Turning the Euthyphro Dilemma around on atheists

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

Most people are familiar with the Euthyphro dilemma against a deity. Theists, particularly intellectually sophisticated theists have some interesting responses to the Euthyphro dilemma (Richard Swinburne's response is one of the most unusual), but we can get into that later.

What if we flip it against atheism?

"Do you do good things because they are good, or are things good simply because you do them?"

If you pick the first option, then the good exists independent of human existence or knowledge. If you pick the second, then people can deem anything they do as good.

This is not that difficult.

"Do you do good things because they are good, or are things good simply because you do them?"

This is a false dichotomy.

You are missing, "things are good because they have the best possible outcome for the well being of other people".

Actions can be rationally and logically evaluated.

Morality in practice concerns the well being of others.

We all have more or less the same brains and bodies, and we live in the same physical universe, subject to the same physical laws.

With some exceptions, it is easy to determine that: life is preferable to death, health is preferable to disease, comfort is preferable to discomfort, etc. I am easily able to extend the above knowledge to other sentient beings, and understand that if my actions cause harm to anyone else's well being, it is bad action. If my action improves someone's well being or is neutral, it is a good action.

I am able to evaluate each situation I encounter in order to determine the action to take that will cause the least possible harm, and/or the most possible benefit to others well being.

I try to do the most good things as possible, and the least bad things. They are not good because I do them, they are good if they have good outcomes.

For instance, if it were the consensus that rape were good

Women are 51% of the population. How would you get a consensus?

But even if they were less than 50%, rape harms the well being of others. So it would be a bad action, no matter how many people say it's good.

1) Any outcome that is determined to be "best possible" is arbitrary aside from appealing to some external standard. Who's to say that, for instance, eradicating hunger is the best possible outcome? Just because the consensus says so? Then you fall into the consensus trap.

Or because evolution dictates it? Consensus trap can become the evolution trap, where if evolution dictates animal torture to be good, you'd run around torturing animals.

Or because you subjectively feel that it is? Same problem- would you torture animals if your feelings told you it was good?

What makes well-being the measure of moral good, as opposed to power or greed? Think about this more.

2) You cannot actually know the best possible outcome unless you are omniscient, because of the cause-effect relationships that are outside of your epistemic purview.

Once you take these issues seriously, you find your response doesn't survive one or both. If you find one that survives, let me know.

Not in the real world the rest of us are living in, buddy.

For instance, if it were the consensus that rape were good, we know what you would do.

Uh...how is that possible? Rape is non-consensual sex. That would have to mean that women wanted to (i.e. consented to) being raped...which is paradoxical.

This leads me to ask then: If you lived in Nazi Germany, where it was the consensus to annihilate the Jews.

Assuming you exclude the Jews from weighing in on that consensus.

Or perhaps you lived in some society where it was the consensus that torturing people was morally good, would it be morally good to you?

Well, if it were the consensus that torturing was morally good, I can only assume that everyone was masochistic to come to that consensus. And if everyone was masochistic, they would thoroughly enjoy it, so yes, it would be good (assuming no serious injury was caused).

If they weren't masochistic, then I cannot see how this consensus would come about. It's like the golden rule: how would you feel if someone tortured you? Would you really vote that torture is okay if you hated being tortured, knowing that some well-being person might kick you in the groin one day as a random act of kindness? And if you were the masochist, and everyone else wasn't, then you would be outvoted.

Or, what if most were masochists but not all? Then: would I want to be tortured [if I weren't masochistic]? No. So the morality of torture differs to the non-masochists.

This is just a basic example for now.
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Look up the word consensus. It doesn't mean what you think it means.

All that is needed for consensus is the general opinion. Individual dissenters can exist.

But for your sake we'll use another example: If the consensus was that animal torture is good, would you agree with the consensus of people or decide there must be some external standard of goodness by which animal torture is still evil despite consensus?

Most people are familiar with the Euthyphro dilemma against a deity. Theists, particularly intellectually sophisticated theists have some interesting responses to the Euthyphro dilemma (Richard Swinburne's response is one of the most unusual), but we can get into that later.

What if we flip it against atheism?

"Do you do good things because they are good, or are things good simply because you do them?"

If you pick the first option, then the good exists independent of human existence or knowledge. If you pick the second, then people can deem anything they do as good.

No, that doesn't work at all. It supposes that one's SOLE criterion for determining what's good is "whether I and I alone think it is".

While we are all the final arbiters of our own behaviour* we don't come to that decision in an ethical vacuum. We have thousands of years of evolving human morality, as well as myriad social and inter-personal influences to draw upon. It's not simply "it's good cos I say so", it "it's probably good because it's what most reasonable people would say was good." One can still have ethical standards without them being imposed by a supernatural entity.

*This goes for theists too, incidentally. You may think you've been handed a set of rules by some god or other but how you INTERPRET those rules comes down to your own personal moral perspective. We know this, since were it not the case individuals of similar theological backgrounds would have identical moral attitudes, and this is demonstrably not the case.

This falls into the evolutionary trap. If evolution programmed your genes to predispose you to torture animals, would you consider animal torture morally good?

This is one of those stupid masturbatory questions that bothers me when either theists or atheists bring it up, because it totally ignores the real world. We are all raised in moral frameworks of families and societies, and are trained by the cultural mores and values of our tribes. There's no particularly good reason NOT to eat dogs, but we don't. We have good reasons to act as we do- we were brought up that way. In the US, we don't eat our dead (although we could). We don't allow angry husbands to stone adulterous wives to death (although we could). In other places, these are cultural norms, as are eating dogs. Some places even eat spiders (the most horrible thing I can think of. I'd WAY rather eat a dead person than a spider).

Why is this even an interesting question to anyone?

Same question here- if morality is determined by families and societies, then if families and societies determined animal torture to be morally good, would you consider animal torture morally good?

You guys are simply not thinking your answers through here.

Not in the real world the rest of us are living in, buddy.

For instance, if it were the consensus that rape were good, we know what you would do.

I, and I hope most of the others here wouldn't agree with the consensus, though.

It's always so cute when you guys go to this example. And oh look, you went to nazis too, in doing so completely ignoring the rest of the argument, which has been broached approximately eight billion times, and it's this: the circumstances surrounding an action also need to be taken into account, not just the opinion of people. In both these cases, one of those circumstances is the demonstrable harm that the actions of rape or murder, and the effects on the rest of society if those things became commonplace.

It's simple: would we all be better or worse off if we allowed this thing?

Let's use a simple example:

Helping a friend move

Do you help a friend move because doing so is morally good, or is it good simply because you do it?

The former, and the second question to ask is why was that action morally good? The answer has nothing to do with some external force of goodness, but rather with the fact that the act was helpful to another human being, and performed in a spirit of cooperation with another human being.

Your entire "turning around" of this question makes no sense, because we aren't the ones making recourse to some singular being in order to attribute the source of our morals. But then, that's hardly surprising; petty sniping seems to be your stock in trade, when it comes to atheists.

Responded to this earlier. To your credit, it's not the most common response.

But who determines that causing harm to others is morally bad, and if the source of that moral view told you that animal torture was morally good, would you agree?

At this point pretty much all the responses are falling into one of the above category of answers.

Simon Moon: Moral Nihilism.

Congratulations on ignoring half the post. What happened, did you only have responses prepared for the options you gave?

You know what? Fuck it. Yes, I would happily kill, rape, and/or torture any bastard I like, if only society would give me the go ahead. I would proudly don a Totenkopf uniform, I'd snort the ashes of dead Jews and I'd dance a merry little jig whilst forcing my rape victims to clean up a torture chamber that would make Torquemada squeemish. You gotta do something to burn off the calories from all those tasty babies, right?

I thought I really did ignore something significant in your post. I looked at it once more, and didn't see anything relevant that escaped any of the issues I raised above.

Do you think if you escape an individual person as a source of ethical values, all the problems are solved? Reading the problems associated with group ethics (society, etc) should change your mind.

If I'm still missing something, just communicate it clearer. I'll try to understand. Just don't throw a tantrum.

Most people are familiar with the Euthyphro dilemma against a deity. Theists, particularly intellectually sophisticated theists have some interesting responses to the Euthyphro dilemma (Richard Swinburne's response is one of the most unusual), but we can get into that later.

What if we flip it against atheism?

"Do you do good things because they are good, or are things good simply because you do them?"

If you pick the first option, then the good exists independent of human existence or knowledge. If you pick the second, then people can deem anything they do as good.

I could be missing a point here but this seems like a really eloquently put together question but it's basically stupid.
It's like asking
"Do you play football because playing football is playing football or simply because you play football"
Then following it by saying "Well if you picked the first option it proves that football came from god"

Why not just get down to it and ask "Why do you do good things" instead of giving two vague options.
I'll tell you why I do good things.
It benefits me because I feel good doing it, I feel no guilt or shame, I'm also not punished by anyone for it for example going to prison getting fired from my job and so on, I like being surrounded by a good atmosphere were people help each other out.

Because I think it's interesting that the Euthyphro Dilemma applies to atheists so powerfully. I'm sort of surprised that I didn't see it before, and think it's eye-opening.