Announcement

Collapse

Philosophy 201 Guidelines

Cogito ergo sum

Here in the Philosophy forum we will talk about all the "why" questions. We'll have conversations about the way in which philosophy and theology and religion interact with each other. Metaphysics, ontology, origins, truth? They're all fair game so jump right in and have some fun! But remember...play nice!

Forum Rules: Here
See more
See less

When does proving one's truth claims come to an end?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
    Or, conversely, enhancing a phenomenon to more than what it is merely to have it fit within a given belief system – notably if such a “belief system” posits a spiritual dimension.
    What "belief system" or spiritual dimension do you think I'm positing? The only belief system I'm aware of actually being posited is by you of the all-explanatory power of science.

    Comment


    • Originally posted by seer View Post
      I go to God Jim, even if there disagreement in my world universal moral truths exist. Which until some one can show otherwise is the only source for these truths.
      So do you go to God or do you go to the moral nature written on the heart? If God's inscribed the moral sense internally, then there'd be no need to go directly to God. That's why atheists etc have an innate moral sense. God's inscribed a rational sense within us also, but that doesn't mean He's the source of rationality.





      Seems like semantics to me, framing it in a way to justify your position.
      You're just categorizing and dismissing what I write and not engaging with it. The same as you do with politics.




      Jim morality in a godless universe is relative, it can't be otherwise. Torturing animals for fun is moral or immoral dependent on the person, culture, etc. That violates no logical norm.
      Of course it can be otherwise. We can assume that certain species, because of their structural and behavioral similarities to humans, have feelings and can feel pain and emotional distress. Torturing animals causes them physical pain and emotional distress unnecessarily. Physical pain and emotional distress are bad things that should not be inflicted on conscious beings without just cause. Therefore it is morally wrong to torture animals that can feel physical pain and emotional distress without just cause. Furthermore, to torture such animals for fun deforms and numbs the character of the torturer, and therefore is morally wrong in terms of the character deformation of the torturer. From a 'virtue ethics' standpoint, inflicting cruelty for fun is therefore morally wrong.

      Now tell me how there being a God who says that torturing animals for fun is wrong actually MAKES it wrong where it wouldn't have been wrong before. How does a subjective belief, even if it is God's, actually make an act morally wrong?





      Right the moral nature that God GAVE US.
      You're getting different things mixed up. We couldn't do math without our brains and we wouldn't have our brains unless God had given us our brains. That doesn't mean God MAKES 1=1.

      Comment


      • Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
        What "belief system" or spiritual dimension do you think I'm positing?
        Then you tell me what you meant by: “There are very good reasons to believe that scientific knowledge of origins alone is far too impoverished to give you complete knowledge of the nature of a phenomenon.”

        The only belief system I'm aware of actually being posited is by you of the all-explanatory power of science.
        There is no other discipline that has the potential to provide verifiable factual information of the universe and our place in it.
        “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
          So do you go to God or do you go to the moral nature written on the heart? If God's inscribed the moral sense internally, then there'd be no need to go directly to God. That's why atheists etc have an innate moral sense. God's inscribed a rational sense within us also, but that doesn't mean He's the source of rationality.
          Jim we are speaking of the source of universal moral truths, if God isn't what is? You have been attacking the idea of God being the source of morality, but you have not offered one yourself.


          Of course it can be otherwise. We can assume that certain species, because of their structural and behavioral similarities to humans, have feelings and can feel pain and emotional distress. Torturing animals causes them physical pain and emotional distress unnecessarily. Physical pain and emotional distress are bad things that should not be inflicted on conscious beings without just cause. Therefore it is morally wrong to torture animals that can feel physical pain and emotional distress without just cause. Furthermore, to torture such animals for fun deforms and numbs the character of the torturer, and therefore is morally wrong in terms of the character deformation of the torturer. From a 'virtue ethics' standpoint, inflicting cruelty for fun is therefore morally wrong.
          Jim just because you hold that opinion does not make it a universal moral wrong, even if all these negative things follow it does not make it a universally wrong. Why are negative consequences universally wrong? You only end up begging the question.

          Now tell me how there being a God who says that torturing animals for fun is wrong actually MAKES it wrong where it wouldn't have been wrong before. How does a subjective belief, even if it is God's, actually make an act morally wrong?
          It is wrong for one reason, that God declares it wrong. There are no reasons for why God is loving, just, forgiving, etc... And there are no reasons why the qualities of love justice and forgiveness are moral goods save the fact that they are qualities of God. Yes they have good consequences for the human person but there again that is only because there is a God given moral teleology for humanity. It ALL comes back to, and is sourced in, God.
          Last edited by seer; 01-27-2020, 07:21 AM.
          Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

          Comment


          • Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
            Now tell me how there being a God who says that torturing animals for fun is wrong actually MAKES it wrong where it wouldn't have been wrong before. How does a subjective belief, even if it is God's, actually make an act morally wrong?
            I take God to be The Good; that is, The Good is (identity statement) a Person, or Trinity of Persons. If God is The Good, then His prohibitions and ordinances, in the form of Divine Commands, constititue our moral obligations. The obligations are fixed because the commands are fixed, and the commands are fixed because The Good is fixed. Thus, if it's wrong to torture animals for fun, there's an underlying moral principle governing that morally relavant state of affairs, where the content of the principle is an injunction, and (per Divine Command Theory) is constituted by a divine command, issuing from The Good, which necessarily makes the legislation objectively binding, right, and fair. If God is necessary, He would exist in all possible worlds, where I construe the relevant modalities in terms of Brian Leftow's causal powers modality (with some minimal boundary conditions). On this analysis, it isn't God's belief that makes an action wrong, though beliefs certainly correlate with it, since God is omniscient. What makes an action wrong are prohibitions constituted by divine commands issuing from The Good. There is also an ambiguity in the idea of 'subjective'. Typically, subjective is taken to mean relative to one's psychological states. Of course, with God, since God is a subject, His subjective beliefs would be a disguised, definite description of The Good's subjective beliefs. It would be subjective in the relevant sense, but since it's specifying the beliefs of The Good, the relevant sense of objectivity is retained. The relevant sense of objectivity is that the truth-value of moral propositions is independent of human psychology or other human-related sociological factors.
            Many and painful are the researches sometimes necessary to be made, for settling points of [this] kind. Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines, which it will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer. When this is done, the same question shall be triumphantly asked again the next year, as if nothing had ever been written upon the subject.
            George Horne

            Comment


            • Originally posted by seer View Post
              Jim we are speaking of the source of universal moral truths, if God isn't what is? You have been attacking the idea of God being the source of morality, but you have not offered one yourself.
              The nature of rational social discourse which is based on normative realism. That's the idea that there are actual justifications for doing things, not just psychological motivations. The source isn't a thing like God or a person or society. The source isn't an entity. That's why you keep thinking I haven't offered an answer, because apparently there's only one kind of answer you're willing to see.






              Jim just because you hold that opinion does not make it a universal moral wrong, even if all these negative things follow it does not make it a universally wrong. Why are negative consequences universally wrong? You only end up begging the question.
              When you say 'universal,' you need to specify the 'universe' you're referring to. Universal in reference to what? In a universe of nothing but gases that would eternally remain gases, would God's moral law apply to that world? What would that be like?

              What my example was meant to suggest is that needless suffering is an objectively bad thing; that is, it's not just bad for the sufferer but it is an objectively bad state of affairs that needless suffering is happening. The experience ought not to go on, regardless of who is having it. I think this scenario is far more plausible than the alternatives, such as that pain is only bad for the sufferer, etc.

              If I consider two possibilities: 1. Torturing children for fun is morally wrong.
              2. God is the source of all moral truths.

              I am far more confident of 1. than of 2. I cannot conceive of 1. being proven wrong, but I can easily conceive of 2. being proven wrong.



              It is wrong for one reason, that God declares it wrong. There are no reasons for why God is loving, just, forgiving, etc... And there are no reasons why the qualities of love justice and forgiveness are moral goods save the fact that they are qualities of God. Yes they have good consequences for the human person but there again that is only because there is a God given moral teleology for humanity. It ALL comes back to, and is sourced in, God.
              You're not really making an argument, however. You're just stipulating that "This is the way it is, and that's that!" over and over. I've tried to tell you why the argument for "God as the Good" has problems, but you haven't ever responded to it.

              Comment


              • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                Then you tell me what you meant by: “There are very good reasons to believe that scientific knowledge of origins alone is far too impoverished to give you complete knowledge of the nature of a phenomenon.”



                There is no other discipline that has the potential to provide verifiable factual information of the universe and our place in it.
                Mary's actual experience of the color red, for instance.

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
                  Mary's actual experience of the color red, for instance.
                  The physical nature of subjective experience and its interaction with the brain is, at least potentially, explainable by scientific methodology.
                  “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by mattbballman31 View Post
                    I take God to be The Good; that is, The Good is (identity statement) a Person, or Trinity of Persons. If God is The Good, then His prohibitions and ordinances, in the form of Divine Commands, constititue our moral obligations. The obligations are fixed because the commands are fixed, and the commands are fixed because The Good is fixed. Thus, if it's wrong to torture animals for fun, there's an underlying moral principle governing that morally relavant state of affairs, where the content of the principle is an injunction, and (per Divine Command Theory) is constituted by a divine command, issuing from The Good, which necessarily makes the legislation objectively binding, right, and fair. If God is necessary, He would exist in all possible worlds, where I construe the relevant modalities in terms of Brian Leftow's causal powers modality (with some minimal boundary conditions). On this analysis, it isn't God's belief that makes an action wrong, though beliefs certainly correlate with it, since God is omniscient. What makes an action wrong are prohibitions constituted by divine commands issuing from The Good. There is also an ambiguity in the idea of 'subjective'. Typically, subjective is taken to mean relative to one's psychological states. Of course, with God, since God is a subject, His subjective beliefs would be a disguised, definite description of The Good's subjective beliefs. It would be subjective in the relevant sense, but since it's specifying the beliefs of The Good, the relevant sense of objectivity is retained. The relevant sense of objectivity is that the truth-value of moral propositions is independent of human psychology or other human-related sociological factors.
                    I think I understand your point about subjectivity: if 'God is the good' is understood as an identity statement, then it can't refer to God's psychological states. So far so good. Where I'm having trouble is in unpacking the idea of the identity statement.

                    If God sets His own standard of goodness, then how are we to independently evaluate the term 'goodness'? It becomes redundant to say that God is the good or that God commands the good - all we're saying is 'God is as God is' and 'God commands what He commands.' The function of evaluative terms, being used relative to an independent metric, must be jettisoned here in favor of a tautology. We're simply restating God's nature under a different term.

                    This quandary becomes especially problematic in light of the question of exactly what constitutes God's goodness. God's goodness cannot depend on any of the virtues that are usually associated with it, for that goodness must not depend on any moral standard independent of God. But that logical independence and priority results in a denuded conception of God's goodness, stripped of any property that could make it intelligible.

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                      The physical nature of subjective experience and its interaction with the brain is, at least potentially, explainable by scientific methodology.
                      The physical nature, but not the phenomenal nature, which is what I was referring to.

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
                        The physical nature, but not the phenomenal nature, which is what I was referring to.
                        Why do you assume there's a difference?
                        “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                          Why do you assume there's a difference?
                          Because the difference is obvious to anyone who is not a robot.

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
                            The nature of rational social discourse which is based on normative realism. That's the idea that there are actual justifications for doing things, not just psychological motivations. The source isn't a thing like God or a person or society. The source isn't an entity. That's why you keep thinking I haven't offered an answer, because apparently there's only one kind of answer you're willing to see.
                            Jim that makes no sense to me. There were reasons or rational justifications for why the Maoists murdered millions of dissidents.

                            When you say 'universal,' you need to specify the 'universe' you're referring to. Universal in reference to what? In a universe of nothing but gases that would eternally remain gases, would God's moral law apply to that world? What would that be like?
                            When I say universal I mean that God's law would apply to all moral, sentient beings. Any where they exist in the universe. Rape is wrong on Mars as well as earth.

                            What my example was meant to suggest is that needless suffering is an objectively bad thing; that is, it's not just bad for the sufferer but it is an objectively bad state of affairs that needless suffering is happening. The experience ought not to go on, regardless of who is having it. I think this scenario is far more plausible than the alternatives, such as that pain is only bad for the sufferer, etc.

                            If I consider two possibilities: 1. Torturing children for fun is morally wrong.
                            2. God is the source of all moral truths.

                            I am far more confident of 1. than of 2. I cannot conceive of 1. being proven wrong, but I can easily conceive of 2. being proven wrong.
                            Again Jim, you are begging the question. You are simply asserting needless suffering is a bad thing. Why is that a bad thing? Because you say it is a bad thing. A sociopath or a masochist may enjoy needless suffering, and you can not argue otherwise because you would just be substituting your opinion for theirs. "Sweet dreams are made of these who am I to disagree..."


                            You're not really making an argument, however. You're just stipulating that "This is the way it is, and that's that!" over and over. I've tried to tell you why the argument for "God as the Good" has problems, but you haven't ever responded to it.
                            Your blind spot Jim is that your position also has problems, in the end you are just arguing in a circle. Never mind that fact that the moral truths that you argue for have no inherent power. There are no consequences for violating them.
                            Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by seer View Post
                              Jim that makes no sense to me. There were reasons or rational justifications for why the Maoists murdered millions of dissidents.
                              Yes, and those reasons were not justified. You're confusing descriptive morality with normative morality.



                              When I say universal I mean that God's law would apply to all moral, sentient beings. Any where they exist in the universe. Rape is wrong on Mars as well as earth.
                              So why say 'universal' then? The word is misleading. It all depends on the 'universe' you're referring to.BTW, you shouldn't have 'moral' in your definition because it's circular.

                              I'm talking about all rational social beings. It's based on normative realism, that there are real reasons in terms of justifications for doing things, in agent-neutral terms. You haven't given any real explanation for why rape is wrong. Just saying "Because God says so" isn't an explanation.



                              Again Jim, you are begging the question. You are simply asserting needless suffering is a bad thing. Why is that a bad thing? Because you say it is a bad thing. A sociopath or a masochist may enjoy needless suffering, and you can not argue otherwise because you would just be substituting your opinion for theirs. "Sweet dreams are made of these who am I to disagree..."
                              Any truth claim anyone makes, including you, is what we say it is. The persuasiveness of the claim depends upon the reasons and the evidence that can be brought to bear in defense of the claim. You haven't brought any evidence at all or any argument other than stipulation: ""This is the way it is and that is that!"
                              If we can make any truth claim at all beyond our subjective opinion, including scientists and mathematicians, we can do so depending on the evidence and arguments we make. According to you, each of us is stuck in our subjective prison. But we're obviously not. There is science, math, philosophy. You're making claims about God and the nature of reality. How are you justified in making these claims, if it's all just opinion?

                              Is pain bad, as in intrinsically a bad thing? Do we have good reasons for thinking so? If you say you're in pain, does it make any sense for me to ask why you believe you're in pain? Is it more immediately apparent that pain is an intrinsically bad thing for the sufferer than that God is the source of the moral law? Do I have better reasons to believe in other minds like my own than to believe that God is the source of the moral law, and that these minds cause these people the same badness associated with pain that I experience with pain? Are there any good reasons to think that the badness for them is any different from the badness for me?




                              Your blind spot Jim is that your position also has problems, in the end you are just arguing in a circle. Never mind that fact that the moral truths that you argue for have no inherent power. There are no consequences for violating them.
                              Who's talking about consequences? Now YOU are clearly begging the question by assuming that there must be consequences to violating moral norms, ie you're assuming an authoritarian retributive basis for morality.

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                                Why do you assume there's a difference?
                                I'm not assuming there's a difference, but there definitely seems to be a strong prima facie case made for a difference based on all the arguments. One shouldn't go in already absolutely convinced, like Dennett who describes himself as a 'third person absolutist'. Why do you assume that there is no difference?

                                Comment

                                Related Threads

                                Collapse

                                Topics Statistics Last Post
                                Started by shunyadragon, 03-01-2024, 09:40 AM
                                161 responses
                                514 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post shunyadragon  
                                Started by seer, 02-15-2024, 11:24 AM
                                88 responses
                                354 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post shunyadragon  
                                Started by Diogenes, 01-22-2024, 07:37 PM
                                21 responses
                                133 views
                                0 likes
                                Last Post shunyadragon  
                                Working...
                                X