Postmodern Beatnik wrote:
Still, my apologies for confusing you [regarding the suggestion that I quoted William Lane Craig when I didn't].

Actually, it was the first thing to be answered: it is (supposedly) a necessary truth. As such it is either "told" to us by pure reason, or it might even be seen as a brute fact (showing yet again the deficiencies in your [N v U] dilemma).

This does not necessarily follow. If the pantheism we are considering is indistinguishable from naturalism, and if naturalism is committed to physicalism, then objective morality is somehow tied to the physical world.

Do you take this to be a justification? Because it is not.

You have recently stated that moral authority does not require a literal mouth, yet have maintained that a brute metaphysical truth is implausible (despite the historical attractiveness of such a view).

I just wanted to point out that at this point you have randomly introduced the concept of a pantheistic God without justification.

Here you seem to be mistakenly assuming that a pantheistic God would have to entail objective morality. It is equally possible that one could hold a version of pantheism that does not involve the universe possessing supreme moral authority (which exposes the above question as merely rhetorical).

But the only way to make the jump from "the universe is the supreme authority" to "the universe is, therefore, God" is to assume that the supreme authority must be God. And thus the question is begged. Otherwise, what justifies the "therefore"?

You misunderstand the situation. For one, I do not "claim to have knowledge of a logical proof that would refute [your] position." What I claim is that Kant attempted a logical proof that has garnered enough allegiance so as to demand an answer (from you). If the proof were successful, it would refute your position. But that's not my purpose in bringing it up (as I do not believe it is successful, either). My point was that you misrepresented the philosophical landscape to make your task easier, which is contrary to any solid philosophical method.

Would you care to point out where? As you may have noticed, this thread was over 20 pages long when I joined; and you have only directed me to one of your earlier posts, as if it were a full presentation of your argument.

Right, but that can only be achieved by undermining the claims of those naturalistic atheists who believe they can still support objective morality.

Here you've been consistently flogging the line "you didn't answer my question" simply because I do not always answer as directly as you like, and now you completely dodge my question altogether? Classic.

Regardless, I have answered you question in advance: it is likely that there can be no single definition of God, only definitions relative to particular conceptions (i.e. theism, deism, pantheism, panentheism, polytheism).

True or false: if there is no God, there is still an ultimate (and thus "supreme") metaphysical reality.

Something is arbitrary in the relevant [metaethical] sense, then, when the reasons for it are ad hoc or ultimately based on the opinion of some subjective entity.

If God could have made a different decision, then the decision is arbitrary in the relvant sense. But if he could not have made another decision, he is not omnipotent and we must ask ourselves why he couldn't make a different decision.

Obviously, (1) is the relevant issue here. Why is God incapable of making rape ethical?

Tisthammerw wrote:

Okay, but I have been questioning how is it that objective moral statements like "thou shalt not steal" have supreme authority behind them (i.e. that everyone ought to obey them).

"Objective morality" isn't a concrete thing; it's more of an idea: statements and principles of how we ought to behave.

The question is, who or what says how we ought to behave? Is it logic (such that the statements can be obtain solely from logic or mathematics)? Is it an Ancient Tablet? What is the metaphysical foundation of this thing called objective morality?

I agree, but I never argued against the authority of morality itself, I argued that one proposed answer to the basis of its authority is circular. Remember what I said about objective morality not being a concrete thing, about it simply being "statements and principles of how we ought to behave." It simply doesn't follow from the mere definition of objective morality that the proper answer to "Who or what says how we ought to behave" is morality itself, because that ends up being circular and vacuous (how we ought to behave says how we ought to behave) and provides no real foundation for objective morality (which was precisely what the question was trying to ascertain).

But remember that for the noncognitivist these "value judgments" have no objective reference point. They're simply an expression of what the individual likes or doesn't like, i.e. personal tastes (like preferring vanilla over chocolate).

If my understanding is not correct, then what exactly are "value judgments" for the ethical noncognitivist if they are not simply expressions of personal taste? How exactly do you define the term "value judgment" in the context of noncognitivism?

Tisthammerw wrote:
Come to think of it, it seems we've gone off topic. What do you think of my actual argument? That if objective moral values exist they are evidence for the existence of God (post #572)?

jdrw wrote:

Tist, I have no idea how it is that allegedly objective moral statements have moral authority. I have said several times that the notion of Objective Morality is unintelligible to me. I don’t know what it means. I don’t understand how it could work. I have been asking from the very first what exactly you understand the binding authority of morality to consist in and in what sense you conceive it as binding.

....

t’s your claim that this Objective Morality idea, these principles, refer to something [i]objective in the world, and that it has moral authority. Your claim has meaning only if you understand: (1) what it is that Objective Morality refers to, (2) in what sense what it refers to is objective, and (3) how what it refers to has moral authority.

If you don’t know what it is that Objective Morality objectively refers to, and you don’t understand what it really means to say that this Objective Morality has genuine moral authority, then you don’t know what your claim even means.

....

Then if you insist that Objective Morality exists, it is incumbent on you to explain in what sense it is objective and in what sense it has moral authority--otherwise your claim is vacuous.

In the end, morality either is about will and the ability to enforce that will—or it is about some independently existing force of some kind. If that somebody is God, then either morality is about what God wills—or else God is constrained by some moral force that exists apart from himself. (The Eurythro problem.)

The phrase “personal taste” has a certain pejorative rhetorical slant that trivializes the value judgments at issue. It misrepresents what can be very deeply held values that people are even willing to put their lives in the line for. A moral nihilist’s value judgments about the Holocaust are misrepresented as being merely a matter of taste analogous to trifling preferences such as vanilla vs. chocolate.

Yahadreas wrote:

Morality is by definition a system of ought-claims. Ought-claims cannot be derived from is-statements. The objective is by definition a category of is-statements. Therefore, morality cannot be objective.

Your argument relies on an illogical claim, and therefore is irrelevant.

Tisthammerw wrote:




Wikipedia does a good job explaining moral objectivism. It says that moral objectivism is "is the position that certain acts are objectively right or wrong, independent of human opinion."

Objective morality refers to statements of how we ought to behave that are objectively correct or incorrect. The objective moral statements are authoritative in the sense that people really ought to obey them.

I'm not sure how to explain it much better than this.

How? Morality is how we ought to behave. "Morality says how we ought to behave" as the basis of morality is circular, because all it says "How we ought to behave says how we ought to behave"; this is circular and provides no real foundation for morality.

God provides a metaphysical foundation for morality because God is the supreme metaphysical reality. It is logically impossible to appeal to a higher authority than God. How is this circular? It does not answer the question of the foundation of "how we ought to behave" by saying "how we ought to behave says how we ought to behave."

It does something entirely different. If you ask why God is the metaphysical basis of morality, the answer is God is by definition the supreme metaphysical reality. If you ask why God is the supreme metaphysical reality, the answer is that this simply part of the definition of God. This proposed foundation of "how we ought to behave" just isn't the exact same circular reasoning as saying the answer is "how we ought to behave says how we ought to behave." Whatever its flaws, it at least goes one step beyond this.

This strikes me as a false dichotomy. Why can't the connection between God and objective morality be more elemental than that? Moral goodness being an inextricable part of who and what he is? Perhaps such that objective moral values might not be able to exist without God but God cannot exist with out objective morality?

But in reality isn't that all it is under ethical noncognitivism--personal tastes, albeit personal tastes that some people feel very strongly about (like someone hating sauerkraut to the nth degree)?

You still did not quite answer the questions you quoted. What exactly are "value judgments" for the ethical noncognitivist if they are not simply expressions of personal taste? How exactly do you define the term "value judgment" in the context of noncognitivism?

jdrw wrote:

But what does “objectively correct or incorrect” mean as applied to statements about morality?

Since “authoritative” (applied to moral guidelines) means ought to be obeyed, the phrase “authoritative in the sense that people really ought to obey them” is entirely uninformative, and circular.

That is, what does “ought to be obeyed” actually mean? What does the “ought” mean, and in what sense do you claim it to be “objective”? What exactly distinguishes an objective ought from a subjective ought?

If you claim that Objective Morality just sitting there somewhere independently of anything or anyone else as its own source of moral authority is a circular, self-referencing claim, then how is it not the case that Objective Morality just sitting there in and of God somewhere independently of anything or anyone else as its own source of authority is not also a circular, self-referencing claim?

This says: The moral authority behind how we ought to behave is God because by definition God is the moral authority about how we ought to behave.

You can claim that moral goodness is an inextricable part of who and what God is. But then when you refer to this moral goodness in God as the source of moral authority

Value judgments for moral nihilists are the same thing value judgments are for moral realists. In this context, they are principled judgments about people’s behavior. Essentially they are approvals or disapprovals of people’s behavior. The criteria on which these judgments are based typically comprise an elaborate network of social beliefs and practices. What distinguishes them from trivial personal preferences such vanilla vs. chocolate is that they are: (1) principled, (2) widely shared in the society, and (3) concerned with what are considered to be the very most important behaviors (life, death, birth, sex, food, property, the gods … .)

To argue that the existence of some hypothetical entity (Objective Morality) would count as compelling evidence for the existence of some other hypothetical entity (God) because the existence of the first entity would be consistent with the second hypothesis, while admitting that the existence of the first entity would not logically entail the existence of the second entity anyway--strikes me as mind-boggling inanity.

jdrw wrote:
Sorry to take so long to get back to this. As you may know, this thread was missing for a while. I lost momentum.

Do you not see that the referent is the issue in the circularity? Whatever it is that you imagine the metaphor “the heart of God� to refer to is what you are positing as the source of moral authority. This is merely a different hypothetical metaphysical entity than whatever metaphysical entity it is that non-God Objective Morality imagines it is refering to.

In either case the source of moral authority is either asserted or defined to be the foundation

If Objective Morality exists, then that Objective Morality would include moral authority, otherwise it’s not Objective Morality. Whatever do you mean by allowing that Objective Morality exists unless you mean that it has moral authority? To grant that Objective Morality exists is to grant that it has moral authority.

If it cannot plausibly exist in and of itself, then the notion of Objective Morality is unintelligible and pointless.

So your argument actually is that Objective Morality in order to be a plausible concept must be a defined aspect of God or of some god-like entity.

Your argument seems to hang on what is and what is not “plausible.� You find it implausible that some hypothetical entity called Objective Morality can be defined to exist as some sort of independently existing metaphysical entity with actual moral authoity

But as long as there are no annoying empirical restrictions anyway, whatever metaphysical notions you can postulate about moraity being an aspect of God in and of himself, can be postulated to exist independently as Objective Morality in and of itself.