I need someone to explain to me the logic of the allegation, that "standards of morality exist independently of God's will," such that God's will is subject to a standard that is not of His own making and thus beyond Himself. This line of thinking invokes the idea of an infinite regression, when the entire point is that God is the uncaused cause. Thus He can be the only cause of His own will and moral perfection; and as their cause, the only legitimate explicator of His moral law. His commands are eternally valid precisely because they are His commands; He is the standard, the measure.
There is nothing more ultimate than God. There can be no "prior" to God; for that implies that God is "in" space and time. And He is not; for if He were "in" space and time, then He would be subject to them, just as we mortals are, and so not could not have been their creator.
The whole suggestion that God is subject to "a higher standard" is an unwarranted and unsubstantiated claim, a smokescreen or diversion premised on the supposition that man can know that higher standard independently of God. That is, that "man is the measure," not God. Well, man can insist on this 'til he's blue in the face; but that does not change one whit the nature of things, or the facts on the ground -- which comprise the basis of human existence.
But what evidence does "Metaethics" have to show in this regard? "Metaethics" sounds more like a group session of mental patients, collectively dedicated to the proposition that moral relativism can actually be socially constructed as a public good, if we all could just negotiate away our differences regarding our moral premises, and agree that morality is a human, not a divine, project. Talk about loaded dice....
It's interesting that edsheppa claims not to associate with this view. But then, edsheppa has not really told us, so far as I know, what his view actually is. So we are left guessing, and faced with the temptation to "characterize" his position for him -- as he has recently done for me, in the process coming up with a caricture, a straw man, to beat. I have seen his conclusion (i.e., that I understand myself to be in possession of "The Truth," etc.); what I have not seen is his evidence.
Moreover he suggests that my "objectivity" or reliability as a truthful observer is deranged because I am besotted with a fantastic futility known as ontology (i.e., the science of being). The fact is, my main problem with edsheppa is epistemological, and only secondarily ontological: He is a walking self-contradiction in the epistemology department, whose materialist, atheist doctrine provides him with no basis to be discussing questions such as: "What is signified by the term, 'innate?'"
Think he'll lay out the bare bones of his argument plus his supporting evidence for us anytime soon, Diamond? I notice he has been quite coy with you lately, as well.
Thanks Diamond, as ever, for your excellent posts!
Please don’t ping me to purely religious posts unless I am actively engaged in the thread.
It appears I have once again come in late to a very interesting discussion. Sigh...
He is the uncaused cause of "all that there is" which includes spiritual and physical, space and time and physical causation itself.
In the absence of space, things cannot exist.
A thing is true because He says it. Indeed, only God can speak objective truth - everyone else is a creature and suffers from the "observer problem."
Only God is Good --- only He can be "good" because only He is Creator ex nihilo.
His Name is I AM.
When He says "thou shalt not murder" it is not a suggestion. It is law in the most absolute sense of the word.
You are correct, BB. To claim God is subject to some pre-existing standard is no different than the question: “Well, where did God come from?”
The point is that everything comes from nothing or everything comes from something. The eternal must have been a something rather than a nothing, because nothing always gives rise to nothing.
The eternal something must be sufficient to account for all that is.....to include the eternal moral order.
It's interesting that edsheppa claims not to associate with this view. But then, edsheppa has not really told us, so far as I know, what his view actually is. So we are left guessing, and faced with the temptation to "characterize" his position for him -- as he has recently done for me, in the process coming up with a caricature, a straw man, to beat. I have seen his conclusion (i.e., that I understand myself to be in possession of "The Truth," etc.); what I have not seen is his evidence.
bb, I think you and xins have deftly illustrated the fallacy of the Euthyphro Dilemma. The reason I cited the two Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles is that I found them to be useful surveys of the some of the controversies and difficulties with accounting for morality.
edsheppa has identified generally with the Moral Naturalism position, hence my link to the article on that category.
The problem as I see it with moral naturalism is that it cannot arrive a reductive analysis of morality without relying on an evaluative premise, which is the very thing it's supposed to be explaining in the first place:
Non-naturalism comes with two distinctive burdens: (i) accounting for how the realm of moral properties fits in with familiar natural properties and (ii) explaining how it is that we are able to learn anything about these moral properties. Naturalism, in contrast, avoids these metaphysical and epistemological burdens.Despite its advantages, naturalism has difficultly capturing well what people take to be the true nature of morality. In saying something is good or right or virtuous we seem to be saying something more than, or at least different from, what we would be saying in describing it as having certain natural features. Correspondingly, no amount of empirical investigation seems by itself, without some moral assumption(s) in play, sufficient to settle a moral question.
[snip]
Among morality's distinctive features, all agree, is its apparently intimate connection to action. In making moral judgments, for instance, we seem to be making a claim that, if true, establishes that someone or other has a reason to act or be a certain way. This marks an important difference between moral claims and claims concerning, say, color. The claim that something is red is, even if true, only contingently connected to whether anyone has any reason at all to act or be a certain way. Whereas if a certain thing is morally good it seems that everyone necessarily has at least some reason (perhaps overrideable or defeasible, but still some reason) to promote, pursue, protect, or respect it — at least if they recognize that it is good. Moreover, many have thought, to judge sincerely that something is good (whether or not one is right) is to have some motivation (again, perhaps overrideable or defeasible, but still some motivation) to promote, pursue, protect, or respect it.
If one is able to beat throught the thick undergrowth in the article on Moral Naturalism, the futility of trying to account for morally evaluative conclusions without first presupposing an evaluative premise(which is what naturalism denies) can be clearly seen. When naturalists are asked to account for morality (at least anything worthy of the name) they invariabley end up positing some sort of prior moral rule, or smuggle in some evaluative premise or conclusion. They can't help it.
Cordially,
It was in my first post on this thread, #56. And further it was in my reply to you in #121. And you replied to that post.
It's interesting that edsheppa claims not to associate with this view.
See #173 where I say
Yes, my view is in the broad category of ethical thought that article describes.
"What is signified by the term, 'innate?'"
I have in mind the standard meaning. Unlike some I try very hard to use words that way to avoid confusion.
adjective: not established by conditioning or learningAs to what it "signifies," here is an example. There were a couple of recent studies about "fairness." One compared human to chimp behaviors in the Ultimatum Game. The game has two playing roles, Proposer and Responder. A certain amount of money is in available. The Proposer proposes a division of the money between the players and the Reponder can accept the division or reject it so that neither player gets anything.
adjective: present at birth but not necessarily hereditary; acquired during fetal development
When people play this game, the Proposer generally offers much more to the Responder than you might "rationally" expect. IIRC, it is often an even split and offers less than 20% to the Reponder are generally rejected.
Some researchers cleverly arranged for chimps to play this game. Unlike human players, the chimp Proposers offered the least non-zero amount possible (e.g. nine grapes for me and one for you) and the chimp Responders generally accepted these very unequal distributions.
The other study compared how identical and fraternal twins played the game. Identical twins were very much more alike in the proposed and accepted divisions than the fraternal twins.
So the evidence is that fairness has a very strong genetic component and, further, people have it and chimps don't. This is the kind of innate human value I'm speaking of.