Although I'm off to bed now, but I'll address some kind of problem tomorrow if you can raise one (although it won't be from the original dialogue). Good night!

yes, because it doesn't address my position.

But by all means find the famous passage and quote it and we'll see.

Why don't you read it and confirm what I'm saying.

Well I can't address the version in the dialogue - the dialogue you've definitely read - because it doesn't address my position. It is about peity and gods, not morality and a god.

And Plato's dialogue doesn't mention God either.

What puzzled you?

My argument concludes that moral values are the values of a subject, and the subject qualifies as a god. And as moral values exist, the god exists.

No grounds for puzzlement. Unless you think 'a god' and 'God' mean the same. But it puzzles me why you'd think that.

Well, you have to change it to make it relevant to my position.

The original is not about morality. Or a god. But peity. And gods.

The 'Euthyphro' problem - the one that contemporary philosophers think dispels divine command theory - bears little resemblance to anything in the dialogue.

That's not to deny it is a problem, just that we really don't need to read the dialogue.

I'm sceptical that you've read it.

I've read it. I know what I'm talking about.

But the question is asked "do the gods love peity because it is holy, or is it holy because the gods love it" or something alone those lines.

So, that becomes "is something morally valuable becuaes the gods value it, or is it valuable and so the gods value it?"

And then we have to change 'gods' to 'Reason' or 'the subject'.

And then I say "it is valuable because Reason values it"

And then I wait for you to tell me what the problem is.

No. The dialogue is not about morality, but peity. Have you read it?

you seem to think it is not to do with modality. It is entirely to do with it.

This:

1. If moral values are the values of a subject, then what is morally valuable will be contingent, not necessary.
2. Moral values are necessary, not contingent
3. Therefore, moral values are not the values of a subject

As I've said before, in my experience most people don't actually know what the Euthyphro problem is. You're fast confirming that.

Didn't make sense. You didn't raise a problem, just described the theory.

Express it as an argument in which the negation of my theory is the conclusion. Otherwise I genuinely don't know what problem you're trying to raise.

I am not answering until we agree on what the problem is because this is subtle stuff and so until you agree on the precise nature of the problem I am not going to address it, for otherwise you'll just change the goal posts mid point.

So, do you now agree that this representation of the Euthyphro problem is accurate:

1. If moral values are the values of a subject, then what is morally valuable will be contingent, not necessary.
2. Moral values are necessary, not contingent
3. Therefore, moral values are not the values of a subject

Oh, someone who can 'actually support their argument' eh! You don't get away with that.
First, you don't support an argument, nincompoop. Arguments are supports. What, do you have crutches for your crutches? Is your wheelchair on a wheelchair?
Second, go back to my thread and show me how my argument fails - that is, show me that I did not support my claim. Having little snide digs on other threads - think I wouldn't notice!!

He says Reason is a subject, and I don't know what that could mean. — Janus

I am a subject. You are a subject. Reason is a subject. Get it yet?

Me: someone killed Janet.

You: who - I have no idea what a 'someone' this killer could be is.

Me: erm, a person - a someone, not a something.

You: nope, not getting it. Incongruence. I agree with the person who said incongruence because that sounds fancy. He's said nothing - just belched hot air and flung insults around - but I like that he said incongruence. Maybe the reason no one agrees with you is that you're not making any sense, but just using these deductively valid argument thingies that no-one seems able to follow despite them being models of good reasoning.

It's called the 'categoricity' of moral prescriptions. It was given that ugly title by Kant, but it is almost universally acknowledged (including by many who are not moral realists - indeed, one prominent anti-realist - Richard Joyce - bases his whole silly case on it!!). Anyway, I haven't done a survey, but I have read the literature. Unlike you.

Total gibberish.

it's not the data set that's the main problem - it's the fact that my claim and moral realism are not synonymous. So it's as if I've said most people have two arms and you've said "ah, but this survey shows most people only have one head"

er, what?

so I say virtually everyone agrees that p is true and you point out that only 56% of contemporary philosophers who bothered to respond to some survey agree that X is true. Good one!!!

I am off to the pub, so drunk replies to whatever attempts at refuting me people make will be forthcoming later.

As normal, I don't really understand what you're saying or see its relevance.

I have not denied that justified true beliefs exist, for instance, or that knowledge is made from them (although I think I might deny that, but I haven't done so here).

I am sticking to morality at the mo, as maths doesn't really matter whereas morality matters more than anything.

But yes, 2 + 2 = 4 regardless of whether I think it does. But that's consistent with it being subjective.

For after all, I am arguing that rape is wrong regardless of whether I think it is, yet still the wrongness of rape is subjective.

You couldn't. But I am right about how anaesthetics work, yes? It's how our reason says they work. Otherwise we could sue surgeons for all the pain they caused us - for if we were merely hallucinating that we were not in pain when in fact we were, then we'd have a case.

Yes, certainly.

Bishop Berkeley believed that all the objects of our sensations - so all the furniture of the sensible world - was ultimately made of the mental states of a god. That is, he thought - well, argued - that we are living in a god's sensorium.

So for him external reality is subjective.

Most people assume he is incorrect and that the objects of sense experience are not made of mental states, but rather are extended things that some of our mental states give us insight into. That is, most people are 'objectivists' about the sensible world.

I think morality is subjective.

Feelings, beliefs, memories, sensations - these are all mental states.

Some things are made of them.

Pain, for instance. It's a feeling, yes? Feelings are subjective states. So pain is subjective. When it exists, it exists 'as' a subjective state.

That's why anaesthetics work - they work by eradicating pain, rather than by inducing the hallucination that you are not in pain.

Deliciousness is subjective.

Funniness is subjective.

Beliefs are subjective (what they are 'about' will often not be).

But let's put that to the side and embrace your way of understanding the terms. "Objective" refers to mind-independent things? Is that what you're saying? — frank

'Objective' means 'not subjective' and 'subjective' means 'made of mental states'.

So, objective means 'not made of mental states'.

That does not mean the same as 'independent of minds' though.

Take minds themselves, for instance. Minds are not made of mental states. They 'have' mental states. But they are not made of them.

Thus, minds are objective, not subjective. They are not made of subjective states.

Minds clearly do not exist independently of minds.

Thus something can be objective, yet be incapable of existing independently of minds.

Another example - first and second storeys.

A second storey cannot exist absent a first. However, although second storeys cannot exist independently of first storeys, second storeys are not made of first storeys.

yes, so I defined them at the outset so that they could be used in a uniform manner in this thread.

If you are using them differently, then I refuse to understand what you're talking about. Plus I genuinely don't know what you're talking about.

I defined how objective and subjective are being understood here. Stop trying to make this about labels rather than theories.

Subjective means 'made of subjective states' - that is, states of a subject-of-experience, a mind.

Objective means 'not made of subjective states'.

If you don't like those definitions, then just deal with it or start up your own thread in which you use them as you wish.

I am setting up the problem that I am then going to deal with.

Stop assuming I'm an idiot.

I don't know what you mean by objective information. I think it is a nonsense phrase. I don't think you know what you mean by it either.

Do you mean 'information'? Or 'information about things that are objective" perhaps?

I have not mentioned God at any point - apart from occasions like this where I correct people's misreading of my view.

God is not mentioned in any premise in my argument.
God is not mentioned in the conclusion.

The subject - Reason - whose prescriptions and values constitute moral prescriptions and values is a god. A god, not God (well, she might be God -not ruling it out). And she's one of those simply because her prescriptions and values are moral prescriptions and values.

So you see that the 'problem' has to do with the apparent necessity that moral truths have. Yes?

The problem, note, is not that it is likely that rape is right. For clearly rape is wrong and there's not a shadow of a doubt about that. And that remains the case regardless of whether you agree with me that the disvaluer of rape is a subject or, well, whatever.

So the problem has nothing to do with how sure we can be about the actual rightness or wrongness of anything.

The problem has to do with the fact that if my theory is true, then the wrongness of rape is contingent, not necessary.

Yes? That is the problem. And I am not softening it for my own purposes. I'll deal with it - but you need ot confirm that you and I are dealing with the same challenge.

She doesn't, obviously.

But if she did, it would be.

And that's a problem - yes. Why? Well, because moral truths are necessary and not contingent.

I didn't mention God. You need to address my theory not another one. So, if Reason were to prescribe rape, that would make it moral.

That means it is true when you utter it, but not me. And that makes its truth relative, not subjective.
You're misusing terms - I defined subjective in the opening post. Truth is a property of propositions. But to say that something is 'subjective' is to say something about what it is made of.