Am I in the neighborhood of your approach? — Srap Tasmaner

I don't have a problem with anything you said, but what I'm saying is that we know things in terms of how they relate to us, and while that is not exhaustive, it is what we need to know to be human in the world.

If you only wish to take shots at my thread management, and not actually discuss your objections, I can't help you.

Wait a second. This is not fair, it is intellectually dishonest. You were the one who introduced "divine knowledge." — JerseyFlight

I introduced it as a concept, not as a reality. I could have said the same thing if I were an atheist. It is not part of my present argument that there actually is omniscience. I am only saying that it is a bad paradigm for human knowledge.

There is nothing dishonest or emotional in managing the direction and scope of a thread. If you wish to discuss theism or omniscience, I would be happy to do so, either privately, or in thread dedicated to that topic. This one is about human knowledge.

Which option do you prefer?

I was not aware there was such a thing as divine knowledge? — JerseyFlight

I do not wish to go off on that tangent in this thread. Here, one can take it as an ideal standard for human cognition I am rejecting.

I want to hear more about belief and knowledge. You gloss "believing that such-and-such" as being committed to the truth of such-and-such. Does that come in degrees? — Srap Tasmaner

Think of Descartes telling us about his methodological doubt. He begins by telling us that he was in his chamber. He knew, therefore, that he was in his chamber, which is an act of intellect, of awareness. Nor does he cease to be aware that he is in his room when he chooses (an act of will) to doubt it. (Just as dramas call for a willing suspension of disbelief, so Descartes willingly suspended his belief.) As he continued to know he was in his chamber, even as he suspended his belief that he was, knowing cannot be a species of (say, causally justified true) belief. So, nothing in the Descartes reflections ever calls knowledge into question, only his commitment to the truth of what he knew.

I think there are degrees (or, more properly, regimes) of belief. We may be willing to act as though p is true in some operation regimes, but not in others -- or we may be absolutely committed to the truth of p.

The whole idea of knowledge as justified true belief comes from a careless translation of Plato. The term doxa means "judgement" as well as "belief" and "opinion." It seems pretty clear from the Teatatetus 190A, that Plato meant "judgement," not "belief," by doxa in the context of knowledge.

Do you treat "knowledge" as a primitive, not to be glossed or explained? — Srap Tasmaner

I treat "knowing" as naming an actual human activity, the nature of which we can reflect upon. Denying that we know is, therefore, an abuse of language.

Now isn't there something a bit mad about the assertion that there are two tables? — Banno

I read it as two table concepts.

do we agree that, the bishop remaining on the same colour for the duration fo the game is a foundational truth, rather than a truth known by experience? — Banno

It is a conditional conclusion, and in no way foundational. The condition is, "If one follows the rules of chess, ...".

Truth is not correspondence to reality. Why? First, because our knowledge is not exhaustive, but leaves an untold amount behind. It is only a diminished projection of what we encounter. Second, because we do not and cannot know reality as it is, but only as it relates to us. — Dfpolis

This already claims to know beyond what it says cannot be known. — JerseyFlight

No, it does not. It reflects on our surprise when something we thought we knew teaches us something unexpected. From this we learn to be humble and not complacent in our knowledge -- to realize that in knowing, we do not know all.

Seems to me this criteria of exactitude that you seem to leverage is unproductive. — JerseyFlight

I'm unsure what you think I am proposing, I am merely saying that divine knowledge is not a proper paradigm for human knowing, and that infallibility and Cartesian certitude are foolish and inhuman goals. Our knowledge is human, not divine, knowledge, and it can suffice for a well-lived human life.

I know mountains, grass, stones, words, successful surgeries are performed on the basis of empirical knowledge. I reject the kind of skepticism (and I have good suspicion of where you got it) that says knowledge must entail exhaustive comprehension. — JerseyFlight

We agree completely.

Although I am a theist, my mention of God is merely to make the idea of perfect knowledge concrete.

But what if we use this "psychological" fact as the stepping stone to the larger metaphysical picture? — apokrisis

It is an epistemological fact that must be considered in our metaphysical reflections.

So your argument is that the "truth of reality" seems problematic as we appear caught between a subjective and objective viewpoint. It is we who construct the abstract concepts by which we understand the physical world. So all becomes modelling and the thing-in-itself never truly grasped. — apokrisis

No, that is not my argument. I am following Aristotle in De Anima ii, 7. We are not "caught between a subjective and objective viewpoint." To view, someone (a subject) must see, and something (an object) must be seen. So, it is not that we are caught, but that in knowing, we enter into a relation with what we know. Since knowing is relational, it cannot exist independently of its relata, viz. its subject and object.

In knowing we do not construct concepts. Rather, we encounter intelligible objects, i.e. things that can be known. (Remember that "knowing" names an activity that humans actually do, and that philosophic reflection seeks to understand the nature of that activity.) So, the content of our concept derives from the intelligibility of the object known, not from us. If we already had the content, we'd already know the object and no encounter would be needed.

Since, we grasp the object's intelligibility, we know it, and not our own construct.

. Objectivity must be forsaken and subjectivity accepted? — apokrisis

No. Subjectivity and objectivity are correlative poles of the relation called "knowing." While objects may exist independently of subjects, they cannot be known independently of knowing subjects.

It is still going to be an exercise in abstraction. But now the goal is to generalise the very idea of a modelling relation. — apokrisis

Humans do model, but knowing is not modelling. Knowing actualized prior intelligibility. Modeling adds hypotheses to what we know to filling the gaps in our knowledge. Or, perhaps, it may simplify what we know on the hypothesis that part of what we know is not needed to attain our goal.

That becomes pragmatism writ large. — apokrisis

There is nothing wrong with being pragmatic, as long as we limit our pragmatism to the practical order. Humans also want to know, not for the sake of doing, but purely for the sake of knowing. As there is no practical goal in theoretical knowledge, there pragmatism is irrelevant and useless.

I am unsure how Rosen's remarks are relevant to what I am saying.

I look forward to your further reflections.

Thank you.

I do not think that knowledge is either a normative concept or a species of belief. If knowledge were a form of belief, we would necessarily believe (be committed to the truth of) everything we know. We do not. We may know that we cannot afford a purchase, or that smoking is bad for us, and choose not to believe it.

Knowing that the table is also made mostly of space, and has a certain atomic structure, does not mean that we are wrong about the table's being solid. — Banno

I agree. The example is from Sir Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, who reflected on the table of common sense vs. the table of science. The lesson is we shouldn't extend the meaning of "solid" beyond its experiential basis. Saying it is solid is adequate to what we want to know, e.g. that your coffee cup is not going to fall through it and make a mess of the carpet.

I noticed a preponderance of physical examples. — Banno

You caught me! My degree is in theoretical physics. I tend to go to science for examples because reflecting on it raised a lot of my questions.

I know, for example, that the bishop remains on its original colour, the one that starts on my left will remain on the red squares for the whole of the game. That's not a truth that is known by making observations of the way things are and then describing them, but a truth that is in a way constitutive of playing Chess; were it otherwise, we would be playing a different game. — Banno

Yes. I agree that knowledge has a justified range of application. Of course, in doing philosophy we want a consistent framework for understanding the full range of human experience, from mysticism to cosmology.

Truth is a species of goodness, that appropriate to judgements and the propositions expressing them. — Dfpolis

Is this Aristotle? — Srap Tasmaner

Not that I recall. It just came to me as I was writing my response.

But why must it be exhaustive? — Srap Tasmaner

I don't think knowledge needs to be exhaustive. Still, if we demand that what we know correspond to reality, then, if we think a table is solid, and later find that it has an atomic substructure structure, we will conclude that our initial knowledge was as nothing in it corresponds to atoms.

If a state-of-affairs includes aspects A, B, C, D, E, and F, and we only describe it as having A, B, and D -- is that not true? — Srap Tasmaner

It depends on the context. If F is the fact that we were at the murder scene when the murder was committed, and we leave that out of our witness statement, then our statement is inadequate and false. If F is the fact that we scratched our noise before going to bed, that will not make the statement inadequate and false. Formally, these cases are the same (F is left out), but materially, they are very different.

It would be false if we claimed it only had aspects A, B, and D, but we needn't claim that. — Srap Tasmaner

We do not have to make an explicit claim for a statement to be false, because truth and falsity are context dependent.

What we want is correspondence between what we claim is there and what is there. — Srap Tasmaner

I think we want more and less than that. We want more if there is more known relevant to our needs, and we do not care if more is known that is irrelevant to our need. If you know that a material will fracture at the temperature that I tell you I'm going to use it at, but meets my requirement at room temperature, and you leave the relevant information out, what you say corresponds to reality, but is substantially deceptive. If I tell you F=ma, leaving out the relativistic corrections you have no need of, what I said does not correspond to reality, but is substantially true.

You can reasonably say "correspondence" should be a bijection, not an injection, but that's just semantics — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, you can and I think must specify the kind of correspondence you mean if that is your theory of truth. Still, since human knowledge is limited, a one-to-one mapping is not possible.

Truth is a species of goodness, that appropriate to judgements and the propositions expressing them. It seems to me that goodness is adequacy for purpose. Is my representation of reality sufficient/adequate for the action I contemplate, the theory I am constructing, or the information I am conveying? It is if it includes the relevant factors and not otherwise -- and that depends on context in a way not captured by formal correspondence.

"To say of what is that it is" while avoiding saying "of what is not that it is", and so on. — Srap Tasmaner

I am not arguing with Aristotle, but with a purely formal view of correspondence.

Exactly. Ergo there is nothing objectively evil about cancer, only subjectively evil about my cancer or the cancer of a loved one, or my general reduced life expectancy because of the existence of cancer (immature railing against death). — Kenosha Kid

No.

I am surprised to find that you think we are designed at all. — Dfpolis

In the blind watchmaker sense :) — Kenosha Kid

The fact that it is relational does not make it subjectively dependent. Whether or not you like it, cancer cells in people deprive them of good health.

There is absolutely no basis in reality for Dawkin's view -- a discussion for another time,

That there is nothing 'evil' about it. It's merely a fact of life, without which we'd have nothing to complain about... Or with! — Kenosha Kid

Evil is not about complaining, it is about objective inadequacy. As we grow old, our bodies become increasingly inadequate to support a healthy life. That is an objective fact, whether or not one is reconciled to it.

I was saying that nothing deteriorated — Kenosha Kid

But you did. Don't pull a Trump and deny what is on the record.

Cancer is a physical evil because it, itself, is a privation of health. — Dfpolis

This makes no sense. Something cannot have a property in and of itself if that property depends on other properties of other things. If the ball is objectively red, it is so independent of the state of any observer. To say it is red because people with red-green colour blindness see it as such is not a statement of its objective properties. — Kenosha Kid

Good and evil are relational. It is the relation between what is and what is adequate that makes things good or bad. There is nothing bad about cancer cells growing in a petri dish, only cancer cells interfering with health are a physical evil.

We are designed to breathe molecular oxygen which is a mild carcinogen. — Kenosha Kid

I am surprised to find that you think we are designed at all.

We are not designed to live forever, we are designed to be born, flourish for a while, and die. In the course of dying, our health will decline, and that is a physical, but not a moral, evil. So, what point are you making?

Second, the very fact that you call it a "deterioration," means that it is a lesser state. i.e. one in which some perfection is no longer present. — Dfpolis

That can't seriously be your argument. So if I say "There is no God," do you then think there must be a God in order for him to not exist? — Kenosha Kid

I can make no sense of your objection. If God did not exist, we would not say His existence "deteriorated." To deteriorate is to become worse. In other words, something was better and has now lost its previous perfection.

The halfhearted proper-functionalism with which you attempt to justify this position doesn't actually do any work, because as you yourself admit, what constitutes proper function is itself a normative stance, so this is just like trying to pull yourself out of the swamp by pulling on your own hair. — SophistiCat

Not quite. We can understand, scientifically, the purposes of many things, aka teleology. We know that if you have a defective heart, your blood will not circulation will be in adequate. It is on this basis, that we decide on norms for heart function. There is no circularity here, just openness to reality

I substantially agree with what you said, because I think that humans can grasp teleology, and so what "should" be. We may have some differences as to detail, perhaps on foundationalism, and perhaps not.

if you agree that a cause of a thing is not the thing itself, then you agree yours was an irrelevant point since the claim is that a thing like cancer is objectively evil in itself. — Kenosha Kid

This makes no sense. Cancer is a physical evil because it, itself, is a privation of health.

If we are designed to rely on carcinogenic substances to live, thus assuring eventual deterioration of health, then there is no meaningful perfection of human life that is deprived by this deterioration. — Kenosha Kid

First, we're not designed to live on carcinogens. If we were, they wouldn't harm us. Second, the very fact that you call it a "deterioration," means that it is a lesser state. i.e. one in which some perfection is no longer present.

That's not evil, — Kenosha Kid

It is not a moral, but a physical evil.

it's just irrational, immature, arrogant, egotistical railing against our own nature's. — Kenosha Kid

It is neither immature nor ranting to call things by their proper names. You are confusing accurate reporting with an emotional reaction.

The act itself is not its own cause. — Kenosha Kid

I never implied that it was.

Again, this is not a description of the thing, but of the impact of the thing on the sufferer. — Kenosha Kid

So? The evil is still a privation -- the lack of a perfection in a human being.

were we to die of nothing else, we would die of cancer due to the small carcinogenic properties of the very oxygen essential to our life. — Kenosha Kid

I did not say that it was evil because it might kill us, but because it interferes with our physiology.

Describing such things as evils is precisely the adolescent temper tantrum I mentioned, — Kenosha Kid

I am not having an emotional outburst, but presenting a reasoned analysis. So, please refrain from demeaning mischaracterizations.

nothing more than an inability to accept facts that don't happen to suit us. — Kenosha Kid

This is also incorrect. I, and most other people, accept the fact that bad things happen. I do not wish to continue if you are going to engage in further ad hominem attacks.

A "privation of some perfection" is, again, poetry. If, for instance, you were to take pleasure in the pain of someone you did not cause, no one and no thing is literally being deprived. — Kenosha Kid

No, it is neither "poetry" nor a metaphor. It is a literal claim. If you took pleasure in harm to others, you would lack the disposition to empathize proper to a social animal, which humans are. So, you would be a defective human being.

Cancer in and of itself is a mindless and inevitable consequence of terrestrial biology. It was not created with purpose, does not proceed with purpose, and knows nothing of harm. It is only with respect to someone it impacts that it takes on the quality of evil and only in a poetic sense. — Kenosha Kid

No thing is evil in abstraction, for existence is a perfection, and so intrinsically good; however, cancer does not exist in abstraction, but only in organisms. In an organism it interferes with physiological processes, depriving the organism of its health. This privation is not poetic, but literal.

It is our arrogance and bias that says we do not deserve it, should not have it, are being deprived. 'It is unfair because it effects *me*.' — Kenosha Kid

I am not saying cancer is a physical evil because people don't like it or have an adverse psychological reaction to it, but because it deprives their bodies of their proper function.

I find it intensely egomaniacal to believe that anything that harms one is evil, like a teenager throwing a tantrum because they do not get what they want, when they want, and hang the consequences. — Kenosha Kid

If I confined the application of the term "evil" to things that harmed only myself, I might be ego-driven. Clearly, I am not doing that. I'm saying that any privation, anything not properly formed, any lack of proper perfection, is an instance of evil -- not necessarily moral evil, but ontological evil.

Evil is not defined as a privation of anything. It is defined in terms of immorality or wickedness. — Kenosha Kid

When we look at examples of evil, we always see a privation of some perfection -- of good health, of justice, of compassion, of rights, etc. So, while you may use words as you wish, I prefer to analyze examples to understand what terms mean.

When we say cancer is an evil, it is poetic. It is not literally evil. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, it is literally evil -- a privation of good health. Evil is not a thing, but the absence of a good that should be present.

Human acts are good or evil in the same way -- they advance our self-realization or inhibit it. Physical and moral evils are both privations of good -- of the full realization of whatever it is we are discussing. Some goods and evils are moral because they are due to free will, but that does not change the basic character of good as a realized perfection and evil as the absence of an appropriate perfection.

There are physical evils, e.g. cancer and birth defects. Tires can be bad, and so can meat. None of these bad things have any moral character. They aren't immoral. they're just bad.

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What value you think pointing out that a tyre can be bad to the argument that it is moral actors who have moral qualities is beyond me. — Kenosha Kid

I made no such claim. We were not discussing subjective moral character, but whether good and evil can be objective. If you do something that makes the world more defective, like polluting the air or poisoning the water, that is objectively bad, regardless of your intentions; however, if you intended to do good, you are not culpable for the evil you caused.

Thank you for your measured response. I think it is absolutely certain that there is an uncaused cause which has all the philosophical attributes of God. So, I don't think you have reviewed the case for theism adequately. I would be happy to discuss it with you privately, or in a new thread.

Maybe God's omniscience works like any other argument one has with a theist: — Pro Hominem

Yes, like instead of responding to what the theist actually says, the atheist spins a demeaning fantasy.

o far so good but the cause, if there is one, arising from God's foreknowledge can act before a person makes decisions. — TheMadFool

First, the identity is that "the builder building the house" names the identically same event as "the house being built by the builder." The only difference is how we are thinking about that event. In the first case we are focusing on the causal aspect (the builder building) and in the second, on the effect being actualized (the house being built). Still, this mental separation does not reflect any real separation or separability, because there is only one event, not two as in accidental causality (time sequence by rule). In other words, the reality of building is identically the reality of being built.

Second, God is not in time, but sees the entire space-time manifold at once -- just as we can see the whole of a map at once. So, there is no before and after in God. In other words, from God's perspective, His knowledge is not before what is known, but concurrent with it.

Third, knowing does not cause what is known. Even if we create something, we can only know it as it is from its actual existence. Given that free will decisions, if they exist, are not immanent in the prior state of the cosmos, the only way to know them is to see what is actually decided. So, the idea that knowing causes the reality known is fundamentally confused.

Taking this to its logical conclusion, foreknowledge of any kind, god's or a time traveler's, should have causal power of some nature to force people to make decisions according to what was foreseen. — TheMadFool

We need to reflect on the actualization of potential -- which is what causes do. Before we know X, we have the potential to know X, and X has the potential to be known. When we turn our awareness (aka the agent intellect) to X. we actualize both of these potentials -- we actually know X and X is actually known. We could not actualize X's potential to be known (X's intelligibility) if X did not exist to have that potential. So, there is no way knowing X can make it exist.

There are non-deterministic methods available for foreseeing the future — TheMadFool

That is not what I am saying, nor do I agree. While we humans speak of God's foreknowledge, it is only "fore" to us, not God. To God it is concurrent knowledge, for God simply is. He does not know what I will choose by knowing the state of the cosmos before my choice and predicting what i will decide, but by knowing what i actually choose at the space-time coordinates of my actual choice.

The good or evil of subjects is a moral category. The good of things and acts is a metaphysical concept. There is no moral value to a good tire or a bad tire, play or specimen. They are good or bad because they can accomplish their functions well or poorly.

It is immoral, however, to pass off a bad tire as a good tire, because now we have brought in an intentional element -- the intent to cheat or deceive. So, there is a relation between metaphysical goodness (how well a goal is implemented) and moral goodness. Most clearly, it is moral to will the advance the good of human self-realization, and immoral to will to oppose it -- for example by not providing what a child needs to flourish.

In your example, intrinsically, pushing is neither good nor bad, but whether it was intentional or not, the risk of being in traffic is objectively evil. So, the evil of the situation does not depend on one's intention. Rather, it is the culpability of the agent that depends on the intention. Maybe the goal is to save the child from an even worse danger, or maybe there is an intent to harm.

You are confused. I am not saying that good or bad acts have a moral dimension independently of the intent of the agent, just that they are objectively good or bad.

Acts can be objectively good and evil — Dfpolis

Any theory that assumes that the act itself has moral character will inevitably generate absurd moral statements. It doesn't take long to think of examples. — Kenosha Kid

Morality reflects the agent's intentionality, not directly the good or evil (privation of good) of acts. A choice is moral if the agent intends to do good and avoid evil. The good of acts is an ontological, not a moral, property. It does not depend on the act's relation to the agent effecting it.

I would be glad to discuss your counterexamples.

If God knows X does Y because X freely chooses to do Y, this is re-phrasing the principle of identity. This says nothing about what causes Y -- simple that X does Y. — Dfpolis

I probably didn't understand what you mean here but if one imputes a cause to Y then, we're presupposing determinism is true and that's begging the question. — TheMadFool

As Aristotle observes in the Posterior Analytics ii, 12, 95a14-24, there are two kinds of efficient causality, which have subsequently been called "essential" and "accidental." Hume and Kant didn't learn the fundamentals before starting, and so didn't know this. They thought that all causality involved time-sequence by rule. That is accidental causality. For Kant, this implied determinism and gave rise to one of the supposed "antinomies" motivating his transcendental confusion.

As Hume pointed out (and had long been known), there is no intrinsic necessity to accidental causality or time sequence by rule. It is an empirical generalization, like thinking that all crows are black on the basis of the few crows we've seen. As a generalization, there is no justification for applying it outside of its empirical basis, viz. Newtonian phenomena. So, there is no reason to think that it applies to acts of will.

Even in insensate nature, time-sequence by rule is not deterministic. If I plant a grain of wheat (a causal event) I can rationally expect a wheat plant to grow (the correlative effect), but still this does not happen infallibly. So accidental causes do not, and cannot, fully determine effects. Since the causal event is temporally prior to its intended effect, there is always the possibility of intervention in the intervening interval.

Essential causality, which is what I had in mind in my comment, is quite different. While accidental causality involves two separate events, essential causality involves only one. So, there is no possibility of an intervening event. While accidental causality lacks necessity because it is based on empirical generalization, essential causality is absolutely necessary because it is based on the principle of identity.

Aristotle's paradigm case is a builder building a house. We separate this event mentally into a cause (the builder building) and an effect (the house being built), but in fact it is one, inseparable event. There is no building without something being built and there is no being built without something building. So the builder building the house is identically the house being built by the builder.

What makes a cause essential is that it actualizes a potential. What is potential is not yet operational and so it cannot operate to actualize itself. Thus, the actualization of every potency requires the operation of a prior operational (actualized) cause.

This is the kind of causality by which free agents actualize their commitment to one of the possibilities open to them. So, God, in knowing that an agent chooses to actualize possibility P1 instead of P2, does not determine the agent's choice of P1. The free agent does.

When God knows X will do Y, it means that, on pain of God losing his omniscience otherwise, X must/will do Y when the time comes. — TheMadFool

Time is the measure of change according to before and after. Since God is perfect, He can neither gain nor lose attributes, and so is immutable. Since there is no change in God, there can be no time to measure it. Thus, whatever God knows, He knows from a timeless perspective -- seeing the space-time manifold as a whole, rather than sequentially, as we do.

That God knows the cosmos in this way does not mean that the cosmos does not exhibit the temporal dynamics we experience. It just means that God sees it all at once. Part of what He sees is free agents actualizing their potentials. Indeed, He could not see us choosing our courses of action if we did not choose our courses of action.

You said that there's an equivocation fallacy in there somewhere. Can you point out where exactly? — TheMadFool

The question is: what possibility does "can't" deny. In the first instance, it is the possibility of God knowing in error. So, whatever God knows, it knows truly. In the second, it denies the possibility of us choosing freely. This is not the same as the first possibility, as how ever we choose, God can know it truly.

The background error here is the assumption that God knows by prediction, rather than by immediate Presence. If God predicted what we will choose, then there would be some reality prior to our choice that would infallibly determine our choice. But, if God knows what we choose, not by predicting it, but by being present to it, then there need be no prior determining factors.

Yours is the question St. Augustine pondered in The City of God. He wrote of people choosing to be citizens if the City of God (those who are committed to the common good) or the worldly city (committed to selfishness). This is often expressed in theological terms, but the issue is pragmatic, not other-worldly. Augustine identified God with Love, saying that God is not loving, but identically Love. So, the City of God is not a religious sect, but all of those committed to love.

The same division was considered by the famous Victorian ethicist, Henry Sidgwick, who was unable to find any pragmatic basis for choosing to be either selfish or unselfish. Aquinas sees the choice as the fundamental option of moral life -- the essential act of free will, from which most of our life choices follow.

So, I would say that the fact that this division exists, and is not predetermined by human nature, is a consequence of, and evidence for, free will.

Allowing this degree of context-dependence in a moral objective framework strikes me as a covert admission that morality is not objective, that if a particular judgment can depend on the actor, it must necessarily depend also on the judge who seeks to understand it. — Kenosha Kid

While I agree with most of what you say, I think this conclusion is unjustified. Acts can be objectively good and evil, even though we can't know the situation exhaustively. In other words, we need to consider two distinct, but related factors: the objective act, and the culpability of its agent(s). Objectively, acts further or inhibit the realization of our human potential (aka sel-realization) and that is the basis of traditional natural law ethics. Nevertheless, even the most informed and best intentioned human, can't know the situation exhaustively. The best rule-based ethics seeks to mitigate culpability by providing a framework that usually yields good results. Still, ethical rules are not infallible, and the better one understand the objective situation, the better one's moral judgements can be -- and the greater our culpability if we choose evil.

If will is reason, then subject to reason. If will not-reason, then how is it free? — tim wood

Will is not reason, but will and reason are interrelated. Reason knows, and will commits in light of what is known.

Knowing does not compel commitment. That is how will can be free.

Committing does not imply effective implementation. So, no failure of implementation can be evidence against free will.

I fail to understand your analogy.

Buridan's ass addresses a case of zero measure (exact balance on a knife edge) and is not a model of free will, which does not involve a balance of forces because motivations are not quantifiable, and so are not analogous to quantifiable forces.

2. If God is omniscient then X can't do something different to what God thinks X will do (premise) — TheMadFool

If God knows X does Y because X freely chooses to do Y, this is re-phrasing the principle of identity. This says nothing about what causes Y -- simple that X does Y.

If X can't do something different to what God thinks X will do then X doesn't have free will (premise) — TheMadFool

This is an equivocation. In 2, "can't" denies the possibility of God erring about what is real. In 3, it denies the possibility of X choosing freely, which has nothing to do with whether God knows the truth of how X acts. If X chooses freely and God knows it, there is no problem.

Are you asking me? I mostly posted my own reflections.

On Plantinga, you can Google "evolutionary argument against naturalism (EAAN)". I agree with the part I cited, but not the whole argument.

While I agree that at best the fine-tuning argument only shows that a powerful mind created the universe, and not an omniscient mind, your four step argument is based on an equivocation, and so has an undistributed middle. In your argument "could" means both "has the power to" and "may will to."

Here is where the equivocation occurs:

2. If the universe could not have existed, then God could have failed to achieve His purposes. — Jjnan1

In the first "could" the possibility might be due to lack of will rather than lack of power. In the second, you assume that God has willed a purpose, which might not be true based on the premise.

basic natural selection says that species only want to ensure the well-being of the species — dan0mac

This is anthropomorphizing a physical process. "Species" are abstractions. While species concepts have a foundation in reality, they do not exist in nature, and so can have no desires of any kind. So, natural selection can say nothing about what the human species wants. It only says how variant offspring are selected based on survivability by the laws of nature.

In fact, since the theory of evolution is based on physical principles, can have nothing to say about human intentionality. As Plantinga argues, it does not matter to evolution whether we have true or false thoughts, as long as what we do increases our chance for survival. Further, I have shown previously that intentional operations (such as knowing, desiring and willing) can't be reduced to physical operations. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4732/intentional-vs-material-reality-and-the-hard-problem So, whether we are selfish or loving cannot be determined solely on the basis of physical considerations such as those justifying evolution.

What is possible can best be resolved by reflecting on what is actual. People actually do love, not merely in the sense of eros, but in that of agape. We make the good of the beloved our good, and harm to them harm to us. Humans actually die to save others. The members of the FDNY rushed to the Twin Towers even before the alarm sounded. Soldiers throw themselves on grenades to save their comrades. Men and women gave up their lifeboat seats as the band played "Nearer My God to Thee" and the Titanic filled with icy water.

We can't answer your question by appealing to physical considerations, because they tell us nothing about human commitments. Still, if we're open to reality, there is no doubt that some choose love over selfishness, and others call them "suckers" and "losers."

You can have context-independence, or you can have observer-dependence. I don't think both is logical. — Kenosha Kid

Every act of knowing is both subjective and objective. There is no knowing without both a knowing subject, and a known object. So, the idea of purely objective knowledge is an oxymoron. Precinding from Omniscience, before it is encountered by a subject, the object cannot be known, only intelligible -- only able to be known -- and so potential rather than actual with respect to human knowledge. When it is encountered, the subject attends to some notes of intelligibility to the exclusion of others. That is abstraction. In no instance is human knowledge exhaustive and "objective." It is always relational, partial and subjective as well as objective..

When we judge moral acts, we must take them out of context to some degree. Our brains simply lack the capacity to represent everything that might be relevant. So, we are forced to deal with abstractions, treating what seems most relevant to us -- not the situation in its full complexity. That is why Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics that we most not expect the same degree of exactness in all sciences.

So, if you want to discuss human judgements about human acts, you must consider the limitations of human knowledge.

I think that there are objectively good and evil acts, but that does not mean that "there is some moral evaluation of that event in that context that it is correct for everyone to make, i.e. that the correct moral evaluation doesn't change depending on who is making it."

The reason is simple: people vary in knowledge and analytic capability. So, the objective good or evil of an act has nothing to do with how a particular individual should evaluate it. Thus, there is a difference between the objective goodness of an act and a person's subjective culpability.

Acts are good to the extent that they realize our individual human potential, i.e., to the extent that they make us more fully actualized human beings. As human potentials vary, so does their realization.

As I take the logical ladders down this well, I end up at the deeper question: "Is capital truth(or Truth) something that the human mind can realise".
I think it is not, that is to say, we will never be able to prove anything is 100% True whilst we are using 'relatively blunt' tools like 'eyes', 'mathematics' and 'reason'. — minuS

We can prove things by abstracting from, rather than generalizing upon, experiential data. In the Hume-Mill model of induction, if all we see is black crows we are justified in saying "all crows are black." Of course this is not strictly proven. What Hume-Mill induction does is add to the data the assumption that other cases will be like those we have experienced. In the Aristotelian-Thomist model of induction, we abstract from what we know -- leaving behind notes of comprehension we are not concerned about. So, in learning arithmetic a child learns that 2 pennies plus 3 pennies is 5 pennies, and 2 oranges plus 3 oranges is 5 oranges, and then comes to see that the conclusion is implicit in counting, and so, no matter what is counted (abstracting from what is counted), 2+3=5.

So, as long as we base our conclusions on premises justified by abstraction rather that generalization, we can prove things. There are two difficulties here. First, natural science seeks conclusions which can't be justified by abstraction. Newton's great insight, that the same laws that apply on earth apply throughout the cosmos is an essential generalization, and it can't be justified by abstraction. Second, once we start abstracting, we tend to forget that we are dealing with abstractions, not with reality in its full contextual complexity. In Science and the Modern World, Whitehead called this "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness."

We can illustrate this fallacy by considering an electron. If we consider the abstraction of an electron in isolation, there is no way we can know that it will repel other negatively charge particles. We can only discover this by observing its interactions with such particles -- by considering it, not in abstraction, but in context.

The same reasoning applies to the thesis that biology can be reduced to physics. It cannot be for the simple reason that in doing physics we abstract away all the contextual data that biologists study. In physics, we do not care in what context an electron occurs -- e.g. whether it is in a eukaryote or a prokaryote. So, physics lacks data relevant to this essential biological distinction -- and, if it has no data on some biological fact, it surely cannot be an adequate basis for deducing that fact. So, reductionist commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness as part of their stock-in-trade.

However it is possible, if the 'practitioners in the field' hold to false premises, or are working from incomplete knowledge, it is possible to prove something that is not true. — FreeEmotion

Exactly. The hypothetico-deductive method cannot prove anything to be true, although falsification can prove a hypothesis false. What it can do is show that our hypothesis is adequate to the facts we know (confirmation) and so a rational basis for moving forward. Often, that is all we need. If you are building a bridge, then the fact that Newtonian physics is adequate to our needs suffices. If we are constructing a "theory of everything" (or at least 6% of everything), it is not. So, what we rationally accept as true depends on the issues we are dealing with.