Euthyprho's Dilemma Deflated

The Euthyphro is a dialogue by Plato in which a troublesome question arises for a (poly)theist: do the gods love something because it is pious or is it pious because the gods love it ?This question has been modified and used as an argument with regard to God being the source fo morality. That is, "Is an action good because god commands it or does god command it because it is good?" If the former option is true, then morality is subject to the capriciousness of the gods, i.e., child rape would be moral if god commands it. If the latter option is true, then there is a standard of morality over and above god which he must conform to, i.e, morality is independent of god.When confronted with this, some theists proclaim that morality is simply a reflection of god's eternal and absolute nature. The argument can then ostensibly be framed in terms of God's nature.I used to think that this was a satisfactory response to the reformulation of morality in terms of god's nature, but I'm not so sure anymore. Surely, if god's nature is absolute then it is not subject to any form of capriciousness or incessant tranformations. And therefore the argument is not directly analagous to Plato's dialogue and therefore is not a sound argument for why god can't be a source of morality.Note, I am not saying that god must be the source of morality, only that there is no dilemma in claiming that to be the case.Thoughts?

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For example if we tried to ground morality in terms of God's nature we would have to say that if God's nature were such that he approved of child rape, child rape would be good. And this applies to any and all moral commands.

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This is the way I've always looked at the irrationality of grounding morality it terms of god's nature. In other words: what if his nature were different?The reason I've been becoming a little suspect of this response is that I've been applying the same sort of argument to my own tentative ideas about morality. I'm not sure they're directly analogous, which is why I started this topic.Let's say I ground morality in minimizing the suffering/maximizing the happiness of sentient beings, as is a popular way of stating a secular humanists viewpoint wrt to the issue. Would it be troublesome if say child rape did in fact increase the happiness of the rapist and the victim? Even though this is most suredly not the case in reality, what if it did? Would it then be moral to child rape?I'm not too certain this a problem for the secularist though. Because I think the problem with with Euthyphro's dilemma is that what is moral (if morality is defined in terms of God's nature) could potentially be diametrically opposed to our most common moral intuitions. This leads to the absurd conclusion which you outlined.When the "what if it were different?" question is framed wrt to secularists it may not be a big problem because child rape is but an instantiation of when the suffering of a sentient being is being increased, not decreased. If child rape did increase happiness in some other hypothetical reality, then it wouldn't necessarily be as absurd to call it moral.I'm not sure I'm being real clear. Hopefully you get the gist of my concern. Edited by JustinC, : typos

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One could, in the end, simply define "good" to be what God wants. But this divorces the meaning of "good" from the intuitive idea that "good" is what people should do without taking into account rewards or punishments;

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I don't necessary think that grounding morality in term of God's wants must necessarily imply that you are taking into account the rewards and punishment that God may decide to bestow upon you. Of course, you are taking into account the consequences of your actions, i.e, whether they conform to God's dictates but that is different. That is no less (atleast not to me) antithetical to morality than taking into account the suffering of individuals when considering your course of action in situation X.

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in fact, it even begs the question: why, then, should people do what God wants? To then discuss this question then implies that in reality morality is separate from God.

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Isn't this question intrinsic to any framework for morality? How does one justify the moral system itself?It seems that within any framework normative statements make sense and can be justified with refernce to some general principles. But if one then wants to justify the framework itself, they have to appeal to another meta-framework. This is no less of a problem for secularist morality than it is for a theistic framework. It seems there will be an infinite regress of frameworks is one is trying to justify normative statements as opposed to taking the sociological perspective and simply trying to explain them in terms of the environment which fosters certain values and behaviors.You said you aren't an absolutist. Just out of curiousity, what does that entail for you? Is it the belief that absolute morality doesn't make sense outside of the cultural framework one finds themselves in at a certain place and time? Also, can you justify the want to spread your values to other cultures, or is this not a concern for you as long as their ideals don't significantly interfere with your way of life?

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There isn't necessarily a relation of one to the other. One would have to demonstrate that such a relation exists first, then pose the question.

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Take it up with Plato.But if I may take a stab I'd say that he tacitly assumed there to be concensus amongst the God's wrt to piousness. So the different gods/different views argument wouldn't apply.But the pantheon was quite and eclectic bunch so I don't see how concensus could be reached, but that's the only way I can make sense of the question.

Must you drag all my threads into the gutter with poorly reasoned arguments?

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This of course is why morality is relative ...

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You wanna give your two cents with regard to my previous reply to Chiroptera? Especially the last paragraph?

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This only counts if you assert some absolute source. If you don't assert some absolute source but a relative source then the framework comes from the individual(s) with each one forming a sort of circle of moral structures that overlap those of other individuals to create a social consensus for moral behavior that is dependent on the individuals in the society.

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By what standards to you appeal to when trying to come up with a consensus? For instance, how could you possible arbitrate the mandatory wearing of burkhas(sp?) in some Muslim sects, as well as the general lack of civil rights afforded to them?This is one of my problems with relativism: how do we justify imposing our relative values on other societies, i.e., saying "our frameworks right, yours is wrong."

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I dunno. How do you justify admonishing your best friend when she does something you feel is wrong?

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How does any moral argument work? You try to find some sort of common ground, some common understanding of desirable outcomes, and try to reason how your opinions will better achieve those desirable outcomes than the other person's. Why would it be any different between your best friend and someone from a different culture? How else does someone try to convince someone else that their moral viewpoint is superior?

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So basically your opinion boils down to:1.) There is no point in trying to justify a moral system itself since you are going to have to justify the meta-framework, and so on ad infinitum.2.) So as a set of First Principles for a moral framework one should stop at the level of their feelings with regard to "right" and "wrong" behaviors. These may change with time but its more of a passive change than an active change (as in, I don't think one can actively change their feelings wrt to a behavior or value).3.) Other cultures have different feelings wrt right and wrong that are just as legitimate as yours (in terms of theirjustification, i.e, they are not being illogical) and they should act according to these feelings.In that same sentiment, though, you have feelings of right and wrong and you can't be expected to act in a way that opposes them. One of these feelings can be the want to spread your values to other cultures. Eventually values which are most conducive to peaceful coexistance will win out over other values through a natural selection of ideas (or so we'd hope).So basically you believe everyone should live by the axiom of not necessarily "live and let live" but "live according to your ideas of right and wrong."I understand I'm putting a lot of words in your mouth. I'm not trying to build a strawman or anything, i'm just trying to cash out the position a bit.