On Euthyphro

[Faizal_Ali]

@Roy

Why take that approach?

The simplest refutation of @structureoftruth’s argument is:

Interlocutor 1: “do you think it is possible for (insert moral atrocity here) to be morally permissible?”
Interlocutor 2: “yes. It was morally permissible in (insert historical society here).”

This works for just about any atrocity you can imagine, including rape (of slaves) and genocide (cf the OT).

I don’t accept that, if something was or is a commonly accepted practice in a community, it is therefore morally permissable.

@structureoftruth

But I’m not talking about the morality of some entirely different circumstance with entirely different kinds of beings. I’m talking about the morality of the same act being different: in philosophical speak, if there’s a possible world with the same non-value facts, the same things happening on a physical level, but where the value facts, the correct moral evaluation, is different.

I would agree with you that what is right and wrong for us is tied into our natures - but that doesn’t mean that morality isn’t objective or that the ultimate standard of goodness isn’t God. (I am not a “divine command theorist” in the strictest sense; I think components of natural law theory are correct.) You are assuming my view is far more simplistic than it actually is.

I don’t really find your position here at all coherent.

If you are conceding that moral values are contingent upon a number of factors including the type of beings we are discussing, the circumstances of their existence, etc, then it appears to me you are blowing your entire argument out of the water.

@structureoftruth

You seem to think that the fact that God is the foundation of reality is irrelevant to his being the ground of what is good, but I think it isn’t arbitrary to suggest that the foundation of reality is the foundation of moral truths as well.

You can think whatever you want. You still haven’t demonstrated it.