Objective Morality and Euthyphro

[Meow Mix]

Well, since I'm stuck at work all night this seems as good of a time as ever to come out of retirement and make ridiculously over-analytical posts like the good ol' days of yore.

Today I'll be dismantling a very specific set of claims: that objective morality is founded in theism, and that those who are not theists (i.e., atheists -- just avoiding semantical games that sometimes arise) somehow lack a foundation to behave ethically; or that they must make theistic assumptions without even knowing it to form ethics.

I've made posts before about Euthyphro's Dilemma, so I won't be doing a full analysis in that regard; but I will give a brief re-cap here for those who don't recall what dilemma the term elucidates:

Euthyphro was a character from one of the Socratic dialogues on morality who pointedly asked something like, "Are the things the gods command good because the gods command them, or do the gods command them because they are good?" The dilemma is that if goodness comes from the fact that God commands something (called Divine Command Theory), then "goodness" is subject to God's whimsy and isn't at all objective -- however, if God commands things because they are in themselves good, then "goodness" doesn't come from God (such that God is just following what's good like the rest of us: good is then transcendental to God).

Euthyphro's Dilemma makes a devastating case against the notion that theism is the only possible foundation for an objective morality: indeed, it demonstrates that it's not possible for objective morality (if it exists) to be founded in theism. The argument I'm going for in this post, however, worms even deeper to the root of this issue.

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First, I think it's important to cognize exactly what we mean by "objective morality." With this phrase I'm specifically talking about the notion of "moral truths." For us to say, "One ought not to do x," we must actually mean "It is true that one ought not to do x." But what does it mean for an "ought" to have a truth value?

Well, what does it mean for anything to be true? If I say, "It's true that this table has four legs," then I'm really saying something like "It corresponds to reality that this table has four legs." There's a correspondence between my concept of the table having four legs and the fact that the table would have four legs in reality whether I thought about it having four legs or not: that's where the truth value comes from.

So what, exactly, corresponds to reality when there is an ought in order for that ought to have a truth value? If we consider the arbitrary statement, "p ought not to do x," then we can see some possible actors that might convey this correspondence to reality: we have the "p" doing the possible action x (the ostensibly free-willed agent making a choice), and we have the action x itself.

See the problem, though? If p does x or doesn't do x, there's still not an "ought" that's doing any corresponding to reality: if x is kicking a can, and p kicks the can, then it certainly corresponds to reality that there is a person p and that there is a can that has been kicked -- but there is no correspondence to whether or not p should kick the can. Where, then, comes the statmeent "It's true that p ought to kick the can" if the word "truth" there doesn't mean what it normally means -- that there is a correspondence to reality? WHAT is corresponding in what way to reality with the "ought" or the "should?"

Think of it like this: Erin likes the color green. She might say, "Green is the best color." Now, consider the difference between the following [potential] propositions:

P1) Erin believes green is the best color.
P2) Green is the best color.

(P1) corresponds to reality -- and thus has a truth value -- because the correspondence lies in Erin's belief: P1's truth or falsity hinges on the arguably determinable state of whether or not Erin has that belief or not. It's either true or false that Erin believes green is the best color, so there is a truth value there.

(P2), however, is a different story. What, exactly, could potentially correspond to reality here? What does it mean for a color to be "best" in order to correspond between a concept and reality to form a truth value? It's suddenly not very clear how anyone could make the utterance, "It's true that green is the best color," even if someone could very sensibly say "It's true that Erin believes green is the best color." Erin believing something has a correspondence to reality, but a color "being best" does not.

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So, in order for objective morality to exist, then there must be moral truths. For there to be moral truths, then there should be propositions about things we "ought" to do or avoid. If, as some (not all!) theists assert, objective morality exists, and that only theism is the foundation for an objective morality, then it must be the case that something about theism explains what it is, exactly, that's corresponding between our concepts of "oughts" and some sort of reality of "oughts."

If the argument is true, then these theists need to be able to bridge the gap between (P1) and (P2), reworded here:

P1) Erin believes she ought to do x.

P2) Erin ought to do x.

So what, pray tell, is the reality that our concepts about "oughts" correspond to, and how is theism the only foundation for understanding that, if the argument that only theists have justifiable objective morality is true?

 

[LuisDantas]

Euthyphro's Dilemma makes a devastating case against the notion that theism is the only possible foundation for an objective morality: indeed, it demonstrates that it's not possible for objective morality (if it exists) to be founded in theism.

Precisely. Thanks.

And it is good to see you around again, Meow Mix.

So, in order for objective morality to exist, then there must be moral truths. For there to be moral truths, then there should be propositions about things we "ought" to do or avoid.

And they do, although perhaps not quite in the rigorously delimited sense that you might want.

It seems to me that moral truth is limited by the mental capabilities of the subject and strongly linked to the expected and foreseeable consequences of available choices.

While there are some challenges and even some art to mapping moral truth, it is hardly the free-for-all, fully arbitrary party that some people for some strange reason want to claim it to be.

Moral truth is often quite objective, if perhaps provisional in the sense that new findings and, above all, new circunstances can always or almost always change it. It is also dynamic, often excitingly so, because the moral capability and parameters of individuals can and do change. Even the moral parameters of whole communities can and do change, albeit far more slowly and with a lot less rationality and more inertia.

 

[Meow Mix]

Precisely. Thanks.

And it is good to see you around again, Meow Mix.

I could say the same about you! I may not post like I used to, but I still browse -- and you've only recently come back yourself. Good to see you!

And they do, although perhaps not quite in the rigorously delimited sense that you might want.

It seems to me that moral truth is limited by the mental capabilities of the subject and strongly linked to the expected and foreseeable consequences of available choices.

While there are some challenges and even some art to mapping moral truth, it is hardly the free-for-all, fully arbitrary party that some people for some strange reason want to claim it to be.

Moral truth is often quite objective, if perhaps provisional in the sense that new findings and, above all, new circunstances can always or almost always change it. It is also dynamic, often excitingly so, because the moral capability and parameters of individuals can and do change. Even the moral parameters of whole communities can and do change, albeit far more slowly and with a lot less rationality and more inertia.

I get the feeling there's some confusion between (P1) and (P2) here though: people and societies can and do change their beliefs about what they ought to do -- and there is a fact of the matter behind that, there is a correspondence to reality about whether or not a particular belief is held by people or societies -- but there is still no proposal here of what it is that's supposed to be corresponding to reality by saying they ought to do anything.

To illustrate a little better, let me give some examples. Perhaps what's corresponding to reality with the "ought" is something like the hypothetical imperative: if I'm thirsty, and I don't want to be thirsty anymore, then I ought to drink water. I have a hypothetical imperative, if I'm thirsty and want not to be thirsty, to drink something: there is a correspondence to reality there (it's determinably true that drinking will cause me not to be thirsty anymore).

But take away the hypothetical imperative and there is a problem:

P3) If I am thirsty and want not to be thirsty anymore, I ought to drink something.

P4) I ought to drink something.

(P3) has a determinable truth value, (P4) does not. What corresponds to reality with (P4)? Nothing as far as I can see, at least not with respect to the "ought."

So, hypothetical imperative is one instance in which an "ought" corresponds to reality: let's call instances of things that cause an "ought" to correspond to reality a "corresponder." Hypothetical imperatives are corresponders, then: they cause sentences with "oughts" to have truth values under the right conditions; whereas sentences with "oughts" that don't have "corresponders" do not have truth values.

Ok, so now let me bring it back to the subject of objective morality. Can hypothetical imperatives explain how moral truths correspond to reality? Not that I can see: in order to make a moral statement into a hypothetical imperative, the best we could probably do is to say something like, "If I want to be good, then I ought to avoid evil actions." Prima facie, that seems true, but what does it really mean?

I've now simply removed the mystery from the word "ought" and put it into the words "good" and "evil." We're still not left with a cognizant thingy that's corresponding to reality: worse, if we tried to break down what "good" and "evil" means I suspect we'd just be looking at microcosms of the original problem since I bet both definitions would include carefully nested instances of "oughts."

So, hypothetical imperatives aren't corresponders for the "oughts" of objective moralities. What COULD be?

Theists that make the claim that only theism is the foundation for objective morality is the same as saying theism is a corresponder for the "oughts" of objective moral truths.

Well, that's a very steep claim. I'm arguing for theists who make that claim to prove it, since I can't even think of *any* corresponders for so-called moral truths.

 

[Sunstone]

Hah! I just knew you subscribed to the Correspondence Theory of Truth. All sane people do (in my opinion).

By the way, welcome back. I, for one, have missed your "overly analytical" posts.

 

[Infinitum]

Kitty, this is one of the best threads I've read in a long, long time. I really want to catch the yarn and roll it around a little bit, but I'm going to need a few days to rewire my brain to grasp formal philosophy again. Also I need to figure out a stance that doesn't simply agree with you.

 

[LuisDantas]

I could say the same about you! I may not post like I used to, but I still browse -- and you've only recently come back yourself. Good to see you!

That is a major compliment, coming from you.

I get the feeling there's some confusion between (P1) and (P2) here though: people and societies can and do change their beliefs about what they ought to do -- and there is a fact of the matter behind that, there is a correspondence to reality about whether or not a particular belief is held by people or societies -- but there is still no proposal here of what it is that's supposed to be corresponding to reality by saying they ought to do anything.

To some extent, morality must deal with "belief", since moral evaluation involves predicting the likely results of an action or choice not yet commited.

Of course, going all the away to making morality a consequence of points of faith is going way too far.

To illustrate a little better, let me give some examples. Perhaps what's corresponding to reality with the "ought" is something like the hypothetical imperative: if I'm thirsty, and I don't want to be thirsty anymore, then I ought to drink water. I have a hypothetical imperative, if I'm thirsty and want not to be thirsty, to drink something: there is a correspondence to reality there (it's determinably true that drinking will cause me not to be thirsty anymore).

But take away the hypothetical imperative and there is a problem:

P3) If I am thirsty and want not to be thirsty anymore, I ought to drink something.

P4) I ought to drink something.

(P3) has a determinable truth value, (P4) does not. What corresponds to reality with (P4)? Nothing as far as I can see, at least not with respect to the "ought."

So, hypothetical imperative is one instance in which an "ought" corresponds to reality: let's call instances of things that cause an "ought" to correspond to reality a "corresponder." Hypothetical imperatives are corresponders, then: they cause sentences with "oughts" to have truth values under the right conditions; whereas sentences with "oughts" that don't have "corresponders" do not have truth values.

Hmm. By such a perspective, it seems to me that morality is fairly accurately defined as the art of analysing situations to the best possible detail and abrangency and proposing adequate corresponders.

If by objective morality you mean one that attempts to dispose of hypothetical imperatives, though, I don't think there is much of a point to it even if it turns out to be possible.

Good, useful morality must allow for a lot of hypothetical situations lest it become detached and draconian, and therefore useless or counterproductive. That is why it is so pointless to attempt to present morality as a consequence of rules or laws.

Ok, so now let me bring it back to the subject of objective morality. Can hypothetical imperatives explain how moral truths correspond to reality? Not that I can see: in order to make a moral statement into a hypothetical imperative, the best we could probably do is to say something like, "If I want to be good, then I ought to avoid evil actions." Prima facie, that seems true, but what does it really mean?

Very little. It is far too general, far too vague a statement to have much of a meaning. This particular example is in fact quite self-referential and sort of blind to objective reality.

I've now simply removed the mystery from the word "ought" and put it into the words "good" and "evil." We're still not left with a cognizant thingy that's corresponding to reality: worse, if we tried to break down what "good" and "evil" means I suspect we'd just be looking at microcosms of the original problem since I bet both definitions would include carefully nested instances of "oughts."

Good and Evil, if they are to have any meaning, ought to be gloriously, unashamedly attached to lots of specifics and particularities.

I will go so far as to say that they must be rediscovered as often as one can afford to.

And yes, that means that different people will reach distinct moral conclusions, as well as that the same person will change his or her moral conclusions along time as it learns better.

In that sense, morality can't be objective or even stable.

So, hypothetical imperatives aren't corresponders for the "oughts" of objective moralities.

They are not?

Probably not if our goal is to find some set, specific, stable set of hypothetical imperatives. I don't think it is possible to do so with much of an useful result.

More generally, however, discovering the adequate sets for specific situations is pretty much the point of morality. The more specific and provisional those sets, the more accurate and useful the morality, albeit perhaps in a difficult to predict and describe manner.

What COULD be?

Theists that make the claim that only theism is the foundation for objective morality is the same as saying theism is a corresponder for the "oughts" of objective moral truths.

And that might even turn out to be true, but it is not an informative assertion, since theism is so meaningless in an ethical or moral sense.

Generally speaking, there is no meaningful correlation between theism and morality.

Well, that's a very steep claim. I'm arguing for theists who make that claim to prove it, since I can't even think of *any* corresponders for so-called moral truths.

That would involve making those theists define and delimit their theism - and therefore their views of God - first, which may easily be impossible and is certainly awfully subjective from the very start.

As for the corresponders, the trick is in embracing that it takes finding a lot of them, with a very short shelf life, before you can dream of finding a small set of lasting ones.

 

[Meow Mix]

Hah! I just knew you subscribed to the Correspondence Theory of Truth. All sane people do (in my opinion).

By the way, welcome back. I, for one, have missed your "overly analytical" posts.

I could argue that correspondence theory of truth is a necessary corollary of logical identity, rendering it transcendentally the only consistent theory of truth.

 

[Sunstone]

I could argue that correspondence theory of truth is a necessary corollary of logical identity, rendering it transcendentally the only consistent theory of truth.

I'd love to see your reasoning there, if you don't mind a digression.

 

[Meow Mix]

That is a major compliment, coming from you.

Well, shucks :flirt:

To some extent, morality must deal with "belief", since moral evaluation involves predicting the likely results of an action or choice not yet commited.

Of course, going all the away to making morality a consequence of points of faith is going way too far.

Agreed here. While I was attacking the substantiveness of "moral truths," I'm not attacking behaving morally in general. I concur this will involve beliefs and evaluation of results of actions.

Hmm. By such a perspective, it seems to me that morality is fairly accurately defined as the art of analysing situations to the best possible detail and abrangency and proposing adequate corresponders.

If by objective morality you mean one that attempts to dispose of hypothetical imperatives, though, I don't think there is much of a point to it even if it turns out to be possible.

I should clarify, as I see how I previously worded the notion could be misleading. I think, indeed, there is still room for hypothetical imperatives in moral thinking, but only in such a way that the "ought" corresponds to fulfilling a conditional rather than to some ontologically external thing: it works much the same, I think, as something like a preference.

If green is my favorite color, and I want to wear a backpack that has my favorite color, then I should pick a green backpack.

There's a should there, one with a truth value; and the corresponder is a hypothetical imperative -- but the reality being corresponded to is a conditional rather than a thing. Wow, that's so abstract that I'm confusing myself even trying to talk about it. I'm trying to say that there's a qualitative difference between the correspondence behind fulfilling a conditional (where the truth value stems from satisfying conditions) and in a pure old fashioned ontology (where the truth value stems from something existing in reality as such).

That hypothetical imperatives are only capable of being corresponders in the sense of satisfying conditions: given that I want a backpack that's my favorite color, that I "should" get one that's green yields true in a different way than "triangles have three sides" yields true. Let me call the second instance an "ontological correspondence," where something's truth is a correspondence to how it exists rather than to how it satisfies conditions.

If I tried to be more specific with a hypothetical imperative example for moral "oughts," I might say something like: "If I want to avoid inflicting suffering, I ought to avoid actions that cause suffering." This proposition clearly has a truth value and is clearly true; but it says nothing at all about whether I should want to avoid inflicting suffering in the first place in order for the hypothetical imperative's conditional to be set up! This is why I made the crass assertion that hypothetical imperatives won't be able to be the corresponder for moral truths: because then a microcosm can just be made that takes us back to the start all over again.

a) If I want to avoid inflicting suffering, I ought to avoid actions that cause suffering

requires me to have a corresponder for:

b) I should want to avoid inflicting suffering

For which it seems there is no help from any hypothetical imperative!

Good, useful morality must allow for a lot of hypothetical situations lest it become detached and draconian, and therefore useless or counterproductive. That is why it is so pointless to attempt to present morality as a consequence of rules or laws.

I agree with you totally here -- but my post was geared towards responding to a very particular type of theistic argument, that's all.

Good and Evil, if they are to have any meaning, ought to be gloriously, unashamedly attached to lots of specifics and particularities.

I will go so far as to say that they must be rediscovered as often as one can afford to.

... (Responding below)

And yes, that means that different people will reach distinct moral conclusions, as well as that the same person will change his or her moral conclusions along time as it learns better.

I'm inclined to agree; but then we wouldn't be talking about objective moral truths; just rational moral/ethical preferences. The latter are infinitely more defensible conceptually than the former!

They are not?

Probably not if our goal is to find some set, specific, stable set of hypothetical imperatives. I don't think it is possible to do so with much of an useful result.

I think it would necessarily have to be the goal to find a set, specific, stable set of corresponders (hypothetical imperatives or not) for moral "oughts" if the claim the OP is attacking to be rationally made.

More generally, however, discovering the adequate sets for specific situations is pretty much the point of morality. The more specific and provisional those sets, the more accurate and useful the morality, albeit perhaps in a difficult to predict and describe manner.

Agreed, again, the scope of my argument is directed only against the strong claim mentioned in the OP: that objective moral truths exist and that theism is necessarily their only corresponder. (Just to put the claim into terms that have since evolved in this discussion)

That would involve making those theists define and delimit their theism - and therefore their views of God - first, which may easily be impossible and is certainly awfully subjective from the very start.

As for the corresponders, the trick is in embracing that it takes finding a lot of them, with a very short shelf life, before you can dream of finding a small set of lasting ones.

VERY well said!

I think ultimately a problem that will fly in the face of the theistic argument the OP assaults IS that it will ultimately involve defining or delimiting theism -- which is ostensibly unacceptable to many theists, and so a large problem. Which is why I raised this argument in the first place as an atheological argument

 

[LuisDantas]

Defining theism is a very difficult proposition, even leaving aside the preferences of the theists themselves. The concept's strength comes largely from its resistance to delimitation, after all. Much of the point of believing in God is that it appears to have a clear meaning yet actually avoids having any.

 

[Meow Mix]

I'd love to see your reasoning there, if you don't mind a digression.

Well, in order to have an epistemology at all someone must have already accepted that A = A; but if A = A then (A v ¬A) and ¬(A ^ ¬A), and if all those, then there must be a reality that is what it is rather than what it isn't and isn't anything in between -- and if there is a reality, one reality, then when we say "There is a cat on the mat" the only possible thing we could be cognizing there is that our concept of the cat corresponds to that one reality we already agree must exist if we have an episteme in the first place.

Coherentist ideas of truth don't work since they implicitly accept (A ^ ¬A) and so self-refute -- though coherentist ideas of doxastics might be okay (so long as there's a sprinkling of foundationalism in there; enough to stem from correspondence theory anyway!)

 

[LuisDantas]

There's a should there, one with a truth value; and the corresponder is a hypothetical imperative -- but the reality being corresponded to is a conditional rather than a thing. Wow, that's so abstract that I'm confusing myself even trying to talk about it. I'm trying to say that there's a qualitative difference between the correspondence behind fulfilling a conditional (where the truth value stems from satisfying conditions) and in a pure old fashioned ontology (where the truth value stems from something existing in reality as such).

Existing by itself, you mean? No, I don't think it is possible to meaningfully define morality in those terms. Moral meaning can't exist without relationships to other entities, far as I can figure it out.

(...)

a) If I want to avoid inflicting suffering, I ought to avoid actions that cause suffering

requires me to have a corresponder for:

b) I should want to avoid inflicting suffering

For which it seems there is no help from any hypothetical imperative!

I probably shouldn't meddle quite this much with these concepts that I barely grasp, but isn't the examination of actual consequences in the observable world enough of a calibration system to ground those imperatives?

(...)


I'm inclined to agree; but then we wouldn't be talking about objective moral truths; just rational moral/ethical preferences. The latter are infinitely more defensible conceptually than the former!

It seems to me that while moral truth can't even hypothetically be ontologically objective, it may be objective nonetheless.

It goes a bit beyond mere preference, because ethical consequences of behavior are hardly arbitrary.

 

[Meow Mix]

Existing by itself, you mean? No, I don't think it is possible to meaningfully define morality in those terms. Moral meaning can't exist without relationships to other entities, far as I can figure it out.

This is the problem with asserting there is a "moral truth" though: even if it's a hypothetical imperative ("If desire x, then do y") then the "moral truth" referred to must mean a truth inherent about the "desire x" part. Because, for instance, even a murderer can agree that "If I desire not to murder, then I ought not to murder" is true. But that doesn't tell the murderer why they should desire not to murder, or otherwise choose not to murder even if they desire to.

The moral truth, then, if it exists, must exist somewhere in the "desire not to murder." There's the "ought" that needs a corresponder: the moral "oughts" that are divored from correspondences. This is the problem.

I probably shouldn't meddle quite this much with these concepts that I barely grasp, but isn't the examination of actual consequences in the observable world enough of a calibration system to ground those imperatives?

For practical, rational ethics -- absolutely. But it doesn't tell us what a "moral truth" is, or how it's anchored to reality in order to assert that moral truths exist (in order for objective morality to exist).

Only if we weaken the term "objective morality" to a string of hypothetical imperatives can we be totally justified and rational: "If equality is desired, then don't discriminate." Things like that. But the hypothetical theist's argument isn't about the hypothetical imperatives: it's not about "If x is desired, then do y." It's about "We should desire x." But to make that claim, they must anchor it to reality -- it must correspond in order to be "true!"

That's the challenge here.

It seems to me that while moral truth can't even hypothetically be ontologically objective, it may be objective nonetheless.

It goes a bit beyond mere preference, because ethical consequences of behavior are hardly arbitrary.

Indeed, and we could post about ethics and moral systems in such a way -- I believe it's probably the only way we could rationally do it. But I think you can see now why I'm asserting the hypothetical theist's expectation is non-cognitive: it's an expectation that there is an ontological corresponder for... something, something that we can't even define between us -- so what's being said at all by the theist's challenge?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

If the argument is true, then these theists need to be able to bridge the gap between (P1) and (P2), reworded here:

P1) Erin believes she ought to do x.

P2) Erin ought to do x.

So what, pray tell, is the reality that our concepts about "oughts" correspond to, and how is theism the only foundation for understanding that, if the argument that only theists have justifiable objective morality is true?

I'm not sure if this helps or just puts the hard questions off another step, but I'll throw it out there anyhow:

Personally, I see morality as the expression of value judgments, so I would consider the statement "Erin ought to do x" as more or less equivalent to the statement "of the options available to Erin, x is the one that will result in maximal net good."

Of course, this does nothing to tell us what's good, what's bad, and how things should be valued relative to each other... though I'm not entirely convinced that these things are baseless.

I'll have to dig up some videos of lectures by Matt Dillahunty on secular morality. He starts with a handful of very basic premises (e.g. all else being equal, life is preferable to death and lack of suffering is preferable to suffering, plus a few others) and ends up at a pretty robust moral system.

So... can statements like "all else being equal, life is preferable to death" be shown to be true? It feels obvious to me, but I'm not sure how I would actually go about demonstrating it.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Euthyphro was a character from one of the Socratic dialogues on morality who pointedly asked something like, "Are the things the gods command good because the gods command them, or do the gods command them because they are good?"

Something like, but rather different. ὅσιον doesn't mean "good" so much as holy/hallowed.

The dilemma is that if goodness comes from the fact that God commands something (called Divine Command Theory), then "goodness" is subject to God's whimsy and isn't at all objective -- however, if God commands things because they are in themselves good, then "goodness" doesn't come from God (such that God is just following what's good like the rest of us: good is then transcendental to God).

What about the various refutations to the above? Or should I be looking at your other thread for these?

First, I think it's important to cognize exactly what we mean by "objective morality." With this phrase I'm specifically talking about the notion of "moral truths." For us to say, "One ought not to do x," we must actually mean "It is true that one ought not to do x." But what does it mean for an "ought" to have a truth value?

And this is one of the answers to the Euthyphro dilemma: contingent vs. necessary truths (in various forms). Simplistically: "before" Creation (whatever that might mean), in which only God existed and the cosmos did not, there was no morality. Not only were there no agents around who could act at all, such that an act might be immoral or moral, but there were no moral "rules". This no longer is true (for an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good God) once the Cosmos exists. There is the capacity for things which we think of as immoral to occur (murder, genocide, etc.).

Barring Ned Flanders, there are not many philosophers who would find Homer's question ("could God microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it?") or similar "limitations" actually limitations at all. A less well-known (relative to Homer's question) is Swinburne's proposal: it is not a limitation of God to assert "that if he is to keep Jones a bachelor he must keep him an unmarried man" or, put another way, that God is compelled to make Jones unmarried if Jones is a bachelor. That Jones is unmarried if Jones is a bachelor flows independently of God, but not in any way that limits God's omnipotence. It is simply to say that a thing is what it is.

Before the Cosmos, moral laws had no parallels to tautologies, logical validity, etc. However,God then created as universe in which there would be humans. Humans feel pain. They can be harmed in any number of ways. Creating humans with the capacity to act freely and to be able to do wrong (even if given a sense of what is right), including e.g., burning another human alive, entails certain logical truths: it is true that if a human is burned alive, they will die in agony. This is not a necessary truth in and of itself, in that (in a creationist cosmology) God could have created drones incapable of pain, free will, and/or evil acts. However, it becomes a necessary truth which is contigent upon the manner in which humans experience things like being burned.

Let us assume objective morality exists independently of God in the same way that the fact that tautologies are true exists independently of God. Simplistically, we might for illustration say "deliberately causing agonizing pain to another is always wrong" independent of God. However, God can create only drones who cannot feel pain. Yet by creating humans (agents) with free will and the capacity for doing what God does not wish, God creates humans who can feel pain. It now becomes necessarily wrong to burn someone else alive because of the manner in which God brought free agents into existence. The act of burning another human alive is contigent upon God's act- God is not constrained by the fact that burning another human alive is necessarily wrong, because God could have made it such that being burnt to death feels like bliss but drinking water causes agonizing pain.

Morality is then objective in two senses: in the absolute sense, it is objective in the way it is objectively true that if x has the property y, then x necessarily has that property y. But these "dummy variables", before Creation, have no ontology. However, once we have the English language, we define a bachelor as having the property "unmarried" and "being a man", and thus it is now necessarily true that if a man is a bachelor, that man is unmarried.

Likewise, if x has the immoral property y, then x necessarily has that immoral property y. Once again, given a particular Creation by God, these moral necessities become contigent upon the manner in which God instantiates them.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Only if we weaken the term "objective morality" to a string of hypothetical imperatives can we be totally justified and rational: "If equality is desired, then don't discriminate." Things like that. But the hypothetical theist's argument isn't about the hypothetical imperatives: it's not about "If x is desired, then do y." It's about "We should desire x." But to make that claim, they must anchor it to reality -- it must correspond in order to be "true!"

That's the challenge here.

I think we can make some headway by looking for logical consistency, since an inherently contradictory set of moral precepts cannot all be simultaneously true, so therefore we can conclude they contain a falsehood to some degree.

For instance, take the Golden Rule: if I declare that I have a right to X because (and only because) I have attributes A, B, and C, then if I also declare that someone else does not have the right to X despite them having attributes A, B, and C, then I have undermined my rationale, whatever it was, for demanding X for myself. Of course, this doesn't speak to where the error is, only that an error exists.

Still, it's better than nothing. At least it gets you to "if you desire X for yourself on grounds Y, then you should also desire it for some other person who also satisfies grounds Y", which is kinda sorta of the form "you should desire X."

 

[Sunstone]

Well, in order to have an epistemology at all someone must have already accepted that A = A; but if A = A then (A v ¬A) and ¬(A ^ ¬A), and if all those, then there must be a reality that is what it is rather than what it isn't and isn't anything in between -- and if there is a reality, one reality, then when we say "There is a cat on the mat" the only possible thing we could be cognizing there is that our concept of the cat corresponds to that one reality we already agree must exist if we have an episteme in the first place.

Coherentist ideas of truth don't work since they implicitly accept (A ^ ¬A) and so self-refute -- though coherentist ideas of doxastics might be okay (so long as there's a sprinkling of foundationalism in there; enough to stem from correspondence theory anyway!)

Thanks, MM! Oddly enough, I could follow what you were saying. I'll give it some thought.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Coherentist ideas of truth don't work since they implicitly accept (A ^ ¬A)

So does quantum physics.

 

[Meow Mix]

I'm not sure if this helps or just puts the hard questions off another step, but I'll throw it out there anyhow:

Personally, I see morality as the expression of value judgments, so I would consider the statement "Erin ought to do x" as more or less equivalent to the statement "of the options available to Erin, x is the one that will result in maximal net good."

Of course, this does nothing to tell us what's good, what's bad, and how things should be valued relative to each other... though I'm not entirely convinced that these things are baseless.

I'm not saying hypothetical imperatives are baseless. I'm saying that a claim is being made by the theistic position my OP was covering: a claim that there are "moral truths" in an ontological sense. The rest is an expose on how that implicit claim is screaming for justification on the claimant's part.

We can agree all day that "If we want to minimize suffering we should avoid doing x and seek to do y."

But that's not what the original claim is making: the original claim is that there is a truth value to "We should want to minimize suffering" or "We should want to avoid sin" or something like that -- a weak assumption, and as I've been arguing, possibly a non-cognitive one.

I'll have to dig up some videos of lectures by Matt Dillahunty on secular morality. He starts with a handful of very basic premises (e.g. all else being equal, life is preferable to death and lack of suffering is preferable to suffering, plus a few others) and ends up at a pretty robust moral system.

So... can statements like "all else being equal, life is preferable to death" be shown to be true? It feels obvious to me, but I'm not sure how I would actually go about demonstrating it.

I'm not sure such statements can be shown to be true. As far as I know, there are no ontological correspondences for preferences. There are correspondences to the propositions THAT we have x preference or y preference, but none that I can cognize for that we SHOULD have x preference or y preference.

For instance, suppose that we show that by behaving in p manner and avoiding q actions that we can maximize happiness and minimize suffering. Well, that's great; but how do we utter that it's true that we should maximize happiness and minimize suffering in any other way than a hypothetical imperative?

If the claim is "p ought not to do x," then the claim is either "I'd prefer that p not do x" or "It's true that p ought not to do x." There isn't trouble with the first, but with the second, there is a problem: what does it mean for "p ought not to do x" that's true if we're not talking about a preference -- what corresponds to reality with the "ought?"

It's not the hypothetical imperative: we can't simply say, "If p doesn't want x's consequences, then p ought not to do x" because p can do x all day while agreeing that "if I don't want x's consequences, then I shouldn't do x." But why should p not want x's consequences?

The only way to justify a proposition like "It's true that p ought not to do x" is by somehow showing what it means for "p ought" to correspond to something in reality in some ontological sense.

I really doubt that's possible (though I'm open to ideas), but I think it just comes down to the possibility that preferences can't be propositions (and thus there are no preferential truths that aren't hypothetical imperatives); and furthermore that morality appears on every level to be preferential --though in a different sense than color or food preferences, of course.

I am *not* arguing that we just pick our morals and ethics all willy nilly like we pick our favorite colors, I'm *only* demonstrating the impossibility of the theistic assertion the OP deals with.

 

[Meow Mix]

Something like, but rather different. ὅσιον doesn't mean "good" so much as holy/hallowed.

Izzat so?

What about the various refutations to the above? Or should I be looking at your other thread for these?

Actually let's debate it here, might as well. I'm not aware of any refutations to Euthyphro's that don't mistakenly attempt to allow for a third horn (which ends up being a microcosm of one of the other two) or crawls into universal possibilism.

And this is one of the answers to the Euthyphro dilemma: contingent vs. necessary truths (in various forms). Simplistically: "before" Creation (whatever that might mean), in which only God existed and the cosmos did not, there was no morality. Not only were there no agents around who could act at all, such that an act might be immoral or moral, but there were no moral "rules". This no longer is true (for an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good God) once the Cosmos exists. There is the capacity for things which we think of as immoral to occur (murder, genocide, etc.).

There is an immediate problem: isn't knowingly creating the capacity for these immoralities itself a moral question? From whence did that come, then?

If God is culpable for knowingly allowing the capacity for immoralities, that has moral connotations. If that has moral connotations, and somehow we find it "good" for God to have done so, then... well, did God allow it because it's good or is it good because God allowed it

Barring Ned Flanders, there are not many philosophers who would find Homer's question ("could God microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it?") or similar "limitations" actually limitations at all. A less well-known (relative to Homer's question) is Swinburne's proposal: it is not a limitation of God to assert "that if he is to keep Jones a bachelor he must keep him an unmarried man" or, put another way, that God is compelled to make Jones unmarried if Jones is a bachelor. That Jones is unmarried if Jones is a bachelor flows independently of God, but not in any way that limits God's omnipotence. It is simply to say that a thing is what it is.

I agree -- God being logical isn't an infringement on God's omnimaxness. It would be bizarre to consider it as such.

Before the Cosmos, moral laws had no parallels to tautologies, logical validity, etc. However,God then created as universe in which there would be humans. Humans feel pain. They can be harmed in any number of ways. Creating humans with the capacity to act freely and to be able to do wrong (even if given a sense of what is right), including e.g., burning another human alive, entails certain logical truths: it is true that if a human is burned alive, they will die in agony. This is not a necessary truth in and of itself, in that (in a creationist cosmology) God could have created drones incapable of pain, free will, and/or evil acts. However, it becomes a necessary truth which is contigent upon the manner in which humans experience things like being burned.

If it's taken for granted that we're free agents and that it's more "good" for humans to be free than not, then there is still the little problem of the logical possibility of God creating us as free agents yet without the capacity for suffering we possess. If God is culpable for the capacity of "being free and able to stub one's toe painfully" as opposed to "being free and not being able to stub one's toe painfully," then isn't God creating that very capacity a moral question in itself? Again, from whence did that moral "truth" come from (whether or not it was "good" for God to realize a particular capacity over another)?

After all, surely if God actualized a world in which everyone suffered horrible burns all the time when instead God could have actualized this world, the creation of that capacity is itself in the realm of moral truths (assuming there are any), right?

Let us assume objective morality exists independently of God in the same way that the fact that tautologies are true exists independently of God.

This wouldn't be a refutation of Euthyphro's though, since it simply rejects Divine Command Theory and affirms the other option: that morality is transcendental to God, and so theism. Moral truths should therefore be accessible minus theism, if so, and the position targeted by the OP fails.

Simplistically, we might for illustration say "deliberately causing agonizing pain to another is always wrong" independent of God. However, God can create only drones who cannot feel pain. Yet by creating humans (agents) with free will and the capacity for doing what God does not wish, God creates humans who can feel pain. It now becomes necessarily wrong to burn someone else alive because of the manner in which God brought free agents into existence. The act of burning another human alive is contigent upon God's act- God is not constrained by the fact that burning another human alive is necessarily wrong, because God could have made it such that being burnt to death feels like bliss but drinking water causes agonizing pain.

Well, why is it necessarily wrong to cause horrific suffering unless we already hold to the hypothetical imperative that we prefer to avoid suffering? Why should we hold that imperative? Where does that truth come from, if it exists?

It still appears, ignoring the above objections, that the "moral truth" is still transcendental to God and could be grasped without adopting theism. Which still defeats the argument from the OP that was targeted, non?

Morality is then objective in two senses: in the absolute sense, it is objective in the way it is objectively true that if x has the property y, then x necessarily has that property y. But these "dummy variables", before Creation, have no ontology. However, once we have the English language, we define a bachelor as having the property "unmarried" and "being a man", and thus it is now necessarily true that if a man is a bachelor, that man is unmarried.

Likewise, if x has the immoral property y, then x necessarily has that immoral property y. Once again, given a particular Creation by God, these moral necessities become contigent upon the manner in which God instantiates them.

To say there is an immoral property is a fancy way of saying there is an ontological truth behind an "ought," since the only alternative is to say an "immoral property" is a preference. Euthyphro's still wins out here, and the argument targeted in the OP still fails to be cognizant, methinks.