RE: morality is subjective and people don't have free will
May 16, 2017 at 4:33 pm
(This post was last modified: May 16, 2017 at 4:47 pm by Whateverist.)
(May 16, 2017 at 1:12 pm)SteveII Wrote:(May 16, 2017 at 11:55 am)Whateverist Wrote: But I presuppose naturalism without doubting free will. Given a choice, why would anyone presuppose supernaturalism? I am fiercely pro natural world, proud to be a natural animal and think everyone with a lofty idea of themselves as a free floating/radically free willing disembodied mind is just off their rocker. Being an animal is a great privilege, being a deluded and pompous non-naturalist is ... unnatural!
You can't have free will without a non-physical process that is capable of physical causation (a mind) because if not, all you have are 100% physical causal processes that would only give you the illusion of free will. So, on your presupposed naturalism, how did a non-physical mind come from purely physical processes? Is there another example in the known universe that the physical has produced anything other than physical?
I don't pretend to know what is or is not required for free will, a word that already stretches to the breaking point our ability to agree on terms. But neither do I accept that anyone else knows either. You're welcome to your hypotheses but it sure looks like mental masturbation to me.
(May 15, 2017 at 8:53 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(May 15, 2017 at 8:02 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: 1. Assuming for the moment the truth of what you're saying,inn what way does that make it *objective* (that is, existing independently of opinion, reason, or mind)? You're describing something else I think.
2. Are those God's rules moral because God commands it, or does god command it because it's moral? This isn't a question that gets sidestepped so easily by asserting that a hypothetical creator gets to make the rules - that may be true or not, but it doesn't describe objectivity.
1. It makes it objective because Natural Law is integral to how the universe was made and how the universe works. Just as rules to a game a person creates are integral to how the game was framed and how it is set up to work. For this reason, Natural Law is the objective reality of the world around us.
2. They are moral because they are in accordance with God's nature. And God created the world in accordance with His own nature. So the two things (morality and God) cannot be separated.
So you say (where I bolded) but I think "natural law" is just people's best guess as to how the world works. It isn't something handed down from on high and no one 'enforces' it; it's not authoritative and is subject to revision at every turn. I think the various ways "law" is used contributes to the confusion.
(May 16, 2017 at 1:32 pm)SteveII Wrote:(May 16, 2017 at 1:15 pm)Aroura Wrote: You presuppose the mind isn't physical. Sources please?
Well, if you suppose that it is purely physical (physicalism), we are really not distinguishing anything from the brain and we are right back where we started--no free will. I should have said: non-physical mind.
It isn't that our experience of consciousness has no physical basis, it's just that -whatever it may be- it is transparent to us from within that experience. Fish probably are equally unaware of water, that doesn't mean there is anything about a fish that does not depend on the water.
(May 16, 2017 at 2:06 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(May 16, 2017 at 2:02 pm)Alasdair Ham Wrote: But epistemic objective morality makes sense.
That's ridiculous. It's like saying you know all about something that doesn't exist.
Um .. pot to kettle?
