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,
No. It is you who adds it because you cannot accept an account which is purely descriptive. That's why in a prior post I said that whole "open question" issue was nonsense.
I will try to be as explicit as possible. It is a category mistake for you to ask if the utilitarian principle I proposed being acted upon by rationality+culture+innate values is good in the context of this naturalistic account of morality. It is not a category mistake to ask if it is true. Of course in my (other) view that is a mistake of another kind, but it wouldn't be a mistake to ask if it can be falsified.
Thanks for pointing me to those two posts. I was hoping to be elightened but I think Betty and xzins haven't addressed the point of the dilemma. Not hard to do, I admit, given the opacity of the prose.
The dilemma basically asks, is God-based goodness arbitrary. Betty and xzins have argued only one side, namely that, based on their conception of God, He must not have been constrained in his choice of good. But they have neglected the conslusion on the other side of the dilemma, namely that if God exercised free will to choose what is good, then goodness is arbitrary. If unconstrained, He could instead have chosen the exact opposite of what he did choose so that hating your neighbor is good and loving him is bad.
That's not to say their conclusion is wrong, it's just that folks find the idea that goodness is arbitrarily chosen unsettling. But then, folks also don't like it the other way either, hence the dilemma.