RE: General question about the possibility of objective moral truth
September 14, 2015 at 1:27 pm
(This post was last modified: September 14, 2015 at 1:29 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
Gee wiz, RocketSurgeon, that’s quite a bit of venom for relying on my memory to spell a difficult Greek name and relying too much on spell check.
Apparently you do not fully understand the Euthyphro dilemma (thank you for the correct spelling) as it applies to monotheism. That is understandable since your knowledge of it appears to come directly from a quick scan of Wikipedia. In classical monotheism the divine good and the divine will are inalienable aspects of god’s essential nature. As such, the dilemma has no meaning .
With respect to my point about the ancient Hebrew theocratic laws’ in-applicability of this dispensation (sorry about the earlier spell-check error), you merely responded with an argument from incredulity.
Your response to my critique of secular based moral systems often misrepresented my position. Perhaps my brevity did not provide you adequate context for an intelligent response.
First I acknowledged the absurdist position as consistent. For some reason you thought I did not.
Secondly, nearly all of the atheists on AF hold to either nominalism or conceptualism. Both of these stances deny essentialism. Therefore by logical extension they must deny any essential nature shared by all humans.
Thirdly, most AF atheists will tell you that they get their moral guidance from empathy and attribute the source of that empathy as natural selection. Why do they privilege empathy as the voice of conscience? No reason at all. Evaluating between competing natural impulses requires making reference to some higher, more authoritative standard. In this respect, evolutionary psychology is of little help. It purports to describe the survival value of certain behaviors mathematically, but it does not address the moral value of behavior.
For example the SF story “Feasibility Project.” Aliens test various intergalactic species, including humans, to see which would be most suitable to serve them as a slave race. They kidnap a small town for evaluation. Having an advanced alien society depending on your survival would be a definite advantage. However, whe the people learn that their own survival would doom all of humanity to slavery, they opt to commit mass suicide to preserve the transcendent value of Freedom for everyone else.
Finally, when I spoke of enlightened self-interest and the highest Good, I was mostly thinking about Aristotle’s Nicomachean (sp) Ethics. You might try reading it sometime.
Apparently you do not fully understand the Euthyphro dilemma (thank you for the correct spelling) as it applies to monotheism. That is understandable since your knowledge of it appears to come directly from a quick scan of Wikipedia. In classical monotheism the divine good and the divine will are inalienable aspects of god’s essential nature. As such, the dilemma has no meaning .
With respect to my point about the ancient Hebrew theocratic laws’ in-applicability of this dispensation (sorry about the earlier spell-check error), you merely responded with an argument from incredulity.
Your response to my critique of secular based moral systems often misrepresented my position. Perhaps my brevity did not provide you adequate context for an intelligent response.
First I acknowledged the absurdist position as consistent. For some reason you thought I did not.
Secondly, nearly all of the atheists on AF hold to either nominalism or conceptualism. Both of these stances deny essentialism. Therefore by logical extension they must deny any essential nature shared by all humans.
Thirdly, most AF atheists will tell you that they get their moral guidance from empathy and attribute the source of that empathy as natural selection. Why do they privilege empathy as the voice of conscience? No reason at all. Evaluating between competing natural impulses requires making reference to some higher, more authoritative standard. In this respect, evolutionary psychology is of little help. It purports to describe the survival value of certain behaviors mathematically, but it does not address the moral value of behavior.
For example the SF story “Feasibility Project.” Aliens test various intergalactic species, including humans, to see which would be most suitable to serve them as a slave race. They kidnap a small town for evaluation. Having an advanced alien society depending on your survival would be a definite advantage. However, whe the people learn that their own survival would doom all of humanity to slavery, they opt to commit mass suicide to preserve the transcendent value of Freedom for everyone else.
Finally, when I spoke of enlightened self-interest and the highest Good, I was mostly thinking about Aristotle’s Nicomachean (sp) Ethics. You might try reading it sometime.
