The sensible faculties are through which awareness operates, — skyblack

I took the point here to be that our faculties are the means of awareness (with which I agree). But I dislike 'through which awareness operates', for awareness doesn't operate as awareness is not an agent. Through which awareness is achieved - yes. Through which awareness operates - no, not really.

but the faculties do not create awareness, — skyblack

Not sure what you mean here - yes, they do, but not by themselves as it depends how we acquired them.

So, if I'd just said a blanket 'yes' I'd have been agreeing with a view that isn't, in my view, quite right. But I thought the gist of what you were saying was correct: the faculties are the means by which we achieve awareness (when or if we do).

Otherwise there is no reason not to "like" my phrasing, since it is precisely describing what's going on. — skyblack

I didn't think it did - not as far as I am concerned anyway, hence my dislike. But Iike I say, I agree with the gist.

A warning from Two Planks is a commendation. But if he's your guru, we're not going to get on.

No, that's not the answer I want. If I am a bot - and I'm not - are we having a conversation?

The sensible faculties are through which awareness operates, but the faculties do not create awareness, right? The faculty of vision does not create awareness, right? — skyblack

I am not sure I like your phrasing. Our faculties are the means by which we gain awareness, but faculties do not themselves perceive things and when we perceive things we are not perceiving faculties. We perceive with our sight, but we do not see our sight and our sight itself sees nothing. If that is the same as what you're saying, then yes. But I am not sure it is.

Something else you mentioned was the term "imparting information". Is that just common usage or do you envision information pixies riding light beams? — Mark Nyquist

Oh stop asking sneery questions. Here's a question for you, Mark Noclue. What's the difference between a bot and an actual person?

Our sensible faculties - which provide us with visual and other sensations - and our reason (our intellectual faculty or faculty of reason).

So, I seem currently to be visually aware of a computer monitor. If, however, my faculty of vision is wholly the product of unguided evolutionary processes, then I am not seeing the computer monitor. Rather, I am having a dream of a computer monitor induced in me (albeit by, among other things, a computer monitor).

Why is the word 'agent' in inverted commas? And yes, what's your point? I am arguing that some agential guidance is necessary (not sufficient) for awareness. So yes, of course an agent can induce dreams. The point is that an agent can also induce awareness.

I've read it twice and the OP is not very clear and probably not very good as an argument. — Gregory

That's your analysis. I would give a very different one. But politeness prevents me from providing it.

You used the term "agency" so I'm asking if the same agency applies to the origin of the universe. — Mark Nyquist

That's a different topic. I am arguing that in order for our faculties of awareness actually to give us any awareness of anything, they'd need to be designed by an agent for that very purpose, otherwise we're just having accurate dreams.

I reread the OP for a second time and he seems to be arguing that dreaming the world into existence is impossible because we can connect logical connections in the world — Gregory

Er, what?!? No, I really am not! You're fired.

Where's the argument that matter is not mighty enough in its substance to provide perception once the matter rolls, meshes, and forms randomly into the proper structure? — Gregory

In the OP!!!

Every case and the origin of the universe too? — Mark Nyquist

I do not understand your question. We are aware of things, yes? I said premise 2 was true and that denying it would commit one to a nonsensical position.

So we 'are' aware of things.

I then argued that we would 'not' be aware of anything if unguided evolution had furnished us with our 'faculties of awareness'.

Thus, I conclude that our faculties of awareness are not wholly the product of unguided evolution.

This was all in the OP.

You have failed to address how being aware of a pie being in the oven is connected to evolution. — Sir2u

I am arguing that if our faculties are a product of unguided evolution, then they do 'not' provide us with any awareness of the pie in the oven. I argued this by showing how the lack of agential guidance would mean that our situation is that of someone having an accurate dream about a pie. I am somewhat puzzled, then, that you should ask me to show you the connection given that the entire OP is devoted to doing precisely that.

You can't seriously think that constitutes addressing the OP?

Can you identify a point where unguided evolutionary forces fail?
For example plant life, simple organisms, complex organisms, brains, brains with awareness.
And could you expand on why the "faculty of awareness" could not develop by a physical process. — Mark Nyquist

They fail in every case: that's what I'm arguing. That 'if' our faculties of awareness are wholly the product of unguided evolutionary processes - that is, if we just evolved them - then they never give us any real awareness of anything.

I would have to repeat the OP to explain this - but I argued it using cases where it is quite clear that awareness has not been achieved, and then showed that this would be the case across the board if blind evolutionary forces had developed our faculties.

I was pointing out that you need to put something in the place of matter as causing sensations and that your idea of God does not work in this regard. If you have another explanation in regard to epistemology do offer it — Gregory

Well you used entirely the wrong words to point that out.

Address the OP or go away.

They're not different. Ethics has a Greek root - ethos - and Morality a latin one - mores. But they're used interchangeably by professional philosophers. Unethical and immoral mean exactly the same - they mean 'wrong'.

Ethics has acquired an additional meaning - it can mean 'the study of morality'. But a course on Ethics and a course on 'Moral Philosophy' will have one and the same subject matter, other things being equal.

Kant's 'Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals' for example is called 'Groundwork of the metaphysics of ethics' in earlier translations. So whether one says 'morals' or 'ethics' or immoral or unethical is really a matter of taste, and in professional articles on ethics you'll find the terms used interchangeably.

Needless to say, a lot of people who lack any credentials in this area will now contradict me.

No argument, no justification, bare assertion. — jorndoe

I've got an argument and if you go through my comments you'll find it. But like I say, you're too ignorant and confident to be worth arguing with. I'm confident and not ignorant - it's an important difference.

Based on what Banno points out — Gregory

That's not a good start.

you don't have an answer to the problem of pain because God can do all evil as well as good — Gregory

Er, no, that's not anything I've said anywhere. And relevance to the OP? Christ, can't any of you actually focus on the OP and not on me and try and bloody argue something?!

Go read an SEP page on perception or Gettier cases or something (not that I've read them - I read the articles and books they're based on - but it's what everyone around here reads and regurgitates) then read the OP and try and engage in some kind of philosophical debate or go away and be confused all over someone else's thread. Buddhists! Jeez.

Is morality not a human construct? — Merkwurdichliebe

Yes. Morality is not a human construct. Some things are. My house, my trousers, my money. And some things aren't. Morality being one.

I've never seen evidence of its existence in nature, independent of human judgment. — Merkwurdichliebe

Jeez, why oh why don't they teach philosophy in schools?? You probably know another language and some algebra, but no philosophy, right? Unbelievable. Ethics is, by its very nature, the most important topic possible, yet they don't teach it in schools, with the result that it is only a tiny philosophical elite who know that morality is not a human construct (and we've known it for thousands of years). The rest of you are fated by your ghastly over-confidence and ignorance to spend the rest of your lives convinced - utterly convinced - that morality is a human construct on the basis of incompetent reasoning. I'd feel sorry for you if ignorance wasn't such a cozy blanket.

Now I will enlighten you if you want, for I have gobs and gobs of expertise and I can assure you you're wrong about pretty much everything where morality is concerned. But it will be very unpleasant for you - you do realize this?

You sound like you're a tantrumy brat and not a proper adult.

Enjoy blurting that tediously commonplace nonsense did you? Morality is not a human construction as anyone with the intelligence needed to think carefully about the matter for more than 5 minutes realizes. You offered no argument for your view. Provide one.

Timber, you have no expertise in ethics. You do not know, for instance, that rightness and goodness are not the same property; do not know about the supererogatory and subererogatory; and do not know about moral desert. You just have this childish word 'evil'.

Now once more, let's see how good your moral imagination is. Why did the good person choose B and not A?

So Timber, can an act be immoral, yet do no one wrong?

While you think over that one, here's another. A good person is offered the choice of creating one of two worlds: A or B. They must create one. A is a just world. B is not. They create B. Why? And to make it harder, note that both contain the same number of lives and the same quantity of free decisions. Why did they choose B over A?

it's immoral, other things being equal.
Evil is a quality of people more than acts. Plus there are subtleties that a blank 'evil' won't acknowledge.

Now stop asking tedious questions like a lobotomized Socrates.

Is 3 a tulip or the gulf of Mexico?

Er, genocide is immoral Timmy - worrying that you have to ask.

Sweet Jesus you do not know what benevolent means! And God is (as) reason? Do you mean subject to reason? — tim wood

No, I don't mean 'subject to reason'. Christ. Reason with a capital R refers to the source of all the imperatives of Reason and all normative reasons.

We are subject to Reason, meaning that Reason's imperatives are directed at us.

Look, this is all a bit above your intellectual pay grade, isn't it? Reason is the source of reasons. But he is not subject to reasons, unless he addresses himself (which would be weird).

Anyway, here's the argument that proves God.

1. Imperatives of Reason exist
2. All existent imperatives have an existent mind that issues them.
3. Therefore, the existent imperatives of Reason have an existent mind that is issuing them
4. The existent mind whose imperatives are imperatives of Reason will be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent (God)
5. Therefore, God exists.

Here's what follows from that:

1. God would not suffer innocent people to live in ignorance in a dangerous world
2. God exists (see above).
3. Therefore, God has not suffered innocent people to live in ignorance in a dangerous world
4. Tim is living in ignorance in a dangerous world
5. Therefore Tim is not innocent.

Tim deserves to be here - deserves to be living in ignorance in a dangerous world. God doesn't love us Timmy, sorry. Hates us. Couldn't give much of a rat's bum what happens to us. But how - how can a good person hate Timmy? It's a puzzler.

It's a prison matey. And the punishment is not to be cared about by the omnipotent being, but to be subject to the company of others like yourself. Like me! Welcome to prison Earth: you're doing a life sentence!

And then necessarily, all of it is good, and must be. — tim wood

You're not following, are you? There's no 'necessity' to anything if an omnipotent being exists, for an omnipotent being can do anything. Thus no truth is necessarily true, for the omnipotent being has the power to falsify it.

Now, the problem of evil. Would an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being create anything evil? I don't think it is reasonable to think so. As they're omnipotent, they can do anything, and thus they are capable of not creating anything evil. And as they're omnibenevolent, it is reasonable - given our understanding of what morally goodness in us involves - to suppose that they will not want to create anything evil. And thus they won't. So they haven't.

You have trouble understanding the implications of things. They. Haven't. Created. Anything. Evil.

Is a being all good all good all the time or not all the time. Is a being all powerful (potent) such all the time or not all the time. If not all the time, then not all. — tim wood

An all good being is good all the time. They don't have to be. They just are.

An all powerful being is capable of being powerful all the time. They don't have to be (if at any point they had to be, then they would not be omnipotent). They just are.

You don't understand these attributes. You seem to think that being all powerful involves being incapable of not being. Not it doesn't. And/or you think that if you're capable of doing something, then at some point you must do it (no, that obviously doesn't follow).

So, being all-powerful means being able to do anything. That doesn't mean you're doing everything you're capable of, does it? It means being 'able' to do things. I am able to throw the mug in front of me through the window. That doesn't mean I'm doing it. I'm not. It doesn't mean I'll ever do it. I'm fairly sure I won't. I am capable of doing it, nonetheless.

An omnipotent being is capable of doing anything. THat includes being omnibenevolent. Obviously. And thus there is no incompatibility between these attributes. Even a 5 year old can understand this but, it seems, not you.

Being omnibenevolent means being fully good. Being fully good formally just involves being fully approved of by Reason. And as Reason is God, it means being fully approved of by God. And as God is omnipotent and so is capable of adjusting himself were any aspect of him to displease him, then we can conclude - once more - that the person of Reason fully approves of himself and is thus fully good.

Two arguments (i keep giving them). One showing that omnipotence is compatible with omnibenevolence. And the other showing that an omnipotent being will also be omnibenevolent.

Now this is all very simple and straightforward. It isn't rocket science. It's obvious.

You're the confused one! Jeez. You're confusing questions about the coherence of the divine attributes with problems of evil. Focus.

Now, once more, show that omnipotence and omnibenevolence are incompatible. That is, show that it is not possible for a being to be both at once. Show that a being who, by definition, can do anything at all cannot be omnibenevolent at the same time. Good luck!

And note: omnibenevolent means being fully good. It does not mean 'incapable of being bad'. (Indeed, if a someone is good of necessity - that is, if they are incapable of doing anything other than the right and the good - then they will be less good than someone who was capable of doing otherwise and didn't).

Explain how being fully good is incompatible with being able to do anything.

No, not at all. God determines what is true. And as God can do anything, God has the power to make anything true. Thus, the propositions that are in fact true, are contingently so, not necessarily so.

We do have the word 'necessary'. But it has two quite different meanings. One is metaphysical and makes no real sense at all- you will not be able to say what this kind of necessity is without going in a circle (as you demonstrated when you tried to do so).
The other meaning is the one it has when we typically use it in every day life: it expresses an adamant attitude. It is synonymous with 'must'. It is necessary that you wash your hands before preparing food. That word necessary expresses the importance its utterer attaches to that activity.

You 'must' come over. Again, expressing a strong desire, not describing a metaphysical bond.

There is, then, that which we wish to emphasize, and that which we do not. And words like 'necessary' serve to emphasize importance.

There are things God emphasizes to us. Such as that 2 + 2 = 4 and that no true proposition is also false. And it is those truths that we call necessary. But they are not necessary in any inexplicable metaphysical sense. They are contingent, for all truths are. But the God is emphasizing these truths. And is giving us them independent of experience. But they are not 'necessary' in the philosopher's sense - which is no clear sense at all.

well I agree that a 5 year old could understand it. Worrying that you can't, wouldn't you say?

You don't seem to know what omnibenevolence involves.

Why on earth would I re-read one of your posts? They're not going to improve and i'm not a masochist.

how can they be the truthmakers for necessary truths? For either they are just true - in which case the necessity of those necessary truths still needs a truthmaker - or they are necessarily true, in which case you have not provided the truthmaker for the necessary truths either.

God is indeed the arbiter of truth. But there are no necessary truths. You keep asserting that I think they are. Odd. I think there are not. Not hard to understand. There are no necessary truths. And you don't know what one is anyway - no one does. 2 + 2 = 4 is true so long as God asserts it to be; thus it is not necessarily true, but just true.

No, they are not necessary truths in my 'system'. I have literally just said that there are no necessary truths and explained why.

Truth is a property of propositions.

Now, bearing in mind that I think there are no necessary truths and that the very notion makes no sense, explain to me what the truth maker of a necessarily true proposition is.

Although the agent who is God is not essentially omnipotent, for then that agent would lack the ability not to be omnipotent, which is incompatible with being omnipotent.

So God is essentially omnipotent in the way in which a bachelor is essentially unmarried. The person who is a bachelor is capable of having a wife, but he would not be a bachelor were he to exercise that ability. That makes him no less a bachelor. Likewise, the person of God is capable of divesting himself of omnipotence, but he would no longer be God if he did so. That makes him no less God.

God 'is' what he is, but he does not 'have' to be or do anything. This is why he can be said to be the source of his own existence.

You seem confused.
No, God is not a necessary truth (that doesn't make sense - propositions are true, not objects). God exists. But he does not exist of necessity. If he did, then he would be incapable of not existing, which is a restriction.

God can do anything. That means he can destroy anything. So nothing exists of necessity. And there are no necessary truths.

Do you think there are necessary truths? If so, what are their truth makers?

There is no point in trying to understand what sort of a thing a square circle could be.

My position is not that we can conceive of a square circle. We are not omnipotent, after all.

My position is that Reason is not bound by the laws of Reason. And thus Reason is omnipotent and can do anything at all, including all those things that our reason tells us cannot be done.

Like I say, I can see no way to refute my view without simply assuming it is false for the purposes of refuting it - which is to beg the question.

Note as well that I do not deny any of the laws of Reason. I do not deny the law of non-contradiction. And I am every bit as certain as you are that there are no square circles.

But Reason is not bound by the laws of Reason, for they are her laws. And that's why she can do anything, including rendering the law of non-contradiction false.

The law of non-contradiction is true. I am as certain of it as the next person. You won't find a person in the world who is more certain of the truth of the law of non-contradiction than me. I just don't think it is necessarily true.

I think this is a valid argument:

1. P
2. Q
3. Therefore P and Q

But I don't think it has to be. It just is. And so on. (And that's why I can still reason about things - and do. The laws of reason only need to be true in order successfully to guide us, they do not 'have' to be true - that they are actually true is good enough).

God can do anything. And that means there are no necessary truths. There are truths and there are falsehoods. But there are no 'necessary' truths. And we're none the worse for that.

Philosophy. Not maths or science. Philosophy.

Omnipotence and omnibenevolence are obviously compatible, as I just explained. Omnipotence involves being able to do anything......which includes being able to be omnipotent and omnibenevolent at the same time.

Furthermore, omnipotence positively implies omnibenevolence. For an omnipotent being has control over the moral law (they wouldn't be omnipotent otherwise). And thus they can make anything good, just by valuing it. And as they're omnipotent, they not going to disvalue any aspect of themselves, are they? For they can change themselves in whatever way they want. Thus, we can conclude that an omnipotent being will fully value how she is, whatever that may be. And as an omnipotent being's valuing activity constitutively determines what has moral value, she will be maximally good - that is, she will approve of herself fully.

"But, but, but, thermodynamics - thermodynamics. There can't be an omnipotent being who is also omnibenevolent, becaus thermodynamics. Thermos. Dynamic ones. They fly around and kill omnipotent beings the instance they try and be omnibenevolent too. So there!"

Ah, and now the condescension. I am not religious. You don't have any arguments for anything, do you?

What does omnipotence mean? It means 'able to do anything'.

Does that involve being able to be morally perfect? Yes.

So, an omnipotent being can be morally perfect.

Again: omnipotence involves being able to do anything.

Not some things and not others. Anything.

Is being morally perfect a thing? Yes.

So can an omnipotent being be morally perfect?

Yes.

It's like reasoning with a child.

God can do anything.

Child: can God do X?

Yes. He can do anything.

Child: can God do Y?

Yes. He can do anything.

Cild: what about S? Can he do S?

Yes. He can do anything.