Seems you're not well read, Terry. Maybe you should learn a bit about this stuff before pronouncing so confidently on it.

And also, what's the name of the thesis that two acts that are identical in all of their non-moral features will invariably be identical in terms of their moral features as well?

Er, no. Was one of your parents a goldfish? I say things and they just fall out of your head, don't they?

Reason is a person. A person. You know, like wot we is. A person.

What we call 'our reason' is a 'faculty'. That is, it is the means by which we gain some awareness of Reason's prescriptions and values.

Simple. Painfully, painfully simple.

Not Platonism, note.

Incidentally, what's the name of those contemporary metaethical theories that are often called - normally disparagingly - Platonic?

Who have you read, Terrapin? Oddly silent.

If you're really interested in this stuff, learn about it. — Terrapin Station

In the course of this discussion it has become painfully apparent to anyone who actually does know their stuff - that is, someone who's been properly educated and isn't just gleaning everything from Wikipedia pages and youtube videos - that you don't know what any of the following terms actually mean: category error; non-sequitur; begging the question; valid. It's also apparent that you don't know what a Platonic Form is or how Plato's view and those associated with it differ radically from mine.

So who have you read recently, then? Which contemporary moral philosopher's work have you recently read? I'm intrigued. Clearly you think you know a great deal more than me - so come on, if I'm to be shown the error of my ways I need to do some due-diligence on my teacher. Whose works have you recently read?

Now either make a proper argument - that is, construct a deductively valid argument that has the negation of either one of my premises or my conclusion as its conclusion - or go away.

No, I am not positing a Platonic Form. I mean, obviously not. I am positing a person - a subject of experiences. A Patonic Form - whatever one of those is - could not issue a prescription or value anything.

'Unenlightened' - yup.

I agree that religions are nonsense designed by the dumb to control the dumber. And it is a crying shame that the defence of God has largely fallen to such idiots, for they typically do the job so badly that others can be forgiven for thinking the case for her existence is as stupid as those who make it.

But in fact God does exist. And I can prove it to all who undertake to reason ruthlessly.

For instance, would you acknowledge that there are prescriptions of reason? Would you acknowledge that this argument form is valid:

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

And that the validity of this argument consists of no more or less than a prescription of reason to believe 3 if 1 and 2 are true?

There's nothing missing as the argument by means of which I arrive at the conclusion that moral values are the values - or valuings - of a god is longer than the one you're addressing.

Here it is:

1. For something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued.
2. Only a subject can value something
3. Therefore, for something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued by a subject.
4. If something's being morally valuable consists in it being valued by me, then if I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable
5. If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable
6. Therefore, for something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued by someone other than me.

As you can substitute yourself for me, that argument operates to put all of us out of contention.

Now, no doubt you will just deny premise 5. But that's absurd. That means you think that if you value raping someone, then necessarily it is morally good for you to rape them.

That's plainly false. That's as manifestly false as the idea that if you think 3 x 18 = 67 then it does.

So, wrong and wrong. And note, just 'saying' that a premise is false won't make it so. So yes, you're right that it is easy to 'say' that moral values are your values (or my values). But they actually need to be - that is, it needs to be self-evident to most of us - that moral values are your values or my values for premise 5 to be placed in any doubt.

It's weird he doesn't see the category error there, though. — Terrapin Station

It's weird you don't see that it is question begging to insist that a category error has been committed when an argument has been provided that proves, beyond all reasonable doubt, that for something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued by Reason.

Again, see the OP. Register that the argument is valid and all its premises true beyond a reasonable doubt. Then draw the conclusion: to be morally valuable is to be being valued by a subject, a subject who is not me, not you, not anyone apart from herself.

It's when reason values you. Duh! — Echarmion

Correct. Note, a proposition won't be rendered false by you sneering at it. You don't have that power.

I have my own question: how is it "intrinsic" value if it's entirely based on the subjective assessment of reason? — Echarmion

We can value something as a means, or as an end in itself. When we value something as an end in itself we are valuing it due to what it is. That is, due to its intrinsic properties.

When Reason values something in that way, it is intrinsically morally valuable.

See the OP for an answer.

Which indicates that you are not sure if "concentrating one's being" is a thing. — Janus

Yes, I don't know what that is. Our source of insight into what's a thing and what's not a thing is our reason. And my reason says that, until more clarifying information is supplied, 'concentrating one's being' is not a thing. That is, not an intelligible activity. I mean, how can I 'be' more intensely? I genuinely don't know what you're talking about. Buddhists and Krishnamurti fans and continental philosophers would nod approvingly at such utterances (which counts for nothing, of course, as that's just the kind of thing they nod approvingly at, as one might to a certain drumbeat). But I don't know what you're on about.

There are coherent activities - going for a walk, lifting rocks, thinking things - and there are incoherent ones - yellowing a seven, concentrating one's being. The omnipotent being has control over what is and isn't coherent. But that doesn't mean that nothing is incoherent. I mean, that doesn't follow at all. No, some things really are incoherent.

She, the omnipotent being, can do anything. Not just anything that is currently coherent, but anything at all. Why? Because she determines what is coherent and what is not. What greater power could there be than that?

Like I say, now you are derailing the debate. You are asking questions about how we can know things - anything. That's a huge question and not one directly relevant to the issue under debate here.

Where this debate is concerned, the issue is to do with the relationship between certain attributes - omnipotence, omnibenevolence and omniscience.

What I have argued is that from omnipotence we can get the others. For an omnipotent being has the power to do anything whatsoever. An omnipotent being can therefore be whatever they want to be. An omnipotent being is not going to be a way they do not want to be (they have the power to be, but that's different).

An omnipotent being has the power to make anything morally valuable, because being morally valuable involves being valued by Reason and an omnipotent being would be Reason because otherwise the omnipotent being would be bound by Reason (which is incompatible with being omnipotent).

So, because an omnipotent will be Reason, and because an omnipotent being is going to approve of her own character, then an omnipotent being will be morally good.

So we have no way of knowing what is a thing and what isn't, since our reason is not determinative of what is a thing and what isn't. — Janus

How on earth does that follow from anything I said? Of course we can know what is and isn't a thing - our reason (which are faculties, note - means of awareness) - provides us with the insight to know, and when we believe something to be a thing that Reason herself decrees to be so, and have come to believe it in manner that Reason approves of, then we know that it is a thing.

According to your argument our reason must be flawed — Janus

Again, that simply doesn't follow. It does in your mind, but that's why you need to update your mind. There's no 'must' about it. Our reason is, clearly, flawed, just as our sight is flawed, and our touch and so on. But there's no 'must' to it. There's a world of difference between saying something 'is' the case and saying that it 'must' be. I don't see at all how you got a 'must' out of it.

By your radically malfunctioning reasoning you can't know there is a computer monitor in front of you because sometimes your sight lets you down.

Anyway, you're changing the topic from one to do with the relationship between certain attributes to one to do with how we can know things - anything. So, stick to the topic and resist the urge to keep saying "how do we know?" and raising the prospect of radical scepticism at every turn.

We can know things - for knowledge is just about the right connections existing between a belief, the truth and reasons. The idea that those connections have to be bonds of steel that can never come apart is, I think, a massive exaggeration.

The important point where this debate is concerned is that an omnipotent being can yellow a seven.

You're just not getting this. What is and isn't a thing is constitutively determined by Reason. An omnipotent being would be Reason. And thus it is up to Reason what is and isn't a thing. And thus Reason can make anything a thing and then do it.

You seem to think that what you can conceive of places some limits on what an omnipotent being can do. It really doesn't.

Could "He" concentrate his entire being in, and only in, a cup of coffee, or the end of your penis, for all eternity if "He" wanted to. What would that look like? — Janus

I have literally no idea what you are talking about. And let's keep my penis out of this Hugh Janus. I have no clue - none at all - what a 'concentrated being' would be (one that's had the water removed?). I don't think you do either.

But an omnipotent being can do anything. And so if 'concentrating' one's being is a thing, then obviously an omnipotent being could do it.

because to want something is always to be insufficient in some way. Such a contradiction is forbidden because it makes no sense, and things that make no sense set no limit on God's potency or on anything else. — unenlightened

First, I do not see why having a desire would be a deficiency. Far from it - a lack of desires will be a deficiency. A being who, for example, has no desire for there to be no cruelty is hardly perfect.

Perhaps what you are thinking is that to have a desire is to be in some sense frustrated. But this, I think, is not true. Imagine you are enjoying yourself and you want the enjoyment to continue and it does and your wanting it to continue is what has made it continue - well, there seems no frustration involved there. (And even if frustration is implicated - that is, if having desires does involve being frustrated to some extent - it does not seem that frustration is always a deficiency either; for instance, it would be entirely fitting to be frustrated that a free agent is behaving badly).

Second, nothing is forbidden to an omnipotent being - that's the point. The omnipotent being, to be omnipotent, would need to be Reason, and it is Reason who determines what does and doesn't make sense - so you can't take something that seems not to make sense to you and then insist that the omnipotent being is constrained to conform to your notion of what does and doesn't make sense. That notion, though it may be rational, is derived from Reason. That is, Reason determines what does and doesn't make sense. But Reason herself, being the arbiter of sense, is not bound to conform to the notion of sense she gives us. That's like thinking that if I say "one must always have tea first thing in the morning" I am somehow bound to have tea first thing in the morning. No, you can reasonably infer that I do have tea first thing in the morning - given this edict I have delivered - but you cannot reasonable infer that I am bound to do so. I am clearly not.

So I have to conceive of God's creation as flowing not from any desire at all, but on the contrary, from a superabundance of quality - of love in that sense of love that is opposed to desire. — unenlightened

Nope, no idea what that means. Love, note, involves having desires. You can't love someone and be indifferent to them. And a "superabundance of quality" - er, what's that when it's at home? Krishnamurti nonsense.

You're not arguing anything. Don't give me your potted history lesson or just state I am in error. Argue.

For my money, it's on a par with "This statement is false": a nonsense, a broken grammatical amalgam that looks like it should say something, but doesn't.

You, it seems, want to take it seriously. — Banno

And as for this, I am not the only one to take it seriously. There's a vast literature on it.

You're just being dismissive again without any arguments. It's getting tiresome.

An omnipotent being needs to be Reason, because otherwise the being will be bound by the laws of Reason.

Reason isn't bound by the laws of Reason because she's Reason, the maker of the bonds.

Now, it is not, in fact, any kind of contradiction to say any of that. For everything just said, including the claim that an omnipotent being needs not to be bound by the laws of Reason, is consistent with there being an omnipotent being and that omnipotent being being Reason.

Not sure why you said this, nor what it could mean for reason not to be bound by the law of non-contradiction.... But leave that as moot. — Banno

Because you - you - said that it was a contradiction to say that Reason is not bound by any laws. So, not out of left field, but a direct response to what you said.

And you're really unpleasant. Byee.

The law of non-contradiction is a law of Reason - but it doesn't bind Reason herself.

Plus even I appear able to do things in violation of it. What I am saying is false, for instance. That proposition is true if it is false, and false if it is true. So I just created a contradiction - created a proposition that has the properties of truth and falsity simultaneously.

So bluntly : I think I know you. You're a reddit philosophy guy. Every post you've said fits the general beats. You're mean, but not smart enough to back it up, though you think you are. — csalisbury

Hmm, well a bit right and a bit wrong. I have never been on reddit. Not realy sure what it is.

I think I can back up most things I say. I mean, say what you like about me, but I do actually offer arguments.

And I am what I said I was - I am someone who cares passionately about the pursuit of truth but who also had once to sit through 2 hours of Krishnamurti spouting nonsense. There are hours and hours of these sessions with him on youtube - you can check them out for yourself. Anyway, I concluded that he had nothing whatsoever to say - no positive thesis, just lots of questions and gnomic utterances (the standard fare of a guru).

Anyway, I am glad you liked the now disappeared Descartes willy joke, which I must say I am quite proud of too. I didn't know I had it in me (as his maid may have said - he really did have an affair with his maid btw). But what's wrong with "philosophy plus barroom"?

I'm not too pretentious and I'm not too the other thing. — csalisbury

Yes, I hope that's true!

Right, I am probably going to get told to shut up as this is a thread for uncritical appreciation of Krishnamurti and not Cartesian filth.

No, I didn't. I argue with you when you disagree with me, not when you agree with me. So I disagree with your edit.

Let's see how deep this agreement between us goes.

An omnipotent will not be bound by any laws, even the laws of Reason. And for that to be the case, an omnipotent being would need to be Reason, no?

No, I would argue that I do not argue with you when you agree with me. So I disagree with you about that.

Well that wasn't remotely clear. I am not a mind reader. You just stated, apropos nothing, that the omnipotent being would be essentially selfish.

Now you're claiming that I need to deny this. Er, I don't think an omnipotent being is essentially selfish - nothing in anything I've said implies otherwise.

I mean, it's like saying "so the omnipotent being is essentially a grape"

Then I say "er, what? How on earth do you arrive at that conclusion"

Then you say "oh, you misquoted me. I just meant that you have to deny the omnipotent being is essentially a grape".

Really? Really? Are you planning on telling me a whole load of things I never claimed, are not in any obvious way implied by anything I have said, and yet that I need to deny? Because that strikes me as an entirely pointless exercise.

The. Omnipotent. Being. Is. Not. Essentially. Selfish. Nothing I said implied otherwise. Happy?

Now you also said I was speaking nonsense. Care to justify that? Or did you just mean that I must deny that I am speaking nonsense?

Not following - are you saying that being selfish and getting what you want are not - not - the same?

If so, good - they're not. Then what is your argument? That is, how did you arrive at the conclusion that the omnipotent being would be essentially selfish?

You didn't say the omnipotent being is essentially selfish?

No; I'm saying for your account to be consistent, you must make that claim. — Banno

You think that I - I - think that selfishness and getting whatever you want are the same!? No, I don't. I'm not stupid.

But you - not me, you - said that this omnipotent being is essentially selfish.

That came out of nowhere. No argument. Just as blank assertion. So, I am asking you to defend it. I do not see how you've arrived at that conclusion. I am suggesting that perhaps you're equating getting what you want with selfishness. After all, if you did then that would explain how you've arrived at the conclusion.

Now, I think you're getting a bit scared because you don't know how you arrived at that conclusion and you're worried that if you say "yes" to equating 'getting what you want' with 'being selfish' I'll refute you. Which I will.

No it isn't. Are you saying that 'getting what you want' and 'being selfish' are the same?

Hence getting whatever you want is not essentially selfish... — Banno

Again, what is your argument? How are you arriving at your conclusion? Are you saying that getting what you want and being selfish are synonymous? Or are you just sneering as you normally do and then wondering why I sneer back?

No, it isn't nonsense. It is sophisticated. But by all means assert things rather than argue them. That's your style.

To be omnipotent is to be able to do anything. Anything. So, can he be something he does not want to be? Yes, obviously.

That does not mean that he is, in fact, something he does not want to be. I can drink a cup of coffee, but I am not doing.

In fact, he is exactly what he wants to be.

Any riddle you try and generate you will be generating by appealing to laws that he is not subject to.

God as essentially selfish. — Banno

No, I don't see how you've arrived at that conclusion.

Yes, he is not bound by any law. Including any law that says that an omnipotent being is not bound by any law.

I think it clearly is a truth of reason that an omnipotent being is not bound by any law. But an omnipotent being is not bound by that truth, given that he is the one who made it true and so could unmake it just as easily.

So when I say that an omnipotent being will 'never' this, or 'never' that, I am not dictating to the omnipotent being - the omnipotent being can be whatever he wants to be - I am just describing what Reason, the omnipotent being, says about himself.

He has the ability to be any way he wants to be. So that includes having the ability to be ways he doesn't want to be. I don't want a coffee, which is why I am not currently drinking one. But I still have the ability to get myself a coffee.

So, he has the ability to be any way he wants to be, including ways he currently doesn't want to be.

Let's just start with omnipotence.

A being who is all powerful gets whatever he wants.

So, by virtue of being all powerful an omnipotent being will have whatever character he wants to have. In other words, he'll never be any other way than he wants to be.

Furthermore, a being who is all powerful is not beholden to any laws. A being who is all-powerful makes the laws that bind others, but is not bound by any himself.

That includes moral laws and values. So. an omnipotent beig, by virtue of being all powerful, is the source of moral values and the issuer of moral prescriptions (and all other prescriptions of reason - an all powerful being would therefore have to be Reason). An omnipotent being must therefore be Reason, for if and only if the omnipotent being is Reason will he not be subordinate to anything.

So we now know, just by reflecting on the nature of omnipotence, that a being who possesses it will be Reason and will be the source of moral values and prescriptions. He is not bound by them, because he is their source.

Nevertheless, because an all powerful being will never be any way he does not want to be, that being will always be morally good. Why? Because if the being is the source of moral value, then 'being morally valuable' is just to be a way that the omnipotent being, Reason, approves of. And we know now that because the being is omnipotent he is always what he wants to be. Thus, an omnipotent being will be morally perfect. Not, note, because he will have this or that particular character. But rather because whatever character he has, it is a character he approves of himself having, and 'being morally good' and 'being approved of by the omnipotent being" are one and the same property.

We can see now, then, that an omnipotent being will also be morally perfect. That is, an omnipotent being will also be omnibenevolent.

What about omniscience? Well, as seen above an omnipotent being must be Reason, for then and only then would he be bound by nothing. Now to 'know' something is for one's belief to be one endorsed by Reason, for that is just what it is for a belief to be justified, and 'knowledge' involves having a justified true belief whatever else it involves. Well, if knowledge essentially involves having a belief that Reason endorses, then Reason himself is the arbiter of knowledge and can thus be deemed omniscient.

Thus, an omnipotent being will not only be omnibenevolent, but omniscient also.

In this way, then, it seems clear that these features - omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and omniscience - form a unity. Possession of omnipotence, entails possession of the other two, and others besides.

Because no-one is pressing the most obvious and cutting criticism of the view I am defending, it seems it is up to me to respond to it. That is, for want of a real opponent I must follow a long tradition of addressing myself to imaginary critics.

So, I have argued that moral values and prescriptions are the values and prescriptions of a mind, a subject-of-experiences: Reason. The case is simple: values and prescriptions require a valuer, a prescriber. Subjects-of-experience - minds - are manifestly the only kinds of thing capable of being valuers and prescribers. Yet as the values and prescriptions of morality are clearly not our own, we must conclude that the valuer and prescriber is someone radically other - another mind, but not any of ours. Reason.

However, if there is another apparently sound argument that leads to the negation of my conclusion, then that itself raises a reasonable doubt about the soundness of my argument. Even without being able to identify the false premise in my argument, one would be within one's rights to reject its conclusion on the grounds that another, seemingly equally powerful argument, negates it.

There is such an argument, here:

1. If I am morally valuable, then I am morally valuable even if no subject values me
2. I am morally valuable
3. Therefore, I am morally valuable even if no subject values me

Both 1 and 2 seem every bit as self-evident as any premise in my argument. That is, Reason represents both 1 and 2 to be true as forcefully as she does the premises of my argument.

However, the fact Reason has been discovered to be a subject now gives us reason to question just what those representations really mean. We can look to our own analogous representations for insight.

Imagine I say "I value you staying alive even if I do not exist" or "I value you being happy even if there is no-one around" or something like that. What would you take me to mean? Surely not that somehow my values will exist even in my absence. That's silly. No, what I mean to express is that I value you being happy for your own sake, rather than for mine or anyone else's. I value you being happy even in circumstances in which I, the valuer, do not exist, because you can still be happy under those circumstances and it is you being happy that I value.

This is just the nature of intrinsic valuing; to value something intrinsically is to value it for its own sake, rather than one's own. If I value a work of art intrinsically, then I don't want anyone to destroy it, including in circumstances where I do not exist - something I might express by saying "don't destroy it, even if I don't exist", or even "don't destroy it, even if I want you to"

By hypothesis, intrinsic moral value involves the subject - Reason - adopting precisely this intrinsic valuing attitude towards something (by hypothesis, that is what it is for something to have intrinsic moral value). But if, when I value something intrinsically, I might well say "don't destroy this even if I am not around" or some such, then it is reasonable to suppose that this is what Reason will say about the things that she values intrinsically. So, if she values me intrinsically, she'll represent me to be valuable even under circumstances in which no-one values me. Just as I might say "I value you being happy even if no-one is around" Reason says "I value Bartricks being happy even if no-one is around" and/or even "I value Bartricks being happy even if no-one values Bartricks being happy".

I conclude that premise 1 of the counter-argument is not true. Yes, Reason does represent it to be true. But all Reason is doing when she represents premise 1 of the counter-argument to be true is telling us that she values me intrinsically, not extrinsically. So it appears to be true, but actually it isn't.

There. The original argument appears to be sound and the only argument that held out any hope of raising a reasonable doubt about it is unsound. The argument is sound, then.