IS and OUGHT

[Belinda]

I can conceive of eternal states that don't involve God.

Really? Well, tell me about that.

People have bodies in the eternal state, actually.

Is that just what God says, or do you actually understand how it could be the case?

I just go with Scripture on that one.

For example, Atheist Thomas Nagel, in his book "Mind and Cosmos," argues that the Materialist argument that things like "consciousness," "identity," "volition," "selfhood," "mind" and "rationality" are reducible to "matter" is so utterly unsatisfactory that we are more or less forced to reject it as wrong. Being an Atheist, he hopes some further "naturalistic" explanation can be found to substitute. But he admits that no such explanation exists right now.

He's not the only one. The mind-brain problem is one of the most serious problems with Materialism. It simply does not seem that any explanation that rules out metaphysical answers before it begins is going to be able to tell us what any of the aforelisted properties are...even though we use them every day.

The mind and the brain may or may not be seperate entities, it doesn't matter.

Oh, but it does. If the two are distinct, then free will is rational. If they were identical, it would not be. And that's just one of many such consequences.

The mind cannot exist without the brain,

We don't know that. One thing for sure: the body can exist without the mind. So where does the mind go?

In fact, the body is not ever "all of me." I could show you a picture of an eight year old child, or of a fifty year old man, and in both cases say to you, "That's me." And I would not be lying. But in what sense is that true, if body is all there is?

The fact remains that mind and body are inextricably linked.

Yes, but not identical. As the old saying goes, "Correspondence is not causality." The fact that two things occur together doesn't tell us if the one is causing the other, the other is causing the one, or a third thing is causing both.

So, anyway, what happens to the soul of a secular rat?

Are you particularly concerned for them?

Having or being a body is delusionary. Experience includes experience of bodies however experience is relative to the instrument that detects experience.

[Harbal]

I can conceive of eternal states that don't involve God.

Really? Well, tell me about that.

I can't, really. You must know how it is when you are trying to get off to sleep and your mind it mulling over metaphysical matters. Ideas come into your head, but they don't tend to come with instruction manuals. Maybe everything that is, just constanty always is. Nothing begins or ends, it just always is. Maybe the universe is a container of limitless potential, and what we experience as reality is just momentary expression of that potential, and I have almost no idea of what I mean by that.

Oh, but it does. If the two are distinct, then free will is rational. If they were identical, it would not be. And that's just one of many such consequences.

We are not discussing free will.

The mind cannot exist without the brain,

We don't know that. One thing for sure: the body can exist without the mind. So where does the mind go?

Of course we know it. Anyone who has had their brain put to sleep with anaesthetic will confirm it.

Where does a magnetic field go when the electical current is switched off?

Yes, but not identical. As the old saying goes, "Correspondence is not causality." The fact that two things occur together doesn't tell us if the one is causing the other, the other is causing the one, or a third thing is causing both.

There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that a mind can exist without the brain. The contents of the mind are completely dependent on the brain; I don't see how that can be disputed.

So, anyway, what happens to the soul of a secular rat?

Are you particularly concerned for them?

I just don't think human beings are qualitatively different to any other animal. Human beings are far more important to me, of course, but that is because I am a human being. I imagine most species regard their own sort differently to any other. Nature does not show any preference for humans though.

[Harbal]

Having or being a body is delusionary. Experience includes experience of bodies however experience is relative to the instrument that detects experience.

So if it isn't the case that we have bodies, what is the case?

[Astro Cat]

What about God being God makes it that we ought to value the same things as God?

Many things. For one, He's our Creator, which means that the only reason we actually exist in the first place is because He created us. And He did so with a specific purpose and intention in mind; a creature that fails to actualize that intended purpose is malfunctioning and missing out on its most blessed and happy kind of life, and failing to achieve the best trajectory of life.

Think of somebody trying to use a cell phone as if it were a hammer. It might plausibly work...maybe even suceed at drivng in a nail or two. But it would shatter the phone, and it would never have achieved all the things it can really achieve.

Now, that's just an object, of course; so that tragedy is not great -- and we could all stand to bust our cell phones from time to time. But the analogy with a human being is tragic. For a person to "use" his life for purposes other than entering into a loving relationship with God is to abuse himself, denying God what is His by right and also denying himself the fulfillment of his own greatest destiny. And if we wonder why so many lives end up broken, shattered and futile, it's not by chance.

First, let's unpack the argument that (paraphrased) "God created us for His purpose, and we would fail to achieve "the best" trajectory of life if we failed to actualize that purpose."

1) "The best" according to whom? God? And isn't the very question "what if we don't care what God thinks?" Some parents think their kids would have "the best" life if they became doctors or lawyers, while the kids don't value that at all and would rather be painters or songwriters. Most of us wouldn't say that they "ought" to ignore their own wishes for their life and just do what their parents expect of them: most of us reject that they owe their parents doing exactly as their parents wish. But this real world example doesn't even matter: what matters is that this response to the question "why ought we care what God thinks" includes caring what God thinks as part of the response, which is circular.

2) Let's say that by "the best trajectory of life," we instead mean things like measurable standards like being physically healthy, obtaining wealth, finding partners, whatever else. Well, the question just takes a different form: why ought we value those things if we don't value them? Or, perhaps we value them in general (but not in the exact way that God wants), but it just goes back to (1): God's idea of a partner for me, according to some people, wouldn't at all be what I'm physically or mentally interested in. I value having a partner, but I don’t value a man as a life and sexual partner. So why ought I value it if I just don't?

3) I note that you use the language, "denying God what is His right," and that's problematic (the word "right"), but we explore that below, so we'll get to it there. Just pointing it out here.

I know you have argued that creators of creations can impart oughts on creations, but if that’s the direction you’re taking, what’s the argument?

Call that one "the teleological argument for obeying God." But it's not the only one, of course. I began with a slightly different argument, one we might call "the anthropogenic argument for obeying God," which is that God created us in the first place, and so nothing we have or choose is owed to anyone else, ultimately. We might also have other arguments, like one from gratitude, one from righteousness, one based on power, and so on. There are, in fact, a multitude of reasons why God deserves the primary focus of our attentions, efforts and loyalty, and why departing from His intentions for us personally is ruinous.

There's a lot to unpack here.

1) You say, "...so nothing we have or choose is owed to anyone else." But this begs the question that anything we have or choose is "owed" to anyone at all, doesn't it? Is there an argument that we owe anyone anything? I suspect it might fall along the lines of the question, "do creations owe their creators anything?" As a brief recap of that argument, I don't think that they do. Certainly not in the sense that a service provider is owed for rendering a service, because with a creation, the creation didn't ask to be created: plus, one would have to value owing service renderers in order to get an "ought" out of it, and perhaps someone doesn't value that. Why ought they value that if they don't value that?

2) You say, "...like one from gratitude..." This goes along the lines of my last sentences from (1) here. It may well be that a creature would feel gratitude, and so experience an ought towards their creator. But a creature might not feel gratitude, so in what way would an "ought" apply to them? What if a creature feels gratitude, but not to the extent that they value everything the creator expects of them? (e.g., a painter might hold a great respect for their parents yet still decline to feel as though they ought to be a lawyer like their parents wish: why should they "ought" to do everything their parents wish if they don't share those values just because they are grateful to an extent?)

3) You say, "...one from righteousness," but won't this just be an argument from "goodness," which you've argued is just that which God desires? And isn't the question, again, "what if we don't care what God desires?" So how would this one answer the question?

4) You say, "one based on power," but power doesn't impart an ought either unless a person cares about consequences, right? We can argue that there are very dire, very tortuous consequences for not doing x, therefore we "ought" to do x, but that's still just a hypothetical imperative with a very large gun to the forehead alongside it, isn't it? "You ought to obey God because otherwise God will torture you grotesquely" only imparts an ought with a hypothetical ("if I don't want to be tortured, then I ought to obey God") and, at the end of the day, if only a hypothetical is what imparts an ought, then moral realism is false. And that's all the noncognitivist is arguing anyway, they win.

But let us now reverse the case, as I suggested before: let's ask, "If we posit that God doesn't own us, and doesn't have such rights in relation to us, who does?" Who has more claim to issue us an 'ought' than God has?

Do you have an answer to that? Or are we now simply going to say, "God being eliminated as the locus of our 'oughts,' they simply become impossible?"

I'm ready to hear whatever you want to answer on that. It's not rhetorical.

As above, the first question that has already struck me each time is "why is it assumed that anyone has a claim to issue an ought over us?"

My position is that, unless otherwise demonstrated, all oughts are built on hypothetical imperatives based on values ("if I value x, then I ought to do y"). On such a view, some P can't impart an ought on some S unless S holds a value that leads to that ought. If P tries to impart an ought on S for which S holds no value that leads to it, then S never experiences the ought. (e.g., if S thinks that wearing mixed fabrics is an amoral situation, that there's nothing moral or immoral about wearing mixed fabrics, then no matter how much P says to S, "you ought-not to wear mixed fabrics," he will not impart an "ought" to S since S doesn't hold the requisite value for that ought to "stick").

Unless it can be demonstrated that an ought can exist which is not based on a hypothetical, which is based in our values, then it is in fact the case that nobody else can impart an "ought" on anyone else -- because the target would need to hold a value in order for the "ought" to stick.

So really, the ball's kind of in your court on that since you're the one that claims oughts exist which aren't hypothetical. You'd have to explain what it means for there to exist an ought that doesn't depend on what values a target has.

If you imply the existence of a “right,” then what is a right?

A "right" is an unalienable, intrinsic property of 'oughtness' with which one has been endowed by God...just as the Declaration of Independence rightly states.

Ah, but then if the question is "what if we don't care what God desires," then wouldn't answering "because God has a right" be the same as answering "because God thinks you should care," which doesn't answer the question if the question is "why should we care what God thinks?" See how that's circular?

P: You ought to do what God says.

S: I don't value what God says. Why ought I?

P: Because doing what God says is good.

S: What does "good" mean?

P: It means "that which is in accordance with what God values."

S: But I just said I don't care what God values. It must follow that I don't care what "good" is, so I don't have an "ought" to do it.

P: Well, God has the right to say that you should.

S: OK, what's a "right?"

P: It's an intrinsic property of "oughtness" which has been endowed by God

S: Well, doesn't that bring us back to the top of this conversation then?

Would a “right” be assigned an objective value without reference to the character and wishes of God?

No. For absent God, there is no rationale the justifies assigning anyone a "right" to anything. Absent God, "rights" are just a human construct, and can be given or removed on a social whim.

If a "right" is about the wishes of God, then it's adjacent to or identical to the concept of "good," and again, why ought anyone care if they don't value what God thinks?

The only real reasons you've given why someone might care what God thinks are all hypotheticals! But if the only reason someone might care is a hypothetical, then moral realism is false, and the noncognitivist was right all along.

[Immanuel Can]

The mind cannot exist without the brain,

We don't know that. One thing for sure: the body can exist without the mind. So where does the mind go?

Of course we know it. Anyone who has had their brain put to sleep with anaesthetic will confirm it.

Under anaesthetic, a person has both a mind and a brain. The mind is merely dreaming, not absent.

What we don't know is how the mind persists when the body is dead. And naturally speaking, we might suppose it doesn't. But that's quite different from knowing it doesn't -- especially when God says it does.

So, anyway, what happens to the soul of a secular rat?

Are you particularly concerned for them?

I just don't think human beings are qualitatively different to any other animal. Human beings are far more important to me, of course, but that is because I am a human being. I imagine most species regard their own sort differently to any other. Nature does not show any preference for humans though.

Ah. Naturalism. Well, that's its supposition, alright. But it's a supposition, not a fact, of course. Again, if God says otherwise, then who but He would know?

[Harbal]

Under anaesthetic, a person has both a mind and a brain. The mind is merely dreaming, not absent.

Yes, I suppose they have. But the point is, the state of the brain has a direct effect on the mind.

But that's quite different from knowing it doesn't -- especially when God says it does.

I'm not claiming to know anything, I am just saying what my own observation strongly suggests to me. My opinion is not influenced by what God is reported to have said, I'm afraid.

Ah. Naturalism. Well, that's its supposition, alright.

No, it isn't any kind of ism, it is a personal view. Wherever there's an ism, there are ists, and I am not an ist.

But it's a supposition, not a fact,

Again, it is my observation; just a blatently obvious feature of nature.

if God says otherwise, then who but He would know?

Nature is God in this instance, so I do consider that I am being informed by God.

[Immanuel Can]

What about God being God makes it that we ought to value the same things as God?

Many things. For one, He's our Creator, which means that the only reason we actually exist in the first place is because He created us. And He did so with a specific purpose and intention in mind; a creature that fails to actualize that intended purpose is malfunctioning and missing out on its most blessed and happy kind of life, and failing to achieve the best trajectory of life.

Think of somebody trying to use a cell phone as if it were a hammer. It might plausibly work...maybe even suceed at drivng in a nail or two. But it would shatter the phone, and it would never have achieved all the things it can really achieve.

Now, that's just an object, of course; so that tragedy is not great -- and we could all stand to bust our cell phones from time to time. But the analogy with a human being is tragic. For a person to "use" his life for purposes other than entering into a loving relationship with God is to abuse himself, denying God what is His by right and also denying himself the fulfillment of his own greatest destiny. And if we wonder why so many lives end up broken, shattered and futile, it's not by chance.

First, let's unpack the argument that (paraphrased) "God created us for His purpose, and we would fail to achieve "the best" trajectory of life if we failed to actualize that purpose."

1) "The best" according to whom? God?

Well, He would be the only one who could forsee that, of course. However, He's also the only one who could have known exactly what we were made for, too. But I think the creature also realizes it when it happens. When you hit your stride, and realize you are in the process of becoming and actualizing all that God intended you to be, what could that be but a pleasure? Like a tool in its right use, your fit with your role produces excellence.

Some parents think their kids would have "the best" life if they became doctors or lawyers, while the kids don't value that at all and would rather be painters or songwriters.

Well, they can be right or wrong about that. Their estimations are only guesses. So are our own estimations of ourselves; they often change, and often multiple times, as we continually discover our own peculiar features and limitations.

Not so, God's estimation.

We can fight what God's best is for us: but we end up fighting against the very nature of what we are. That's self-destructive and counter-productive, of course; but creatures with free will can choose to do that...and sometimes do.

2) Let's say that by "the best trajectory of life," we instead mean things like measurable standards like being physically healthy, obtaining wealth, finding partners, whatever else.

I don't mean that. So I don't know why we would do that.

I know you have argued that creators of creations can impart oughts on creations, but if that’s the direction you’re taking, what’s the argument?

Call that one "the teleological argument for obeying God." But it's not the only one, of course. I began with a slightly different argument, one we might call "the anthropogenic argument for obeying God," which is that God created us in the first place, and so nothing we have or choose is owed to anyone else, ultimately. We might also have other arguments, like one from gratitude, one from righteousness, one based on power, and so on. There are, in fact, a multitude of reasons why God deserves the primary focus of our attentions, efforts and loyalty, and why departing from His intentions for us personally is ruinous.

There's a lot to unpack here.

1) You say, "...so nothing we have or choose is owed to anyone else."But this begs the question that anything we have or choose is "owed" to anyone at all, doesn't it?

No, because we can't help having to orient our lives somehow. We are going to have to make value judgments, organize priorities, arrange hierarchies of importance, set goals, establish aims, and so forth. The alternative is not to live at all.

So we're going to have to make something the basis of that orienting. Our "oughts," even if only our instrumental ones, are going to have to relate to some goal or aim we take as obligatory or important in some way. And we can do that unthinkingly, on auto-pilot, as many people seem to do, or else we can question and examine the point or aim toward which we've been orienting ourselves, and decide whether or not it's the right one.

So I come back to my question. If God is not the center of our "oughts," who is? Who's the next candidate on the list? What do you refer to, when you orient your choices, values and actions? Let's move that from the unconscious level to the conscious.

2) You say, "...like one from gratitude..." This goes along the lines of my last sentences from (1) here. It may well be that a creature would feel gratitude, and so experience an ought towards their creator. But a creature might not feel gratitude, so in what way would an "ought" apply to them?

Whether or not I owe somebody gratitude does not at all depend on my feeling that I do.

If you swim out and save me from drowning, I might say, "I'm not going to thank some woman!" Or I may tell you, "I wasn't that close to drowning; I would have made it to shore myself." And maybe I even believe it's true.

But maybe it's not. Maybe you genuinely risked your life to pull me out, and I do owe you gratitude, but my heart's too small and shrivelled and my ego's too big to admit it. And maybe any fair observer would say, "What a miserable ingrate IC is; after all Cat has done for him, he doesn't even say 'Thank you'."

And my ingratitude would not diminish you. It would only signal my smallness and pettiness. But I would still owe you gratitude I had not given.

3) You say, "...one from righteousness," but won't this just be an argument from "goodness,"

No, slightly different. To be brief, "righteousness" presupposes an fixed "right," an objective code. The argument from "goodness" is more the one we were making before. But the "righteousness" argument is not an argument I aim to make here, or that I've bothered to exposit fully. My point was merely that there are these different arguments, some of which I've already made, and others that can be made.

4) You say, "one based on power," but power doesn't impart an ought either unless a person cares about consequences, right?

Not at all, actually.

I may care nothing for the power of the police. But if I break the law and become culpable, I'm going to feel it anyway.

Of course, for the thinking secularist, all morality is nothing but power, as Nietzsche said. However, human power is always far less than God's power. And in the end, any argument about power runs into a brick wall at the Almighty.

But let us now reverse the case, as I suggested before: let's ask, "If we posit that God doesn't own us, and doesn't have such rights in relation to us, who does?" Who has more claim to issue us an 'ought' than God has?

Do you have an answer to that? Or are we now simply going to say, "God being eliminated as the locus of our 'oughts,' they simply become impossible?"

I'm ready to hear whatever you want to answer on that. It's not rhetorical.

As above, the first question that has already struck me each time is "why is it assumed that anyone has a claim to issue an ought over us?"

Well, I hope I've answered that now: we all have to orient our lives.

How do you orient yours?

If you imply the existence of a “right,” then what is a right?

A "right" is an unalienable, intrinsic property of 'oughtness' with which one has been endowed by God...just as the Declaration of Independence rightly states.

Ah, but then if the question is "what if we don't care what God desires..."

Then you get to be wrong, obviously.

Here's an interesting factoid: in the phrase, "we hold these truths to be self-evident," the original wording was this: "we hold these truths to be sacred." Did you know that? Jefferson wrote it that way, and Franklin insisted the wording had to be changed to "self-evident." So even at the framing of the Constitution, they were debating the very facts you and I are debating now.

Curious, no?

Ah, but then if the question is "what if we don't care what God desires," then wouldn't answering "because God has a right" be the same as answering "because God thinks you should care,"

No.

The answer would be, "Because God is right, and you are wrong." But you have a right to be wrong, and to live with the outcome of your wrongness, should you insist. So don't insist. At the end of the day, you won't like the results. You won't be happy, won't be the person you were made to be, won't fulfill your actual purpose in life, and will end up paying dearly for your bad choice. So don't do it.

You "ought" not to trash your life. God says it's valuable.

Would a “right” be assigned an objective value without reference to the character and wishes of God?

No. For absent God, there is no rationale the justifies assigning anyone a "right" to anything. Absent God, "rights" are just a human construct, and can be given or removed on a social whim.

If a "right" is about the wishes of God, then it's adjacent to or identical to the concept of "good,"

Adjacent? Perhaps. Identical? No.

A right is an unalienable 'gift' or endowment God assigns to you, as His creation, just as the D of I says. It's limited to things like life, liberty and property, which all people have by virtue of being people created by God and given certain responsibilities.

In the only rationale for rights we have anywhere, John Locke spells this out. He begins with what he calls, "The Great Day," meaning Judgment Day. And he points out that God gives to everybody accountability, individually, to Him. But how can God hold accountable that which is not living? He cannot. How can He hold accountable that which has no liberty or freedom of choice? He could not. How could He call anyone to account if they had no substance or property with which to enact their stewardship to Him (or to demonstrate failure to do so)? He could not.

So, says Locke, the fact of "The Great Day" shows that God gives all men "life, liberty and property," and with it, "conscience." And anyone who violates these is fighting against God. If you take a man's life, you steal what God has given him. If you take his liberty, you interfere with his discharging of his role toward God. If you take his property, you rob him of the means to be faithful to God in practical action. And if you try to interfere with his conscience, you not only act contrary to the Creator but try to do something that is impossible: for conscience is ultimately impossible to take away from him.

There has been no explanation of rights since. But this is why the phrase "endowed by his Creator" was necessary in the D of I. God is the source of rights. Without Him, there simply are none...and no other rationale exists, to this day, for any.

That's all the explanation of "rights." But good is a property intrinsic to the character of God Himself. Your rights are good for you, it's true; but they are not merely the same as good. I think you can see how, now.

[FlashDangerpants]

God's idea of a partner for me, according to some people, wouldn't at all be what I'm physically or mentally interested in. I value having a partner, but I don’t value a man as a life and sexual partner. So why ought I value it if I just don't?

This seems like an interesting question that got accidentally sidelined by the process there.

[uwot]

...you can often tell when you're hearing truth, and when you're not. Truthful answers have a way of sounding coherent and integrated in ways that falsehoods often lack.

Anyone who has read a story knows this is untrue. There is a quote attributed to more people than you can shake a stick at to the effect that the difference between fiction and fact is that fiction has to make sense. It's the difference between philosophy and science - philosophy has to be coherent, it is guided by logic. Science on the other hand is guided by observation - you might not understand the reasons behind what you observe, but you can make measurements, seek patterns and any use you can make of those patterns is science, regardless of any underlying truth.

[Belinda]

Having or being a body is delusionary. Experience includes experience of bodies however experience is relative to the instrument that detects experience.

So if it isn't the case that we have bodies, what is the case?

The case is we are neither bodies nor minds. We are body-minds.
Persevering with due scepticism we understand we can't be sure we are even body-minds. All we can be sure of is experience happened.

There is maybe an analogy in physics. Did you view that BBC4 programme (Last Friday I think??) on Horizon about quantum entanglement i.e. beginning with the Einstein/Podolski/Rosen experiment and ending with a huge cosmic experiment on top of a Canary Island? I recommend the programme very much. I'm not a physicist and can't even do arithmetic but the programme is accessible to lay people and does not aim to explain but to describe, which is fair enough. It's great fun too.

[Astro Cat]

1) "The best" according to whom? God?

Well, He would be the only one who could forsee that, of course. However, He's also the only one who could have known exactly what we were made for, too. But I think the creature also realizes it when it happens. When you hit your stride, and realize you are in the process of becoming and actualizing all that God intended you to be, what could that be but a pleasure? Like a tool in its right use, your fit with your role produces excellence.

Well, I can say anecdotally that I'm living my life without any consideration to what any gods want for me, and I feel as though I've "hit my stride." I'm doing well for myself, it's hard to imagine being much more content other than things outside of my control such as the state of the world around me. How could that be?

But I suspect this will not be accepted as an argument because I can imagine a response, "well, it could be better." But I don't think either one of those arguments go anywhere. I can at least say that I'm not miserable, which might have been a point in your argument's favor: but I'm not, nowhere close.

Let me put this part of the argument into perspective.
1) I asked, "What about God being God makes it that we ought to value the same things as God?"
2) You said, "God created us for His purpose, and we would fail to achieve "the best" trajectory of life if we failed to actualize that purpose."
3) I asked, "The best according to whom? God?"
4) You said, "Well, He would be the only one who could forsee that, of course," which I'm taking as an affirmative answer (so yes, according to God)

But the problem is this: what would "the best trajectory" mean? "Best" doesn't mean anything without some metric. What is that metric?

I considered a few things like "happiness," but if it's happiness, then Cat is happiest when her own values are followed, not when having to follow someone else's values that she doesn't share. I considered "a sense of fulfillment," but again, Cat feels fulfillment when her own values are satisfied, not when she's satisfying someone else's values (that she may not share). Having to fulfill someone else's values that we do not share is usually regarded as miserable (and so it would be, in some cases with what God supposedly expects of Cat according to some people).

What metric for "the best trajectory" do you mean that God has for us such that we ought to value what He values instead of what we value?

Some parents think their kids would have "the best" life if they became doctors or lawyers, while the kids don't value that at all and would rather be painters or songwriters.

Well, they can be right or wrong about that. Their estimations are only guesses. So are our own estimations of ourselves; they often change, and often multiple times, as we continually discover our own peculiar features and limitations.

Not so, God's estimation.

We can fight what God's best is for us: but we end up fighting against the very nature of what we are. That's self-destructive and counter-productive, of course; but creatures with free will can choose to do that...and sometimes do.

Well, we still have to find out what you mean by "best," like what metric is being used to determine what's "best" to be able to respond to this.

What if our "best trajectories" from our own considerations where we are happiest and thrive the most is different from God's "best trajectories?"

Hmm, I know you were hesitant to get personal with this, but I really want to bring up a glaringly obvious example. A lot of Christians think homosexuality is somehow immoral, ostensibly something God does not want. Yet I didn't choose this, I can't help but to feel attraction to whom I feel and not feel attraction to whom I don't. Ostensibly God's "best trajectory" for me would be in a direction I literally physically can't (in terms of arousal) go in. How could God's trajectory for me be "the best" when I'm very happy, satisfied, smitten by my partner, my girlfriend, likely wife soon enough? I promise I'm not going to get mad or damage our friendship and rapport over admonitions against homosexuality. Remember that it's cruelty that I abhor, not differing opinions. (Just don't tell me if you vote for laws that are oppressive to me, that'll be don't ask don't tell )

1) You say, "...so nothing we have or choose is owed to anyone else."But this begs the question that anything we have or choose is "owed" to anyone at all, doesn't it?

No, because we can't help having to orient our lives somehow. We are going to have to make value judgments, organize priorities, arrange hierarchies of importance, set goals, establish aims, and so forth. The alternative is not to live at all.

So we're going to have to make something the basis of that orienting. Our "oughts," even if only our instrumental ones, are going to have to relate to some goal or aim we take as obligatory or important in some way. And we can do that unthinkingly, on auto-pilot, as many people seem to do, or else we can question and examine the point or aim toward which we've been orienting ourselves, and decide whether or not it's the right one.

So I come back to my question. If God is not the center of our "oughts," who is? Who's the next candidate on the list? What do you refer to, when you orient your choices, values and actions? Let's move that from the unconscious level to the conscious.

I orient my choices by my values, so I guess the answer to your question would be "ourselves," for the most part. If I'm in a situation and I don't know what to do, then I check my values for what I should do: even if the answer is sometimes to check what the experts say, that's listening to a value. I would say that even when a Christian or a Muslim listens to an expert, they are first checking their values (they value what their religious experts say).

2) You say, "...like one from gratitude..." This goes along the lines of my last sentences from (1) here. It may well be that a creature would feel gratitude, and so experience an ought towards their creator. But a creature might not feel gratitude, so in what way would an "ought" apply to them?

Whether or not I owe somebody gratitude does not at all depend on my feeling that I do.

If you swim out and save me from drowning, I might say, "I'm not going to thank some woman!" Or I may tell you, "I wasn't that close to drowning; I would have made it to shore myself." And maybe I even believe it's true.

But maybe it's not. Maybe you genuinely risked your life to pull me out, and I do owe you gratitude, but my heart's too small and shrivelled and my ego's too big to admit it. And maybe any fair observer would say, "What a miserable ingrate IC is; after all Cat has done for him, he doesn't even say 'Thank you'."

And my ingratitude would not diminish you. It would only signal my smallness and pettiness. But I would still owe you gratitude I had not given.

First, I don't accept that someone would have an obligation to someone else unless they feel one. Those of us that do value gratefulness will of course see such a situation as you describe and be appalled, because (since we value it) we feel as though something is owed. But the person that doesn't value it, they don't feel as though something is owed: they don't feel an obligation. So what would it mean to say they have an obligation that they don't feel? In what way are they obligated, since they don't feel it? In all cases, isn't an obligation something that we feel, which comes from our values?

This is all bundled up into the main theme of the question: "what is an ought without a hypothetical imperative?"

3) You say, "...one from righteousness," but won't this just be an argument from "goodness,"

No, slightly different. To be brief, "righteousness" presupposes an fixed "right," an objective code. The argument from "goodness" is more the one we were making before. But the "righteousness" argument is not an argument I aim to make here, or that I've bothered to exposit fully. My point was merely that there are these different arguments, some of which I've already made, and others that can be made.

Well, we may have to dredge up arguments, because I am still not sure why someone ought to value what God values instead of what that person themselves values, and I am not trying to be obtuse. Each argument has so far had problems which are being laid out here.

4) You say, "one based on power," but power doesn't impart an ought either unless a person cares about consequences, right?

Not at all, actually.

I may care nothing for the power of the police. But if I break the law and become culpable, I'm going to feel it anyway.

Of course, for the thinking secularist, all morality is nothing but power, as Nietzsche said. However, human power is always far less than God's power. And in the end, any argument about power runs into a brick wall at the Almighty.

This is the only argument out of all of them that makes any sense: "you ought to do what God wants, or else." This is the only one so far.

Because most people are going to value not suffering the "or else." (But note that it still only works if a person values consequences!)

But!

As has been my point all along, if this is the basis, this one thing that makes sense, then the noncognitivist was right all along: oughts are just hypothetical imperatives based on values and backed up by power. The noncognitivist wins, in this case. If so, I'll pop my bottle of champagne. I guess I'd have to buy one first.

And I would reiterate: it still only works if a person values consequences. It's still dependent on the subject's values whether they experience an ought.

Ah, but then if the question is "what if we don't care what God desires..."

Then you get to be wrong, obviously.

But if "wrong" just means "not in accordance with what God wishes," if it's not a property but just a description of what God thinks, why would we care about being wrong?

Say that to be Cattish is to be in accordance with Cat's wishes and to be Doggish is to be against Cat's wishes. If you took some action and someone said, "but that's doggish!" and then insisted that you ought to care, wouldn't that be absurd? Wouldn't it be absurd because there's no reason you should adopt Cat's wishes instead of your own?

Well if the only reason to adopt God's wishes are things like "because if you don't adopt God's wishes, then your wishes will not be like God's wishes" (the definition of "wrong," here), then so what? Where is the argument that we ought to align with God's wishes? "Because if you don't, then you won't be aligned with them" is not a convincing argument, it's a tautology. Tautologies are fine and have their uses, but in this case, it does not impart an argument.

Here's an interesting factoid: in the phrase, "we hold these truths to be self-evident," the original wording was this: "we hold these truths to be sacred." Did you know that? Jefferson wrote it that way, and Franklin insisted the wording had to be changed to "self-evident." So even at the framing of the Constitution, they were debating the very facts you and I are debating now.

Curious, no?

I mean, that's interesting, but I don't carry the highest opinion of the American founders and think their near deification by some modern people is more problematic than it's worth. According to them, I shouldn't vote and people should be able to own other people. They obviously had as many shitty ideas per my values as they had good ones.

Ah, but then if the question is "what if we don't care what God desires," then wouldn't answering "because God has a right" be the same as answering "because God thinks you should care,"

No.

The answer would be, "Because God is right, and you are wrong." But you have a right to be wrong, and to live with the outcome of your wrongness, should you insist. So don't insist. At the end of the day, you won't like the results. You won't be happy, won't be the person you were made to be, won't fulfill your actual purpose in life, and will end up paying dearly for your bad choice. So don't do it.

You "ought" not to trash your life. God says it's valuable.

Surely you can see that I will ask "ok, what does 'right' mean" and "what does 'wrong' mean," and the only possible answer given your definition of "good" is that "right" is that which is in accordance with God's wishes and "wrong" is that which is not in accordance with God's wishes, and so the thing I originally said that you quoted would be apt.

But, if you do have a different definition for "right" and "wrong," I'll hear them and respond then. But I suspect that in order to be consistent, my quote: "Ah, but then if the question is 'what if we don't care what God desires,' then wouldn't answering 'because God has a right' be the same as answering 'because God thinks you should care,'" will be apt.

Also we have to be careful to distinguish "right" as in "right vs. wrong" and "right" as in "having a right (e.g. to do something)." In my quote it looks like I was talking about the latter.

The problem is that you're committed to defining most of these terms by accordance with God's wishes or not ("goodness," "evilness," "rightness," "wrongness") and because of that, using those terms to explain why we ought to care what God thinks is circular. Because saying "It's good to value what God values" is really just saying "God values that you value what God values," and saying "It's right to value what God values" is really just saying the same ("God values that you value what God values"), and it doesn't answer the question: why ought we care what God values if we value something else?

If a "right" is about the wishes of God, then it's adjacent to or identical to the concept of "good,"

Adjacent? Perhaps. Identical? No.

A right is an unalienable 'gift' or endowment God assigns to you, as His creation, just as the D of I says. It's limited to things like life, liberty and property, which all people have by virtue of being people created by God and given certain responsibilities.

In the only rationale for rights we have anywhere, John Locke spells this out. He begins with what he calls, "The Great Day," meaning Judgment Day. And he points out that God gives to everybody accountability, individually, to Him. But how can God hold accountable that which is not living? He cannot. How can He hold accountable that which has no liberty or freedom of choice? He could not. How could He call anyone to account if they had no substance or property with which to enact their stewardship to Him (or to demonstrate failure to do so)? He could not.

So, says Locke, the fact of "The Great Day" shows that God gives all men "life, liberty and property," and with it, "conscience." And anyone who violates these is fighting against God. If you take a man's life, you steal what God has given him. If you take his liberty, you interfere with his discharging of his role toward God. If you take his property, you rob him of the means to be faithful to God in practical action. And if you try to interfere with his conscience, you not only act contrary to the Creator but try to do something that is impossible: for conscience is ultimately impossible to take away from him.

There has been no explanation of rights since. But this is why the phrase "endowed by his Creator" was necessary in the D of I. God is the source of rights. Without Him, there simply are none...and no other rationale exists, to this day, for any.

That's all the explanation of "rights." But good is a property intrinsic to the character of God Himself. Your rights are good for you, it's true; but they are not merely the same as good. I think you can see how, now.

If rights are endowed by God, then they are in accordance with God's wishes. But that suffers from the same problem: what if we don't care what God wishes?

The circularity of your position is in every term you try to use.

If it's "wrong" or "evil" to go against God's wishes, that just means "It's against God's wishes to go against God's wishes." But that doesn't tell us why we ought to care what God wishes.

If it's "right" or "good" to do what God wishes, that just means "God wishes that you do what God wishes." But that doesn't tell us why we ought to care what God wishes.

If a "right" (this time as in to hold a right, not rightness) is just another thing that God wishes for people, then why ought they care?

Any explanations for why we ought to care what God wishes can't just use a term in the explanation that says we ought to care because God cares that we care: that's circular, and it doesn't answer the question.

[Walker]

Any explanations for why we ought to care what God wishes can't just use a term in the explanation that says we ought to care because God cares that we care: that's circular, and it doesn't answer the question.

- Although that may not be explanation enough for humans who have questions about the physical laws of the universe, the wishes of God may be explanation enough for God who has no questions about the physical laws of the universe.

Caring about the physical laws of the universe is a survival advantage to the species, as is longevity of the individual caused by acting with care.

Folks don't have to think in those terms, except in caring enough to override species imperatives with clinging to one social engineering delusion or another. If left unmolested, the species imperative of survival automatically makes desirable what's necessary, even though in humans the tracing of causation can be complex.

[Walker]

Meditation is something I never took seriously. Mystical nonsense is probably how I would have described it. Since then I have become aware that some people who I have respect for practice it, and talk about its benefits. So now I accept there must be something to it, but I still don't know what is meant to be achieved by meditation.

Thanks Harbal.



Based on that, I can probably tell you anything you need to know about the topic, beginning with, the ultimate purpose of meditation is the cessation of thought. The purpose of the effects of meditation, which is subsequent thought, is to live.

Not to be confused with contemplation, the purpose of which is thought, and the purpose for the effects of contemplation, is also to live.

I dont agree, Walker. Unless you are in deep sleep you are constantly thinking. Waking awareness implies thinking. The aim of Meditation is calming obtrusive thoughts so that afterwards you can focus better.

Your disagreement is based on what you know, and what you don't know.

No-thought breaks the continuity of existence. Subsequent thought, and the subsequent reopening of the sensory gates that were closed via pratyahara, creates a new and fresh world that bears some similarity to memory.

For more info beyond the scope of this thread I recommend a good translation and commentary of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. As I recall, Chip Hartranft authored one.

[Walker]

What I find interesting is that Science accepts an effect as the proof of an inferred cause’s intangible existence, and yet denies that same method of proof for God’s existence.

[Veritas Aequitas]

What I find interesting is that Science accepts an effect as the proof of an inferred cause’s intangible existence, and yet denies that same method of proof for God’s existence.

Note the Features of why Science is credible
viewtopic.php?p=489338#p489338

What [the best of]Science claims is any one can repeat the same experiment and will get the same results [principles] repeatedly. Burn hydrogen with oxygen, one will always get water [H20].

Whereas, if God is supposedly omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omnipresent, omni-whatever I [all all non-theists] cannot contact [email, etc.] God to request him to get rid of all Evil.