Always relish reading your posts. — Noble Dust

How do you apply relish to an activity? That seems incoherent to me, or perhaps I am missing something.

Assuming an afterlife is worse than here. Are we talking brim stone and hellish landscapes? Worse in what way, and why exactly? — TiredThinker

I don't know. I just know that my reason and the reason of virtually everyone else tells them that death is something to avoid.

There's a bottle of bleach in my cupboard. It says "Danger: do not drink". Now, do you think drinking it will benefit me or harm me?

I'm obviously not as smart as you, Dr. Bartricks, — 180 Proof

To quote you: :up: stopped clock.

so tell me: (A) Is it the fear of death that harms one? — 180 Proof

No, death itself. Fear is unpleasant, of course, but it is not what the harm of death consists in for the death of one who has no fear of dying is still harmful, is it not? Tom, who is not fearing death at all, is killed when the jet plane he is on slams into a mountain. Tom was harmed by that.

(B) Is it one's actual death that harms one once one is dead? — 180 Proof

Yes, death - which I would define as the point at which one is no longer here, in this realm - is harmful. And it is harmful because of where you end up.

tell me how does one, when dead, experiences being harmed — 180 Proof

Because you still exist. Your body no longer contains you. But you still exist. That's the conclusion.

You're drawing distinctions among dreams, not providing any reason to think that a dream of a shoe on a roof, had while one's body nears death, is not a dream.

It would be remarkable if, from time to time, people did not have dreams that gave them true beliefs about the world.

And there are all manner of possible explanations of this, ranging from coincidence to locked away memories being plundered during dream-time.

People have the dreams you're talking about when they're not nearing death. And some have them when they are. They're still dreams.

I don't understand why you think they're not dreams.

My advice is not to ask questions in bad faith.

my advise is to not disparage — Noble Dust

What do you mean by 'is'? Your advice is itself 'to not disparage'. That is, 'to not disparage' and your advice are one and the same? That's incoherent, I think.

Now, once more, our reason - faculty - represents (or, if you want to be needlessly pedantic, creates in us a mental state by means of which we are made aware of an apparent representation of Reason) our deaths to be harmful to us.

And by 'deaths' here is meant the discontinuation of our residence in the body.

And that representation is made by the faculties of reason of virtually everyone. So it's about as well corroborated as that 1 + 1 = 2.

And our reason also represents harm to be something that requires existence. You can't harm the non-existent.

Join the dots.

Eh?
This thread is about the probative value of near death experiences. And I am arguing that they have very little if any probative value, for it seems more reasonable to take them to be dreams.

There is good evidence of an afterlife. But they are not it. You asked me about that evidence, but not in good faith, I think.

This is incoherent to me, but maybe I'm missing something. — Noble Dust

Yes, there's nothing incoherent about it. Perhaps you don't know what 'incoherent' means. And yes, you're definitely missing something. But if I told you what, you wouldn't understand as you're missing it.

Reason "represents"? that doesn't make sense to me. — Noble Dust

Some mental states have representative contents. Now, in a way I agree - it makes no sense to talk of a mental state representing something to be the case, for it is minds - not states of mind - that represent things to be the case.

I, for instance, am making representations to you right now. But these words are not making representations, even though I am using them to make you aware of my representations.

So, Reason is the one who is making the representations and the representations themselves are what are generated by 'our reason' (which is a faculty).

But anyway, if you're going to try and resist my case by denying that there are any representations of Reason, then you are resisting my case by resisting the very idea that there can be evidence for anything. Which is, needless to say, to admit defeat.

What is "it" in this sentence? — Noble Dust

The event of one's brain ceasing to function. No doubt death can sometimes be gradual. But instant death is harmful. Blowing one's brains out would, presumably, lead to instant death and would be singular event. That, then.

I don't know what "it" above references, so I have no clue what this means. — Noble Dust

So, just to be clear, you don't understand how anything can be evidence for anything and you don't understand what death is?

I don't think I can help you, to be honest. I need something to work with. Are you 1?

Our faculties of reason represent death to be a great harm. That's why rational people do virtually all they can to avoid it.

It would not be a great harm if it ended one's existence as one can't be harmed if one does not exist.

Thus we continue to exist after death, else our deaths could not harm us. And the plane of existence our deaths take us to be must be considerably worse than this one, else it would not be harmful to die, but beneficial.

That's another reason to view NDEs with suspicion - they tend to represent the afterlife to be a nice place to be. Our reason tells us it will be worse than here.

Out of body experiences could potentially constitute evidence that the mind is an immaterial thing or that it is a tiny material thing that can float free from the body. It is not evidence that life continues after death, but at best that the mechanism by which this could happen exists.

But again, you are clearly someone who mistakes bad evidence for good. There's plenty of good evidence for the immateriality of the mind and good evidence that we survive our deaths (albeit it'll take us to a place worse than this one). But you will never know this until you die, for you are only convinced by sensible evidence, which by its nature is of a sort that - so long as one is here - will never provide you with evidence for an afterlife, only dreams of one. If you follow reason you can know of these things this side of death. But if only sensations convince you, then you'll not know about an afterlife until you're in it.

So if I have a dream of a sixpence under the oak tree and then find a sixpence there, you agree that's still a dream (albeit one that raises a lot of questions).

Well, why do you think any differently about those in which a person dreams they came out of their body, sees a shoe on a roof, and then subsequently finds that there is one there?

Why not? Out of body experiences are not evidence we survive our deaths.

You haven't answered my questions. My dream of the sixpence - was it a dream or not?

And do you think dreams are evidence that sleep takes us to another much more disordered realm?

Personally I don't care if a memory formed when the brain was "off" or sometime unknown to them when they started to come to. It is information that matters. If a person can leave their body without death than to me that is equal to actual impermanent death. The mind found independence from the body somehow. It's all about confirming information. — TiredThinker

I am talking about the fact - if it is a fact - that many of those who report having near death experiences (walking towads ilghts and so on) report having remembered having them at a time when, supposedly, their brain was doing precisely nothing.

Now, one can easily explain those by simply pointing to whatever brain event is causing their apparent memory of the experience. That will suffice. One does not have to explain the experience itself, only the apparent memory of it, for that is actually all they report.

You're now talking about something else, which is out of body experiences in which people supposedly (and I believe there's no hard evidence for this) identify things they could not have identified otherwise.

Tbus spoke the hoi polloi! :eyes: — 180 Proof

I'm not among the hoi polloi. Like I say, it's Dr Bartricks to you.

Half wits – those who don't know that they don't know – are usually the last to know. — 180 Proof

No, you're confusing a crap mind with half a mind. Which is sign that one has one. Not that a crap mind recognizes its own crapness. Dunning Kruger. Have you heard of the Dunning Kruger effect?

Nothing is harmful to the dead. Status quo bias harms your "reason", Batshitz, causing these kind of reification fallacies. — 180 Proof

The evidence builds.

I don't think I've ever had a dream reveal anything to me that only a person located elsewhere could know. — TiredThinker

That's not the defining feature of a dream. Let's say that tonight I have a dream that there is a silver sixpence under the old oak tree at the bottom of my garden. Tomorrow morning I go and dig where the dream represented it to be, and low and behold there is the silver sixpence.

What does this tell me? That I wasn't dreaming?

I don't see how inspecting what's going on in the brain is going to cast any light on these matters.

Imagine I become brain dead and then brain alive again and I report one of these experiences. Well, it seemed to me - at the time of the report - that I was previously travelling down a tunnel. That's is, I am currently having an apparent mnemonic experience. And that experience - the experience of seeming to remember travelling down a tunnel - is occuring when I am brain alive. And so it will have some cause in the brain. And that's sufficient to explain it.

This is why the fact the brain was not working when people report having these experiences is not good evidence of anything. For what they are actually reporting is currently remembering having the experience. The brain is working when they report having the experience, and what they're actually experiencing when they give the report is an apparent memory. And that apparent memory will have a cause in the brain.

It is not 'biased' to prefer listening to reason than to just believing what you want.

Most people believe what they want. They listen to reason as a means to an their own ends and will stop listening if or when reason starts revealing truths they'd rather not obtain.

NDEs do not seem to qualify as good evidence by any sober analysis.

People have them who are not close to death, for goodness sake! They're just curious kind of dream. Or at least, that's the more reasonable thesis about them.

If you think they're good evidence, why don't you think dreams are good evidence that sleep takes us to another realm in which laws of nature operate very differently to how they do here?

Well there you go then. You're one of 'them' - the folk who are persuaded by utter rubbish. Knowledge is not something you'll ever have.

The evidence I gave you is the best evidence. NDEs are not good evidence.

Note, good evidence is not that which would persuade most people. Most people are very stupid and do not know good evidence from their elbow. Good evidence is made of clear deliverances from our reason that we have no reason to distrust and that are widely corroborated.

Our reason is our guide to reality. It is by reason that you know you exist. It is by reason that you know you have a mind (you do not experience your mind, but rather experience by means of your mind, and so your mind's actual existence is not something experience can provide you with any direct evidence for, but only indirectly by means of what your reason tells you about experiences, namely that they cannot occur absent a mind to have them).

So, stop thinking that you have to experience something to know it. Stop thinking that sensible experiences are the ultimate evidence. They're not. Indeed, the thought that they are is itself not something that we can be sensibly aware of. So those who think - and it is the vast majority at the moment - that sensible experience is our ultimate source of evidence are the stupid people I was just talking about.

Your reason tells you that you - a mind - exists. And that same faculty of reason tells you that your mind is indivisible.
You can't have half a mind, can you? What does that even mean? (I do not mean the common phrase 'I've half a mind to...' - which means 'I have some motivation to' and is not a claim about the divisibility of the mind).

This is not some peculiar deliverance of my reason. Virtually everyone's reason says the same, including the reason of eminent reasoners such as Plato, Descartes, Berkeley and so on.

And unlike NDEs, there is nothing suspicious about such deliverances. They are widespread - for no one can conceive of half a mind - and there is no reason to doubt their probative force.

And so we have excellent evidence that our minds are indivisible. Some things must be, for not everything can be made of other things. And our minds seem to be indivisible.

And if something is indivisible, then it is simple - it has no parts. And thus it is indestructible. How does one destroy something that has no parts?

Our bodies, by contrast, are clearly divisible and will crumble away.

Thus, by a simple exercise of reason one can see - see by reason, not sense - that we will survive the destruction of our bodies.

That's a venerable argument and I know of no refutation of it.

And our reason tells us - virtually all of us - that our deaths will be harmful to us. Really harmful. But they would not be harmful to us if we did not exist. For one has to exist to be harmed. And so, once more, our reason is telling us that we will survive the destruction of our bodies.

These are good pieces of evidence. But most will consider them weak and will not be persuaded by them.

NDEs are not a source of powerful evidence. Why? Because there are more plausible alternative explanations of why some people - and it is only some - have these kinds of experience as they come close to death (and incidentally, a lot of people have them when they're not close to death).

Our reason represents our minds to be indivisible. As it is by reason that we know of their existence, we should also listen to what our reason tells us about them.
If something is indivisible, then it has no parts into which it can be deconstructed. And thus it is indestructible.
And death harms us because we survive it and suffer harm. For you need to exist to be harmed. Our deaths harm us. And so we exist when we die. Death is not good for us. Even when it is rational to seek death, this will be because it is the lesser of two evils.
That's another reason to doubt near death experiences. They tend to represent death to be positive.

That's not evidence they are not dreams, but that they are a certain sort of dream.
What makes something a dream has nothing to do with how vivid it is. A dream is generated by the imagination.
Dreams can also incorporate real information from the world, such as sounds.
And most of our dreams are alike. We go to a disordered place that seems to be governed by different laws of nature, yes? And we have recurring dreams of falling and being chased.

So again, do you think dream experiences are evidence that sleep takes us to another place?

And most people don't have these near death experiences. What if I almost die and I just dream of being on a bicycle made of cheese. That's not going to be recorded as a near death experience, is it? Or what if I experience nothing. Is that recorded?
Or are the only ones that are recorded and considered evidence those that have a certain content? If so then the overlap - which wouldn't count for much anyway - is artificially constructed by the fact that it is only experiences of that sort that are seen as qualifying.

There is the fact our minds are indivisible and thus indestructible. And there is the fact our deaths are extremely harmful to us (which yet would not be if they ceased our existence).

Why think the experiences are veridical as opposed to dreams?

The testimonial evidence is evidence of the experiences.

No one seriously doubts that people have these experiences.

What's in doubt is whether they have any probative value.

I think they don't, for it seems more reasonable to think they are dreams.

Do dreams provide evidence that sleep takes us to another very disordered realm governed by quite different rules to those that apply here?

I think there's excellent evidence that life continues after death, but I'm sceptical that this sort of experience provides it.
Why isn't it more plausible that these people simply had a dream?

What you say is true of concepts like bachelor because bachelor is a property and not a substance. Many things can be bachelors. It would also be true of gods (lower case g) such as in the greek mythology. But God in Christianity is not a property but a substance. That substance is goodness, is power, etc. — A Christian Philosophy

I believe that's incoherent. Yes, the person of God is a substance -a mind. And, qua God, he has the properties of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence. But he, the person, is not one and the same as those properties.
A bachelor is wifeless. That 'is' is not the is of identity, though - it does not mean that the bachelor and wifelessness are one and the same. It just means that a bachelor is a person who lacks a wife.
And that's the same with God - God is 'all powerful'. But that does not mean that God and all-powerfulness are the same. It means that God is a person who has, among other things, the property of being all powerful.

As I said earlier - take a person and give them omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence. Well, that's now God. If you say otherwise, you're abusing language.

This is in agreement with the Catholic doctrine. God can do anything that does not contain a contradiction. — A Christian Philosophy

You're ignoring the philosophical point. A person who can do anything but also not do some things is a contradiction, yes?

So, a person who is unable to do some things - things that even I can do, incidentally - is not omnipotent.

Being omnipotent means being able to do anything. Anything, Jesus is very clear on this: with God all things are possible. Not some things and not others. All things. And that's quite right - that's real omnipotence.

If you say - as so many confused theists do nowadays - that God is constrained by logic, then you are not dealing with an omnipotent being any longer but one who is constrained by something outside of him - logic.

But God is not constrained at all. And thus not even logic constrains him. (Logic is not without him, but within him - it is up to God what the laws of logic are and thus he is not constrained by them).

That does not mean that any contradictions are true. On the contrary, we are told, by our reason, that no contradictions are true and to reject any view that entails them.

THe view that God is all powerful yet unable to do some things is a contradiction and thus false.

Note, when someone says 'God can't lie' the word 'can't' is ambiguous and the expression is not open to just one interpretation. If I say, for instance, "I can't stand it!" I am not saying that I am incapable of standing it. I am expressing my disgust. And so likewise, when the bible says - if it does from time to time - that God can't lie, that is how that should be interpreted. For to interpret it differently is to say things that are plainly contradictory, for it is to say that a person who can do anything at all can't do some things.

I am not concerned with what Catholics believe. I am concerned with whether or not the bible commits a Christian to nonsense of the kind that many Christians - including many Christian scholars - spout.

I am not a Christian. I am a theist. But I am a theist on the basis of the evidence. It just seems to me that many CHristians say things that make not a blind bit of sense and when I check out whether the bible commits them to saying such things it seems clear that it does not.

So, that God is constrained - where is that in the bible?

That God has his properties essentially - where is that in the bible?

That God is one person and three persons - where is that in the bible?

There seem no passages that commit one unequivocally to these views, even if there are some passages that can taken that way. And yet there is excellent reason - decisive reason - to resist such intepretations, given they commit one to complete nonsense.

If you say that God 'is' omnipotence, that's nonsense.

God is a person.

He is omnipotent.

He is not omnipotence, though. He 'has' omnipotence.

And if God has his properties essentially, then he's not omnipotent - that's just an outright contradiction.

if you think God can't do contradictions (itself a contradiction - he can), how did he do that one!?!

And if God is one person, he is not also three distinct persons.

If Catholic doctrine says otherwise, so much the worse for Catholic doctrine - it's demonstrable nonsense.

There is a distinction between having properties essentially and having them non-essentially (or accidentally). It would be possible for a being to be all powerful, all knowing and all good in a non-essential way, which means they could lose these properties without losing their identity, and thus they would not be God. They would have these properties but not be these properties. God is identical to those properties. — A Christian Philosophy

They're not essential properties of a person. They are essential properties of God. But all that means is that to qualify as God you need to have them.

For instance, it is an essential property of a bachelor that they lack a wife. That does not mean that a person who is a bachelor is essentially wifeless. It just means that you have to lack a wife in order to qualify as a bachelor.

That's the same with God.

If a person is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, then they are God. If you deny that, then you're just misusing a word.

But that does not mean that the person who is God is essentially omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. That's as confused as thinking that a person who is a bachelor is essentially wifeless.

Indeed, it is more confused than that. As there is a contradiction involved in the idea. If the person who is God is essentially omnipotent, then they are not omnipotent. For to be essentially omnipotent is to be incapable of not being. But then that is a restriction.

Even I can divest myself of power. It is absurd to think that God - who is all powerful - lacks that ability.

So, the person who is God is demonstrably not essentially omnipotent. THey are omnipotent. But they are not essentially omnipotent. To be essentially omnipotent is to be manifesting a contradiction: it is to be unable to do a thing and to be able to do anything at the same time, which is incoherent.

I also see nothing in the bible that commits one to the view that God has the properties of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence essentially. Indeed, quite the opposite. God, Jesus says, can do anything. Well, then he can divest himself of those qualities if he so wishes. And presumably did do when he became Jesus.

Your ignorance (feigned or not) is stunning, kid. — 180 Proof

It's Dr Bartricks to you. Dad.

However, it's worth noting that there is an absolute ton of paradoxes when it comes to the idea of identity. Identity, as commonly defined, requires the satisfaction of:

A reflexive relationship, G = C
Liebnitz' Law: whatever can be said of G can be said of
That these relationships are necessary.
Necessary distinctness: if G is not x then this is true by necessity

The Trinity, inasmuch as it asserts that all three parts share an identity, fails to meet this criteria. That said, I'm not sure how big of an issue this is because it's unclear if the definition of identity has serious issues. There are tons of unresolved paradoxes that emerge from this definition of identity. Introducing the idea of relative identity solves some issues, but opens up others. Not being able to live up to the bar of a broken definition is not necessarily a huge issue. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I do not follow. I am the same person as my child self. Yet my child self has all manner of properties that I lack and vice versa. Indeed, I am the same person I was a moment ago, yet I had different properties a moment ago.

We should also note that there is no necessity to anything if God exists, for God can do anything and so nothing is necessarily the case. Any argument that appeals to necessity to try and raise a problem for God is question begging then, as it assumes the existence of something - necessary relations - that would not exist if God exists.

Sure, but generally if you're the founder, the chair, and the president, you're not going to say "the founder told me I have to go, but don't worry, he's going to send the chair to help." — Count Timothy von Icarus

But that's why i mentioned other cases. We ourselves give ourselves instructions. We do it all the time. We leave instructions for our future selves. Those are not distinct persons, but just us in the future.

There is nothing incoherent about it - giving an instruction to oneself is coherent (unlike the idea of three distinct persons also being one and the same person).

And it is to be positively expected if, say, you do not realize that you and the person you are giving the instruction to are one and the same person.

God is omniscient. But Jesus could be the same person as God and not be omniscient. Just as I know more than my child self, yet we're the same person.

So, let's say I have forgotten entirely that I am the chair of the company. I know I am the majority shareholder, however. Someone wants me to use my position as the majority shareholder to influence the chair into doing something. I decide to play ball and say "I will visit the chair and ask the chair to implement the thing you want implemented". I then set off to see the chair and find myself directed to my own office (whereupon I remember that I am the chair).

All perfectly coherent. Unlike the idea the three persons are also one person, which is just straight nonsense.

The mistake that many theists seem to be making is to think that if God and Jesus and the holy spirit are all the same person, then they must all have the same properties - which is false. God is god in virtue of possessing certain properties - the omni properties - but those are not essential to him being the person that he is. And so he can divest himself of those properties and still be the same person. So, God can be Jesus and Jesus can lack omnipotent, omniscience and omnibenevolence. They can be the same person, even though when God the person has different properties to Jesus. And Jesus can be unaware - or sometimes unaware - that he is the same person as God, consistent with God being omniscient.

I just think most theists don't realize this or have simply fallen into the habit of thinking that they are somehow committed to believing a contradiction: that three persons are also one person, and thus they find themselves committed to talking nonsense or abusing language to disguise the nonsense they are uttering.

No, the claim that the less a person thinks, the more they will believe.

Some people will believe more if they think less, and some will believe less if they think less. And some who think a lot will believe more by virtue of having thought a lot, and some will believe less by virtue of having thought a lot.

Thinking often leads to belief, does it not?

"The less you think, the more you believe."---Richard Dawkins — Christopher

That's not true either.

I do not understand why you think everything cannot be explained.

I think everything can be explained.

When is something explained? That is, what, at base, is it for something to have been explained?

It is for its occurrence or existence to require no further explanation. And that will happen when asking 'and why did that occur?' or 'why does that exist?' makes no sense and shows only a lack of understanding on the part of the questioner.

Well, why think that can't be true of every single occurrence and every single thing that exists?

I have shown why I disagree. — Merkwurdichliebe

No you haven't.

It's entirely unclear to me what your view is, as you said 'exactly' when I said something that contradicted something you'd just said.

Now, do you think that moral reasons are grounded in self-interest or not?

Ok I see. — Hello Human

But what I did there is simply appeal to the argument for idealism. That is, I simply applied the basic argument for idealism to resemblance itself.

The argument for idealism - the main argument - goes via certain self evident truths of reason, namely that a) sensations can only resemble other sensations and b) that sensations can exist in minds and minds alone.

This point seems to come back often. Is there any way for someone to accept it other than viewing it as "a truth of reason" ? — Hello Human

All evidence for anything amounts to an appeal to a self-evident truth of reason.

All examples do is excite acknowledgment of the self-evident truth of reason.

But in the case of sensations, even within the domain of sensations, one type of sensation seems only to resemble other sensations of the same type (though whether this is actually true is not essential to the claim that sensations can only resemble other sensations).

Consider texture and sight. Do colours have a texture? That is, can you 'feel' what colour something is without any recourse to a visual impression?

No, obviously not. Indeed, the very notion seems confused. Colours are essentially seen, not felt. That this is so clearly true is a self-evident truth of reason. One cannot see that colours are essentially seen. One can see a colour. But one cannot see that colours are essentially seen. That is a self-evident truth of reason, not something we are aware of sensibly.

By the same token, it seems equally self-evident to reason that nothing can resemble a sensation of any kind except some other sensation.

Ok I agree with with this. But still, I'm not sure of what is meant exactly by "perceiving". I'm also not sure of how this is related to the thesis that the world is made up of sensations. — Hello Human

Because unless our sensations resemble the world they are telling us about - and tell us about it in that way - they will not constitute perceptions of the world.

We do perceive an external sensible world.

If our sensations were merely providing us with information about the world, then we would not be perceiving the world by means of them (that was the point the air traffic controller example was designed to illustrate - acquiring information about a matter is not the same as perceiving it).

So, as we do perceive an external sensible world, our sensations must resemble it.

Sensations can only resemble other sensations.

From this it follows that the sensible world that we perceive by means of our sensations is itself made of sensations.

And that, in combination with the self-evident truth that sensations can only exist in a mind, gets us to the conclusion that the external sensible world is made of the sensations of another mind.

I agree when we speak of "persons" as used in the common language. But properties assigned to God are to be understood analogically and not literally. — A Christian Philosophy

I don't see why. Surely the literal reading enjoys the default? And if it makes sense when taken literally, that's surely the reasonable interpretation to give it? That is, it's only reasonable to give an alternative interpretation if taking it literally would betoken nonsense. But that's what is at issue: does taking what the bible says about the trinity betoken nonsense? I think it doesn't. I think the interpretations are nonsense as they involve insisting that three persons are also one person.

quote="A Christian Philosophy;721582"]But properties assigned to God are to be understood analogically and not literally.[/quote]

Why? Unless taking them literally committed one to saying nonsense, I see no reason not to take them literally.

E.g. when we say God is good, it is not meant in the same sense are we are good, i.e., that we obey the moral laws. — A Christian Philosophy

Again, I see no reason to interpret 'God is good' as meaning anything different to what it means on normal usage. Indeed, I think there's a serious problem for those who do not. For what would you call a person who is all powerful, all knowing and all good in the normal sense of the term good? I'd call them 'God'. But presumably you wouldn't. Why? If you say that you understand 'good' to mean something different when applied to God, then you're saying that a person who is all powerful, all knowing and all good (where good means what it normally means) 'isn't' God. But yes they are.

So, I think it has to be understood the normal way, otherwise you'd have to say that someone who is all powerful, all knowing and all good isn't God. But who are they if not God?

And I see no problem in thinking it denotes exactly the same property it does when applied to us. That property being the property of possessing a character that is fully approved of by the personal source of all norms and values. That is, God is good by virtue of approving of himself. Which is what goodness in us consists in too - that is, to be good is to be such that God approves of how one is.

In the same article, Divine Persons are also called Divine Relations, so you can call them relations if that makes things clearer. — A Christian Philosophy

Yes, to refer to relations as persons is such an abuse of language one can only assume their intention was to be unclear.

Your interpretation of 3 conditions for 1 person makes sense; but for reasons I do not know, theologians throughout history have opted against it. — A Christian Philosophy

Yes, I am puzzled too.

Here, for your convenience, is the initial exchange that led to the focus on the non-instrumental nature of moral reasons:

You will always have to live with yourself. That's merely a fact.

It's the fact that you should always consider in making a choice.

Hence, a real ethic -- you *should* consider that you'll always be with yourself.
8 days ago
Bartricks
5.3k
↪Moliere But surely morality is primarily about others, not oneself?

If i have reason to do something due to it serving some of my ends, then we describe that reason as an instrumental or practical reason, not a moral reason.

But if I have reason to do something due to it serving some other person's ends, or due to it bringing about a just state of affairs, or ameliorating an unjust state of affairs, or if I have a reason to do something because it will bring about something of intrinsic moral value, then we describe those reasons as 'moral' reasons.
8 days ago
Moliere
2.1k
But surely morality is primarily about others, not oneself?
— Bartricks

I agree.

And, after you mistreat someone, you will still live with yourself -- knowing what you did.
8 days ago
Bartricks
5.3k
↪Moliere But what work is the word 'existential' doing?

Moral obligations are had by persons. So, one needs to be a person in order to have any.

And a defining feature of moral obligations seems to be that they concern acts we have reason to perform for the sake of others, or for the sake of the promotion of something of moral value or the prevention or amelioration of something of moral disvalue.

But there's no 'ethic' here, inasmuch as it is left open exactly what we are morally obliged to do. The point is just that when the ground of the reason for action is some consideration that is not to do with one's self - not to do with promoting one's own interests - it can qualify as a moral reason. — Moliere

You then contributed a facetious remark and I then responded and here we are.

I was really wondering why you randomly brought up instrumental reason when the subject is on existential ethics. Weird. :chin: I suspect it was mere sophistry on your part, trying to prove that morality can be reduced to selfishness and altruism. — Merkwurdichliebe

If you'd taken the trouble to read what I said on the subject, then you'd know that I do not know what an 'existential ethics' is.

But anyway, my point - whether you're interested in it or not - is that one of the marks of a moral reason is that it is grounded in interests other than one's own.

Make of that what you will.

Why did you say 'exactly'? I was correcting you. You think moral reasons 'are' instrumental reasons. They're not.
You: we are in Paris
Me: no, we are clearly in Cairo.
You: Cairo is Paris. If you set off from Paris and arrive in Cairo, then Cairo is Paris
Me: no, they're quite different places. That you set off from Paris does not entail that where you arrive will be Paris
You: Exactly. They're different places.

If you have moral reason to do what you have instrumental reason to do, then that does not make the instrumental reasons into moral reasons or vice versa.
For instance, if it is in the best interests of others that I do what is most in my interests, then the moral reason to do what I gave instrumental reason to do remains grounded in the interests of others, just as the instrumental reasons remain grounded in my interests.