Is morality objective or subjective?

[Immanuel Can]

My syllogism didn't say that God makes thing happen.

No, that's true. You're right...it didn't explicitly say that. But it assumes it. It assumes that prediction (which is a form of knowledge, obviously) entails predetermination (which entails the arranging or engineering of a result). That's what's called, "assuming the conclusion," and it's a logical fallacy. The place where they argument has to prove its case is in the conclusion; it can't merely assume it from the first premise.

My syllogism didn't say that God makes thing happen. It also didn't assume such. Nor does it rely on same.
If there is no predetermination though, then there must be the possiblity of predictions not being accurate.

Actually, that's not the case.

If, say, there are multiple possibilities or routes that one could choose, it makes no difference at all what God knows about that. Unless he's "rigging the game," you still get to make your choice, you still don't know which one you're going to choose, in advance, and the results are still your responsibility. God hasn't made your choice for you, and He isn't making you make a particular choice.

In terms of the dynamics, God has remained entirely outside the equation, because "knowing" is really a passive verb, like "being," not an active one, like "forcing" or "making." In that case, God hasn't done anything to make the situation what it is...you've been the only one who has done something about that. God's just stayed with the knowledge He always had.

[FlashDangerpants]

No, that's true. You're right...it didn't explicitly say that. But it assumes it. It assumes that prediction (which is a form of knowledge, obviously) entails predetermination (which entails the arranging or engineering of a result). That's what's called, "assuming the conclusion," and it's a logical fallacy. The place where they argument has to prove its case is in the conclusion; it can't merely assume it from the first premise.

My syllogism didn't say that God makes thing happen. It also didn't assume such. Nor does it rely on same.
If there is no predetermination though, then there must be the possiblity of predictions not being accurate.

Actually, that's not the case.

If, say, there are multiple possibilities or routes that one could choose, it makes no difference at all what God knows about that. Unless he's "rigging the game," you still get to make your choice, you still don't know which one you're going to choose, in advance, and the results are still your responsibility. God hasn't made your choice for you, and He isn't making you make a particular choice.

In terms of the dynamics, God has remained entirely outside the equation, because "knowing" is really a passive verb, like "being," not an active one, like "forcing" or "making." In that case, God hasn't done anything to make the situation what it is...you've been the only one who has done something about that. God's just stayed with the knowledge He always had.

Yeah... except my syllogism said this...

If the future is not predetermined, God could be mistaken when predicting future happenings.
God cannot be mistaken when predicting future happenings.
Therefore the future is predetermined.

Now while I wait for you to make up your mind what is wrong with it because your story is changeable to say the least. I would just like to draw your attention to the very limited nature of the conclusion which only states that therefore the future is predetermined. It doesn't say God enforces that determination, or assume anything non-passive whatsoever about God, just that there exists a state of predetermination.

[Immanuel Can]

My syllogism didn't say that God makes thing happen. It also didn't assume such. Nor does it rely on same.
If there is no predetermination though, then there must be the possiblity of predictions not being accurate.

Actually, that's not the case.

If, say, there are multiple possibilities or routes that one could choose, it makes no difference at all what God knows about that. Unless he's "rigging the game," you still get to make your choice, you still don't know which one you're going to choose, in advance, and the results are still your responsibility. God hasn't made your choice for you, and He isn't making you make a particular choice.

In terms of the dynamics, God has remained entirely outside the equation, because "knowing" is really a passive verb, like "being," not an active one, like "forcing" or "making." In that case, God hasn't done anything to make the situation what it is...you've been the only one who has done something about that. God's just stayed with the knowledge He always had.

Yeah... except my syllogism said this...

If the future is not predetermined, God could be mistaken when predicting future happenings.
God cannot be mistaken when predicting future happenings.
Therefore the future is predetermined.

Yes. And as I pointed out, "know" and "do" are essentially synonyms for "predict" and "predetermine." A person cannot "predict" without "knowing," and can't "predetermine" unless he also "does" something.

So the conclusion is assumed in the premise, not proven by the syllogism.

Clear now?

[Veritas Aequitas]

Agree with the above but there are more nuances and depths to the above.

Yes.

When the above moral norms are encoded to facilitate survival of the individual and the species, there must be some sort of neural algorithm supported by its physical neural correlates.
Since the are so evident within humanity, they are obvious pattern which can be inferred inductively to arrive at sound conclusion.
These can be researched and tested scientifically as scientific facts.

Appearances are the encoding of niche survival and reproductive strategies.
Patterned behaviours are, as well.
Those that offer an advantage become innate.....

Whatever is conditioned upon a human-based [collective] framework and system[FS] is objective, e.g. the science FS which is the gold standard of objectivity.
When those scientific facts which are also moral elements inputted into moral FS, they are objective morally, thus morality is objective.

Yes it is.
Ethics, on the other hand are human adjustments of these naturally selected behaviours.

Monogamy, for instance, is an ethical rule man imposed upon himself so as to integrate as many males, mostly, into social unities - make them investors in the collective's well-being.

see this link
How to convert objecive scientific facts to objective moral facts.
viewtopic.php?p=707334#p707334

I really don't like homework....I have a huge reading list I am chipping away at.

Your views?

Having skimmed through it, I see nothing objectionable.
patterns is what behaviours are.
All existence, in fact....or the part we can perceive.
Chaos is another issue.

When dealing with organisms - ordering unities - patterns is our guide - behavioural patterns.
Morality evolved so as to establish certain pattern s that were advantageous to species that had adopted particular strategies.
This is why morals only apply to social species.

The confusion arises when we include human amendments to these naturally evolved behavioural patterns.
Some ascribe to them a divine origin to enforce them.
Monogamy, as I've mentioned, is an example of a human ethical rule, attempting to control innate impulses in Homo sapiens.
Ethical rules against contraceptives or abortions ae also governed by human objectives, attempting to preserve group cohesion, and group competitiveness.

So, two types:
Morals = naturally evolved behaviours encoded by man, facilitating cooperative survival and reproductive strategies
&
Ethics = amendments, of the first, attempting to enforce behaviours so as to make complex human systems possible.
God enters the picture as a means of enforcing these behaviours.
Mutations arise, which challenge both.
God, essentially, is more than a representation of the incomprehensible, it is a representation and idealization of collectives.
Ethics is collective rules imposing restrictions to individual behaviours.

I agree with the above except:

I define morality as the management of evil to enable the emergence of the related good.
What is evil is related to anything that has potentiality of fatality and is net-negative to the well-being and flourishing of the individuals and that of humanity.
Ethics is the applied system to achieve the ultimate objectives of morality.
Ethics will facilitate the individuals to be progressively moral naturally and spontaneously within any coercions from rules, threat of hell, punishment and the like.

As such I do not see ethics as the collective rules imposing restriction to individual behaviors.
Such rules would be related to customs, traditions, culture, politics [legislation] and other constitutional rules.

[Will Bouwman]

God certainly changes His actions.

Then he doesn't transcend time.

I can't get your reasoning there. You'll have to explain that, Will.

All you need for time is one change. For any change, there is before and after. If your god changes his actions, then there is before and after and he is subject to time.

God alone never has to act in any way not consonant with His character.

On the contrary.

What can you say against the Supreme Being being the only Being in the universe who is not ever constrained to behave in ways unsuitable to His character?

If your god doesn't do what the supreme being would do, he isn't the supreme being.

How does a person who disbelieves in God manage to believe in free will?

Because if a god were to tell me what I would do next, I believe I could do otherwise.

But an Atheist does not believe in God, so that's not even relevant. Let's look at Atheism on its own terms, not the Theist's. There's no need to impose suppositions on the Atheist that the Atheist himself would not even countenance.

You cannot impose your "Atheism" on me. I am an atheist because I don't believe there is a god, not because I believe there isn't one. I would be surprised were a god to appear before me, but I can certainly countenance it.

Atheism implies a mechanistic view of the universe. That's obvious.

You can't impose your "Atheism" on the universe either. The fact that you can't think beyond two possible worlds doesn't mean others don't exist.

If God doesn't create the universe, then the universe has to have been created by some mechanistic process, either material forces acting by chance and time, or maybe quantum mechanics. But it's certainly nothing to do with any volition.

Well, there are lots of theories about consciousness which allow for freewill without invoking any gods.

How then can you believe that you have any free will? You're the pure product of mechanisms, as is everything you do, say or even think -- at least, according to Atheism.

Because I am an atheist, not an Atheist.

[Skepdick]

All you need for time is one change.

A whole change? A half, a quarter, a third, or an infinitesimal part of a change won't do?

[FlashDangerpants]

Actually, that's not the case.

If, say, there are multiple possibilities or routes that one could choose, it makes no difference at all what God knows about that. Unless he's "rigging the game," you still get to make your choice, you still don't know which one you're going to choose, in advance, and the results are still your responsibility. God hasn't made your choice for you, and He isn't making you make a particular choice.

In terms of the dynamics, God has remained entirely outside the equation, because "knowing" is really a passive verb, like "being," not an active one, like "forcing" or "making." In that case, God hasn't done anything to make the situation what it is...you've been the only one who has done something about that. God's just stayed with the knowledge He always had.

Yeah... except my syllogism said this...

If the future is not predetermined, God could be mistaken when predicting future happenings.
God cannot be mistaken when predicting future happenings.
Therefore the future is predetermined.

Yes. And as I pointed out, "know" and "do" are essentially synonyms for "predict" and "predetermine." A person cannot "predict" without "knowing," and can't "predetermine" unless he also "does" something.

So the conclusion is assumed in the premise, not proven by the syllogism.

Clear now?

A person can most definitely predict without knowing, there is an entire gambling industry predicated on exactly that.
If a race is fixed, not every gambler who predicts the winner correctly is the guy who drugged the horse.
You misread my sylogism in your eagerness to overinterpret.

[FlashDangerpants]

You always have to explain everything to IC twice because he likes to leave the first explanation out of what he quotes and pretend it wasn't written. I don't think I've ever seen himn argue in good faith.

[Lorikeet]

I agree with the above except:

I define morality as the management of evil to enable the emergence of the related good.
What is evil is related to anything that has potentiality of fatality and is net-negative to the well-being and flourishing of the individuals and that of humanity.

Objectively speaking there is no good nor evil.
Like I said....all value judgments, including good/bad, are based on a triangulation, between a subject, its objective, and its appreciation of the effort, distance separating the two.

So, if the objective is survival, or if the objective is power, this alters the triangulating relationships, changing what is considered to be 'good' and what 'bad.'
Every culture has its own ideals, its own objectives. Each ideal is aligned with reality to different degrees, some ideals existing entirely "outside" reality, beyond existence, such as the Abrahamic one-god.
This inverts the triangulations entirely, changing their relationships. In this case the distance between subject and its objective (god) is eternal.....it can never be bridged. this is intentional, because the subject is placed in a perpetual state of failure - sinfulness, desperation, seeking salvation from its predicament, and it is given this solution in the form of submission, with a reward after death.

Ethics is the applied system to achieve the ultimate objectives of morality.
Ethics will facilitate the individuals to be progressively moral naturally and spontaneously within any coercions from rules, threat of hell, punishment and the like.

I use morality/ethics to differentiate evolved from manmade adjustments.
Genetically determined, leading to mimetically alterations, based on human objectives.
A distinction which is crucial in understanding what morality is and why it is so important to species like us.
Species that have adopted a cooperative method of survival and procreation.

As such I do not see ethics as the collective rules imposing restriction to individual behaviors.
Such rules would be related to customs, traditions, culture, politics [legislation] and other constitutional rules.

Ethics are additional methods of enforcement.
They express collective approval of individual actions, relative to the welfare of the group.

For instance, inter-gropu violence is detrimental to group cohesion, negatively affecting its cohesiveness. So social species have evolved the alpha who is a peace keeper.
In human systems where it is attempted to integrate racially and culturally heterogenous populations, law and order, ethical rules concerning murder, adultery, also prevent inter-gropu strife.

Infanticide is immoral in nature because it decreases a groups effectiveness, but infanticide is not immoral when it is against another group.
We see this in the ethical stance towards abortion within heterogenous systems, where the aborted foetus has no genetic relationship with most of the members of the social group.
Why?
Because if this practice is normalized the entire group will slowly decline, unable to sustain its human resources.

[Immanuel Can]

Then he doesn't transcend time.

I can't get your reasoning there. You'll have to explain that, Will.

All you need for time is one change. For any change, there is before and after. If your god changes his actions, then there is before and after and he is subject to time.

No, I don't agree. Human beings change actions all the time, and don't thereby change nature or my potential. I see no reason at all to suppose that any change of activity on God's part would mean He's subject to time. You'd need to show me how that made sense.

What can you say against the Supreme Being being the only Being in the universe who is not ever constrained to behave in ways unsuitable to His character?

If your god doesn't do what the supreme being would do, he isn't the supreme being.

I think I'm missing the intention of this response...it doesn't seem to me related in any way to my comment.

Because if a god were to tell me what I would do next, I believe I could do otherwise.

But an Atheist does not believe in God, so that's not even relevant. Let's look at Atheism on its own terms, not the Theist's. There's no need to impose suppositions on the Atheist that the Atheist himself would not even countenance.

You cannot impose your "Atheism" on me.

I'm not.

I am an atheist because I don't believe there is a god, not because I believe there isn't one.

Well, either that means you are an agnostic, or it's a distinction with no difference.

I would be surprised were a god to appear before me, but I can certainly countenance it.

"Countenance"? If that means that you think it's possible, then you're an agnostic. If "countenance" means you would "fact it, if it happened," but that you don't think it could happen, then you're an Atheist. Nothing is imposed: that's definitional and etymologically correct. It's what the two words actually mean.

Atheism implies a mechanistic view of the universe. That's obvious.

You can't impose your "Atheism" on the universe either.

I don't have to. It's analytically true, and logic shows it. An Atheist cannot believe in any kind of Supreme Being at all, but rather has to think that the universe came into existence by something like time and chance. That that explanation doesn't actually make any sense is not anybody's fault but rather a fault of Atheism itself.

If God doesn't create the universe, then the universe has to have been created by some mechanistic process, either material forces acting by chance and time, or maybe quantum mechanics. But it's certainly nothing to do with any volition.

Well, there are lots of theories about consciousness which allow for freewill without invoking any gods.

Really? Well, that's news. Perhaps you can offer one.

[Immanuel Can]

A person can most definitely predict without knowing, there is an entire gambling industry predicated on exactly that.

If his prediction were ever to be 100% guaranteed to be correct every time, as God's is, then it's certainly a form of knowing. There would be no important distinction between knowing that certainly before, or that certainly after.

[Harbal]

A person can most definitely predict without knowing, there is an entire gambling industry predicated on exactly that.

If his prediction were ever to be 100% guaranteed to be correct every time, as God's is, then it's certainly a form of knowing. There would be no important distinction between knowing that certainly before, or that certainly after.

God knows exactly what the future holds, but he is not controlling or influencing the future, he just has knowledge of it.

God is always 100% right in his predictions about the future, and it could never be otherwise.

The future is always what God knows it will be, but God does not interfere in order to make it so.

The future cannot be other than what God knows it will be, because God is always 100% right about what it will be.

No matter how you put it, the future always comes out looking very inflexible.


Can you explain how any future event can be known with absolute certainty if the future is open to other possibilities?

[Immanuel Can]

God knows exactly what the future holds, but he is not controlling or influencing the future, he just has knowledge of it.

God is always 100% right in his predictions about the future, and it could never be otherwise.

The future is always what God knows it will be, but God does not interfere in order to make it so.

The future cannot be other than what God knows it will be, because God is always 100% right about what it will be.

No matter how you put it, the future always comes out looking very inflexible.

Can you explain how any future event can be known with absolute certainty if the future is open to other possibilities?

Because "knowing" is passive. It's not any kind of active intervention, like "doing." That's why you can't build a bridge or tower by simply "knowing how to" build a bridge or tower.

But we might also note that one can "know" multiple alternatives at the same time. If I were God, I might know what will happen if Harbal responds to this message, and also what would happen if Harbal did not respond to this message. And I might correctly know that Harbal will, and still know what would have been the case had he done otherwise. So God can know both what Harbal will do, and what would have happened had Harbal chosen otherwise than he, in fact, did. Harbal remains free, and I still know how he is going to choose freely to actualize his choice.

[Skepdick]

You always have to explain everything to IC twice because he likes to leave the first explanation out of what he quotes and pretend it wasn't written. I don't think I've ever seen himn argue in good faith.

Since you don't buy into objective morality, I don't understand what your gripe is.

Good faith. Bad faith.

What's the difference?

[phyllo]

God knows exactly what the future holds, but he is not controlling or influencing the future, he just has knowledge of it.

God is constantly influencing the future. The bible is full of stories about it.

Deists think that god doesn't influence the future, not theists.