It would be a hellish society where nobody had the free will to murder, rape, steal, commit genocide, or start wars? — Marchesk

A Clockwork Orange.

Sure, but society takes over that role to an extent. We have various laws that are enforced, to an extent, which curb people's free will to do anything they might want.I could really hate my neighbor and wish them dead, but restrain from carrying it out because I don't want to go to prison. — Marchesk

If society was omnipotent to the extent that every crime was invariably punished, then indeed every arsehole would find it expedient to be compliant. There would be no virtue in good behaviour, any more than there is virtue in having regard to gravity. Such a world would be 'perfect' in the behaviour of its inhabitants without their being 'good' at all. In fact it would be a pretty hellish society to my mind.

When my children were little, I used to prevent them from running into the road, from fighting each other, and so on. But now they are all grown up, they have to make the best they can of their own lives. If they turn out to idiots and arseholes in spite of my loving care and education, that is unfortunate, but if I have to go on exercising parental control for ever, then they cannot possibly grow into responsible adults.

Lucifer the light bringer is akin to Loki; teacher and trouble-maker. I can't speak for the orthodox, but the myth makes sense to me as a psychological description of the separation of man from the beasts. The perfection of nature is it's innocence. The beasts live in a timeless present and do not reflect on their own existence. Thus there is no death and no morality - paradise.

Self knowledge, in the sense of a projected identity into the future and a reflective identity on the past, creates moral knowledge because it identifies my point of view as a view of itself and your point of view as the unseen other. It also creates awareness of death, which is always a projection to the future. So it is this knowledge that throws us out of nature, and out of the garden, and gives rise to 'work', as the sweat of one's brow as a projection to the future. Thus we no longer hunt because we are hungry, but because we will be hungry in the future.

Thus will as free-will is identical with the projection that constitutes psychological time, and the separation that constitutes both the fall from innocence and the ejection from paradise. Unfortunately, this way of reading the story does not allow me to make much sense of the questions you ask, which seem to depend on a rather literal understanding.

I think what all this points to, and rather contra Aristotle, is that even in the case of a well defined class like 'triangle', the essence turns out to be more of a linguistic affair than a distilled special oil that inheres in things.

Is there an objective way to say who is not part of the family? — mew

Depends what you mean by 'objective'. You're not part of my family for definite, but the dog is, and so is the urn of grandpa's ashes. One can know who's in and who's out for certain, but there is no definable essence required of all members other than being 'in'. Likewise, we know what a game is and isn't, but there is no common feature of Russian roulette, solitaire, and frisbee - or if there is I can more or less guarantee to find another game that lacks that feature.

What are family resemblances? — mew

Well I have my mother's nose, and my father's eyes, but my sister has my father's nose and my mother's eyes; so we have nothing in common, but are the same family.

Isn't it contradictory to say that the essence of things is that they have no essence? :s — mew

Yes. It was a joke.

Interesting word, 'essence'. Sometimes it just means 'being'; sometimes it means more like 'what makes a thing that kind of thing' - a waggly tail is the essence of dogginess; Sometimes it relatedly means the distilled aromatic oil of characteristic scent - vanilla essence.

The ergon (omic?) of vanilla is not the shape of the pod, but the smell.

Bloody Wittgenstein rather shot this fox with his analysis of the essence of 'game', which failed to find anything essential, but only 'family resemblances'. Mind you, it could be that that is the essence of a game, that it has nothing essential to it ... ;)

As I suspected. You are not here to defend an argument. You just want an excuse to chip in with the ad homs. Stroll on buddy. — apokrisis

I'm not here to defend an argument against someone who makes exactly the same argument and then calls me a solipsist. Buddy.

I ground being in value. — unenlightened

it grounds being in acts of evaluation — apokrisis

So you're a dick. Got it. — darthbarracuda

I got it too.

Pragmatism is the process view, and so it grounds being in acts of evaluation. — apokrisis

Glad we agree. But what's with the name calling all the time. It's really pathetic, and timewasting

What smells very fishy is the claim to ground value in the "being of human" and then to start equivocating when you are asked do you mean "human experience". — apokrisis

Values - truth, love, beauty, whatever, are the ground of (human) being, and the ground of reason, not the fruit. — unenlightened

The smell is of your misunderstanding. Rather than ground value in being, I ground being in value. First I give a shit, and then I value truth and reason and measurement, and even eventually perhaps, the distinction between mind and matter, who knows, as ways of dealing with shit.

I'm not interested in ridiculous inventions. I'm talking about the fact/value distinction, and saying that value is primary. That's nothing to do with dualism.

In fact it's of the essence of pragmatism, I would have thought. But go all sniffy if you like.

that seems a fair implication. — apokrisis

Can you state in a more positive fashion why it seems fair?

So the usual dualist or idealist position where only the mind can experience value? And truth, love and beauty are platonically real? — apokrisis

I don't recollect mentioning dualist, idealist or mind, and I'm fairly confident Hume is neither dualist nor idealist. But sure, Hume is primitive; that's the end of that argument.

For Hume, values are primary. So I explain the value of children in terms of the value of survival. But an anti-natalist denies that survival has positive value. (Genes have no values, are selfless and opinion-less, hence my feeble joke.) But once one arrives at value-zero of life is good, or life is not good, reason cannot adjudicate, because it is always the slave, and not the master. Values - truth, love, beauty, whatever, are the ground of (human) being, and the ground of reason, not the fruit. The difference that makes a difference is itself a value in action, the giving of a damn.

Facts without value are trivia.

If attitudes are explained as serving a purpose, then are they not justified? — apokrisis

Only in terms of another value - in this case species survival. But as Darwkin explained, the aim of the selfish gene is to go extinct, and most of them achieve it eventually.

Moore restated Hume's guillotine as the naturalistic fallacy. That was actually the main basis of most discussion of ethics in the logical schools of the 20th century. — ernestm

A slight issue could be that a pragmatist metaphysics is empirical in its realism. So reasonableness is tied to acts of measurement. — apokrisis

Here's a curiosity. Hume points out the limits of logical reasoning, hence the term 'fallacy'. He does the exact same thing for predictive science, and yet science utterly fails to fall about in confusion, unlike ethics. Perhaps an example will bring out the difference between a pragmatically reasonable explanation of ethics, and a logical justification.

Humans value their offspring highly because they have few of them (compared to an oak tree for instance) and invest heavily in them. Sperm are plentiful, and eggs are fewer and this perhaps explains the different moral attitude to male and female sexuality. What it doesn't do is justify it.

What is odd about discussion of Hume is that he gives values primacy over logical reason; reason is the slave of passion, and one reasons always from values and not to them. If philosophers or religionists value reason over values, they have got their knickers in a twist, and need to take them off and sort them out. Why do they think he has undermined values, when he has rather undermined reason?

The point being, that if these questions are asked of Hume's Treatise, the answers are, likewise, negative! — Wayfarer

The point being that if all are consigned to the flames, then Hume's job is done and his treatise is not needed. But you appear to want to follow his dictum for his work, but not for those others. Which is a bit contradictory.

It's not a bigger deal than his other dictum: you can't get a will-be from an is.

"One ought to do good and one ought not do evil."

I take this to be a priori - a definition of 'ought'.

Then one needs in one's premises, an assertion of what is good, or what is evil, in order to make an argument.

What is unnatural is what is wrong. — darthbarracuda

This is pretty clearly a totally inadequate assertion. Aside from the ambiguity, it is obviously denied by any poster of good will, since the internet is unnatural by any conceivable interpretation. One might try the inverse - what is natural is right, but even then, I'm not sure that tape worms are good. Finding the right moral premises is problematic, but attempts have been made, from the ten commandments, to the golden rule. Some variation on "play nice" ...

His argument... — rickyk95

... is indeed a weak one, that works just as well backwards as forwards.

Try instead the argument from freedom.

Moral good (distinguished from aesthetic good, perhaps) only arises from moral freedom. One is not morally good if one cannot do otherwise. Therefore the possibility of evil is necessary to moral good.

As to God, an evil god must be endured if such is the case, but has no impact that I can see on morality or religion. If the Arsehole is in charge, one must do the best one can, which will be little enough. In this sense, faith in a good god is more of a declaration of allegiance than a declaration of fact. Similarly, to say "I believe in justice" is not to claim that justice invariably prevails but that I will that it should prevail.

Unprovable, certainly, improbable perhaps, but I have to wonder how it could be improved?

When the cat is on the mat, is the 'on' in the mat or in the cat, or is it somewhere between them? I can find the cat, on the mat, and the mat, under the cat, but where oh where is the 'on'? Bah, I don't think it exists - nothing is ever really on anything.

If the person known as God has interacted with the world in a causal manner (say, to drown the sinful in a great deluge, answer intercessory prayers, or help the Patriots win the Super Bowl), then ought to be evidence of such interactions. — Arkady

Well if God wanted to intervene in this discussion, to get His message across perhaps, He might do it by inspiring one of the participants to post something intelligent, rather than bothering to register and contribute on His own behalf. Hard to detect that sort of thing, but even harder if He chose to make an intervention such that we did not after all blow ourselves to kingdom come in 1969. Even Dr Who is hard to spot when he meddles with history, and he's not even trying to be inconspicuous.

Arkady linked to a blog page, with a quotation from Alvin Plantinga (here), which I said I found anthropomorphic

God is the kind of being who is conscious and enjoys some kind of awareness of his surroundings (in God’s case, that would be everything). Second (though not second in importance), a person has loves and hates, wishes and desires; she approves of some things and disapproves of others; she wants things to be a certain way.

My interpretation is that such descriptions are only true by analogy, i.e. God is like a person. I understand the classical theological view to be that all statements about the attributes of the divine are analogical. — Wayfarer

I'm not qualified to comment on the nature of God. It doesn't look like it's intended analogically though. But I seem to recollect that it was said that we were made in His image, rather than the other way round, so perhaps we are analogical rather than Him.

Likewise, you have failed to deal with my point that one can make objective claims about persons. — Arkady

One can make objective claims about bodies.

This is non-responsive. As I pointed out, by your criteria, science cannot study anything at all, as it is in the business of only elucidating mechanisms, not in offering definitions, and it cannot study what it cannot define. — Arkady

I have not talked about definitions, that was you. Whenever I ask about persons you point to bodies, because science can recognise bodies but not persons. I haven't defined persons myself, and I have not asked you to.

1. If persons are bodies or bodily processes, then science can study persons.
2. If persons are not bodies or bodily processes, then science has a problem studying them.
3. So science necessarily assumes that persons are bodies or bodily processes.

And then after much study of the evidence, and some complex theorising, it concludes that persons are bodies or bodily processes. And from that circularity, we proceed, to announce that there can be no personal god. Which is true IF persons are bodies or bodily processes, but untrue if they are something else.

Now how about you try to engage a little with my points rather than your re-boiling of them into your points.

You might also address my point that, given your criterion, science can study nothing at all. — Arkady

I might, but I won't. Your boiling is a straw man. Science can study causes, mechanisms, bodies, and jolly good it is for doing so. It does so by methodically eliminating the subjective, which is personhood. This method disqualifies it from talking about persons, as distinct from bodies.

If Dawkins and you are claiming that there cannot be a god that is a complex expression of genes and environment plus whatever other mechanisms you wish to add, then there is probably not a theologian on the planet that would disagree.

Julius Caesar was a person. — Arkady

What is a person?

But this is where I came in, and so this is where the argumentative circle is complete, and since you nor Dawkins have an answer, there is no content to your pontifications, and this is where i leave you to it.

As I said, the notion of defining personhood is a philosophical question, but it doesn't follow that empiricism can't study or evaluate claims pertaining to persons, including whether or not they exist. — Arkady

This is a herring the colour of ripe strawberries in good light. Whether Julius Caesar existed or not is an entirely separate issue from what it means to be a person. The method of science is to eliminate the subjective and personal; it does not and cannot take account of them. Dawkins mistakes a methodological assumption for a proven fact, and your quote simply adds a little 'complexity' to the mechanistic reduction of the person. Empiricism cannot evaluate claims pertaining to persons unless it recognises the existence of persons as something other than the existence of bodies and mechanisms. But it cannot do that.

Yes, I am aware of that view. How does it follow that Dawkins (or scientists generally) believes that persons are nothing but the expression of genes? — Arkady

I'm not interested in Dawkins' beliefs, but in his writings. There is no science of persons, because science is concerned only with mechanisms. You suggested that my characterisation was unfair, I gave you a quote to support it. I dare say the man is humane enough to his wife, but that is not what he writes about.

As for the notion of persons being "nothing but an expression of genes," I don't know where you are getting that from (or if you are just spitballing as to how you believe a scientist might define a person). — Arkady

“We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

If there is no such thing a a person, then there is no such thing a a personal god.

What is a person, according to Dawkins et al? Do they believe in a personal person? I find myself struggling to defend the notion of personhood at all at times.
— unenlightened
Why ask Dawkins? — Arkady

Well If one is going to attack the notion of a personal god, it is reasonable to ask what a person is. Now if it turns out that a person is nothing but an expression of genes, a mechanism, then the the idea of a personal god is ridiculous; a mechanical god is simply of no interest. One needs some idea of a person being an end in itself, or a locus of freedom, or a seat of consciousness, or some other rather unscientific term, or so it seems to me, so I am asking science what is a person. I don't think there is an answer, and if there is no answer, then science has nothing to say about a personal god, because it does not know whereof it speaks.

the fact that most Christians believe in a personal God — Arkady

What is a person, according to Dawkins et al? Do they believe in a personal person? I find myself struggling to defend the notion of personhood at all at times.

Looking up from the screen, through the window I can see the daffodils.

What is the purpose of teaching philosophy in higher education? — Marchesk

In this case, medical ethics would be relevant. What is a person, what is consciousness, that sort of thing.

I grade papers, read books, and write articles - it's fun, but it's a damn vocation... not a religious calling. — Carbon

What is a vocation? My recollection is that it is a calling, (religious) rather than a mere job. And a damn vocation is presumably a calling to serve the devil. That would explain the vacuity of 'fun', that seems to be the sole point of your doing philosophy, apart from the comfort and status it brings you. How sad!

How could a bishop be trapped in a knight's body? He's not trapped. He just wants to move diagonally and he knows knights who do that are scorned. — Mongrel

The question though, is whether it is the horse-face that makes the knight or the moves he makes. Players don't like pieces that don't make the moves assigned to their form; it confuses their strategies. More confusion to the players, I say, I don't want to be played by their game anyway.

I think this is more to do with birth trauma than transgressive sex.

Sure, this is a slippery slope argument — Hanover

Happy to slide on down. It's between him and his surgeon; How the Olympic committee resolves their issues is of no interest to me either. He'd probably have to use the disabled toilet, but again its a matter of convenience; I don't mind aquatic mammals using the urinal.

Where do we draw the line? — MonfortS26

Draw your own line wherever you like, just don't tell me where to draw mine. If you're a plastic surgeon, you have to consider your ethics, but otherwise get your nose out of other peoples privates.

It doesn't much matter who shat on the carpet, it needs cleaning up.