On Euthyphro

[John_Harshman]

@structureoftruth

This key claim here (God’s nature is the ground of objective moral values) is inferred by philosophical arguments, not stipulated.

What are these arguments?

@structureoftruth

A necessary being necessarily has the nature it does

Only if all aspects of the being’s nature are necessary. If a hammer is necessary its color could be anything.

@structureoftruth

Initially, because we have a subjective standard as part of our natures. Later, because we understand that that subjective standard points towards an objective standard.

That sound quite a bit like lifting yourself by your bootstraps. How do we understand that the subjective standard points to an objective one? And what do we do if the subjective standard fails to match the objective one?

@structureoftruth

The change in the understanding of God would be “no, he didn’t actually do that”.

That doesn’t sound like a change in understanding not of God but of scripture. But OK. Sure, if there was no Flood, there’s no reason to blame God for the genocide.

@structureoftruth

At this point, you aren’t arguing the Euthyphro dilemma anymore. This is a different objection. “You claim that God is good, but you also claim that God did this thing, and this thing is not good” isn’t a rebuttal of the coherence of my response to Euthyphro, but the consistency of my response with some other premises.

I think it’s actually a form of Euthyphro. If it’s good because God did it, genocide is good. If it’s not good even though God did it, God is not the objective standard. This is a case in which our pitiful subjective human idea of morality fails to match God’s objective morality. I prefer our pitiful subjective human idea in this case. What about you?

@structureoftruth

Ah, but there is space between arbitrariness and conformity with an external standard: namely, by conformity with an internal standard, his own nature.

But why should we call that standard “good”?