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	<title>Comments on: Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part II</title>
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	<description>Philosophy of Religion, Ethics, Theology and Jurisprudence</description>
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		<title>By: Clayton</title>
		<link>http://www.mandm.org.nz/2009/03/tooley-the-euthyphro-objection-and-divine-commands-part-ii.html#comment-16279</link>
		<dc:creator>Clayton</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 24 Dec 2009 12:56:44 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description>&quot;The conditional states that torturing one another as much as possible is obligatory, in a particular situation; that is, a situation where a perfectly good omniscient being commands it. Now it seems inconceivable to me that any action, torture included, could be wrong under such circumstances. If torturing one another as much as possible is gratuitously evil and could never be obligatory then an informed perfectly good being would not command it.&quot;

Follow up on post concerning your earlier post.  There are two questions here.  
(Q1) Which conditionals are true?
(Q2) Which conditionals does a defender have to say are true?

Essentially you&#039;re saying that a perfect being wouldn&#039;t command rape, genocide, tortrue, etc...  That seems to address (Q1).  But, that doesn&#039;t address (Q2).  Critics of DCT will say that someone who defends DCT (if we take that to be the view that right acts are right because God commands them and not because of some further reason (e.g., that they are objectively best, required by the categorical imperative, etc...) have to explain why it is that God would never command us to perform an action that is impermissible.  The challenge is that the command itself is what is supposed to serve as the &#039;ground&#039; of all obligations, so if you appeal to moral facts to explain why certain commands are possible (e.g., wash my car!) and other commands are not (e.g., when you finish washing my car, torture my neighbor Moses!) you seem to be suggesting that moral facts explain commands rather than the other way around.  That&#039;s how it should be, but that seems like an obvious cheat for a proponent of the DCT theory.
.-= My last blog-post ..&lt;a href=&quot;http://claytonlittlejohn.blogspot.com/2009/12/could-ought-be-objective-but-shifty.html?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ThinkTonk+%28Think+Tonk%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Could &#039;ought&#039; be objective but shifty?&lt;/a&gt; =-.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>&#8220;The conditional states that torturing one another as much as possible is obligatory, in a particular situation; that is, a situation where a perfectly good omniscient being commands it. Now it seems inconceivable to me that any action, torture included, could be wrong under such circumstances. If torturing one another as much as possible is gratuitously evil and could never be obligatory then an informed perfectly good being would not command it.&#8221;</p>
<p>Follow up on post concerning your earlier post.  There are two questions here.<br />
(Q1) Which conditionals are true?<br />
(Q2) Which conditionals does a defender have to say are true?</p>
<p>Essentially you&#8217;re saying that a perfect being wouldn&#8217;t command rape, genocide, tortrue, etc&#8230;  That seems to address (Q1).  But, that doesn&#8217;t address (Q2).  Critics of DCT will say that someone who defends DCT (if we take that to be the view that right acts are right because God commands them and not because of some further reason (e.g., that they are objectively best, required by the categorical imperative, etc&#8230;) have to explain why it is that God would never command us to perform an action that is impermissible.  The challenge is that the command itself is what is supposed to serve as the &#8216;ground&#8217; of all obligations, so if you appeal to moral facts to explain why certain commands are possible (e.g., wash my car!) and other commands are not (e.g., when you finish washing my car, torture my neighbor Moses!) you seem to be suggesting that moral facts explain commands rather than the other way around.  That&#8217;s how it should be, but that seems like an obvious cheat for a proponent of the DCT theory.<br />
.-= My last blog-post ..<a href="http://claytonlittlejohn.blogspot.com/2009/12/could-ought-be-objective-but-shifty.html?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ThinkTonk+%28Think+Tonk%29" rel="nofollow">Could &#8216;ought&#8217; be objective but shifty?</a> =-.</p>
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		<title>By: Matt</title>
		<link>http://www.mandm.org.nz/2009/03/tooley-the-euthyphro-objection-and-divine-commands-part-ii.html#comment-1504</link>
		<dc:creator>Matt</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:55:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://mandm.churchweb.co.nz/2009/03/tooley-the-euthyphro-objection-and-divine-commands-part-ii/#comment-1504</guid>
		<description>Precisely Bethyada, I am glad you have grasped the points I was trying to make. Your comments are on the mark. I was worried that the philosophical nature of this post would mean I would lose people.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Recent blog post: The Foundations of the Alexandrian Argument against Feticide Part III</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Precisely Bethyada, I am glad you have grasped the points I was trying to make. Your comments are on the mark. I was worried that the philosophical nature of this post would mean I would lose people.</p>
<p>Recent blog post: The Foundations of the Alexandrian Argument against Feticide Part III</p>
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		<title>By: Matt</title>
		<link>http://www.mandm.org.nz/2009/03/tooley-the-euthyphro-objection-and-divine-commands-part-ii.html#comment-1311</link>
		<dc:creator>Matt</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2009 04:38:00 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description>Hi Mark&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;If I understand you correctly, I think your position rests on confusion between two different things. (a) Unquestioning obedience to a command of Divine origin and (b) unquestioned acceptance of the claim that a command is of divine origin.  &lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt; I agree that if God commands something we should obey without question and it would be absurd to measure Gods commands by our own standards. I do not think that it follows from this that we should accept without question every claim that God has or has not commanded everything  and I think it can be perfectly appropriate to use what one believes about right and wrong to asses whether or not a given interpretation of Gods commands is in fact an accurate one.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Hi Mark</p>
<p>If I understand you correctly, I think your position rests on confusion between two different things. (a) Unquestioning obedience to a command of Divine origin and (b) unquestioned acceptance of the claim that a command is of divine origin.  </p>
<p> I agree that if God commands something we should obey without question and it would be absurd to measure Gods commands by our own standards. I do not think that it follows from this that we should accept without question every claim that God has or has not commanded everything  and I think it can be perfectly appropriate to use what one believes about right and wrong to asses whether or not a given interpretation of Gods commands is in fact an accurate one.</p>
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		<title>By: Mark.V.</title>
		<link>http://www.mandm.org.nz/2009/03/tooley-the-euthyphro-objection-and-divine-commands-part-ii.html#comment-1295</link>
		<dc:creator>Mark.V.</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 28 Mar 2009 20:03:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://mandm.churchweb.co.nz/2009/03/tooley-the-euthyphro-objection-and-divine-commands-part-ii/#comment-1295</guid>
		<description>Matt you state:&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&quot;If torturing one another as much as possible is gratuitously evil and could never be obligatory then an informed perfectly good being would not command it.&quot;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Which raises the question, how do we know whether the commands of a being believed to be informed and perfectly good are in fact good?  &lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;If everything this being commands are good because that is his nature, then the question of whether they are good or evil would never arise.  Every one of his commandments would be obeyed without question because they are his commandments and they are always good.  But we don&#039;t do that, we measure his commandments against our standards and only obey them if they meet our standard of goodness.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;The earlier post of the woman found not to be a virgin on her wedding night is an example of this.  You went to some lenghts to find evidence that the commandment did not reflect the practce of the day because you disagreed with (I assume) the commandment that a woman found not to be a virgin should be stoned to death.  So you measured this commandment against your own standard of morality.  But why would you do that if all the commandments of this being are always good?</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Matt you state:</p>
<p>&#8220;If torturing one another as much as possible is gratuitously evil and could never be obligatory then an informed perfectly good being would not command it.&#8221;</p>
<p>Which raises the question, how do we know whether the commands of a being believed to be informed and perfectly good are in fact good?  </p>
<p>If everything this being commands are good because that is his nature, then the question of whether they are good or evil would never arise.  Every one of his commandments would be obeyed without question because they are his commandments and they are always good.  But we don&#8217;t do that, we measure his commandments against our standards and only obey them if they meet our standard of goodness.</p>
<p>The earlier post of the woman found not to be a virgin on her wedding night is an example of this.  You went to some lenghts to find evidence that the commandment did not reflect the practce of the day because you disagreed with (I assume) the commandment that a woman found not to be a virgin should be stoned to death.  So you measured this commandment against your own standard of morality.  But why would you do that if all the commandments of this being are always good?</p>
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		<title>By: Matt</title>
		<link>http://www.mandm.org.nz/2009/03/tooley-the-euthyphro-objection-and-divine-commands-part-ii.html#comment-1283</link>
		<dc:creator>Matt</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:29:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://mandm.churchweb.co.nz/2009/03/tooley-the-euthyphro-objection-and-divine-commands-part-ii/#comment-1283</guid>
		<description>Ed Feser&#039;s latest post suggests the same problem occurs with regards to religion in the literature in general.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Ed Feser&#8217;s latest post suggests the same problem occurs with regards to religion in the literature in general.</p>
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		<title>By: Glenn</title>
		<link>http://www.mandm.org.nz/2009/03/tooley-the-euthyphro-objection-and-divine-commands-part-ii.html#comment-1282</link>
		<dc:creator>Glenn</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:06:00 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description>It will come as no surprise that I agree here.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;The more I discover in the literature the more absolutely convinced I am that dismissal of divine command ethics - and theologically grounded ethics in general - is &lt;i&gt;the&lt;/i&gt; weakest spot in contemporary ethical theory, bar none.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It will come as no surprise that I agree here.</p>
<p>The more I discover in the literature the more absolutely convinced I am that dismissal of divine command ethics &#8211; and theologically grounded ethics in general &#8211; is <i>the</i> weakest spot in contemporary ethical theory, bar none.</p>
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		<title>By: Matt</title>
		<link>http://www.mandm.org.nz/2009/03/tooley-the-euthyphro-objection-and-divine-commands-part-ii.html#comment-1279</link>
		<dc:creator>Matt</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Mar 2009 09:36:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://mandm.churchweb.co.nz/2009/03/tooley-the-euthyphro-objection-and-divine-commands-part-ii/#comment-1279</guid>
		<description>I think your comments are spot on.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;I was worried people wouldn&#039;t understand my post.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I think your comments are spot on.</p>
<p>I was worried people wouldn&#8217;t understand my post.</p>
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		<title>By: bethyada</title>
		<link>http://www.mandm.org.nz/2009/03/tooley-the-euthyphro-objection-and-divine-commands-part-ii.html#comment-1233</link>
		<dc:creator>bethyada</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:50:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://mandm.churchweb.co.nz/2009/03/tooley-the-euthyphro-objection-and-divine-commands-part-ii/#comment-1233</guid>
		<description>The Euthyphro dilemma exists (at least in part, possibly completely) because there were more that one god and these gods were not required to be in agreement, so one could play them off against each other.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Within monotheism this is not an issue as the moral imperatives come from God&#039;s nature. So while in some sense what God commands is good, he only commands what is consistent with his righteous nature. Or as you say, some potential commands are impossible as there is no world which God would create with such a situation.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;I also posit that making claims as the the truth or falsehood of propositions based on impossible premises seems foolish. &quot;If you could count to infinity then you would stop counting,&quot; may seem superficially true, but it is in fact a nonsensical statement.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The Euthyphro dilemma exists (at least in part, possibly completely) because there were more that one god and these gods were not required to be in agreement, so one could play them off against each other.</p>
<p>Within monotheism this is not an issue as the moral imperatives come from God&#8217;s nature. So while in some sense what God commands is good, he only commands what is consistent with his righteous nature. Or as you say, some potential commands are impossible as there is no world which God would create with such a situation.</p>
<p>I also posit that making claims as the the truth or falsehood of propositions based on impossible premises seems foolish. &#8220;If you could count to infinity then you would stop counting,&#8221; may seem superficially true, but it is in fact a nonsensical statement.</p>
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