IS and OUGHT

[Astro Cat]

Let us not worry too much about what Socrates actually said verbatim because I do understand your point about polytheism and whether there is disagreement amongst gods or whether God disagrees with Himself: that is fine.

As we will see below, all that pointing all of this out does is make it explicit that you reject Divine Command Theory: you reject the First Horn.

So the questions remaining then are "does the second horn make sense" and "does the second horn have unwanted consequences for Christians or at least Immanuel Can?"

I will be arguing that the answers to these questions are "maybe" and "yes" respectively.

...it doesn’t matter if we change “because” to “and”

It actually does.

"Be-cause" means, "is the cause of". And one thing we know for sure about anything we call a "cause," is that it mush precede the "effect" we attribute to it. There are no exceptions.

Your own child could never be the "cause" of your existence. You could never exist "because" of her. But your mother can be a "cause" of your existence. And why? Because the cause must always precede the effect.

You ask, does God love something because it is good. That means, that the "cause", the goodness of the thing, must preceded the effect you attribute to it, i.e. God's approval. So your supposition has to be that there is a thing called "good" that existed prior to God's approval, and "caused" that approval.

Of course, that has no relation to anything a Christian thinks is the case. You've got the wrong "god" there. You've got a contingent god, one that can be "caused" to approve things by an abstraction that exists prior to him and apart from him. That would be Zeus, or Odin, or maybe the demiurge. But it would not be the Supreme Being or the First Cause. In fact, if "good" describes actions, one would also have to suppose there was an action prior to God's approval...which means the universe itself precedes the approval of God.

How far are we now from any Christian conception of God, or of good?

If we reject that goodness is caused by God commanding something, that God's command is just incidental to the goodness, then we can just ignore the first horn of Euthyphro altogether and focus on the second.

The statement "God commands X and X is good" has the following consequences:

1) God's command is extraneous. This is just saying God happens to make a command about X, good for God, He gets a cookie, but the command has nothing to do with why X is good.

2) It's the "X is good" part that's important. This is saying there's something about the universe that makes X good. Is it God that makes it good? Well, it's not because of God's sovereignty that makes it good (remember, we have rejected the first horn, God's command does not have a causal role in X being good).

So the question becomes "well what does it mean for X to be good, what makes X good, why is X good?" If God's command is out of the picture, maybe goodness exists because of God's aseity: goodness is just part of His nature? You point out that it's unacceptable for goodness to be external or transcendental to God on a Christian worldview, but I will argue that this is necessarily the case if goodness exists at all. That's for my post Part 2 of 2: I will need to talk about God's aseity and sovereignty and why it is necessary that some things be external to God, transcendental to God, before arguing that one of those things must be whatever "goodness" might be if it exists (which I still am not convinced that it does).

[Immanuel Can]

so-crates is pointing out the problem with there being many 'gods' who often disagree about what is 'good', also deciding what is 'good' for us. that's the entrance into the dilemma, but not the meat of it.

Well, I don't want to seem pedantic, but I have to ask, do you know what a "premise" is?

It's the first stage of an argument. It's the foundation upon which the entire argument "rests." And any basic logical argument has at least three stages...major premise, minor premise and conclusion. So we're talking about the major premise.

But if the first premise, the foundation of the argument is not true, then all deductions from that premise will end up being false, even though the second premise is true and the conclusion follows logically from the pair of them.

This is also why syllogisms can be "valid" but at the same time, not "true." Getting the logical framework in order is not the same as establishing the truth of all the content. An argument can be formally compelling, but still fatally flawed by an untrue major premise.

So even if you like Socrates's logic, you cannot believe his conclusion if his major premise, or even his minor premise, is false.

There are not multiple gods with multiple views of moral rightness and wrongness. Socrates foundation is vacuous. The rest can be entirely logical, but will still be wrong.

[Astro Cat]

so-crates is pointing out the problem with there being many 'gods' who often disagree about what is 'good', also deciding what is 'good' for us. that's the entrance into the dilemma, but not the meat of it.

Well, I don't want to seem pedantic, but I have to ask, do you know what a "premise" is?

It's the first stage of an argument. It's the foundation upon which the entire argument "rests." And any basic logical argument has at least three stages...major premise, minor premise and conclusion. So we're talking about the major premise.

But if the first premise, the foundation of the argument is not true, then all deductions from that premise will end up being false, even though the second premise is true and the conclusion follows logically from the pair of them.

This is also why syllogisms can be "valid" but at the same time, not "true." Getting the logical framework in order is not the same as establishing the truth of all the content. An argument can be formally compelling, but still fatally flawed by an untrue major premise.

So even if you like Socrates's logic, you cannot believe his conclusion if his major premise, or even his minor premise, is false.

There are not multiple gods with multiple views of moral rightness and wrongness. Socrates foundation is vacuous. The rest can be entirely logical, but will still be wrong.

No, it doesn’t matter if Socrates used an example with polytheism though because the meat of the argument is asking whether X’s goodness comes from God’s command or if X is just good in some way. That’s a valid question that works for monotheism or polytheism. And it’s important to distinguish, too.

The first one gives an account for goodness: it’s defined by what a being wants, that’s DCT. We can reject DCT, but then we still have to give an account for what goodness is.

[Immanuel Can]

...the intention matters.

We agree on that. But retributive justice is not motivated by hatred or cruelty. It's motivated by things like justice itself, which involves equality of treatment, proper consequences for actions, respect for personal choice as demonstrated by the dignity of inheriting the results of one's actions, redress to the victimized, and other quite impartial and fair considerations. It's not revenge.

So I say that somebody is going to pay for what was done: should it not be the perp, instead of the victim?

Suffering isn't a currency that has a census and a due date, though.

I don't know who said that was true. It certainly wasn't me.

Human justice is a matter of returning to somebody "just" the consequences of the actions they perform, and of giving to the victims "just" what they deserve by way of redress. It's extremely equitable, and involves good done to both the victim and, ultimately, to the perpetrator. For to permit the perpetrator not to inherit the consequences of his actions is to denigrate his status as a free agent, and deny him a proper feedback loop to inform his decision making. It's to corrupt his moral state, as well as to deny the victim the dignity of being declared innocent in the matter.

But we might observe as well, if we are speaking Christianly, that all justice is an attempt to approximate the perfect justice of God. And ultimate justice does have a due date. It's just that you and don't know exactly when that due date is.

...perhaps he is imprisoned for the rest of his life because he's never safe. But again, that isn't to cause him harm in intention.

As I say, "harm" is not the idea behind retributive justice. It might be a motive for revenge injustice, though.

Let's think about a particular case. Suppose your a boss wants to sleep with one of his underlings at the workplace, and confides his intention to you, over pints at the pub. You're perhaps not thankful for the information; but let's suppose you ask him, "Is that moral"?

What can you mean? Are you asking him, "Do you really want to do that?" Are you asking, "Is it personally pleasing to you?" I don't really think you are. I think you're more likely raising questions about the rightness of him using his position as an employees' superior to leverage an unequal relationship. You're perhaps calling him back to his duty to his wife. But you are raising the possibility that his decision is just plain wrong, and he owes it (ought) not to do it, for some reason. That the reason may be unclear to you is unlikely to keep your from raising it, too. To raise the moral dimension is the invoke oughtness...and with it, objective moral standards.

And I do think that when you do make such an utterance, whatever the circumstances, you're at least tacitly aware that you are asking a great deal more than "Do you think that will bring you pleasure?"

I have outwardly been saying that it is saying more than "do you think that will bring you pleasure," though.

I notice you don't say what you WOULD say, in my particular case. Is the boss okay to leverage his power to obtain sexual gratification from his underling?

For some people, my dating another woman is a moral question, a notion that I find absurd:

I don't know if we should raise this. I don't want to get into judgments of your own practices. That's inevitably personal and hurtful.

Could we instead deal with it through a different kind of case? Or are you actually wanting to get into this sort of personal particular? I'm willing to go there for your sake, if that's what you want: but I'm disinclined to be the agent of that choice, because I haven't got any desire to inflict discomfort on you.

do you think a person should own chattel slaves?

I think a person should not own people, but that is because I value liberty and I value the use of power to protect liberty.

Alright, but perhaps your neighbour south of the Mason-Dixon does.

Is he wrong to do so?

[FlashDangerpants]

If that's right, then, say, Saudi women have no inherent right to drive, no right not to be beaten, no right not to be forced to become child brides, and their testimony in court should be worth no more than half that of any man. And women in Pakistan have no right not to be revenge-raped.

Also, women in the US have no right to abortions, if the US changes the law. Chinese dissidents have no right to protest, and North Korean women have no right not to be made into sex slaves. In all these cases, the society in question approves that.

Is that how you think you want to tell the tale? If you think you can sell that story, go ahead.

You are definitely arguing from ought to is.

I am not. I'm simply asking if you want what you say you want. You say you want to believe in a world in which "rights" are defined by a society. A society has defined the above as the limits of what a person can ask or expect within that society. If you're okay with all that, then I'll believe you're sincere.

If not, I've got questions.

This is a world in which rights are assigned by societies. That's an IS.
Why are you asking if I want to believe in that?

[Immanuel Can]

Let us not worry too much about what Socrates actually said verbatim because I do understand your point about polytheism and whether there is disagreement amongst gods or whether God disagrees with Himself: that is fine.

As we will see below, all that pointing all of this out does is make it explicit that you reject Divine Command Theory: you reject the First Horn.

You're right: "Divine Command" theory is always a very poor term. It gives people the sense that morality is no more than a matter of "commands," and that as such, it can be arbitrary.

Jesus was very explicit that morality is not like that. The Pharisees were sure it was; Jesus rebuked them for imagining that. They were focused on the Mosaic Law, as if it were a set of rigid rules they could follow, with lots of big spaces in between the rules, places where their veniality could find a happy home. Jesus took all that away from them, on several occasions, but perhaps most notably in the Sermon on the Mount, when he pointed out that every seeming "command" implies also a "spirit of the law" that fills in all ostensible "gaps" in morality. And that the substance of all is an unconditional love for God; for to know God's character and to synchronize oneself with that is to do far more than all the 613 "commandments" in the OT.

And that is what the whole of morality actually is.

If we reject that goodness is caused by God commanding something, that God's command is just incidental to the goodness, then we can just ignore the first horn of Euthyphro altogether and focus on the second...

2) It's the "X is good" part that's important. This is saying there's something about the universe that makes X good.

So you're now positing a pre-existing "universe" about which there's "something" that makes things "good" without God?

I'm sorry, Cat...but this is just not the Christian worldview. God's nature and good are coextensive. What you are trying to do is to ask, "Is Cat a woman, or is she an adult human female?" The question itself has no coherence because it posits a separation between identical terms.

Is it God that makes it good? Well, it's not because of God's sovereignty that makes it good (remember, we have rejected the first horn, God's command does not have a causal role in X being good).

I will need to talk about God's aseity and sovereignty...

Let's do that.

[Immanuel Can]

You are definitely arguing from ought to is.

I am not. I'm simply asking if you want what you say you want. You say you want to believe in a world in which "rights" are defined by a society. A society has defined the above as the limits of what a person can ask or expect within that society. If you're okay with all that, then I'll believe you're sincere.

If not, I've got questions.

This is a world in which rights are assigned by societies. That's an IS.

Assumptively. You've asserted it: you've done nothing to prove it.

Why are you asking if I want to believe in that?

I'm wanting to know if those conclusions are what you intutively and conscientiously accept as "moral." I want to know what your sense of things is actually telling you. If you have no intuitive problems with the beating and raping of women, then I understand your position. It's at least consistent, even if I might not share it.

But if you cannot accept those outcomes, I want to know why you cannot. Your worldview demands them.

So if I believe you, then the following is entailed:

When the US provided federally for abortion, women had a right or claim to free abortions.

Now that the US does not provide federally for abortion, women have no rightor claim to free abortions.

By your account, that's all fine. So long as a society dictates it, that's what the limits of "rights" and "moral claims" are.

Happy with that?

[Astro Cat]

Ok, Part 2 of 2: aseity, sovereignty, and the transcendence of oughts.

As previously discussed, Euthyphro's Dilemma is really about giving an account for what oughts are. The dilemma is that either oughts come from God's commands, or that God commands things because they are good. We have already established that you reject that oughtness comes merely because God commands something. But that would have at least given an account for what an ought is: well, X ought to be done because God commands it.

We can point out, as you have, that God can command X and X is good for reasons other than God commanding it. But that just means that oughtness doesn't come from God's sovereignty. That God commands something becomes irrelevant because that thing would be good regardless of whether God commanded it on the view that rejects Divine Command Theory (DCT). But then we are all of a sudden left without an account of what an "ought" is, which was the original objection I was raising: I asked, "what does it mean for there to exist an 'ought' that's not formed out of a hypothetical imperative?" You mentioned God, but since God's sovereignty has nothing to do with what an "ought" is, what is it?

We can't argue "well, God created the universe to be in just such a way that X is good." That's because this just goes back to giving an account of goodness in God's sovereignty: if God created the universe a certain way to make X good because God chose it to be that way, this is just DCT with extra steps, can you see that? "Command" doesn't have to be a literal command, the important part is choice. If God chooses X to be good by creating the world a certain way, that's still Divine Command Theory, and God could have chosen to make the world in such a way that burning people alive for fun is "good." In such a case, "oughts" are still just the result of hypothetical imperatives God makes from His values and there is still no ultimate moral realism, there is just God's whims when creating the cosmos.

If that makes more sense than the way Euthyphro phrases it, then we could instead pose Euthyphro's Dilemma as, "does goodness originate in any way from God's sovereignty, or does God not have sovereignty over what is good?" And that is the real problem: most theists do not at all like the notion that there can be things beyond God's sovereignty.

But there must be things beyond God's sovereignty, as I will now show. This is the aseity-sovereignty problem, that God cannot both exist a se and possess absolute sovereignty. All we have to do is to note that God has properties. Perhaps God has sovereignty over God's own properties (and perhaps we see this in Christian belief, where God briefly takes on the properties of being a human man), but there is a problem in that God must have had some sort of "initial" properties.

The aseity-sovereignty problem occurs when we ask, "Did God choose His properties?" The answer couldn't be "yes," because that puts the cart before the horse: in order to "choose" properties, it requires things like having the knowledge of what properties are possible to have and the power to instantiate the "change" one desires in one's properties. But having knowledge and power are properties, so in order for God to have chosen His properties, he would have already had to have properties. It follows that God, at some point anyway, had properties that were beyond God's sovereignty: He had no choice but to have those properties.

So if God has a nature, then God has properties; and if God has properties, then God does not have absolute sovereignty. But that means that there are some things that are not relevantly dependent on God because God doesn't choose them. One easy thing to consider is something like logical self-identity: in the same way, it puts the cart before the horse to say that A = A because of God in some way because self-identity isn't dependent on God to exist: it must be the other way around! In order for anything to have a dependence on God to exist, God has to be God, which clearly means that identity isn't dependent on God (but God is dependent on identity to be God). So we can say that identity is transcendental to God: God didn't choose it, God doesn't cause it, God can't help but to be an instantiation of it (God = God, beyond God's control), and so on.

Furthermore we know that logical self-identity is something other than God, because God has properties that logical self-identity doesn't have: a really easy one to point out is personhood. So God isn't the foundation of identity, isn't identical to identity, and is dependent on identity: identity is transcendental to and external to God.

So, here is the problem: if oughtness doesn't come from God's sovereignty, and oughtness exists (I am granting this is cognizant for argument's sake), then that means God is helpless as to what oughtness is: God has no control over it, had no choice in the matter of it. Likewise God isn't identical to oughtness (we cannot say that oughtness is just "part of" God because that's noncognitive nonsense). In the same way, whatever an "ought" is, whatever "goodness" is, must be independent of God: again, if goodness doesn't come from God's sovereignty, then God is just agreeing that X is good. What defines goodness from badness is then transcendental to God, God had no part in making it that way, God had no choice in the matter, and God is relevantly dependent on that state of affairs to be good rather than defining what is good. Goodness is therefore transcendental to and external to God.

But then we are all the way back to the original question: what the hell is "good?" What is an "ought" that isn't formed from a hypothetical imperative? If God's sovereignty has nothing to do with it and if it's external to and transcendental to God, then God has nothing to do with the answer; God's existence is just an extraneous sidequest in the main story of the question! What is an "ought?" How does it correspond to reality? We are right back to having nothing at all even resembling an account of what it could cognitively be. And that is the problem.

We have no problem with something like identity because it is, again, both self-evident and incorrigible: we are forced to accept logical identity. But we can't even seem to define what an "ought" outside of a hypothetical imperative even is!

[FlashDangerpants]

I am not. I'm simply asking if you want what you say you want. You say you want to believe in a world in which "rights" are defined by a society. A society has defined the above as the limits of what a person can ask or expect within that society. If you're okay with all that, then I'll believe you're sincere.

If not, I've got questions.

This is a world in which rights are assigned by societies. That's an IS.

Assumptively. You've asserted it: you've done nothing to prove it.

Prove? It's just a matter of observation. A citizen of the Roman Empire had rights, they were far removed from the rights you have. Your great great grandaddy had different rights to yours today. This stuff is quite observably in constant flux.

Why are you asking if I want to believe in that?

I'm wanting to know if those conclusions are what you intutively and conscientiously accept as "moral." I want to know what your sense of things is actually telling you. If you have no intuitive problems with the beating and raping of women, then I understand your position. It's at least consistent, even if I might not share it.

But if you cannot accept those outcomes, I want to know why you cannot. Your worldview demands them.

And that's supposed to be an argument against my description of the way things are is it?

[Immanuel Can]

...that just means that oughtness doesn't come from God's sovereignty.

Ah, we'd best be careful with that word.

Many people think it means something like "dictates" or "arbitrary wishes." It does not. No Christian ever denies that God is "sovereign," when it simply means "king" -- which it does. God is the rightful Lord of the universe He created. It does not imply He is arbitrary.

But to respond, oughtness does not come from "sovereignty," whatever you might actually mean by that. It comes from the intersection of two basic facts: God's own nature, and the teleological purposes built into the universe He created to reflect His character.

That God commands something becomes irrelevant because that thing would be good regardless of whether God commanded it on the view that rejects Divine Command Theory (DCT). But then we are all of a sudden left without an account of what an "ought" is,

Wait: why are we going back to DCT? I thought I was quite clear that I'm not a DCTer, and that I have good reasons not to be.

And that is the real problem: most theists do not at all like the notion that there can be things beyond God's sovereignty.

I'm convinced that's not true. But my response would have to depend on what you thought "sovereignty" might entail. And that, I can't tell merely from your usage of the word.

...there is a problem in that God must have had some sort of "initial" properties.

The word "initial" seems wrong, here. It seems to imply again you have some thought of a God with an "initial" point. But Christians do not believe in created "gods," nor in a single god with an origin point.

Could it be you mean something like "inherent"? Are you asking if God has eternally possessed any particular qualities descriptive of His character? Because a Christian could respond to that. But "initial" just doesn't work, because it compels an non-Christian supposition.

So if God has a nature, then God has properties;

What do you mean by "properties"?

Are you trying to say that God wasn't "good" until a human being existed and knew He was "good"?

...and if God has properties, then God does not have absolute sovereignty.

Well, it's seems we're going to need to clear up your definition of "sovereignty," absolute or otherwise. Because as it stands, I can't grasp the claim you're making here.

I'm wondering if you've left out Trinitarianism and self-existence, possibly. But I'll wait to see what you mean by sovereignty. Your "god" sounds like a kind of monad, something incapable of existing or knowing himself without the existence of human beings to name his attributes. But that seems a bit extreme, so I'll have to wait to see what you mean.

[Immanuel Can]

This is a world in which rights are assigned by societies. That's an IS.

Assumptively. You've asserted it: you've done nothing to prove it.

Prove? It's just a matter of observation.

Not at all.

It is observable that human societies have issued "rights." It's not observable as to whether or not they've done so in accord with the ultimate rights issued by God. In fact, it's observable that sometimes, at least, they have not done so, since they disagreed with each other and with themselves over time.

Locke had this right. That's why our human rights codes today still all go back to him.

Why are you asking if I want to believe in that?

I'm wanting to know if those conclusions are what you intutively and conscientiously accept as "moral." I want to know what your sense of things is actually telling you. If you have no intuitive problems with the beating and raping of women, then I understand your position. It's at least consistent, even if I might not share it.

But if you cannot accept those outcomes, I want to know why you cannot. Your worldview demands them.

And that's supposed to be an argument against my description of the way things are is it?

No, it's my measurement of whether or not you really believe what you claim. If you do, you'll be fine with all that your view entails. If you're not, then you'll be inconsistent: and I'll want to ask why.

[FlashDangerpants]

Assumptively. You've asserted it: you've done nothing to prove it.

Prove? It's just a matter of observation.

Not at all.

It is observable that human societies have issued "rights." It's not observable as to whether or not they've done so in accord with the ultimate rights issued by God. In fact, it's observable that sometimes, at least, they have not done so, since they disagreed with each other and with themselves over time.

Locke had this right. That's why our human rights codes today still all go back to him.

Well I am describing the observable stuff.
Obviously I'm not touching with a shitty stick anything that has a dependency on proving God exists.
Nothing in my description could possibly justify any assumption that there is a need for internal consistency in this process.

Wow, I didn't realise Locke predated the Magna Carta.

I'm wanting to know if those conclusions are what you intutively and conscientiously accept as "moral." I want to know what your sense of things is actually telling you. If you have no intuitive problems with the beating and raping of women, then I understand your position. It's at least consistent, even if I might not share it.

But if you cannot accept those outcomes, I want to know why you cannot. Your worldview demands them.

And that's supposed to be an argument against my description of the way things are is it?

No, it's my measurement of whether or not you really believe what you claim. If you do, you'll be fine with all that your view entails. If you're not, then you'll be inconsistent: and I'll want to ask why.

My view entails that we have to constantly renew the discussion about what rights we assign. That's the way things are whether we like it or not.

[Immanuel Can]

Prove? It's just a matter of observation.

Not at all.

It is observable that human societies have issued "rights." It's not observable as to whether or not they've done so in accord with the ultimate rights issued by God. In fact, it's observable that sometimes, at least, they have not done so, since they disagreed with each other and with themselves over time.

Locke had this right. That's why our human rights codes today still all go back to him.

Well I am describing the observable stuff.

You observe only the tip of the iceberg. Then you say, "I'm not prepared to talk about the possibility of underwater ice."

We'll see how that works out for you, I guess.

My view entails that we have to constantly renew the discussion about what rights we assign. That's the way things are whether we like it or not.

Well, in the US, the judiciary discussed what rights were appropriate to assign to women regarding abortion. And they "renewed" the view that the Constitution holds they're in state jurisdiction. So women in the US now have no right at all to an abortion on demand. And, according to your view, the abortion-desiring females have no basis of complaint or protest...because their government mechanisms have ruled on the question.

So what are those pink-hat loonies doing, stomping around the judiciaries, claiming they have "right" to something that they have no "right" to, according to you?

[FlashDangerpants]

Not at all.

It is observable that human societies have issued "rights." It's not observable as to whether or not they've done so in accord with the ultimate rights issued by God. In fact, it's observable that sometimes, at least, they have not done so, since they disagreed with each other and with themselves over time.

Locke had this right. That's why our human rights codes today still all go back to him.

Well I am describing the observable stuff.

You observe only the tip of the iceberg. Then you say, "I'm not prepared to talk about the possibility of underwater ice."

We'll see how that works out for you, I guess.

My view entails that we have to constantly renew the discussion about what rights we assign. That's the way things are whether we like it or not.

Well, in the US, the judiciary discussed what rights were appropriate to assign to women regarding abortion. And they "renewed" the view that the Constitution holds they're in state jurisdiction. So women in the US now have no right at all to an abortion on demand. And, according to your view, the abortion-desiring females have no basis of complaint or protest...because their government mechanisms have ruled on the question.

So what are those pink-hat loonies doing, stomping around the judiciaries, claiming they have "right" to something that they have no "right" to, according to you?

On what basis do you suppose I say people have no right to complain or protest? These are long established rights in most societies.
It's completely normal for there to be dispute over what rights we want to hold.
It wouldn't be normal if there was a reliable way to find out what our rights ought to be forever and ever and ever amen.
But there isn't.

[Immanuel Can]

I'm wondering if you've left out Trinitarianism and self-existence, possibly. But I'll wait to see what you mean by sovereignty. Your "god" sounds like a kind of monad, something incapable of existing or knowing himself without the existence of human beings to name his attributes. But that seems a bit extreme, so I'll have to wait to see what you mean.

Just a follow-up, Cat: you say you were in a Baptist-Presbyterian context: is it possible that you absorbed a definition of "sovereignty" from Calvinism? That would seem possible. And if so, are you aware that that definition is contested very vigorously, and is denied firmly by many Christian theologies, and even by Scripture itself?