Appearance of bear when there is no bear: subjective. In your terms: exists, but not real.
— Gregory of the Beard of Ockham
The confusion is real in the sense that it affects you somehow. But I distinguish between this real and the real in my first comment. All our experiences are real in this sense.
Imagining a unicorn: ditto
— Gregory of the Beard of Ockham
Imagining a unicorn is another activity. — MoK
Please let me know if you are happy with what I said. — MoK
Okay, thanks for clarifying. "Is Real" = exists objectively. "Exists" may be subjective or objective.And the definition of exists depends on the definition of reality, so the combination is circular.
— Gregory of the Beard of Ockham
Correct. So, I need to provide an example to illustrate what I mean by "exist". When something, such as a human, exists, it is a part of reality. By reality, I mean the set of all objects, whether mental or non-mental. Mental objects, such as experiencing the red color of a rose, and non-mental objects, such as a cup of tea. So, something can be unreal yet still exist, such as an experience. In the same manner, something can be real and exist, such as matter. Something that does not exist cannot be real. And eventually, nothing is defined as something that does not exist and is not real. I have to say, making the distinction between existence and real started from a post by me that from which Bob agreed that evil exists, but it is not real. The story is long, so please read the discussion if you are interested. — MoK
For example, I seem to be seeing a bear in the woods, but it is only a tree stump, or I am imagining a unicorn, both merely subjective; versus there really being a bear in the woods?
— Gregory of the Beard of Ockham
I don't understand how this example is proper to what you said before? Do you mind elaborating?
Death can mean various things. (1) When a person stops breathing and the heart stops beating and soon the body begins to decay, people say "he is dead," without necessarily understanding what death is, i.e., its essence. (2) Traditionally, death is understood as the separation of the soul from the body. This is called the First Death in Christian theology. (3) There is also the Second Death, when the soul is separated eternally from God (goes to hell). (4) In 1968, the Harvard Medical School promoted the concept of "brain death", ....
— Gregory of the Beard of Ockham
I'd like to add another description of death to your list:
(5) When a person is dead to God. When a person ceased to exist to God. — GregW
... but in an ethical discussion about murder, we must understand death in the right sense. GregW thinks (3) is the appropriate sense of death for murder.
— Gregory of the Beard of Ockham
No. I do not think that (3) and (5) are the appropriate sense of death for murder. Murder can only be committed by people, not God. The death described in sense (3) and (5) are the prerogatives only of God, it is not murder.
But this cannot be correct, for it is beyond the power of any human being to put another to death in sense (3). How, then, did Cain kill his brother (Genesis 4:8)? How did Lamech slay one or two men (4:23)? How did Moses kill the Egyptian (Exodus 2:12)?
— Gregory of the Beard of Ockham
Yes, it is beyond the power of any human being to put another to death in sense (3), but Cain, Lamech, and Moses did murder, kill, and cause death in sense (1), (2) and (4).
Why is there a commandment against murder (Gen. 9:5-7, Ex. 20:13)? It is pointless to prohibit what cannot be done.
— Gregory of the Beard of Ockham
There is a commandment against murder because God did not want us to murder, kill, and cause death without His sanction. It is not pointless for God to prohibit murder as described by (1), (2), and (4).
And the definition of exists depends on the definition of reality, so the combination is circular.Real is defined as: actually existing as a thing. Existence is defined as: The state of having objective reality. So the definition of real depends on the definition of existence. — MoK
(I couldn't remember what (a) said.)(a) Abortion is prohibited after 6 weeks of pregnancy not resulting from rape or incest.
(a') Abortion is prohibited after six weeks of pregnancy.
Yes, b’ is immoral to endorse: it positively affirms abortion; whereas a’ does not. — Bob Ross
A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. Such cases are not infrequent. It is a fact that while in some parts of the world there continue to be campaigns to introduce laws favouring abortion, often supported by powerful international organizations, in other nations-particularly those which have already experienced the bitter fruits of such permissive legislation-there are growing signs of a rethinking in this matter. In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects. ---Evangelium Vitae, sec. 73
I would argue that If God go and kill someone it isn't murder because they haven't truly died since their soul is immutable and ends up in heaven to face God's judgement. — GregW
If you are using my definition and leveraging that God is not murdering people because they can't truly die, then no one ever commits murder. — Bob Ross
You are equivocating the killing of a person in the natural sense of the body dying and the soul be killed. — Bob Ross
There is no equivocating, when you are dead to God, you are truly dead body and soul.
We apparently disagree on the definition of death. What is your definition of death? — GregW
I hold God to a higher standard then myself; because, as you noted, we may tolerate laws because we don’t have the power and freedom to inspire what we really think. Can we agree on that? — Bob Ross
Evil is a privation of the good that God always wills.
— Bob Ross
I don't understand you! Good God can only will good. — MoK
Firstly, endorsing a law that does not protect against certain evil is not the same as endorsing a law that protects evil. To use your example about pro-life voting, a pro-life law that explicates it is impermissible to abort after 6 weeks is not technically endorsing abortion prior and up to 6 weeks; whereas a law that explicates it is permissible to abort before and up to 6 weeks is endorsing abortion. The former is permissible for a person to vote for (assuming that’s the best law they can manage to get passed) whereas the latter would be impermissible. This is a subtle and seemingly trivial note but is really crucial. — Bob Ross
If you go around arguing that abortion is perfectly fine up to the 6 week mark, then you are doing something immoral even if it is for a good end of mitigating the effects of abortion; and you don’t have to do that to endorse a bill that limits abortion without banning it outright.
I tell you that to prevent that I would have voted for a six-week ban with exceptions for rape and incest, and I'm no consequentialist
I see the appeal, but that would be a consequentialistic move. You are saying that you would endorse a bill that explicates that in the case, e.g., of rape it is not wrong to abort when you know it is wrong. — Bob Ross
The problem with this rejoinder is that it reduces God to a consequentialist. E.g., He codifies rules about slavery because no one would have listened to Him if He spoke the ethical truth that it is wrong; ....
God cannot be a consequentalist: an action's permissibility can be influenced by the circumstances, but some actions are clearly bad or good in-themselves and actions like murder, rape, etc. are bad in-themselves. He cannot tip the scales of an immoral act because the consequences of doing it would be a greater good: God does not weigh actions on a scale of the most good for the most people. — Bob Ross
And if thy brother-Israelite is brought by poverty to sell his own liberty to thee, do not submit him to bondage with thy slaves; let him work in thy household as if he were a hired servant or a free alien, till the year of jubilee comes. Then, with his children, he must be restored to his kindred and to his ancestral lands. The Israelites know no master but me, their rescuer from Egypt; they must not be bought and sold like slaves; do not use thy power over him, then, to treat him ill, as thou fearest God’s vengeance. Your men-slaves and women-slaves must come from the nations round about you; or they must be aliens who have come to dwell among you, or children of theirs born on your soil; these you may hold
as chattels, passing them on to your children by right of inheritance, as belonging to you in perpetuity; but you must not lord it over your brother-Israelites. — Leviticus 25: 39-46, Knox translation
C: EXODUS SLAVERY AND INDENTURED SERVITUDE
This is talking about beating slaves (or perhaps indentured servants) as permissible:
When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money.
This is talking about raping women, selling women into sex slavery, and the implicit permissibility of polygamy (although I will keep the whole passage so not to misconstrue the other parts)(emphasis added):
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please her master, who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has broken faith with her. 9 If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
......
ACCUSATION(S)
Rape, slavery, and indentured servitude are unjust and God cannot commit an injustice; so Exodus cannot be Divinely inspired. — Bob Ross
↪Gregory of the Beard of Ockham
"This idea occurred to me as a part of an argument that God cannot be a utilitarian: ...... So there is no maximum amount of goodness that God could create, just as there is no largest integer. But utilitarianism requires us to cause the maximum amount of good possible. Therefore God cannot be a utilitarian."
I commend your cleverness and ingenuity here; but I think this is fallacious. Goodness is not quanitified over like an atom: it isn’t a concrete being but, rather, a property that concrete beings can have.
...... — Bob Ross
↪Gregory of the Beard of Ockham
It seems to me that for every level of perfect ordering of the creation, there might be a more perfect possible ordering, so that ordering the creation perfectly (i.e., most perfectly) would be impossible.
Can you elaborate on this? — Bob Ross
I would say that there has to be a best ordering to creation because the thing that has a property the best is the one that has it 100% (even if there could be multiple beings with it 100%); goodness then is said to be the most of something when it is 100% good; the ordering of things that is best is relative to how well they and their relations resemble what is 100% good; and what is 100% good is univocal (viz., there can’t be two different ways to be 100% good just like there are not two different ways to be 100% soft, clear, circular, etc.).
I think you would be implying (by saying there are possibly two ‘most best’ orders of things relative to any given quality) that there is a way to be 100% of some property and not be 100% of some property (because there is a different way to be 100% of that very property). — Bob Ross
I’m saying this is a theological question, [n]ot a philosophical question. — Fire Ologist
4. He is the creator and purely actual, which entails that He cannot fail to order His creation perfectly (viz., He must be all-just); — Bob Ross
Lorenz describes — T Clark
This system thus exists a priori to the extent that it is present before the individual experiences anything, and must be present if experience is to be possible. But its function is also historically evolved and in this respect not a priori. — Lorenz - Behind the Mirror