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The Principle of Contingent Causation: The Impossibility of Infinite Regress.
RE: The Principle of Contingent Causation: The Impossibility of Infinite Regress.
(July 4, 2023 at 11:10 am)Nishant Xavier Wrote: No one, for future reference, if you want a response from me, try not to use silly insults and expletives in the same post. And also formulate some kind of argument like Angrboda did. To the implication of what you claimed, it is false; God has always revealed Himself to humanity in various ways since man began to exist; not least through Conscience, which we're going to discuss below, through the design in the Universe, through the very principle of contingency we're discussing etc. Unless you want to claim there was a time when man didn't have a Conscience, your argument fails.

@Angrboda

Quote:"An argument not given need not be refuted. If you're depending upon another result, you need to introduce it.

Ok, then. Since you asked. Let's deduce Property III of the First Cause:

Property III of the First Cause: The First Cause is a Supremely Good Personal Being, the origin of the objective Moral Law we discern on our Conscience.

Proof of Property III: There are 3 lines of evidence (1) from moral intuition (2) from the absurdity of subjective morality (3) from the inability of Moral Philosophers who are Moral Subjectivists to consistently maintain the requirements of subjective morality (as I mentioned in the case of Michael Ruse on the other thread, who in 1 place claims they are subjective, yet in another says, they are as certain as objective and necessarily true mathematical facts, something like: "the person who says murder and rape are fine is as wrong as one who says 2+2=5")

First, from basic and nearly universal human moral intuition. Virtually, every one holds to some properly basic moral Truths (even those who don't see that a Necessary First Cause of Goodness is entailed by those Truths) that are objectively binding on all, for e.g. that murder, rape, theft are wrong, or that we are (objectively) bound to care for the Poor, for the hungry, etc, which is correct; that comes from the Image of God in Man, and Woman, and is part of what the Bible, and St. Paul, and St. Augustine and St. Thomas call the Moral Law of Nature implanted within us.

As to the content of our moral intuitions, intuition generally is not a reliable indicator of truth, or even realism.  We have intuitions undergirding our belief in free will, but so far the evidence against free will is stacked against it being real.  And people have intuitions that they sense the divine, the so-called "sensus divinitatis," which is conspicuous in the fact that it isn't uniformly experienced.  Arguments can be made, but it is not hard to imagine that a mere sense of the numinous or of unusual proprioception such as those exposed in the magnetic helmet experiments could be easily conflated with a more specific sensation of the divine, but erroneously so.  And experiments have shown that a large percentage of people use Aristotlean intuitions about motion in predicting the movement of objects despite the fact that Aristotlean principles of motion are wrong.  And there's the whole question of folk psychology -- the lay theory that we have things like beliefs and emotions and that these mental quantities interact with each other.  Psychological studies refute such intuitions as often as they confirm them.  So the content of moral intuitions themselves is not evidence beyond being evidence that we have such intuitions.  It is not reliable evidence toward the validity of the content of such intuitions.  And more, even if we were to grant the intuitions some validity, the presence of such intuitions doesn't tell us why we have them and so they aren't probative of the question of where morals come from and whether they are objective facts or not.


(July 4, 2023 at 11:10 am)Nishant Xavier Wrote: Now, I agree that if you deny this moral fact, that moral Truths are objective, and hold to subjective morality, you can avoid the conclusion. The problem is nearly no one wants to hold rape or murder are subjective in the way that a choice of tea or coffee are. SM leads to gross absurdities.

If you want to be a Subjective Moralist, go for it. But have the intellectual (and moral) courage to follow through from your false premises to their grotesque conclusions. The true conclusion that would follow from subjective morality is that all law is impossible and nothing universally binding.

I need not do anything of the sort.  You seem to be under the impression that if you can defeat subjective morality, then that would demonstrate or at least abet the position of objective morality.  First of all, that's not a valid argument as it's an appeal to ignorance.  But more problematic is that we know of additional alternatives to the types or moral realism and moral relativism that populate your argument, so you are guilty of misapplication of the law of the excluded middle (aka a false dichotomy).  This is enough to dismiss your latter two issues pertaining to subjectivism.


(July 4, 2023 at 11:10 am)Nishant Xavier Wrote: I will leave it at that for now as the question of whether Morality is Objective or Subjective (which does in fact have to be determined either from moral intuition; or from accepted moral Truths admitted by both sides) is not the immediate issue at hand here. 

Let's come to your question/objection, could the Moral Law have originated from some subordinate law-giver, and not the First Cause? In other words, is the First Cause of all being, the First Cause of all Goodness also, and was it He, or allegedly someone else, who implanted within us the moral obligation/objective moral Law we discern on our Conscience?

It's an interesting question and I'm just considering it for the first time. I would formulate my response like this: 
(1) moral Truths are necessary truths, not contingent truths. 

in modal logic, a necessary truth is one that is true in every possible world, for e.g. the laws of mathematics and logic.
a contingent truth or a possible truth is one that is true only in some p. worlds, for e.g. the laws of physics and science.

Moral Truths would come under the former category, unless one wants to argue one could be obliged to rape, murder, etc in some possible world, or that we are not bound to help the Poor, to feed the hungry etc could be possibly true.

Your latter comment is an appeal to consequences and is not of any merit as an argument. I don't know if you meant (1) as an argument; it's a bare assertion and can therefore be rejected.


(July 4, 2023 at 11:10 am)Nishant Xavier Wrote: (2) necessary Truths like moral laws binding in every possible world could not have originated from a contingent being.

There is no evidence that moral laws do exist in every possible world. More importantly, you're simply asserting that moral laws are binding in every possible world, and then using that to argue that they must come from a necessary being or cause. Since existing in every possible world is the definition of a necessary entity, you have simply begged the question. Moreover we have reason to believe that your assertion is false, or at least highly doubtable.  Regardless of what one thinks of theories of morals based in evolution or subjectivism, they are at least plausible explanations for why we have such intuitions and are absolutely examples of morals coming from contingency.  Beyond that, this is a bare assertion and lacking any evidence or argument for it can be dismissed.   Additional problems remain beyond even these.

(July 4, 2023 at 11:10 am)Nishant Xavier Wrote: (3) Therefore, they originated from the same necessarily existent First Cause, not some contingently existent intermediate being.

Upon examination of your arguments for the necessity of morals originating in a necessary being, all of them amount to either defective argument or bare assertion and so your conclusion itself can be dismissed without prejudice.

(July 4, 2023 at 11:10 am)Nishant Xavier Wrote: Will get back to the rest subsequently.

Please do.
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RE: The Principle of Contingent Causation: The Impossibility of Infinite Regress. - by Angrboda - July 6, 2023 at 9:24 am

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