I disagree. Properly basic beliefs are a legitimate source of knowledge. They are beliefs we accept rationally, not merely pragmatically (which is what you seem to be saying). Denying this leads to radical skepticism. But that is a whole other rabbit trail… might just have to agree to disagree on this. (I’d point you to my blog again for more on the subject, but you are disinclined to read it, apparently.)
They do, actually. The inherent meaning of moral intuitions requires that there is an objective standard for them to make sense. If there is no objective standard, our moral intuitions are false. Blog, yet again. Afraid I don’t have time to reiterate my arguments for this point from there any further.
Care to start from the top and actually explain why?
2 is literally an instance of the law of excluded middle. A or not A. Tautologically true.
I don’t believe we actually need to know the definition of moral perfection to use it as a term in a logical argument. We can still see that the argument is logically valid (as you yourself conceded that it is; thank you for that, by the way). Of course, it helps to evaluate the truth of the premises if we at least have a partial idea of what moral perfection means. But we do have a partial idea, from our moral intuitions.
Agreed; problem for another day.
A non-necessary but morally perfect being would fall under 6b. I certainly have exhausted all the possibilities; please take a closer look. Each fork of 3-5 just divides the remaining possibilities into two disjoint and mutually exhaustive categories.
Correct, thanks.
Because our moral intuitions tell us that the objective standard is necessary; that’s part of premise 0. It isn’t just that it is wrong to (say) torture innocent children for fun: it isn’t even possible for that not to be wrong. It is necessarily wrong. And if the objective standard is necessary, then what grounds it in reality must be necessary as well.
Feel free to show me how its done. Until then, it’s intuitively obvious that facts about value aren’t going to emerge merely from facts about the physical universe.
To make them an objective standard, no. To make it so that our moral intuitions bear any resemblance to that standard, yes. Without that connection the theory is self-undermining (it defeats the reason for accepting premise 0).
The standard works like this: if someone acts the way a person with God’s character would act, that matches the standard and so is good. If someone deviates from the way a person with God’s character would act, they deviate from the standard and are to that extent bad. This shows that the being that grounds the standard must be morally perfect. (It also shows that having the standard be grounded in a being is perfectly coherent.)