Right, fine. But my point has been that, whether or not you think you need to ID the source, as soon as someone asks you to ID the source, the game's over. Because whether you answer or not, someone else will posit a source of their own that doesn't necessarily jibe with what you think moral law is. IOW, you decline to answer, so I fill in the blank for myself by saying that Ba'al commands me to drink the blood of the unbeliever, as a moral imperative. How do you counter that?
Now you can agree or disagree, but in order to disagree, you'd need to give reasons. Simply saying "No, suh!" doesn't quite cut it. The burden is on thee, not me.
Why? I don't feel particularly compelled to persuade you of this, particularly when there's an easy way to verify whether or not I am correct in my inferences - you could blow me out of the water instantly by denying that you feel that moral law flows from some particular moral law-giver. You ask me what led me to infer that you won't deny such a thing - the fact that you duck the question leads me to believe that I am correct in my inferences, among other things ;)
The way I see it, you have a couple of possible answers to the question of where moral law comes from. One, you could tell me that moral law comes strictly from within, which you seem to have been toying with. However, the implication of that answer would be that moral law is inherently subjective, and a matter of personal opinion, since you have no way of knowing that what I see within me is what you see within you. Since you wish to posit that moral law is objective and universal, rather than subjective and personal, and you are clever enough to recognize the implications of saying that it comes from entirely within ourselves (among other things, it would put you squarely in agreement with me, which you seem not to want to do), I think it unlikely that you would choose to answer in this manner.
Two, you could answer that it doesn't really come from anywhere at all. However, this is tantamount to saying that moral law is eternal and uncaused also, as God is. And then I would have to ask how many exceptions you intend to carve out to the idea of causality. As this answer is likely to be truly rare indeed - I have never heard anyone posit such a thing - and because I think that you are a clever person who recognizes that this answer opens up a whole new can of worms, I find it unlikely that you will choose to answer in this manner either. Although it is just barely possible that you would believe such a thing, you would be a rare bird indeed to hold such an opinion.
Three, you could choose to do an about-face and deny that there is such a thing as universal moral law altogether. Since this would directly contradict your position to this point, and I have no overweening illusions of my own powers of persuasion, I find it unlikely that you would choose to answer in this manner also.
Four, you can answer that moral law and universal moral truths flow from some particular source. As this is the most common position among those who believe in universal moral laws, and as the other options seem rather unlikely, by process of elimination, I am led to conclude that this position is the most likely one for you to hold.
But, of course, you could prove me wrong by simply answering the question. So tell me - where, exactly, does moral law come from?
And when you answer, then we'll know how well my powers of deduction are working these days ;)
Why does one need to believe in a source of moral law in order to believe that moral law exists?
I don't say that belief in a source of moral law is necessary to believe in moral law itself - indeed, I explicitly allow for the possibility that it is not above. I merely infer that you believe that there is a source of moral law. I don't really believe that it's a necessity at all, but even if it isn't necessary, it's still an option. And an option that I think you have availed yourself of.
Of course, you could prove me wrong by answering the question ;)
But I know that you seem to be constructed along the same basic plan that I was (I mean, I'm assuming - unless the Internet has started to sprout its own intelligence or something)
Funny, I was going to suggest that very possibility - neither of us know whether the other is even a real person or not. ;)
So it just comes down to what the standard of knowledge is that we're going to demand.
And that's exactly it. And exactly the sort of game the sophists (and their postmodern cousins, BTW) play - define "know" so stringently that it turns out that we don't really know anything at all, and everything we think we know is simply a matter of belief. This is what I was alluding to about trotting out the sophistry for myself.
But ultimately, that sort of relativism is self-refuting. The problem that the pomos have is the same problem that all relativists have had since the days of Protagoras - ultimately, what it boils down to is the notion that there's no such thing as objective fact, just people's opinions. But when presented with that statement, the immediate question one should ask is, well then, is that statement itself objectively true, or is it just your opinion? And neither answer is particularly palatable to the relativists, for obvious reasons.
So, while I could play that game, I'm not a through-and-through relativist (nor a postmodernist), so I don't find it particularly convincing.
Someone earlier on this thread asked how we could know that we weren't just all created yesterday, with our memories implanted. If we can't know that, then there's next to nothing much else we can know, so there'd be no point in continuing. But if we're willing to say, Look, the evidence is so overwhelming, and there's no evidence at all to the contrary...
Well, I think I might answer that a bit differently. No, we don't know that, but more importantly, we can't know that to be true, even if it is. So why behave as though it is? Even if that is true, we can only operate based on the information we have before us, and the information we have before us tells us that we weren't just created yesterday, even if it is true that we were. So acting as though we have information that we do not strikes me as irrational. And anyway, even if we knew that to be true, so what? What are we supposed to do about it?
I think it would be the height of unreasonableness for me to assume, or even fail to assume otherwise, that you don't feel pain the same way I do, in all the relevant details. Sound acceptable?
Well, I suppose you could try to add to the evidence supporting such an assumption - you could set me on fire or something, and try to observe whether or not my behavior matched what you would expect from someone who senses pain. But you, not unreasonably at all, infer inductively that you don't really have to do such a thing. And that's what you really did in your post - you inductively reasoned that what was true of you is also true of me.
But there's a nasty fact hiding underneath that sort of thing also, and it'll sound sort of like the sophists' arguments at first, but it isn't at all, really. In a much earlier post, I mentioned David Hume and how he showed that the study of history was a form of petitio principii, or begging the question. But that's actually just an amusing side-effect of what he was really doing - what Hume was really doing was showing that there's no way to prove the validity of any sort of inductive reasoning at all. IOW, what philosophers call the "inductive principle" is necessarily a matter of belief, and one that cannot be proven to be valid. Now, inductive reasoning has proven to be useful enough that we accept the validity of it, even though we can't prove the validity of it - it appears to be empirically valid, even though we can't prove that it must logically be valid. But truthfully, at its core, you have nothing more than an assumption that I am like you, and you reason based on that assumption.
S it differs from the relativists in the sense that it allows that we can know the things we deduce to be true, but it leaves us with the nasty fact that we can't really know the truth of what we reason out inductively, since we can't really know whether induction is itself valid.
But, while all that is very interesting (and I highly recommend Hume to you for that, and the fact that he pretty convincingly wrecks Aquinas's "proofs" of the existence of God), we do generally accept that induction is valid. So, ultimately, I accept your reasoning that there is this thing we call "pain", and that when you and I refer to "pain" we have a common understanding of a thing that actually exists. We can't prove it to be true, but we grant it to be true as a foundational starting point - it is one of our unprovable axioms, if you like.
At least not up until now. But further down in your post, you wrote, "S it differs from the relativists in the sense that it allows that we can know the things we deduce to be true...." So now I caught you in a typo, which means you must be human. Either that or some kind of English-speaking alien.
I don't say that belief in a source of moral law is necessary to believe in moral law itself - indeed, I explicitly allow for the possibility that it is not above. I merely infer that you believe that there is a source of moral law.
Well, that clears it up a little better. Earlier you said (#732), "What I'm saying is that your presumption of what universal truth is, is necessarily predicated on what you think has been given to you by a particular deity." (my emphasis) Your use of the word "necessarily" led me to believe that you intended for your statement to apply to anyone who believes in moral truth, not just me. Instead, you were simply making an inference about my beliefs specifically. Well, that's fine, then. You can infer all you want. It doesn't have any bearing on the present discussion.
IOW, you decline to answer, so I fill in the blank for myself by saying that Ba'al commands me to drink the blood of the unbeliever, as a moral imperative. How do you counter that?
By proceeding along the lines we've been proceeding along below. Let's continue, shall we?
So it differs from the relativists in the sense that it allows that we can know the things we deduce to be true, but it leaves us with the nasty fact that we can't really know the truth of what we reason out inductively, since we can't really know whether induction is itself valid. (corrected version :-p )
That doesn't seem like much of a difference to me. If you can't rely on any form of induction, then you're not left with much to deduce from.
IOW, what philosophers call the "inductive principle" is necessarily a matter of belief, and one that cannot be proven to be valid.
OK, but this is the impasse that we're at: the fact that something is a matter of belief doesn't mean that it's a matter of fantasy. It can still be a fact. As G.K. Chesterton said, "Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all." It's a matter of just accepting that there's a point beyond which you can't break things down any further. You actually slipped ahead of me when you asked me how I can know that you feel pain the way I do, and vice versa. I'd like to take it back to my original question, and simply ask you if you know that you can feel pain - never mind about anyone else just yet. Because the point I'm trying to establish is whether or not you can know something to be true (in this case, your perception of pain), without being able to prove it objectively.