There are “repeatable” fundamental “kinds”, which explains why there are relations of causal necessity. Realism about universals confuses the semantic generality of concepts
for ontological generality. “Instantiation” and “exemplification”
relations add nothing useful to property instances (tropes).
So there, you scoundrels! Will Wilkinson has more, in his very entertaining post. Why can’t we get more of this from him?
Arrogance is the enemy of wisdom, and Wilkinson strikes me as quite arrogant. He’s impatient to arrive at a quick conclusion, so he places little weight on evidence that contradicts his pat answers. For example, he writes “God, for instance, is the best explanation for nothing.” Gee, why did I waste so much time reading the great philosophers of history. It would have been so simple to just read Wilkinson. But great philosphers such as Nietzche, Camus and Sartre have concluded that morals are irrational, and impossible, without God, as are love and meaning. Honest scientists, such as Dr. Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, have concluded that evolution alone can’t explain the ascent of life from nonliving matter. A tad bit of humility would keep Wilkinson from being so bored with metaphysics.
But great philosphers such as Nietzche, Camus and Sartre have concluded that morals are irrational, and impossible, without God, as are love and meaning.
Is this a joke?
Some philosphers argue that without a rational God, even reason is an illusion, although I can’t think of their names at the moment.
What’s the matter, don’t you people want to debate Naming and Necessity, or possible worlds?
Lucretius seemed to think that the existence of natural kinds necessitated the existence of god. For without god, what would prevent cats from giving birth to mice? Such is another possible world.
There’s always the coevolution of society and the individual to explain that, Hei Lun Chan.
Well, when you reject modal notions of necessity, of course you get crazy results like that.
If God wants me to kick my sister in the teeth, does that make it moral to do so?
A loving God would not want to kick your sister in the teeth, at least, not without a reason consistent with a boundless love for you sister (her teeth were rotten, she needed to be punished to teach her not to engage in harmful behaviors, etc…)
More generally, your question echoes Plato: is a man holy because he is loved by the Gods, or is he loved by the Gods because he is holy? The lesson is that ethics that come from God’s decree are arbitrary (Why not make killing ethical?). But if ethics transcend God, then God is not needed to justify moral behavior.
Of course, the theistic response is that ethics involve following God’s nature. God’s nature is not just omniscient and omnipotent, he is also omnibenevolent. God loves everyone infinitely. That is His nature, and our model to follow.
Master Christian Philosophy
I’m sympathetic with many of Wilkinson’s claims, but not his ultimate conclusions. His rejection of modality is heartening, since arguments from the Kripkean modal hierarchy get us unnecessarily baroque ontologies, but, being more conventionalist (and conceptualist) than he is about meaning, I think phrases like “gold might have had a different atomic weight” to be perfectly meaningful.
I would like to know if he’s a simple compatibalist about freewill (and thus be innocuous, if uninteresting), or a full-blown libertarian (which is interesting, but hopelessly wrong). From his separation of determinism and freewill, I think the former is more likely.
Michael,
Does the lack of insight of a particular dreaming person as to the nature of his or her condition make the waking state unreal?
Google
Advaita,
“Does the lack of insight of a particular dreaming person as to the nature of his or her condition make the waking state unreal?”
The “waking state” is “real” by definition. If it weren’t, what would it be? Lack of insight is not a condition unique to dreaming, nor do dreamers necessary lack insight.
Other than that, I don’t understand what you’re getting at.
4) God would have no other contradictory desire of greater importance that would preclude him from acting to fulfill his desire to have me use his nature as my model to follow.
The problem with this conclusion in the concept of love. In the traditional understanding of the God of the Bible, love is closely tied to free will, for if God forces us to follow him, then we haven’t chosen to love him and we’re mere slave, which Islam teaches. Can a slave love his master? Possibly, but the master wouldn’t know unless he freed the slave and the slave chose to remain a slave. In Christianity, God places so much value on those who freely choose him, that he was willing to accept the consequences from others choosing to rebel against him.
Justin,
“The gist of condition (5) is that not just that following God is freely chosen, but that belief in God is freely chosen.”
I don’t choose my beliefs. Maybe other people do, but I don’t. (Or, if I do, I don’t know how I do, and I certainly don’t know how to control the choosing process.)
My beliefs occur to me, and once they do, I have them whether I like them or not. I don’t understand what it means to “freely chose” a belief, for I don’t understand what it means to choose a belief in general. For example, I cannot choose (freely or not) to believe that I can fly by flapping my arms, nor can I choose to believe that I have three children instead of two, or that any particular god that has been described to me exists.
With that in mind, the god described above would not be acting in accordance with it’s own purposes if it required me to choose my beliefs while knowing that doing so is not within my ability.
“So what did G. E. Moore or Hume think about the existence of morality without God? Or indeed, about is-ought fallacies?”
Please enlighten me.
Maybe I’m not as well-versed in these matters (I probably should remove the “maybe”), but I don’t see anything new or particularly striking/revealing about this analysis. After things like Carnap’s internal/external distinction, Quine’s ontological relativism, Kuhn’s notion of paradigms, etc., I don’t see how the so-called “analytic metaphysician” gets off the ground. I realize, of course, that there must be a plethora of ways (of which I am completely ignorant), since there appears to be a lot of “analytic metaphysics” going on.
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