Euthyprho's Dilemma Deflated

The problem is that the idea of a single, absolute standard for morality doesn't even make sense. The whole notion of "right" and "wrong" is basically an emotional one, ultimately based on what people feel inspires praise or condemnation. For this reason, "right" and "wrong" are going to vary with time, culture, and even among people in the same culture at the same time. God cannot be "good" because different people are going to view his (hypothetical) actions differently, and there is no objective way to determine which view is the "correct" one.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; 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.The reason Euthyprho's Dilemma is a dilemma is that cultures usually exhibit some degree of ethnocentrism; even the most tolerant of cultures assume that their particular values are superior to those of other cultures. Plato, like most of the ancient Greeks, assumed that the moral values he was taught are, indeed, an objective standard for morality, and it may very well seem to him a remarkable coincidence that the Greek gods also upheld this standard of morality.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

Something is no less true just because it makes you uncomfortable.Added by edit:Actually, I probably should expand on this a bit. No, only to those who think there is some "moral truth". Well, there is no moral truth to be sought. Some may not like it, but too bad -- that's the way reality is. Well, yeah, that's what all moral arguments are. People who admit that morality is subjective admit this; those who want to believe that there exists an objective standard for morality are also simply trying to cause others to share their attitudes and to disapprove of the same things. Good arguments are about determining whether the conclusion necessarily follows the premises. Good arguments are about choosing the premises that explain the world as well as one sees it. Whether or not there is some "truth" to be identified is itself a rather complex and profound epistemic question. This is not true. Proper moral arguments use, or try to use, logic to show that the premises held by the other person either lead to conclusions they would not agree with or do not lead to conclusions they deem as important. Proper moral arguments use, or try to use, logic to show that one's premises lead to conclusions that both hopefully feel are the ones that should be sought.Like all arguments, all moral arguments simply explore the consequences and conclusions that follow from the premises. Like all investigations, they are part of a search for the right premises that seem to describe the world. Where moral arguments differ from arguments in, say, the physical sciences is that the premises in a moral argument do not describe any kind of objective reality; rather the premises describe the world in which the participants themselves would find desirable to live.Additional edit:
I should also add that so-called "objective moralists" themselves use motional arguments. Every moral argument I have ever seen, regardless of the stand taken by the arguer, eventually comes to trying to show that unpleasant consequences will arise if the other person's morality or lack of one is adopted. I have never seen even an "objective moralist" who did not eventually come to the "appeal to consequences", which itself is an argument based on manipulating the other person's emotions.Edited by Chiroptera, : No reason given.Edited by Chiroptera, : No reason given.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

The same can be said for the objective moralist. "What if it were different" should be no big problem because in this case child rape would be an instantiation of what the Big Guy wants.The reason it is a problem, though, is that the objective moralist assumes, even insists, that the objective standards of morality corresponds to the standards of morality that they just happen to hold. In fact, usually the point of the objective morality position is so that the moralist can insist that people must accept her morality without giving the issue much thought.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

I did. I gave an explanation of morality that is grounded in people's intuitive understanding of right and wrong, and this explanation precluded it from being based on an objective basis.It is the objective moralists who are irrational. They fail to give a definition/explanation of morality that(1) corresponds to what people normally think of when they think about morality, and(2) is linked either by evidence or by clear logic based on agreed upon premises to some objective standard.- Thanks. If all you were going to do is suggest a reading list, you could have just done that and not wasted your time and ours with a lot of empty posts. Oh, that's right, you really just wanted to call people names. Well, good job on that!- This was amusing, seeing that it was immediately followed by an even more jumbled mess of a paragraph!-Great post, exactly what we have come to expect from you recently! Thumbs up!

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

Ah. Sorry for the misunderstanding.- Okily dokily.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

Sorry for the delay in response, Justin. I didn't see this post until you mentioned it in a later post -- I think that it got lost among all the spam generated by a now-banned member.- That's a good question. That question has bothered people since time immemorial. The main obstacles, in my opinion, in answering this question is that people try to answer it as if there were some standards of morality that exist external to the human psyche. I think once people understand what morality really is, then the question becomes more amenable to answer.In particular, "right" and "wrong" are simply what people feel. If you feel that something is wrong, even outraged by an action, then that action is "immoral". If you feel that something is right, even to the point of voluntary self-sacrifice, then that action is "moral".I mean, what else is morality? No one has as yet explained what morality is independent of the feelings and preferences of people.How does one justify one's moral system? One really doesn't. One acknowledges one's internal feelings of morality and repeats Martin Luther's statement, "Here I stand, I can do no other."- I dunno. How do you justify admonishing your best friend when she does something you feel is wrong?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?Edited by Chiroptera, : Awkward sentence.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

Not at all, Justin. I understand what you are saying. I appreciate that someone is actually trying to have an intelligent discussion of this topic, as opposed to the usual nonsense that gets posted on this.-I was a bit vague in my previous posts, deliberately so. I realized that these questions would come up, but I wanted to keep the initial posts simple, to give the "zeroth order approximation", the foundation as it were, so that the more detailed explanations would make sense.Of course, justifications are important. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that any individual is going to be confronted with moral dilemmas, that is, situations where any action taken by that person seems to result in consequences she is going to find disturbing. So what action is she going to take? Most people are going to try to analyze the basis for their moral beliefs (if they haven't already done so) to try to figure out why they believe the way that they do, to find what they consider the most basic principles of their beliefs, the raison d'être of their moral framework. Once they understand their framework, or after they've constructed one, then they can use what they believe to be the basic principles of their moral beliefs to decide on a course of action that will lead to the best, or maybe the least bad, outcome possible in their situation.The other reason for justifications is that people have to live together. I believe that humans have an innate tendency toward "moral behavior" (even if the particular moral code is arbitrary) since they evolved from social species. Now, I'm not saying this is why a person should live morally -- remember, my position is that I admit there is no reason why we should live morally; rather, people just do live morally (even if some people's morality may be incomprehensible to you or I).However, I am trying to make the point that we do need to live together, and we tend to want to live together peaceably. So we have to come up with some sort of common groundrules which will help us decide how we are going to organize our society. So we come up with "justifications" in order to discuss what we feel should be the basic principles of our societies, to come to a common understanding as to how we are going run our societies, and, insofar as morality really is subjective and emotional in nature, to get our emotional responses "in synch".- Pretty much right, at least the way that I see it. One is quite concerned about one's own safety and freedom, and one certainly has the right to act in a way to protect their own safety and freedom. If an individual poses an immediate and direct threat against you, you certainly have the right to take action against them, in some situations even the use of deadly force, to protect yourself. In the same way, if some culture has values that pose a threat to your safety, then one is justified in influencing the social values of the other society (like the de-Nazification of Germany after WWII).In the same way, most of us will feel the need to intervene if we see someone kicking the hell out of a kid on the street, that other person's moral justification for his actions notwithstanding. In the same vein, another society may be harming or endangering other people, and it offends our moral sensibilities to see this, and so an attempt to intervene is entirely justified, South African apartheid being an example of this.In fact, as I've said, this is the whole reason we have these moral feelings. To come to some agreement as to how we will live together, which means that we will have some agreement about what "justice" means, and these feelings exist to motivate us to act when we see others treated in an "unjust" way.- One would hope. And, to repeat what I've said, this is exactly why we come up with justifications for our morality, as arbitrary as they may be. So that we can discuss these issues and resolve them in a way that, I hope, is peaceful, and in a way that preserves the dignity and wellbeing of everyone.Edited by Chiroptera, : Just learned how to do circumflex accent in HTML. Whee!

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

Hi, Stile.Pretty much what I have been trying to say. Including this:

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine