @139:
Let’s start with this:
First; there definitely is a red herring in this thread, but it is not mine. We’ll get to that farther below.
You argue that morality needs to be grounded “at the world-root or foundation level”. This is a legitimate point of view which I happen to think is wrong. Challenging that is a legitimate point for me to argue; it is not a “red herring”; a red herring is an irrelevant topic used as a distraction; how morality is properly grounded is VERY RELEVANT. Afterall, if you are wrong your entire argument falls apart!
The problem is that you just don’t know how to respond to my comments, so you are left with claiming they are irrelevant. My comments are irrelevant ONLY IF THE GROUNDING OF MORALITY IS IRRELEVANT. Clearly the folks here running UD (including you) think how morality is grounded is very important; so my challenge to their view (and yours) is not a red-herring.
I think you believe your position is “self-evident”; it is not. Barry Arrington wrote a fairly good OP recently on the meaning of “self-evidence”; you should read it.
A point I think Barry did not mention is that sometimes people refer to things as “self-evident” when they want to put their assertions or assumptions beyond dispute. That is a MISuse of the term. Your claims are not actually self-evident.
There’s no pretense. The question of whether “world-root or foundation level” even makes sense is EXACTLY THE QUESTION. You have set this up as a threashold requirement, but you have yet to justify that requirement.
That requirement is false for several reasons.
First, requiring morality to be grounded at the “world-root or foundation level” is itself ungrounded. No moral system (not even the Christian one, not even the “OMT”) can establish that it is so grounded, and no one has established that such grounding is necessary or useful.
Claims that theistic morality is grounded in “ultimate being” are just that: claims. Claims don’t ground anything. They are just claims. Claims that morality needs grounding in “ultimate being” are, likewise, just claims. These claims are themselves ungrounded.
Second, when we look at the idea of grounding morality in “ultimate being”, it becomes absurd.
If a moral system is grounded in “ultimate being” then everything that exists would be subject to the moral system.
If moral systems create obligations for those subject to them, a moral system grounded in “ultimate being” would impose a moral obligation on everything that exists. Everything that exists would have moral duties they owe to other things.
Therefore inanimate objects (rocks, atoms, subatomic particles, etc.) would be under moral obligation. But the consensus seems to be that this very idea is foolish. Some go so far as to declare this an Actual Stupid Question.
Inanimate objects exercise no “agency”, they make no choices so they cannot respond to any “obligation”. These things just react to the forces of nature acting on them.
If the base matter/energy and forces of our universe are not acting under any moral obligation, then there is no purpose to claiming that morality must be grounded EVEN MORE DEEPLY THAN THESE.
Requiring morality to be grounded in “ultimate being” so as to encompass all that exists, and then excusing all but a trace-part of the universe from any moral obligation is absurd.
There is no practical or rational purpose to this; the purpose is purely RHETORICAL. This faux requirement creates the appearance of a need for a deity who would be, by definition, the ultimate being, the world-root. Otherwise, this faux requirement serves no moral or rational purpose; it provides no moral or rational value; it makes no difference. If we jettison the idea, we lose nothing but the absurd notion that molecules might go to hell.
You have suggested that perhaps the laws of nature that describe the behavior of inanimate objects could have been made by the same source of our moral obligations. That is a possibility, but that does not make natural law into a moral law.
Ex: Potters make pots. Potters also can make dinner. That does not make their dinners “pots” nor their pots “dinner”.
Maybe there’s a deity who made natural law, and who made a moral law. That would not make natural law a moral law.
Third; if morality imposes no obligation except on those creatures capable of appreciating and responding to obligations, then morality needs no grounding deeper than the truth of those creatures’ nature and existence. Anything more is rationally and morally useless. It adds nothing to moral thought; it’s excessive; it’s an extravagance.
A rational, non-theistic morality can be grounded on the truth of human nature and existence. We are fallible, fragile, social creatures. Those facts, along with our possession of volition, knowledge, foresight, and reason make us able to appreciate and respond to moral obligations toward each other and toward other things in our universe.
Whatever defects there may be in my proposed rational moral system, it is not any lack of sufficient grounding. The facts of our nature ground our moral obligations; that is all the grounding we need. It is sufficient to make a non-theistic “inter-subjective morality” as real and as effective as any moral system can be or has ever been.
Thus, I have addressed this “world-root or foundation level” claim and demonstrated it is ungrounded, leading to absurdity, and pointless. It provides no extra clarity or assurance or enforceability; it is worthless. Since you make this topic a central feature of your claims, my comments on it are very much topical and appropriate. There are no red herrings in this.
This is an issue, of course. But it is not “pivotal”. Those “unwilling to accord equality of nature and worth” have never been hindered by any claim that the rules they were breaking were grounded at the “world-root or foundation level”, this proves that your claims have no value.
If agreeing with you that morality is grounded at the “world-root or foundation level” actually made a difference, I’d be with you. But clearly it does not make a difference to those who do great evil.
SO THE VERY THING YOU WISH TO FIX (EGREGIOUS PUBLIC IMORALITY) HAS ALREADY BEEN DEMONSTRATED TO BE UNAFFECTED BY YOUR IDEA. YOUR IDEA–BY YOUR OWN EVIDENCE–HAS ABSOLUTELY NO PARTICULAR VALUE.
As I have demonstrated, the ontological roots of morality are set firmly in the facts of reason and nature, and in the possession of volition, knowledge, foresight, and the aforementioned reason. You stubbornly refuse to deal with the fact that your claims are not the only ones that could possibly be correct, and that there are many serious flaws in your proposal.
It’s no pretense; I have addressed the matter. But you cannot figure out how to respond to my comments, so you declare them impermissible. The chorus of supporters in this echo-chamber may agree with you, but honest ONLOOKERS (to whom you periodically write) will see the falseness of your claim.
Ah yes. As I promised at the beginning, there is a red-herring in this. Here it is and it is yours.
As serious as the Holocaust was, as serious as the issue of abortion is, they are IN THIS CONTEXT red-herrings.
It was good, well grounded, God-fearing Europeans who committed the Holocaust. No doubt you will point at a handful of Nazis who were atheists or non-believers, but I point at the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of otherwise ordinary Germans, Poles, Dutch, etc. who went to church every Sunday and prayed for their Fuhrer or for their people and then on Monday through Saturday worked to facilitate the Holocaust. Their belief that God was Good and the Law-Giving Father did not prevent them from denigrating, designating, humiliating, isolating, concentrating, and annihilating more than 6,000,000 jews; and millions of others.
You may argue that their sins violated traditional moral beliefs, and I’d agree. But those traditional beliefs didn’t hinder their mass-murder.
I’d point out that their crimes obviously violated the Golden Rule, violated Reason, violated the principle of Reciprocity and you’d agree but point out those didn’t hinder them at all.
Together, these at most prove that neither your “world-root or foundation level” morality worked nor would have mine. Being as it makes no difference in our dispute, IN THIS CONTEXT the Holocaust is irrelevant: HERE it is the very definition of a red-herring.
Certainly the horrors of abortion violate your morality and obviously it violates the Golden Rule. And even those who embrace your morality still go out and get their abortions–otherwise it would not be so newsworthy that the Pope has given every priest the authority to forgive it; why forgive something few parishoners ever do?
So again, your “world-root or foundation level” morality does no better working against abortion than does mine. Again, since there is no difference in our dispute, IN THIS CONTEXT abortion is irrelevant: HERE it is yet another example of a red-herring.
The Holocaust is very relevant and important to the world, as is abortion. Both were/are tragic and horrific; but neither distinguishes your moral claims from mine. On this particular topic, they are irrelevant because they fail to show a difference in this specific question; they are red-herrings; they are your red-herrings.
One of the ironies you overlook in your haste is that the failure of Christians and their Churches to resist the evils of Naziism is part of the reason that attendance at Christian church services in Europe has fallen to levels not seen since the time of the Roman Empire. Materialism and atheism have overtaken most of Europe AND YET THEY HAVE FEWER ABORTIONS THERE THAN DOES THE U.S. This is quite the opposite of what your claims would predict. Clearly traditional religious beliefs in the US have not done much about abortions here, and clearly atheistic materialism has not led to vast numbers of abortions in Europe.
On top of all this, your comments are a bonafide ad hominem. You assign guilt to me for the Holocaust and abortion; you ask, “Have you no shame? Are you so benumbed, endarkened and blinded by hardness of heart?”
Pure ad hominem.
Then you post these comments prominently at UD and deny me the opportunity to respond there; anyone who wants to see my responses must follow links and search for them. Is this Cowardice? Or lack of confidence? Or both? You pick.
In #153 you complain that “the character attack against [you] is unwarranted”.
Really? Have YOU no shame? Accusing me of endorsing the murder of jews and babies is OK, but calling you a coward is “over the top”? Unwarranted? Fugetaboutit.
You actually earned my criticism The Old Fashioned Way: “as ye sow, so shall ye reap.”
Oh Look! Another biblical instance of RECIPROCITY!
– – – – – – –
After your outburst of ad hominem laced red-herring, you continued more soberly:
And yet, even those who believe in this “necessary being” find a way to do whatever they want.
We’ve embraced that idea for a long time and it didn’t work. Time for something new.
The Golden Rule, Reciprocity, Reason, and the Facts of Nature together are a sufficient ground for reasonable, responsible living. Belief in Gods has failed to stem the tide.
Agreed. The Golden Rule, Reciprocity, Reason, and the Facts of Nature provide that solid moral footing as well as honoring reason; something that is sorely lacking.
Agreed, but recycling old, failed ideas is not radical rethinking.
– – – – – – –
After that came more recycled stuff; cut-and-paste smacking of stale thinking. Ending with:
And we can see that grounding it as you demand is unnecessary, ungrounded, incoherent, and INEFFECTIVE.
Time for some fresh thinking.
Oh wait! That’s YOUR line!
That we do. And seeking answers in a useless, already-failed theory will not solve those serious matters.
So let’s get off this valueless idea of “world-root or foundation level” morality and work on something of worth.
sean s.
mohammadnursyamsu @144:
I don’t agree much with this, but it’s refreshing to see someone expose the dark underbelly of Free Will doctrine: the idea that information destroys freedom; that a truly free person must be essentially ignorant of the world.
Oddly, in most modes of life, hiding facts and requiring decisions in ignorance is regarded as the oppressive and immoral and is often criminal.
@156:
Solved? Do you mean “disproved”? Because it’s not; the incompleteness theorem stands unrefuted.
Oh yes, that is invalid except as reaching a baseless opinion. “What is real” is a fact, not an opinion.
In purely subjective matters (like art) opinion has a place. In questions of what is Real and True, opinions are nearly worthless. Evidence and Reason determine the proper conclusions in those, not personal choices.
sean s.
kairosfocus @145
The existence of a “necessary being root of the world” is in no sense “patently obvious” or “self-evident”. That “necessary being” may be real but it is not at all obvious or self-evident.
sean s.
Barry Arrington @152:
Thank you.
sean s.
Dionisio…
@157:
No, I mean I am open to consider someone else’s ideas. I’ve not committed myself to agreeing with any of them.
@159:
Of course there is.
@161:
Oh. Well if you don’t have any moral system, then mine is definitely BETTER!
@162:
42. Except in months that end in ‘r’.
@164:
At some point, you need to demonstrate that you are more than a ‘bot generating questions. How about a few answers from your own mind?
What do you think?
@165:
There is a line between reminding and nagging. You are tending toward the latter. Maybe that is accidental; do you object to being told this?
We are not chatting; in a chat there is giving from both parties. “As ye give, so shall ye receive.”
sean s.
@kairosfocus
My information is mathematics based on immediate zero totality avoids Godel’s incompleteness theorem. In stead of taking counting as the basis of maths, the zero totality is then the basis of maths. So if one takes nothing as an axiom, creatio ex nihilo, and, ex nihilo nihil fit……
And we got into Godel, because you sought to weaken the “factuality” of facts saying all facts have some faith element.
It is because you have no proper place for opinion that you put an element of opinion into fact. And the proper logic of opinion is as I explained already several times.
All subjectivity in common discourse works with that logic of choosing. And I think I have shown that your proposed “neccessary” being, inhibits subjectivity in general. It slants all your ideas towards fact, including beauty, providing no demarcated room for opinion.
@Seansamis
Same. You allow art to be opinion, how charitable of you, to allow room for subjectivity. But of course what is required is that subjectivity is validated by logic, and not by you or anybody to grant it as you wish.
There is no logical place for subjectivity in materialism, it only supports facts. Creationism with it’s 2 domains, creator and creation, provides room for opinion and fact in an integrated conceptual scheme.
sean semis @170
You have revealed your motives.
My questioning was intended to see if you were sincerely interested in serious discussions.
Your comments, specially the ones @170, seem to indicate that you are not interested in having serious discussions.
I have much better things to do than squandering my time on senseless arguments.
SS,
While I will respond later, kindly notice the topic for the thread:
So, right off the bat your interventions from 7 above have been tangential at best; and I attest to that as OP poster and thread-owner. This thread should be discussing Euthyphro, nihilism and the like, i.e. in direct terms this tangent provides rhetorical cover for someone to escape behind.
In addition, for several weeks now, you have been trying to argue that the GR/CI — which no one denies is useful for teaching moral principles as we respond to peers as morally valuable and of the same morally governed nature as we are — is able to substitute for answering to the ontological foundations of morality.
This is fallacious, and it sets up a strawman argument as if the issue is about the GR. It is not, the issue is the IS-OUGHT gap in ethics, a well known and significant issue. Because of the nature of ontology, only something at world root level will answer to the issue. And in context, the might makes right issue also has had to be addressed.
I can clip a comment from earlier:
So, there you have a preliminary note.
DV, later.
KF
PS: I simply note on roots of reality that infinite regress of causes faces the stepwise descent from minus infinity problem — before we get to more empirical ones such as thermodynamics etc (there is a reason oscillating universe models died). Circular cause is a non-starter, Sci Fi time traveller notions notwithstanding. Non-being is a non-starter as it has no causal capacity, and a quantum foam is not non-being, pace Krauss and Dawkins. If something now is, something always was, the unconditioned, necessary being root of reality. The debate is, just what it was/is.
MNY:
I make a couple of quick notes.
First, let me do this:
{} –> 0
{0} –> 1
{0,1} –> 2
{0, 1, 2} –> 3,
etc
This starts with zero and creates N, from which we can go all the way to C, etc.
That does not in itself create a physical world.
Creation ex nihilo is not nothing transforming into a cosmos, but that God, the root of reality creates a cosmos from no material start-point. (There are whole dead philosophies of “gods” starting with primordial, recalcitrant matter and making a mess of our cosmos.)
Next, note Stanford Enc Phil on Godel:
The issues remain.
Worldviews invariably trace to a cluster of first plausibles which are not further proven . . . neither infinite regress nor circularity will ultimately work. And, no worldview of consequence can be constructed on self-evident truths, there just are not going to be enough.
Everyone has his or her faith point and it colours everything, the wise man seeks a reasonable, responsible faith.
Indeed, everybody is placing big bets, with our very selves in the stakes. That’s the bite in Pascal’s wager.
If you want me to give an example try a Plato’s Cave type world model, e.g. a more perfect matrix or brain in vat world etc. You cannot show it false logically, it is empirically equivalent to the world we understand to be real.
You have to make a monentous decision that models entailing grand delusion will undermine credibility of mind, knowledge, rationality and so are set aside as self-referential and absurd. But, that is a set aside, not a proof beyond doubt.
And more.
KF
PS: SS, strawman again. It is possible to choose among worldview options through responsible, reasonable faith. Will does not substitute for reason, and to be informed does not remove the basis of choice, indeed it enables it. You also need to be reminded that if we are not responsibly free, reason, knowledge (based in key part on rational warrant) and the inner life dissolve into grand delusion and absurdity.
@kairosfocus
If I understand correctly (not bloody likely), immediate zero totality starts with 0, then 00, 01, 10 and 1100.
The 1 in relation to 0 is boolean, that is why 10 and 01 are both a totality of 0. But 11 having no relation to any zero, is not a zero totality, which is why 11 on it’s own is impossible, and immediate zero totality requires that the 00 is added to it.
What this also means IMO is that because any configuration of the physical universe must have zero totality, it makes any configuration equally likely as the start of the universe. There is no priority for a universe starting out with what is exhaustively described with just a single 0, over starting out supercomplex, because the totality of both is equally zero. Or so to say it provides for “poof” creation, especially for the initial decisions. But after the initial decisions, then possibilities around what has already been decided become more likely.
I think you are wrongly understanding this as an evolution idea of requiring to start with a single 0, and then building up step by step from that. In my view the zero totality provides a unity in the order of things, it does not require incremental steps.
Zero totality is not an arbitrary axiom it seems to me. Counting is an arbitrary axiom to start from, why not start with multiplication or something in stead? Which means in effect that it is a choice among many alternative possibilities to take counting as an axiom, but it is not a choice to take zero totality as an axiom. As all else can be derived from zero totality, but zero totality cannot be derived when taking counting as an axiom.
In any case, some scientists say that Godel’s incompleteness theorem can be avoided with immediate zero totality.
The basic procedure for obtaining a fact is evidence forcing to produce a model of what is evidenced. To have all the facts about the moon means basically to have an exact 1 to 1 model of it in mind.
Facts work by force, opinons work by freedom. Facts apply to creation, opinion applies to the creator. That is simple and works, while “neccessary” being slants everything towards fact, it does not work.
MNY: With all due respect, you are now well off on a tangent dealing with a coding game on bits — which is so far from the origin of the physical cosmos that it could not be plainer — in the face of a critical cluster of issues on the table (cf. OP) linked to inter alia the ongoing, worst holocaust in history. I took enough pause to address why the Godel Theorems — which BTW in the first case show by constructed example how sets of axioms will run into undecidables — are highly relevant to the point that there is an irreducible element of faith in core plausibles even for mathematics sufficient to address ordinary arithmetic. It is notorious that no worldview or life system is reducible to certain first principles built on through deductive reasoning. Further to this, it is nonsense that facts work by force: for, such are statements that describe empirically evident reality. There are dynamical-stochastic systems in the world, which are governed by laws of force and of chance, but those are irrelevant to acts of human responsible rational freedom. To work with a fact, you have to learn of it, evaluate whether to accept it as claimed, then reason regarding it, all of which require responsible freedom as a premise or else all collapses into grand delusion. That is sufficient for our purposes here, which inter alia have to do with the ongoing moral collapse of a civilisation beset by institutionally dominant, inherently amoral and logically incoherent lab coat clad evolutionary materialist scientism and its fellow travellers. With the ghosts of hundreds of millions of victims of abortion speaking out against us and indicting us of utter barbarism. Now, crowned by the expose of Mengele like harvesting of baby body parts and selling them for tainted medical ‘research.’ I think you need to think again on what you are enabling by such tangents. KF
PS: I gave an example of starting with 0 to show where that gets you by applying successive iterative algorithms, a mental construct, here the natural numbers which happen to be foundational to arithmetic etc. Not creation of a physical world much less a moral order. Where, axioms, first steps and algorithms are not arbitrary in the sense of capricious or irrational, if they help us set up constructs that we can then use to do relevant things.
SS, 166:
I will respond yo key points as clipped, using enumerated steps of thought:
SS: >>You [i.e. KF] argue that morality needs to be grounded “at the world-root or foundation level”. This is a legitimate point of view which I happen to think is wrong.>>
1 –> First, it is not merely a legitimate view and it is not merely the view of an idiosyncratic bloggist who can be brushed aside. The IS-OUGHT gap is a generally acknowledged major issue in ethics.
2 –> In essence, Hume captures the challenge that people tend to argue IS, IS then — without a bridge — jump to OUGHT, OUGHT, leaving such without starting warrant, or grounding at the level of the root of reality.
3 –> In fact, many (especially materialists) hold and even deem it an unquestionable fact that it is unbridgeable, so I am pointing out (with others) that a world-root IS that is also simultaneously of such character as to ground OUGHT, is an adequate and satisfactory answer.
4 –> That is, there is a possibility to bridge the ontological and the moral at the root of reality; requiring a necessary being of particular character, i.e. Inherently good and maximally great.
5 –> Hence, too, the significance of the preliminary point that were there ever an utter nothing, such would forever obtain, so that there is a world now is best explained on something unconditioned that always was, something that also is not under the insuperable problems of infinite contingent chains and/or suggestions of circular causation.
6 –> Further to this, there is no possibility of so grounding it at a level that is later than that, as that falls right into the IS-IS, OUGHT-OUGHT gap problem.
>> Challenging that is a legitimate point for me to argue; it is not a “red herring”; a red herring is an irrelevant topic used as a distraction;>>
7 –> As has been repeatedly pointed out to you, but studiously ignored or further distorted and dismissed, the Golden Rule is not at world foundation level, it distracts focus from the world root level by highlighting a principle that teaches us morality premised on knowledge that we have moral worth and legitimate moral expectations of others [= rights], and implicitly recognise that there are others who are as we are.
8 –> In short you have been insistently changing the subject from grounding morality to learning it and acknowledging the legitimate claims of others who are as we are. But, epistemology is not a substitute for ontology.
9 –> Further to this, on many critical moral questions over the years and currently, there has been a pattern of refusing to acknowledge the humanity of the targetted others, whether black people kidnapped and enslaved, or Polish and Jewish “mice” targetted by the presumed superior Aryan superman “cat” in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, to the denial of the personhood and right to equal protection under law of the unborn today, which has led tot he state-backed slaughter of hundreds of millions. This last now reaching the stage of Mengele like organ harvesting and sale for tainted ‘research.’
10 –> So, we see the red herring distractor of pouncing on the golden rule then chasing off away to the strawman caricature that epistemology can answer to ontology.
>> how morality is properly grounded is VERY RELEVANT. Afterall, if you are wrong your entire argument falls apart!
The problem is that you just don’t know how to respond to my comments, so you are left with claiming they are irrelevant. My comments are irrelevant ONLY IF THE GROUNDING OF MORALITY IS IRRELEVANT.>>
11 –> This is another strawman, the pretence that having put the epistemological up against the ontological, you can now suggest that the rejection of that substitution is to undercut the issue that OUGHT must be properly bridged to IS at world foundation level. That would have to be shown not asserted or implied and I can find nowhere where you have a cogent answer. So, we have a red herring led to a strawman pummelled so that an empty rhetorical victory can be announced. And the proof of my answering is in the fact that I anticipated the key issue, and have highlighted your pivotal error of trying to substitute epistemology for ontology. Rhetorical drumbeat insistence on error, can only be answered by exposing it, which is what seems to have triggered accusations of cowardice made by you and answered above.
12 –> Fail. Your further case collapses.
>>I think you believe your position is “self-evident”; it is not.>>
13 –> Another strawman. At no point have I ever argued that the grounding of morality is a matter of simple self-evidence. It is not, and no serious person argues that.
14 –> What I and others have pointed out, is that we have a faculty, conscience, which informs us that we are under the government of moral law, a faculty that many materialists imagine is delusional, as already cited, let me again clip Ruse and Wilson (cf. 48above) as typical exemplars:
14 –> The problem with such is of course, that once a major faculty of mind is deemed illusory, as it is inextricably entangled with other such things, perceptions, judgements, reasoning and warranting, etc, we are letting grand delusion loose in the human inner life.
15 –> So, this falls into self-referential incoherence and utter undermining of the mind.
16 –> Which is exactly a point where say Haldane long since warned:
>>The question of whether “world-root or foundation level” even makes sense is EXACTLY THE QUESTION. You have set this up as a threashold requirement, but you have yet to justify that requirement . . . . requiring morality to be grounded at the “world-root or foundation level” is itself ungrounded. No moral system (not even the Christian one, not even the “OMT”) can establish that it is so grounded, and no one has established that such grounding is necessary or useful.>>
17 –> In fact, the reason for that has long since been highlighted by how I have used Hume. Again, in a nutshell, there is an IS-OUGHHT gap. Generally acknowledged major issue.The structure is to discuss on what is, the IS-IS, then to jump to the OUGHT-OUGHT.
18 –> How can this be bridged, or can it? At any level above world-roots, you will have that challenge staring in your face,and every is you appeal to will be challenged, why should this ground ought beyond might and manipulation make ‘right’?
19 –> There is only one remaining level, the world-root. Morality is grounded there or it is not grounded at all. (The same obtains for responsible, rational freedom, of which morality is a component.)
20 –> Indeed, as is outlined in the OP (especially in an infographic), for any conclusion A, we can challenge, how is it warranted, leading to B. B now comes up for challenge, leading to C. This leads to infinite regress or to circularity or to a finitely remote cluster of first plausibles.
21 –> Circularity is question-begging, and an infinite stepwise regress is non- traversible by the finite, fallible, morally struggling and too often stubborn and ill-willed. The only safe candidates are sets of finitely remote first plausibles, addressed through comparative difficulties across live option alternatives. (That’s why such are non-circular.)
22 –> So, what is really happening here is that you know you do not have a ground, so you are trying to reduce worldviews and argument chains that trace to finitely remote first plausibles sustained through comparative difficulties, to either circularity or infinite regress.
23 –> Fail, again, so the rest of your argument further collapses, the rubble is now bouncing.
>>Claims that theistic morality is grounded in “ultimate being” are just that: claims. Claims don’t ground anything. They are just claims. Claims that morality needs grounding in “ultimate being” are, likewise, just claims. These claims are themselves ungrounded.>>
24 –> Repeating your refusal to acknowledge the nature of reasoned argument and worldviews, that leads to a resting point at the level of finitely remote first plausibles, does not transform such a refusal into a proper argument.
25 –> Can you appeal to circularity without begging questions, no.
26 –> Can you stepwise traverse an infinite regress, no.
27 –> So, just like the rest of us, you have finitely remote first plausibles, only, you are patently not confident of your ability to defend such so you wish to leave them unstated while launcing an attack. Sorry, comparative difficulties requires that the live option alternatives are brought to the table.
28 –> Let me go back to the OP:
29 –> In short, you have done much as was predicted. Fail, again, the rubble bounces some more.
>>Second, when we look at the idea of grounding morality in “ultimate being”, it becomes absurd.
If a moral system is grounded in “ultimate being” then everything that exists would be subject to the moral system.
If moral systems create obligations for those subject to them, a moral system grounded in “ultimate being” would impose a moral obligation on everything that exists. Everything that exists would have moral duties they owe to other things.
Therefore inanimate objects (rocks, atoms, subatomic particles, etc.) would be under moral obligation.>>
30 –> Strawman again.
31 –> Mechanical reality is governed by mechanical law, responsibly free creatures would be governed by moral law, which they would learn from the signalling candle within of conscience and the implications of recognising that others are as they are, are their neighbours to be treated with the same respect.
32 –> Which is precisely what we find ourselves to be.
>>Third; if morality imposes no obligation except on those creatures capable of appreciating and responding to obligations, then morality needs no grounding deeper than the truth of those creatures’ nature and existence.>>
33 –> And that nature and existence trace directly to the world roots (as in imago dei), thank you for conceding the key point.
>>A rational, non-theistic morality can be grounded on the truth of human nature and existence. We are fallible, fragile, social creatures. Those facts, along with our possession of volition, knowledge, foresight, and reason make us able to appreciate and respond to moral obligations toward each other and toward other things in our universe.>>
34 –> This assumes rather than grounds, moral obligation, and speaks rather to how we learn than to how such comes to be.It is grounding that is on the table: the ontological is prior to the epistemological.
35 –> Yet again, fail.
>>I have addressed this “world-root or foundation level” claim and demonstrated it is ungrounded, leading to absurdity, and pointless. It provides no extra clarity or assurance or enforceability; it is worthless.>>
36 –> That is what you would wish were the case.Patently, it is not.
KF
@kairosfocus
A fact cannot be anything other than the perfectly accurate 1 to 1 representation of what the fact refers to. The fact is the effect, the thing the fact refers to the cause of it. The fact that there is a crater on the moon there and there, in essence the fact is forced, by the actual crater on the moon being there and there.
You start from “neccessary being”, which slants everything towards fact, even beauty. Then to solve this slanting problem, you just assert that every fact has an essential subjective element in regards to axioms. That’s when you refer to Godel. So then you have a sort of recognition of both fact and opinion.
But you have just messed up both fact and opinion, by throwing them together like that.
It is very obvious that materialism provides no room for subjectivity, at all. That is how evolutionary theory efficiently sabotages conscience, by shutting down subjectivity, of any kind. The stereotypical coldhearted calculating nazi ss, the coldhearted calculating communist commisar, both ideologies derived from evolutionary theory, shutting down subjectivity.
The emotionless talking about chopping up babies, same, it is evolution theory shutting down subjectivity.
Your idea about a neccessary being does not help subjectivity either, it also undermines subjectivity, very clearly.
MNY, A fact is a description or representation, it is not the reality itself. It has no physico-dynamic effect. As such we have to process the information and act on it for that to have an effect. Of course for something like, there is an out of control car coming at you, look out, that is rapid and “second nature,” but it is still processed, as would happen if someone were to shout at you in a language you don’t know. KF
Dionisio @172
We are not having a “discussion”.
You asked questions; I answered; you asked more questions. Etc.
That is not a “discussion”.
It is an INTERROGATION.
I am not interested in being interrogated.
You want to discuss? Then discuss. No one’s stopping you.
sean s.
kairosfocus @173:
Well, since apparently Christians regard Heaven and Hell as essential and vital parts of morality, it certainly appears that their God ultimately falls back on “might makes right”. If that is not the case, then neither Heaven nor Hell are important or vital to Christian morality.
I have been clear that the Golden Rule and Reciprocity are grounded by Facts and Reason, neither of which are “contingent”; they just are.
That would be GREAT! Please show us how to examine this challenge to prove your claim. I have never seen you do it. You simply assert it is true and quote Old Dead Men to “back you up”. That is not enough.
Maybe so, but it is a flaw in your argument that you cannot demonstrate the need for “ontological grounding” beyond what I’ve proposed. How is anyone supposed to fix their “flawed worldview” when you cannot demonstrate what the flaw is?
All that is true, of course. What is not shown is that this “necessary being” needs to be an intelligence, a “being” acting with purpose and design.
An impersonal, mindless “being” can accomplish all you demand. The current materialistic candidate for this is often referred to as a “multiverse”.
I will respond to your #177 soon.
sean s.
SS, Heaven/hell are not core aspects of Christian moral thought, no more than a gaol is at the centre of defining what is criminal, why. That is yet another strawman, at this stage, no surprise. KF
PS: Our whole universe of contingent facts stands in demonstration of another error on your part.
kairosfocus @177:
I thought sorting through 36 points would take a while, but since most are repetitious and nothing is new, it went quicker than I thought.
No one suggests brushing the topic or your position aside, and disagreeing with you does not amount to those either. “The IS-OUGHT gap” may be a “generally acknowledged major issue in ethics” but that does not mean your solution is correct. I believe mine is correct and you are “brushing it aside”.
I understand the problem; I also understand that the solution was known before Hume wrote a single about it.
I don’t care whether others hold this “gap” unbridgeable or not; those are only their opinions, nothing more. It is bridgeable; it was bridgeable before Hume was even a twinkle in his father’s eyes.
The ontological and the moral cannot be bridged at the root of reality because beings existing at or near the root of reality have no moral duties; they owe no moral obligations. Do quantum particles, atoms, molecules, or the four forces have moral duties? No. Founding morality there is absurd. In fact most of the beings that exist have no moral duties. Do rocks? Stars? Galaxies? No. That would be absurd.
Morality connects to reality only when beings have volition, knowledge, foresight, and reason. Upon that combination, the ontological and the moral connect.
Since no bridge at the “root of reality” is sensible, no “being of particular character, i.e. Inherently good and maximally great.” is NECESSARY for the sake of morality
Because reality is causal, some necessary, self-sufficient being must exist; but beyond their necessary and self-sufficient existence, no other attribute is known to be required of this being; in need not have a mind; it need not be able to form plans, intentions, goals, desires, etc. It need only exist. Nothing else is needed. That is sufficient.
Agreed.
Grounding morality at the “root level” creates absurdities as I have shown. Obligation attaches when volition, knowledge, foresight, and reason combine in individual creatures. Only at that point is any bridging needed or even sensible.
As has been repeatedly pointed out to you, but studiously ignored by you, that bridging “at world foundation level” creates absurdity. Insistence upon this absurd requirement distracts focus from moral issues with nebulous philosophical digressions.
Challenging one grounding by offering a better alternative is in no sense “changing the subject”; the grounding IS the subject.
Accusing me of “changing the subject” is a red-herring intended to obstruct discussion and comparison of your proposed grounding versus mine.
This is a red-herring verging on ad hominem.
I have always acknowledged the humanity of Poles, Jews, unborn children, gays, lesbians, transsexuals, Muslims, atheists, etc. etc. These valid and painful topics have nothing to tell us about where morality should be grounded.
KF, you are the red herring distractor.
Your 11 is repetitious.
Your 12 is mere argumentation.
If your “world root level grounding” is not self-evident, then my challenge to it is appropriate.
What Ruse and Wilson write is of no importance to me.
You believe in Proof from Authority, I deny it. One of the nice things about having no religion is that I have no pope, prophet, or priest to tell me what I’m supposed to believe.
Ruse and Wilson’s opinions are theirs. And I freely ignore them, as do other materialists.
To the point: the faculty of conscience is not delusional, but exactly how it works is not proved. Conscience is “inextricably entangled with other such things, perceptions, judgements, reasoning and warranting, etc.”
We are under the government of moral law; agreed.
None of this helps your case even in the tiniest way. My position is entirely compatible with the validity of conscience.
Your 15 is meaningless.
Your 16 is repetitious.
Your 17 through 30 are all repetitious.
I’m not even sure what this is about. It seems to be an endorsement of the GR.
Your 32 is just argumentation.
Then you agree that grounding morality in our possession of volition, knowledge, foresight, and reason is sufficient? No grounding deeper is necessary or desirable. Thank you.
It is grounding that is on the table. But what is shown is that grounding at the world root level creates absurdities.
Your 35 is mere argumentation.
Your 36 is mere argumentation.
And that’s it. That’s all there is. Nothing new.
sean s.
kairosfocus @182:
Excellent! Good news! Now when that guy who hangs out on the corner tells me that I’m going to Hell, I can refer him to you for a correction.
sean s.
Regarding God’s might making Him right;
This is what the Catholic Church had us praying regularly when I was a kid:
Clearly Heaven and Hell was very important then. Has God shut Hell down? When was that announced?
sean s.
@kairosfocus
Simplicity, practicality, consistency with common discourse, consistency with creationism, a unified conceptual scheme. The meanings of fact and opinion I provided score very high on all those criteria.
The fact itself is the effect. When somebody asks the facts about what happened, then the job is to simply make an exact 1 to 1 model of what happened. What happened is the cause, the model of it is the effect of that cause. The model is in essence forced by what it is sought to be modelled.
That is an explanation of fact that is simple, practical, in line with common discourse, creationism etc.
Facts have the logic of being forced. Opinions have the logic of freedom. Simple, straightforward. Facts apply to the creation, opinion applies to the creator. Again, that is the way the logic of morality, subjectivity, functions, in common discourse at present.
You want to reinvent common discourse? Have people speak differently, with a different structure of logic? That’s maybe philosophically interesting, but practically an impossibly tall order.
People might discuss whether it is neccessary to believe in a neccessary being, and maybe something will come of it. But in daily life, they use the logic of creationism, with 2 categories, opinion and fact.
SS,
the nub of it is that you need to start with the chain of warrant question, and until you face it squarely, no further progress is possible for you.
So, again, you put up claim A.
Why should I accept A?
Well B, some frame of evidence or reasons etc, leads to A, warrants it.
Let’s take it that it actually does, and that I am not playing selective hyperskeptical rhetoric games.
But B, summed up, is another claim.
Why accept it, then?
C.
And so forth.
Yes, I know, you have dismissed this, you are tired of seeing it, you don’t think anything of it.
It is not on trial, you are, SS.
The chain is there for any reasonable person to see, to dismiss it speaks ill of you, not of it.
The implication is that the chain faces one of the three options above: infinite regress, circular claims, finitely remote first plausibles.
Circles that beg questions will go nowhere, fast.
Finite, fallible, morally struggling, too often blindly stubborn people cannot traverse an infinite chain of warrants in steps, that fails also.
So, the reality is, we face finite chains of warrant, going back to first plausibles. In a world where there are alternative possible faith points. So we evaluate on comparative difficulties across factual adequacy, coherence (logical and dynamical) and explanatory balance and power: neither simplistic nor an ad hoc patchwork.
The issue is, which faith-point, why.
This holds for any chain of warrant, including moral ones.
In that case, you have tried to suggest that oh we can all agree on the Golden Rule. The problem is, we don’t, and very important cases have hinged on whether X is my neighbour with reasonable expectations to be respected as I expect to be. Just ask the Polish and Jewish “mice” facing Hitler’s “cats” c. 1939.
The GR can teach those willing to be instructed, but it is not foundational. Which, has been said several times.
The only place where chains of warrant properly terminate is at world root level, with first plausibles. In this case, on pain of facing the IS-OUGHT gap.
Now, I know, you have dismissed all of this.
Here is Kocher on something you and others tempted to argue as you have (especially on chains of warrant) should ponder:
KF
PS: I will respond to select points in due course as footnotes for the onlooker.
PPS: Again, I will not be drawn into a further tangential discussion on matters of theology when ontology is not being properly addressed, and even the issue of chains of warrant. I will note for the concerned onlooker, that heaven vs hell is no more central to right/wrong than gaols are to why certain acts are properly deemed criminal and subject to sanctions in law. The same onlooker will be able to scroll up to the OP and see why the attempt to accuse God of imposing might makes right fails . . . but how it fails is not convenient rhetorically so above we see yet more of red herring tangents led away to strawman caricatures, now backed up by the pretence that repeating an already corrected error drumbeat fashion undoes the correction.
MNY, kindly cf the just above. KF
F/N: Just now, I commented in the denial thread in response to SB. I believe this comment is also appropriate here, as the issues seem to be latent drivers of the exchanges we are seeing. The fallacy of the selectively hyperskeptical, closed mind starting with first principles of right reason has to be exposed and turned from if progress is to be made:
________________
>>SB, 15:
Aptly summarised.
I suggest once we have a world W and a distinct thing A in it, we see a world-partition:
W = {A|~A}
In that context the three core first principles of right reason are self-evidently and jointly manifest.
LOI: A is A
LNC: A is not simultaneously ~A in the same semse of partition.
LEM: For some x in W, x is in A X-OR in ~A.
(X-OR, I find useful to introduce; it denotes exclusive or, AUT not VEL. In short x in W means that x must be in A or ~A, and it cannot be in both, it is in A or it is in ~A, but not both nor neither.)
Once we see this outline, it shows the underlying issue: distinct identity of A, I have usually spoken of A = a bright red ball on a table.
One of those medicine/exercise balls is a good case. The old fashioned baby’s first toy ball or a traditional cricket ball count. (These days, I see two-tone cricket balls and white ones. I suspect the two-tone will tell a batsman or a videographer a lot about bowling action, and will feed databases.)
If someone baulks at this, there is no hope of going on to other self-evident truths or exploring a weak form principle of sufficient reason by which once A is [or even is not], we may ask and investigate in thought or empirically, why A is [or is not] and whether/how it came to be [or, to not be]. This of course brings up possible/ impossible being, possible worlds, non-being or nothingness, and contingent/necessary being. Where also, truth says of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not and reasonable warrant allows us to see that a warranted, credibly true belief is knowledge. From such, we may then learn about causes, enabling on/off causal factors (via considering a fire) and their effects/ impacts.
With such a mental toolbox, we can then begin to explore on a basis of clear, insightful and reasonable thought.
(Cf here on in context: http://nicenesystheol.blogspot.....u2_bld_wvu )
But, too often, that is exactly what too many have been indoctrinated to fear and be repelled by.
Of course, the better to be manipulated by those who are confident they can achieve message dominance and institutional dominance. But, muddle-headedness and manipulation have a highly predictable outcome: marches of folly and evil leading straight over the cliff to ruin. Personal, and civilisational.
Our civilisation is hell-bent on folly and great evil, with the ongoing abortion holocaust of many hundreds of millions as exhibit A.
A is A, and A leads to ruin, so the chief aim of the sane and sensible, sober-minded person in our day will be to turn back before it is too late.
And signs aplenty point to the crumbling cliff’s edge leading to an abyss that we are heading straight towards.
Whom the gods would destroy, first they rob of reason.
And, the god of this world has come to steal, to kill and to destroy.
But, there is One who came to redeem, bless, transform and enable us to have life to the full. (Cf. here on.)
Whose report will we believe, and why?
Or, will we indulge selective hyperskepticism as usual, leading to incoherence, folly and evils that ought to have been averted or should be reformed?
Have we come to a point where as a civilisation, the light in us as we imagine it is in reality darkness and deception, a Plato’s Cave shadow show put on for us by those who dominate messages and institutions, pretending to be guardians of science the only begetter of truth?
(Where that core proposition of scientism is patently self-refuting and so, false. But that does not prevent it from being drummed into us by those who hope to profit by today’s updated multimedia living colour shadow shows presented as though they were truth.)
Again, whose report will we believe, why?
KF>>
_________________
It is time to correct basic errors of thought that are now pandemic in our day.
KF
F/N2 (attn SS): Just on a point where SS indulges an attempted turnabout accusation to deflect the point that acknowledging neighbour status with the neighbour being seen as being of equal value and a bearer of rights is not to be assumed:
Of course , what is really going on there is that SS has been trying to push the golden rule into a role it cannot fulfill.
It is an epistemic, educational device that allows us to see that if we have reasonable expectations to be treated fairly, justly etc, then others of like mature and moral worth are to be accorded the same respect as we find ourselves to be owed; a respect that of course reflects our evident nature and ought not be warped into the idea that as we hold power and say that the tail of a sheep is a leg, henceforth a sheep has five legs so there; on pain of gaol or loss of livelihood or stripping you of your children under false colours of law if you dare object in the name of conscience or good sense.
But, patently, such an epistemic principle cannot provide the ontological basis for such rights, for such duties, for such moral value, and for such equality of nature and being. Indeed, it assumes them and invites that exploration.
However, for several weeks, SS has been indulging a distractive exercise by pouncing on my citation of how Locke used the GR through citing Hooker, and has tried to suggest that we need go no farther than this, for practical purposes.
Let me add, how I have augmented the Hooker cite in Locke in his 2nd treatise on Govt, Ch 2, to clarify . . . of course studiously ignored:
In response, I have cited several notorious historical cases and one case now in progress. Cases that show that there is a history of refusing to acknowledge neighbour status, equality of rights, and equality of nature. African slaves, notoriously, were deemed racial inferiors over the past several centuries. Hitler, in Mein Kampf, spoke of how cats have no sympathetic views to mice [as a part of making a case of unequal nature justifying Aryan Man racial superman ideology and the associated targetting of inferiors], and from 1939 made Poland a principal target of the holocaust, murdering 5 million poles, 3 million of them Jews. Yes, half the Jewish part of the holocaust was Polish Jewry. We can add 25 million Russians to the usual holocaust reckoning, net of the was it 5 – 8 millions killed on the battlefield, that was at least death in battle. There was a plan to starve the Ukraine to death.
Today, we live in the midst of the worst holocaust in history, one that dwarfs both what Hitler et al did and what he Communists have done. And a major talking point used to warp law, the state, courts etc in its support, is that the unborn are not persons within the meaning of the law, and so are not to be protected, starting with their life.
So, we see that there is a challenge of warrant for the GR, which requires moving on to a deeper level.
One, that will require bridging IS and OUGHT.
One, that points tot he chain of warrant issue already addressed but obviously being brushed aside.
One, for which SS obviously has no cogent answer, so he has resorted tot he tactic of the projective turnabout accusation, I am to be dismissed as setting up a red herring distractor and even an attack to the man. (Perhaps, this last is because it seems likely SS supports abortion on demand and resents that I classify it with the holocaust and slavery as examples of rejecting the neighbour-status of targetted groups. Sorry if it hurts, but that is a matter of history and of the current moral issue no 1 confronting our civilisation, ongoing holocaust and linked corruption of institutions and thought through mass bloodguilt, including now Mengele like corruption of medicine. (Look, I had to face a wake-up call in recent weeks on this issue myself, I had become far too silent on it — which is enabling behaviour. God, forgive me for that.)
Obviously, there is no answer to X is not my neighbour, but going tot he roots of IS and moral worth, thus bridging the IS-OUGHT gap.
Which then brings to bear the general force of the principle that warrant chains, and confronts us with the choice: infinite regress, or circularity, or finitely remote first plausibles. Where question-begging fails instantly, and infinite regress of warrant cannot be traversed by the finite and fallible.
So, we find that warrant traces to not just some point in common for those who will be in the circle we are willing to acknowledge, but to world-foundations level or world-roots level, and thus to finitely remote first plausibles.
if we are to warrant a bridging of IS and OUGHT, that is where it is to be sought. Just as to found Geometry as a first and exemplary mathematical, logical discipline, Euclid went back and back until he hit on the axiomatic level. Not everything is deductive, so warrant needs to be broader than deductive proof, i.e. inductive arguments, inference to best explanation, the question of moral certainty, credibility of the senses and of conscious inner life etc are a part of the picture.
And so, we are at the pivotal point here.
There is already a point by point addressing of issues, but there is intransigence based on polarisation and refusal to acknowledge the nature of warrant, multiplied by the sort of rhetorical tactics I just now have had to address and expose.
But in the end, as Aristotle outlined in The Rhetoric Bk I Ch 2, arguments become persuasive due to the impact of emotions, appeals to seemingly credible sources or presenters, or to the force of fact and logic. Emotions are no better than their underlying perceptions, judgements and expectations, no authority is better than his facts and logic. So, in the end, though it is the least persuasive lever in popular discussion, I will go to the only level that actually truly directly warrants, facts and linked reasoning.
I take my stand on facts and logic, here informed by the chain of warrant issue and the history that demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt why the GR is not foundational, though it is a key educational principle that teaches those willing to learn.
Let us see if SS and others of like ilk will be willing to do better.
KF
It is forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It means you are forbidden to regard good and evil as fact. Yet, you advocate it as a virtue.
The good and evil is attributed to the spirit, and the existence of the spirit is a matter of opinion.
The law of non contradiction of identity, you are applying it in a wrong way. It’s wrong and absurd that you categorize kindness and cruelty together with Jupiter and Saturn, that the law of non contradiction applies to all. What is in people’s soul is a categorically different issue from what substances are in their body. Kindness and cruelty are matters of opinion, the substances in their body are matters of fact.
MNY:
A basic error of eisegesis, projecting interpretation into a scriptural text.
The issue in view in that text was trusting obedience to God vs disobedience driven by mistrust of God (who is portrayed elsewhere in scripture as Reason himself, as all-wise and all-knowing so inherently wisdom, knowledge and reason are virtues or goods) and believing instead a manipulative sales talk.
False, twisted “knowledge” or “wisdom” that leads to endarkenment is what is condemned, e.g.:
. . . or:
. . . and again:
No, wisdom, reason, knowledge, truth, the right and the good alike are not forbidden but instead are praised, set as desirable goals, and seen as the fruit of sound growth under God in accordance with true enlightenment.
Indeed to live soberly, responsibly, even joyfully by the light of truth and right through the power of him who is Truth Himself, is seen as flowing from spiritual enlightenment, liberation and renewal of our minds, and is specifically termed our reasonable service.
KF
PS: To discuss good or evil etc, we first have to resort to language, which pivots on distinctions and distinct identity. Thus the triple laws are always there. And as long as good, evil, truth, falsity etc are distinct, these laws apply. Indeed, let me cite some more:
. . . and:
It is straightforward understanding of scripture, you are forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Do not do that, says God.
You turn scripture on it’s head and in effect say that eating from the tree of knowlege of good and evil is praised!
That good and evil is properly attributed to the soul of somebody, makes good and evil into a matter of opinion, because the existence of the soul is a matter of opinion.
It all makes sense that way. The soul chooses, the goodness and evil is in the soul, God then judges the soul. God judges who you are as making the decisions you did. God preserves the soul, God does not preserve the results of the decisions, the results turn to dust.
MNY, I simply invite the drawing of the contrast between your assertions and the clear teachings of scripture. I do so in part as a service to you, as it seems your understanding is influenced by the haram concept; per your emphasis on “forbidden.” KF
I think this debate between kairosfocus and myself is coming to its effective end. Our arguments are beginning to become repetitious; I’ve seen all KF has, and all I can do is remind him of why he is wrong. I’m sure KF feels exactly the same way about me and mine.
Now kairosfocus is so frustrated at his inability to change my mind that KF’s beginning to insinuate that I must be evil. That is a sign that this needs to end.
Wide-spread belief in kairosfocus’s “world-root-level” grounding of morality does absolutely no good for preventing evil.
It did not stop the thousands of Germans who committed the Holocaust, or the thousands of Polish, Russian, French, Dutch etc. collaborators who were accomplices in that crime.
It did not stop 19th century pogroms in Imperial Russia. It didn’t stop the African Slave Trade or Southern lynchings or Jim Crow laws. It didn’t stop the Wars of Religion in Europe, nor mass-murder of Jews in medieval Germany, nor witch burnings, heretic burnings, and on and on and on.
It doesn’t stop Christians from getting abortions today, a problem so great that some churches and denominations struggle to find ways to minister to members who’ve gotten abortions.
It doesn’t stop conservative politicians who take money away from programs intended to serve poor children and mothers so they can lower taxes for the wealthy. Strangly; “godless” Europeans have fewer abortions than we Religious Americans do. And they take better care of their children too. Are those related facts? Probably.
In any event, belief in kairosfocus’s “world-root-level” grounding of morality does absolutely no good for preventing any of these evils. Is the solution to the crisis of abortion to proclaim “Ontology!”? Will that change hearts and minds?
Would my alternative, a moral system based on the mandate of the Golden Rule and founded on Reason and Facts of Nature do better? I think so because it does not try to leverage beliefs in deities. Deities have been and are used to justify all manner of horror because “God said so, and God’s ways are mysterious.” All those horrors I mentioned above were supported by religious leaders in the name of their God.
And now we have Godly believers who won’t take their children to doctors, who throw acid at little children, who destroy antiquities, who induce children to become sex-slaves and child-soldiers and suicide bombers, who go to the funerals of fallen soldiers and cheer the weapons that killed them.
Think of all the conflict zones in the world; how many are driven by religious disagreements? Most are. I cannot think of a war in all of history where religious leaders on either side (much less BOTH sides!) were like: “Hold on there! This is wrong!” Mark Twain’s War Prayer got it right.
My morality replaces God with Reason and Facts. Oh for sure people can and will dispute Reason and Facts (just like they do theistic ideas) but because reason and facts are accessible to all, there is no claiming that “Reason’s ways are mysterious”; reasons ways are reasonable by definition. Facts are facts.
My alternative is not perfect, but that’s not the standard we need meet. We just need better. And boy! Do we need better!
Kairosfocus is part of the team that runs UD (or so it appears) so I will give him the last word on this thread.
Thank you all for your kind attention.
sean s.
SS, at this point, with all due respect things like the chain of warrant are not on trial, you are. Likewise, it is patent that do to neighbour as you would be done by teaches morality well but cannot ontologically found it, where some sobering history on dehumanising to abuse shows the urgency of such grounding. And so the verdict is in, you can only play the I declare rhetorical victory card. Sad, in the end. KF
The “forbidden” fruit is a common name for it, as far as I know. You are grasping at straws. You are arguing against scripture.
When scripture says ” But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
Then it is unthinkable that you just change the meaning to “False, twisted “knowledge” or “wisdom” that leads to endarkenment is what is condemned,” You do not even mention good and evil!
It is not what it says. And that is just so typical elitist, ‘I don’t have to deal with the straightforward truth because, I am so sophisticated’. That, religion is not for common people, but for learned people who understand about “neccessary being”, and all that sophistication, and how sentences mean the direct opposite of what it says, because of this or that smart argument.
It’s the genius of scripture that it predicted you saying to desire wisdom in regards to knowledge of good and evil, just like Eve said.
“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
kairosfocus
“No, wisdom, reason, knowledge, truth, the right and the good alike are not forbidden but instead are praised, set as desirable goals, and seen as the fruit of sound growth under God in accordance with true enlightenment .”
And also the “enlightenment”
“Satan fashions himself into a messenger of light” (2 Cor. 11:3, 14)
Aren’t you too close for comfort to what scripture condemns? Shouldn’t you be somewhat more circumspect, and accept the straightforward meaning that knowledge of good and evil is forbidden?
Isn’t it obviously odious to propose the worth of man as fact, and then inevitably start calculating worth (4 -2) x 3 = worth 6. The minus uh..to get rid of them, the multiplication eh.. to have them reproduce, we get rid of these 2 men and produce 4 children. That’s okay, it’s increasing net worth.
MNY:
First, this is not a theology discussion [philosophy and ethics may reckon with traditions, but are going to be looking at foundational principles and issues].
Second, even so I have taken time to pause and give you brief indicators as to where you can begin to form a better balanced view on what the Judaeo-Christian scriptural tradition actually directly and consistently teaches on what you seem to imagine is haram.
I add to the above, this counsel from Rom 12:
And yes, reasonable service and spiritual worship are both renderings of the same Gk phrase, showing the inextricable joining of what you think is irreconcilably separate.
(The solution is that true enlightenment — as opposed to wise- in- our- own- eyes willful and foolish rebellion that erects strongholds of fallacies that lock out the knowledge of God — starts with him who is the way the truth and the live, Rational Communicative Wisdom Himself, and with a reckoning on the force of what was presented to the Athenian intellectual elites (cf. Ac 17, i/l/o here), noting the specific point of historical anchorage put on the table on the strength of the 500 witnesses. As Jesus noted in the Sermon on the Mount, the eye is the lamp of the body, so if your eyes are good you will be enlightened, but if your eyes [of understanding] are bad, your body will be filled with darkness.)
That is sufficient for any reasonable discussion on what is a tangent now tainted with improper dismissiveness.
KF
SS:
I see your psychologising projection, which by the mirror principle is inadvertently revealing:
If it were not in the end a sign of sobering issues, I would laugh.
Before embarking on some steps of thought, I should note that the very word debate — which you used above to characterise this tangential comment exchange — is loaded and inadvertently telling.
Echoing Jefferson and behind him Socrates et al: that wicked art that makes the worse seem the better case, therein abetted by rhetoric, the art not of warrant but too often instead of manipulative persuasion. (The art that Ari et al counselled us to reform and take up for purposes of defense in the face of manipulation of opinion and destructive polarisation of communities, rather than prizing for its own value.)
No, we do not need more of “debate,” we need instead clear thinking and discussion guided by reason.
I take up some steps of thought:
1 –> I have no duty or concern to try to persuade, I have simply pointed out factors that a reasonable person would be well advised to consider.
2 –> For instance it is quite obvious that you struggle with something as elementary as the implication of the easily recognised fact that warrant comes in chains, A –> B –> C –> . . . so that we must all face the issue of infinite stepwise regress or circularity or finitely remote first plausibles.
3 –> Of which, only worldview level first plausibles assessed on comparative difficulties, are serious candidates for fundamentally grounding any case.
4 –> So, tracing back, if there is a telling refusal to address such grounding, that means that SS you are at some level aware that your view will not stand up to such, and have been using every rhetorical device to avoid such a dialectic of worldview foundations.
5 –> Given that it is highly likely that you are arguing i/l/o inherently amoral evolutionary materialist scientism and/or its fellow travellers — it is tellingly patent that you have studiously avoided comparison of acknowledged worldviews — that is not surprising.
6 –> We take due note of the implication that evolutionary materialism and fellow traveller views are so weak that they cannot even be acknowledged and defended in the presence of informed interlocutors.
7 –> That is a stunning implication of inability to stand up at the bar of comparative difficulties.
8 –> Similarly, it is no accident that you have borrowed a principle without acknowledging its specific theistic context in our civilisation, the Golden Rule. A rule, BTW, that we have it on excellent authority, does not stand on its own . . . a big clue as to the key ethical fallacy at work:
9 –> In wider context, this double-principle of course triggers the telling attempted rebuttal, and who is my neighbour; which leads to the parable of the Good Samaritan, which overturns notions that restrict neighbourliness to in-groups and lock out out-groups. Cf Lk 10:25 – 37.
10 –> It is well worth noting the underlying context, of love to God the Creator, as driving love of neighbour (who in Biblical context is equally made in God’s image). The apostle John, in later years, therefore amplifies the teachings of his cousin:
11 –> Philosophically, this underscores the issue of the IS-OUGHT gap and its resolution. For, neighbour love does no harm but rather good to neighbour, neighbourliness is rooted in our sharing the common Imago Dei which endows us with the worth and dignity that has legitimate expectations of respect for what we now term core rights, which must be mutual. And, that is how the GR, stamped in our hearts, instructs those who will listen to it.
12 –> But, we equally see the ontological root behind the teaching-principle, a root that philosophical considerations on ethics draw out, through the widely recognised issue of the IS-OUGHT gap. (An issue, SS, that you are suspiciously unwilling to take seriously.)
13 –> Hume argued that there is a gap between IS-IS and OUGHT-OUGHT, that must be addressed, and subsequently in an age dominated by evolutionary materialist scientism, radical secularism and fellow travellers, it is a commonplace notion that it cannot be bridged. Fact.
14 –> It is in this phil context that I applied the chain of warrant issue, starting indeed from the epistemic principle that teaches us morality if we listen and if we are willing to acknowledge that historically, one of the grave challenges of ethics has been that there is a strong tendency to dehumanise or even unduly demonise, stereotype and scapegoat those targetted for distinctly un-neighbourly treatment.
15 –> I listed slavery of Africans, the holocaust of WW II and the ongoing slaughter of hundreds of millions of unborn children, as clear historical and current cases of this problem. (And if you think this is an ad hominem, I suggest rather that it is a good thing that there is sufficient conscience left to be stirred.)
16 –> I also connected it to the history of ideas roots of modern democracy (which itself answers to a whole agenda of accusations against ethical, Judaeo-Christian theism in the community and public square that have been neatly tip-toed by as though they do not exist and need not be corrected).
17 –> This, by pointing out how Locke in ch 2 of his 2nd essay on civil govt — acknowledged by one and all to lie behind the pivotal US DoI, 1776 — cited Hooker’s use of that rule and by implication, Hooker’s onward link to Aristotle as a representative of the reasonable minded man who is not necessarily explicitly thinking in a theistic tradition.
18 –> Now, there is a need to build a bridge, and we see that warrant, by its inherent logic, inexorably — never mind your resistance to following this logic — points to the roots of the world and our views on those roots, our worldview first plausibles.
19 –> The logical answer is, that the bridge must lie at foundational level, or else ever after there will be is-is then jump to ought. (And, let me add: I have already, simply, noted a commonplace distinction between the mechanical world ruled by natural law and the world of responsibly free agents subject to moral government as an answer to the talking point you raised that would suggest that rocks and trees and donkeys would therefore have moral duties. I point to Psalm 32:9, which says “Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle . . . “ I am also informed by a retired vet here, that some bulls are so unruly that they will rip the nose-ring right out of their noses if you try to use that to control them. The answer to such a bull is, bang, steak for lunch. Control by force may be necessary in such cases, but it is not moral government. [Might makes ‘right’ is an outright contradiction in terms, and deceitful rhetoric is a violation of the right to informed decision. Cf this discussion on Ac 27.])
20 –> Where also, we can see that if we follow the logic of evolutionary materialist scientism we face both amorality and the implication as stated by Ruse and Wilson, that morality is an illusion impressed as a mechanism for promoting cooperation and survival, but that carries with it the unacknowledged price tag of letting grand delusion loose in our inner rational life, landing in inescapable self referential incoherence.
21 –> On all of this, we notice on your part a studious skirting.
22 –> But the reasonable man will conclude, on pain of incoherence, that we are responsibly free, rational and morally governed, so there is somewhere a way to bridge is and ought, somewhere that by the chaining of warrant challenge, will lie at the world-root level. The level, SS, that you so studiously, so revealingly want to dismiss and set aside; favouring instead selectively hyperskeptical skeptical rhetoric.
23 –> I again point to what was outlined and predicted in the OP, which prediction you have inadvertently managed to fulfill, in the course of side tracking a discussion and allowing DK to avoid serious engagement of the issue the OP primarily sets on the table, viz the failure of the Euthyphro dilemma in the face of ethical theism’s ontological and moral roots that bridge the IS-OUGHT gap:
24 –> Last but not least, you again project to me the issue of (by suggestion, improperly) accusing you of being evil. I would suggest that I have instead made it plain that we are all finite, fallible, morally struggling, and too often stubbornly ill-willed; something that we need to deal with for the sake of our world and our own souls.
KF
PS: I add, that one should be willing to take up a balanced 101-level educational process if one is not already sufficiently familiar with an important subject, before forming an opinion and making a decision with potentially serious consequences; e.g. voting. That is supposedly a major function of the media (and before that primary and then secondary level teachers) but notoriously media houses and those who determine education content instead far too often indulge in manipulation and end up leading the public into marches of folly. I must single out Wikipedia by name as an education site whose leadership full well knows what is going on, or full well should know what is going on on ideologically blighted topics, even as they have now utterly undermined traditional encyclopedias, even in CD form. Proper and fair minded, truthful public education is also a duty of key institutions and professions, again too often failed. Historians, of all people, should know that the sound lessons of history were paid for in blood and tears, with huge treasure simply burned up in the process, and that those who fail to learn those sound lessons are doomed to relive the worst chapters. I cite Ac 27 as a case study on how democracy and corporate/community governance can go sadly wrong . . . and yes, I am speaking straight to our civilisation at this time. Historians, you are the last line, stand to! (If you fail, all will be lost.) For what it’s worth, here is my in a nutshell on assessing news, views and the like: http://www.angelfire.com/pro/k.....r_spin.htm (This is a key aspect of my response to the debate-manipulative rhetoric problem. Another is this, on straight thinking in a nutshell: http://www.angelfire.com/pro/k.....inking.pdf )
F/N: Locke in the intro to his essay on human understanding, section 5:
We would be well advised to ponder and heed this counsel. Counsel which, BTW, shows an underlying Judaeo-Christian context that is too often snipped out of relevant discussions. KF
F/N2: By contrast, Lewontin on evolutionary materialist scientism is revealing in a very different fashion:
And, we should not overlook the inadvertent self-referential incoherence of Ruse and Wilson, by way of letting grand delusion loose in our thinking:
Of course, above, SS tried to snip off and dismiss this, but in fact it is closely connected to the logic of descent with modification driven by chance variation and differential reproductive success of sub-populations. So, if one differs with these eminent scholars from the Darwinist perspective, there is some need to justify and substantiate.
Worse, that same logic undermines rationality and knowledge from the same evolutionary perspective; as was highlighted by Nancy Pearcy in her recent Finding Truth:
The institutionally, educationally and culturally dominant evolutionary materialist perspective and its accommodationist fellow travellers have some serious ‘splaining to do.
Explaining that is highly relevant to addressing morality, the IS-OUGHT gap and the attempt to force-fit the Euthyphro dilemma on ethical theism.
KF
@sean samis
It is very obvious that constitutional democracy centered around freedom of opinion has provided loads of peace and morality on the societal level.
To base morality on the facts of nature is what communism and nazism tried to do.
So the issue is broadly that we have nazi’s and communists living in a democracy, undermining it. We have people who do not really accept the validity of opinion, because to make good and evil a fact destroys all opinion. Materialism destroys all opinion. God as a neccessary being destroys freedom of religion. Etc. If people would be taught how choosing works at school, taught what they already know, teach how choosing works in common discourse, then awareness of freedom is raised to an intellectual level, and people would more understand that opinions can only be formed by choosing. It would be democratic people living in a democracy.
MNY:
It seems I need to post a little tutorial on modes of being, to bring out what necessary being means (hint: it does not destroy freedom of opinion, on religious or other subjects.)
Okie, let me clip from the NCSTS U2 (here and scroll):
___________________
>> . . . For a fire to begin or to continue, we need (1) fuel, (2) heat, (3) an oxidiser [usually oxygen] and (4) an un- interfered- with heat-generating chain reaction mechanism. (For, Halon fire extinguishers work by breaking up the chain reaction.)
Each of the four factors is necessary for, and the set of four are jointly sufficient to begin and sustain a fire. We thus see four contributory factors, each of which is necessary [knock it out and you block or kill the fire], and together they are sufficient for the fire.
This may be studied by lighting a match. For instance, strike one, and let it half burn. Then, tilt the head up. Watch the flame fade out for want of an ON/OFF enabling factor, fuel.
Similarly, if one pulls a second match and instead of wiping on the friction-strike strip, moves it rapidly through the air — much lower friction — it will not light for want of heat. If we were to try to strike a match in pure Nitrogen instead of air, it might flare at first (depending on what is in the head) but the main fuel, wood will not burn for want of a good oxidiser. And so forth.
As a similar exercise, one may set a candle stub in a tray of water and light it. Then, put a jar over the candle, such that water can be drawn up into it. After a little while, the candle will go out for want of the oxidiser in air, Oxygen.
(One should do the actual experiment, at least to the stage of making a match fade out. Many of us will have done this or the like in school. [And, as quantum phenomena are often posed as a great mysterious counter-example to the logic of our everyday world, we should note that a fire is doubly a quantum phenomenon. First, the rapid oxidation reaction, and second the emission of photons of light, which makes the process visible to us. Indeed, we should note how creators of fireworks add particular chemicals to the mix to get desired colours, and more seriously a spectroscope can allow us to learn much about a fire by revealing its spectrum. And, enabling causal factors such as those in the fire tetrahedron are pervasive in quantum processes, e.g. — and yes this is trivial, but the trivial sometimes also makes a key point — no unstable atom, no radioactive decay, and the like; cf. here for more.])
We thus see by definite and instructive example, the principle of cause and effect. That is,
[d’] if something has a beginning or may cease from being — or, generally it is contingent — it has a cause.
Common-sense rationality, decision-making and science alike are founded on this principle of right reason: if an event happens, why — and, how? If something begins or ceases to exist, why and how? If something is sustained in existence, what factors contribute to, promote or constrain that effect or process, how?
The answers to these questions are causes.
Without the reality behind the concept of cause the very idea of laws of nature would make no sense: events would happen anywhere, anytime, with no intelligible reason or constraint.
As a direct result, neither rationality nor responsibility would be possible; all would be a confused, unintelligible, unpredictable, uncontrollable chaos with nothing having a stable existence or identity. That is, this principle is directly linked to the identity cluster already outlined. Indeed, it can be noted that if something A is possible, its defining attributes must be coherent, unlike the contradictions between requisites of squarishness and circularity that render a square circle impossible:
DIAG: One and the same object cannot be circular and squarish in the same sense and place at the same time
Also, since it often comes up, yes: a necessary, ON/OFF enabling causal factor is a causal factor — if there is no fuel, the car cannot go because there is no energy source for the engine. Similarly, without an unstable nucleus or particle, there can be no radioactive decay and without a photon of sufficient energy, there can be no photo-electric emission of electrons: that is, contrary to a common error, quantum mechanical events or effects, strictly speaking, are not cause-less.
(By the way, the concept of a miracle — something out of the ordinary that is a sign that points to a cause beyond the natural order — in fact depends on there being such a general order in the world. In an unintelligible chaos, there can be no extra-ordinary signposts, as nothing will be ordinary or regular!)
However, there is a subtle facet to this, one that brings out the other side of the principle of sufficient reason.
Namely, that there is a possible class of being that does not have a beginning, and cannot go out of existence; such necessary beings are self-sufficient, have no enabling, ON/OFF external necessary causal factors, and as such cannot be blocked from existing. And it is held that once there is a serious candidate to be such a necessary being, if the candidate is not contradictory in itself, it will be actual. [Such a thing is possible if it is not impossible . . . as a square circle is impossibly self contradictory as the necessary attributes for something to be squarish and those required for it to be circular stand in mutual contradiction.]
Or, we could arrive at effectively the same point another way, one which brings out what it means to be a serious candidate to be a necessary being [after, Avi Sion]:
That is, for a successful candidate necessary being:
since there is no external ON/OFF enabling causal factor, a successful candidate necessary being will exist without a beginning, and cannot cease from existing as one cannot “switch off” a sustaining external factor.
As a simple example the true proposition 2 + 3 = 5 and its constituent numbers are such necessary beings. To see that, try to imagine a world where, 2, 3, 5 and the operation of abstractly joining 2 and 3 to form 5 did not exist or can cease from existing, or where it is false that || + ||| –> |||||.
Another possibility of course is that such a candidate being is impossible: it cannot be so as there is the sort of inescapable contradiction of defining attributes as is involved in being a proposed square circle.
So, we have candidates to be necessary beings that may not be possible on pain of contradiction, or else that may not be impossible, equally on pain of contradiction. (Thus, the law of non-contradiction is inextricably entangled into possibility of being, and thence into cause and effect. Attempts to sever the two are wrong-headed and inevitably fail.)
Of course, something like “a flying spaghetti monster” — which would be built of components and depends on their particular arrangement to be what it would be, is not a serious candidate to be a necessary being. (NB: Such has been suggested in dismissive parody of the iconic creation of Adam that appears in Michelangelo’s famous Sistine Chapel painting. God, of course is symbolised in that painting as an Old Man, the Ancient of Days, but that is just a representation. God is a serious — nay, the most serious — candidate to be a necessary being.)
In addition, since matter as we know it (such as what goes into spaghetti and noodles as well as eye-stalks and eyes) is contingent, a necessary being will not be material. The likely candidates are: (a) numbers such as 2, (b) abstract, necessarily true propositions and (c) an eternal mind . . . often brought together by suggesting that (d) such abstract truths or entities are held in and eternally contemplated by such a mind. >>
___________________
In short, necessary being does not entail coerced choice on opinions, religions etc. Save, insofar as responsible freedom implies duties of care to truth and right. But patently, we may violate such duties of care, by ignorance, negligence or willful misconduct. Of course, if you climb up an ackee or breadfruit tree and jump off, imagining you can fly [to heaven or to Africa makes no difference], you will be lucky if you break your arm, and for sure the authorities will commit you as a lunatic. And yes, that is a real world case.
KF
@kairosfocus
I am quite convinced that the “neccessary being” argument was already used by governments to force acceptance of people that God exists. I have no evidence of it, but I would not be surprised. The government would simply argue that because the existence of God is neccessary, it is then unlawful to reject the existence of God. Why not do that, sounds like a great idea to promote rationality, responsibility and whatnot.
There is nothing in what you said about a neccessary being which supports choosing, or freedom of opinion. In contrast, when the existence of God is regarded as a matter of opinion, then choosing is required to form the opinion that God is real (or not real). That is straightforward support for freedom of religion.
You have freedom only as a threat (unpredictability, irrationality and whatnot).
The mechanism of creation is choosing. That means that cause and effect are chosen as 1. There are no effects without causes, or causes without effects. A cause is not the “creator” of an effect, the creator chooses the cause with the effect together.
The car has the potential to go about, but it is spontaneity which pushes the gaspedal down, bringing into being all the causes with their effects of the moving car.
MNY,
Which government, when and where?
(I assure you that modal ontological reasoning has nothing whatsoever to do with any positions of government anywhere. And so it is no surprise you say you have no evidence. You don’t because it does not exist, nor is it a reasonable expectation. You are projecting, and projecting improper things. In my homeland, we would say, you are out of order.)
You seem to be terrified somehow of a government somewhere imposing believing in God by force.
The massive evidence is just the opposite, of many cases of government sponsored promotion and even imposition of evolutionary materialist scientism, duly dressed in the lab coat. With a death toll in the past century of in excess of 100 millions, not counting the in process laughter of hundreds of millions of the unborn.
So, have you been standing up and denouncing this, expressing deep concern over such subversion of science institutions and science education?
I doubt it.
There is simply no genuine connexion between believing in God, or before getting to that, accepting that the logic of being and modes of being point to our world being rooted in necessary being and any totalitarian ideology or agenda.
None, you are making up a false narrative agit-prop scare story based on stereotyping and scapegoating ethical theists. FYI there is a fundamental right to innocent reputation and in a day of political censorship, internet slander mobs who try to harm people in livelihood and life and outright persecution of Christians and Jews, you have issued fighting words.
Logic indeed has force, but it is the force of truth and reason [much weaker rhetorically than that of appeals to emotions or even apparently credible authority], not appeal to tyranny.
You can freely ignore logic and facts or principles it is based on, but there will be natural consequences to marches of folly. As has already been stated by me above in almost so many words.
You do not know me, and yet you seem to want to think I am a nazi or something like that. (Likely, you believe the error promoted by Stalin, that Nazism is a right wing totalitarian ideology, multiplied likely by buying into the lies that Christians are right-wing theocratic fascists. Nazi, FYI is short for National Socialist German Workers Party, and the Nazis understood themselves to be socialists, and were understood by others to be socialists. Benito Mussolini, founder of the Italian Fascist party, was a leader of the Socialist International, who broke with it over Nationalism, his fascism used control of the economy rather than takeover of ownership, but was all about utter state domination and control. No great surprise, from what, the 1880’s on, increasingly, socialism was seen as the inevitable future, even by its conservative opponents. It is the unexpected collapse of the 1980’s that turned that general view around.)
Has it registered with you that I have repeatedly taken a public stance for liberty and for constitutional democratic government — including right here in this blog? That I have ever so many times called attention to the guidance in the 2nd Paragraph of the US DoI, and the key citation Locke made from Hooker? That I am in fact a convinced, though pessimistic supporter of constitutional democracy?
I believe, for cause, our civilisation is on a march of folly that — absent a miracle — is likely to end in blood and tears.
But I would betray my Lord (and my family heritage, starting literally with the history written into my name) if I did not stand up for the right and the truth because it is right and because it is true, regardless of consequences.
I suggest to you that you are now seriously out of order.
KF
All who would deny freedom of opinion are in the group of original sin. It doesn’t matter if a social darwinist does it, or if some religious construct subverts it. The materialists are quite more blatant about it, but for a time I have been trying to get more insight into religious rejection of subjectivity, which I find is more obscure, more difficult to understand.
My criticism was that the neccessary being construct tends to deny freedom of opinion. I do not feel that I am free to accept or reject a being which is “neccessary”. That the being is neccessary makes me feel I am forced to accept the existence of said being, because of the neccessity. And so that’s why, noting that religious affairs are important for societal affairs, it seems likely to me that such an argument is usable to deny freedom of religion by a government.
I also entertained the idea of a neccessary being a long time ago. It is just impossible to think that it may come to be that there would exist nothing, or not even nothing, unreality, etc. But then later I changed that because feelings of emptiness, maybe they aren’t very moral, but they are very human. There is no doubt that the universe it being a contingency, can cease to exist. And then it is just a matter of opinion what is in the spiritual domain. And if so a feeling of emptiness is expressed, then a double nothing both material, and spiritual is found to be valid, denying the neccessary being construct.
And I think my argument against nazism, communism, materialism etc. that they reject subjectivity is right on target. I don’t think a nazi would be a nazi if they would reach the conclusion about what emotions somebody has by a way of choosing the answer. It seems to me essential to nazism that the worth of the Aryan, their emotions, is regarded as fact, which is also what sabotages conscience. I think it is more crucial in regards to morality how people view people, and not how people view God. If the agency of a decision is regarded as a subjective issue, then morality is invited. That is the root of all subjectivity. If not, then it’s a big problem.
MNY:
At this stage, you are projecting falsehoods in the teeth of repeated correction, you are trying to improperly taint reputations through well-poisoning, and you are manifesting the fallacy of the closed, hostile, ideologised mind.
We are not butterflies on pins but real people (millions) who you are slandering by improperly painting as enemies of responsible freedom, so kindly stop.
Now.
I substantiate:
>>All who would deny freedom of opinion>>
1 –> projection of a fixed assumption about those who differ with you, based on a twisted and fallacious argument cf, following
>>are in the group of original sin.>>
2 –> This goes off into the weeds on theology, it seems from the Islamic view that rejects the Christian view that from our primordial ancestor we have inherited a proneness to wrong. That may be a clue as to root motivation.
3 –> These first loaded assertions, in context, are an accusation based on a fallacy of the complex question (it is patently PRESUMED, that I and others deny freedom of opinion — at this stage, given repeated corrections, a lie), and a groundless one. You are projecting false accusations in the teeth of adequate correction.
4 –> Kindly, stop this uncivil behaviour. Now.
>>It doesn’t matter if a social darwinist does it, or if some religious construct subverts it.>>
5 –> In context, social darwinists no longer exist at least officially. So, you mean that for the thought crime of thinking God to be the Eternal I AM (that is what is implicit in God as necessary being), you would double down on false accusations.
6 –> Yes, holding God to be eternal is tantamount to holding him to be a necessary being. (Contingent beings depend on external enabling factors and that is why they begin, need support to sustain existence, and can cease from being.)
>>The materialists are quite more blatant about it, but for a time I have been trying to get more insight into religious rejection of subjectivity>>
7 –> In context, me, but this is patently false. It pivots on an imposed question-begging idiosyncratic — and unnannounced — redefinition of what it means to be a responsibly free individual. where, to believe that God is eternal is to deny responsible freedom. Ludicrous.
>>, which I find is more obscure, more difficult to understand. >>
8 –> More projection and doubling down rooted in locked in assumptions that have already got you into trouble. For instance, are you willing to deny that God is eternal and independent of other things for his existence?
>>My criticism was that the neccessary being construct tends to deny freedom of opinion.>>
9 –> actually, more like an ungrounded, locked in assumption used to project accusations and insinuations against those who differ, whilst being oblivious to the flaws in the assumption.
>> I do not feel that I am free to accept or reject a being which is “neccessary”.>>
10 –> Let’s see, do you feel free to accept or reject the entities 2, 3, and 5 as necessary beings, and the relationship 2 + 3 = 5 as a necessarily true proposition? Is that a concern? I’ll bet not.
11 –> Let’s explain, showing that such are necessary in any world, even one with no material objects, by starting with the abstraction, the empty set, and assigning symbols of cardinality which will look familiar:
12 –> You awful tyrant, you destroy my freedom of opinion to hold that 2 + 3 = anything I want. NOT.
13 –> I simply show that while you can choose to do anything like that, such is irrational as twoness, threeness, fiveness and their interconnectedness are inextricably intertwined in the framework for existence of any world. Only an ignoramus or madman would insist on clinging to the absurdities implicit in denying or dismissing these relationships and entities.
14 –> But, God is different! Yes, and the argument presented is different too.
15 –> Notice, the first issue is not God, but rootedness of reality in a world where it is absurd to deny the reality of causal chains down to us:
. . . C –> B –> A (now) –> . . . (the future)
16 –> What fills in the lead-up? Circular self causation involving coming into existence is absurd, and it is infeasible to descend from minus infinity to 0 [we can take that as the big bang], cf. the OP.
17 –> That leaves a finitely remote root cause of reality, which is a necessary being. Where, a serious candidate to be such a being will either be impossible (as a square circle is impossible) or else actual.
18 –> And in a world where we find ourselves to be responsibly free, rational and morally governed beings on pain of letting general delusion loose in our inner lives, we need a root-being that can ground responsible freedom and rationality. (Notice the start-point, the recognised fact of freedom and responsible reason, this is where the outrageous projections you have been making become so blatantly in the teeth of truths . . .)
19 –> It bears repeating, in the teeth of your projections and invidious insinuations, acknowledging responsible freedom and rationality as facts of the human condition on pain of general delusion is a start-point. To deny it is to descend into general delusion. (That is one reason your projections are both unjust and utterly without foundation.)
20 –> In this context, as the OP outlines, a CANDIDATE is introduced, per the logic of inference to best worldview level explanation (a form of inductive not deductive reasoning):
21 –> As can be seen for the price of scrolling up, the invitation is then extended, produce a superior candidate: ________________
22 –> It is predicted: none will be forthcoming, but there will be every distortion, distraction and dismissal. Precisely as seen.
23 –> But, it is also patent that there is no compulsion involved, only the challenge to coherently, adequately account for the roots of reality, including our responsible and rational freedom on the basis of an alternative.
24 –> Where, atheists are gently reminded that if they hold they know there is no God, they need to show such a necessary being is incoherent as to core characteristics rendering God impossible. (A project that, post Plantinga, has collapsed with the breakdown of the classic problem of evils. Not to mention, as Boethius highlights, its inability to address the longstanding issue of good.)
25 –> Those who suggest they are well informed and have taken the stance that they have no need for belief in deity in that light, face the same issue and the additional one, that as compared with what is to be known, their base of knowledge is as a mathematical point to the cosmos; open-minded epistemic humility rather than dismissiveness would more become such a creature.
>> That the being is neccessary makes me feel I am forced to accept the existence of said being, because of the neccessity.>>
26 –> There is no force of compelling the will by some appeal to the stick, only an invitation to reasonableness and dialogue in light of evident facts, coherence and explanatory power. Where, the production of such strained, loaded talking points conjoined to ducking the invitation speaks tellingly.
>> And so that’s why, noting that religious affairs are important for societal affairs, it seems likely to me that such an argument is usable to deny freedom of religion by a government.>>
27 –> A veiled, utterly unwarranted projective accusation of totalitarian intent. Do you really want me to read that back-ways through the mirror-principle that out of the abundance of the heart the mind projects and the mouth speaks? (BTW, those genuinely wishing to understand what I actually think about government . . . instead of setting up and knocking over toxically loaded strawman caricatures, as well as on liberty and democracy etc can see here on in context: http://www.angelfire.com/pro/k.....htm#librts )
>>I also entertained the idea of a neccessary being a long time ago. It is just impossible to think that it may come to be that there would exist nothing, or not even nothing, unreality, etc.>>
28 –> Given that (as the OP clearly outlined) non-being has no causal capacity, were there ever utter nothing, such would forever obtain. In short the fact of a world points to underlying reality that there was always something, the root of our world.
>> But then later I changed that because feelings of emptiness, maybe they aren’t very moral, but they are very human.>>
29 –> Feelings of emptiness have nothing to do with the logic of being. This is naked appeal to dismissal on emotions.
>>There is no doubt that the universe it being a contingency, can cease to exist. And then it is just a matter of opinion what is in the spiritual domain.>>
30 –> An evident fact is conceded, but its implications as just outlined, are suppressed through emotional commitment and a slippery use of “opinion” and “spiritual.” (The implication is, faith lacks rational suppoort and if there is a context of reason, that undermines freedom to believe and is totalitarian. Rubbish, pomo rubbish tracing to the idea that totalising metanarratives are oppressive. But in fact that is a totalising generalisation and cuts its own logical throat by means of self-contradiction. Instead, responsible reasonable faith defining a serious worldview and way of life is eminently possible and actual.)
>> And if so a feeling of emptiness is expressed, then a double nothing both material, and spiritual is found to be valid, denying the neccessary being construct.>>
31 –> Empty words in dismissal of facts and evident logic, through appeal to emotions and wishes.
>>And I think my argument against nazism, communism, materialism etc. that they reject subjectivity is right on target.>>
32 –> Such a cluster reveals invidious intent, esp in context the etc.
>> I don’t think a nazi would be a nazi if they would reach the conclusion about what emotions somebody has by a way of choosing the answer. It seems to me essential to nazism that the worth of the Aryan, their emotions, is regarded as fact, which is also what sabotages conscience.>>
33 –> irrelevant to what is focally on the table, also speculative projections.
>> I think it is more crucial in regards to morality how people view people, and not how people view God. If the agency of a decision is regarded as a subjective issue, then morality is invited. That is the root of all subjectivity. If not, then it’s a big problem.>>
34 –> Again, people are contingent beings and cannot be the IS that grounds OUGHT. The attempt to appeal at this level ends in might makes ‘right.’
35 –> And that is the real gateway to tyranny as ruthless factions vie for and seize power.
It is time, more than time, for serious rethinking MNY.
KF
As before, it is the most excellent feature of creationism that it accommodates subjectivity, expression of emotion. Including expressions of emptiness, which means there is no spirit there at all.
And that opinion is then the awful reality, that there is no God. You are saying subjectivity does not deal with reality? You mistake that subjectivity does not deal with the reality of creation, what is in the material domain, but it does deal with the reality of what is in the spiritual domain.
That you criticize an opinion, for the sole reason that it is an expression of emotion, is all what I argue against.
Then predictably you assert logic and fact against opinion. (and I already explained more then once how fact and logic also fit with creationism besides subjectivity)
What you have to do to address my concerns is make clear where subjectivity fits in with this “necessary being” construct. But all what you argue just further adds to my concern that indeed the necessary being construct rejects subjectivity.
Further, I do not see your creation science either. The mechanism of creation is choosing. Like with fine tuning arguments, or irreducibly complex arguments, they refer to specific ways in which things have been chosen. Yet, you only seem to talk in terms of cause and effect, not choices. As before, the concept of choosing does not function when the agency of a decision is regarded as fact. Because facts operate by force, evidence forcing to a conclusion resulting in a fact, and choosing requires freedom.
MNY, with all due respect, this is more of the same. It is therefore sensible to give one day for final comments. KF
PS: Before repeating, kindly note 18 & 19 above and their context ever since the OP and beyond . . . no I am not just talking mechanistic or chance cause and effect. Responsible rational freedom, self evidently, is the premise of rational discussion. And that has been repeatedly highlighted as a key step. Take that as a measure of just how much of an irresponsibly loaded strawman you have set up to knock over.
And there are loads of materialists championing democracy, freedom of opinion etc. But materialism provides no room for subjectivity at all. They just champion it in contradiction to, and in spite of materialism.
Same with your responsible freedom etc. I do not see where choosing and subjectivity is logically implied with the neccessary being.
We can immediately see that regarding the existence of God as a matter of opinion validates subjectivity and freedom. Where is the logic that goes from a neccessary being to freedom and subjectivity?
F/N: This thread has been pretty much dragged off track from quite early, a strong sign of the rhetorical pattern, distract, distort, denigrate. Or, more bluntly, red herrings led away to strawmen soaked in loaded projections and set alight to cloud, confuse, poison and polarise the atmosphere.
Whether that is led by talking point zombies echoing mindlessly their indoctrination, or the direct work of the actual primary, knowingly deceitful agitprop cultural civil war manipulators or their willful enablers who put up cleverly disguised false front groups, and through such send out legions of the indoctrinated through astroturfing stratagems, makes little difference; save to how we should view the objectors and how we should treat them as individuals. The key sign of such agitprop at work is that we will see stubborn resistance to balancing reason and evidence, especially to tracking the chains of warrant on issues that come up to their natural terminus in worldview roots, then further resistance to reflecting on comparative difficulties on live option alternatives.
Where of course, many people have been misled to think that rhetorical debates and talking point exchanges divorced from the chain of warrant worldviews roots challenge, are adequate for making major personal, familial, institutional, legal, policy and civilisational decisions. Such have been severely manipulated and misled, regardless of how intelligent, certificated, influential and respectable they may be. And yes, I am saying that our enchantment under the spell of rhetoric has set up horrific marches of folly leading to chaos for our whole civilisation.
We can therefore take it to the bank, that where astroturfing games and talking point agendas are at work there will be no real reply on the main merits, as running through the thread above will show. We are dealing with manipulative culture war agendas, not serious discussion. The attitude to the warrant chain pointing to worldview roots is diagnostic.
The first pivot, is that we need to firmly fix that conclusions and proposals for our civilisation’s agenda must be warranted. That puts the chain of warrant and the triple-issue:
[1] infinite regress vs
[2] circularity vs
[3] finitely remote worldview core first plausibles to be assessed on comparative difficulties
. . . at the heart of consideration.
That various objectors are ever so eager to dismiss this, is a sure sign of just how important it is.
The logic involved is plain, it is not on trial, the objectors are.
And, consistently, predictably, they fail.
With but few exceptions.
They want to go on the debate talking point attack, they do not want to engage in sober discussion on grounding, i/l/o main alternatives (all of which bristle with difficulties) on factual adequacy, coherence, explanatory power. [Cf here for a primer: http://www.angelfire.com/pro/k.....oolkit.htm .]
Next, the issue on the table in the OP was the attempt to accuse God of being the ultimate appeal to might makes ‘right,’ reflecting the so-called Euthyphro dilemma.
The answer to this, is to first examine whether or no, we can reasonably see ourselves as being responsibly free, rational, morally governed beings.
That is the basis for rights and the general expectation of the promotion of the civil peace of justice, duly balancing rights, freedoms and responsibilities in healthy community. And it turns out that to dismiss the testimony of our inner life that we are so free, reasonable and governed, lets grand delusion loose in our inner lives, ending in self-referential absurdity that would undermine even trying to have responsible rational dialogue.
So, it is self-evident that (for all our struggles and failings) we are responsibly free and reasonable, so also morally governed. We cannot but start there, on pain of instant absurdity.
Of course, that is in no wise to suggest that we are perfect or can attain perfection in this life. It just means, we have every good reason to know we can do better and to strive in that path.
So, the actual track record of far too often not even seriously trying (often, while projecting blame to the other for much the same things we do . . .) indicts us.
Yes, all of us.
Planks vs sawdust in eyes time.
Now, observe carefully, at no point have I inserted or assumed anything beyond that we find ourselves in a common world and per common sense reflection, we find ourselves necessarily responsibly free and rational, on the whole. So, we can and should do better. Too often, we don’t, and we are individually and collectively blameworthy for that.
Guilty, guilty, guilty, we are. All of us.
But, that situation calls for drilling down, as we see the IS-OUGHT gap, and if the above holds, it must be bridged. The only serious level for that is the same for any serious argument: world foundations. How can morality, the OUGHT, be embedded in the roots of reality, the IS that grounds our world and our experience?
Surely, that is a serious question, one that deserves to be properly answered at world-roots level.
If it were not so sad, it would be amusing to see how above (and previously) there was an attempt to substitute a principle of discovery of moral rules among responsibly free, rational and morally valuable persons, pushed into the role of substituting for the ontological roots of morality. That someone thought he could get away with that itself speaks volumes to our want of responsibility in thought. Never did we find a serious answer to the immediate observation that such a rule of learning presupposes that we share a common, morally freighted nature that gives us rights, freedoms and responsibilities. Nor, to the point on historical and current cases, that it is the dehumanisation of those targetted that is a common precursor to distinctly un-neighbourly conduct. Which, puts our common nature and how that connects to moral worth, rights, responsibilities and freedoms right in the heart of considerations.
Patent, world-roots issues.
It therefore points onward to foundations, as we can see in the US DoI of 1776, as we may infer from Locke’s citation of Hooker in his 2nd treatise on civil govt ch 2. It is indeed explicit in Matt 22, where love to God as creator and root of being sets the context for a rule like unto it, love for neighbour as self, sharing the common Imago Dei.
That is clear.
The desperation not to look at foundations in light of the logic of chains of warrant therefore jumps up and waves its arms with big red flags as a warning sign.
Something has gone wrong.
To fix it, we must go . . . to world-roots level.
Now, in a modified form the same chain principle used for warrant applies to the roots of reality.
We descend across time from those roots, in a causal succession:
. . . –> C , –> B, –> A (us) –> . . .
How does that chain get to us?
Traversing an infinite succession step by step is absurd, for many reasons linked to getting to the zero-point (say the big bang, 13.7 BYA):
Absurd from the outset on, infinite sets are either presented all at once or are pointed out as a trend, not a thing we can traverse in successive steps.
Likewise, circularity of cause involving origins is a non-starter, as something has to be there before it can cause anything else.
If you doubt this, kindly provide an example: _________
None will be forthcoming, as non-being — the real nothing — has no causal powers.
So, we are looking at a finitely remote root of being.
Next, we can see that as non-being has no causal powers, if ever there were utter nothing that would forever obtain.
So, as there undeniably is a world, something always was.
Something that is the root of reality and obviously is an ultimate, and is unconditioned on anything else.
That is, it is a necessary being, one that is possible [not impossible as a square circle is] and is not contingent [dependent on other things for its existence].
Such beings would be present as part of the framework for any possible world.
As a simple example, the truth asserted in “2 + 3 = 5” never began, does not depend on any cause to enable it to begin to exist, will hold in any possible world, and will never cease to hold.
Such are the ways of necessary beings.
(And yes, our formal and informal education has ill-equipped us to think in such terms. No prizes for guessing how that came to be.)
Notice, we have reached here long after the establishment on our experience of ourselves in our world that we are credibly responsibly free and rational.
Indeed this first point is a context in which we are exploring and characterising the root of reality.
Now, we introduce a serious reality-root candidate necessary being (a flying spaghetti monster etc would not be serious, as composite and material, to begin with . . . ):
There is no claim that this is the only possible candidate, we simply invite a serious alternative that can meet the relevant test of a world infused with responsibility, rationality and moral government: ______________
(Predictably, this blank will continue to be unfilled, and there will be an attempt to resort to rhetoric, instead of discussion of worldview level alternatives.)
We have here an exercise in worldview level inference to the best explanation, which is inherently open-ended but as we know from science, law and history, is a very powerful form of inductive reasoning, if given half a chance.
Now, just above, MNY observed that many materialists champion freedom etc despite the lack of worldview foundation for that. I answer, yes, they are reflecting the moral government from within, and they are borrowing the depleting cultural resources of Christendom; even as our civilisation descends into chaos.
MNY then — despite multiple correctives and warnings — makes the fatal step of an improper equivalency:
Sorry, responsible freedom is not contradicted by the existence of a necessary being root of reality, indeed that responsible freedom stands as a self evident truth antecedent to reasoning and thus before reasoning towards such a being as root of reality.
Yes, matter cannot credibly account for freedom, responsibility and contemplative mind (and even has grave difficulties accounting for the FSCO/I implicated in organisation of a computational entity such as a brain in a body), but there is no reason why supreme mind cannot give rise to mind.
And yes, a root of reality capable of the purposeful behaviour of creating a world and of grounding ought would be mind. Mind beyond matter which is inherently contingent as we have known ever since E = m*c^2.
So, the attempt to suggest that it is from necessary being that we get to freedom in the first instance, is a strawman caricature.
Responsible freedom as self-evidently true and a premise of rational discussion was the first step. Independent of all others. A context in which other steps were then considered, confident that we are indeed responsibly free and rational.
Otherwise, discussion is just an exchange of ultimately meaningless mouth noises.
All that is required is that a root of being capable of creating a world of morally governed, thus reasonable and responsibly free creatures, is compatible with such.
Which is patently so.
If a free mind is possible for the root of reality, there is no good reason why significantly free minds cannot exist otherwise.
Nor does the idea that we are accountable to our Creator as Lord and Just Judge, undermine our freedom and responsibility. An executive of a corporation is responsible to a board, but that does not remove his responsibility, rationality or freedom.
As to subjectivity, reasonably understood, a responsibly free, rational and self-aware being is a subject and has an interior life, i.e. subjectivity: we think, perceive, feel, value, believe, reason, evaluate, decide, motivate ourselves towards purposeful action. That does not remove responsibility to act in light of common sense reason and conscience, though obviously, existentially, the ought at this level is too often not the is.
And indeed, law in the abstract is inherently about the government of such beings who have power of choice and duty to choose aright.
In that context, the notion that God imposes his might to arbitrarily make up right to be this or that per whim and fancy, collapses.
At the root of reality, the IS that is the root of all, being inherently good, infuses the world with that character, and in creating beings that are responsibly free and guided by conscience and reason. OUGHT is a choice, not the programmed IS of robotic zombification.
Nor is just audit and judgement in defense of the civil peace of justice equivalent to arbitrary might making arbitrary ‘right.’ That some are prone to that gross confusion speaks volumes on how broken down our moral thought is today.
In that light, let us note, the gods of Greece were supermen projected to the sky, not the inherently good necessary and maximally great being root of reality Creator God. So yes they were inadequate to found morality. Not so, the Eternal, inherently good and true God, the root of reality, the God of ethical theism in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, whose service is our reasonable duty (and should be our delight).
In short, the above thread speaks volumes on how broken down our culture of worldview level thought has become.
With devastating consequences visible all around us.
KF