God commands us to do the good (and, much of that good is intelligible) because he is both inherently good and utterly wise

 Nowadays, it is fashionable to dismiss God, and to dismiss the idea that our moral sense of duty comes from God, starting with the voice of sound conscience. Worse, save for the Catholic Church, the idea that there is an intelligible, built in -- and yes, Creation Order -- first law pivoting on justice, has long since been relegated to history by the legal profession. Instead, we find a widespread notion that morality is subjective [so largely an accident of personality and/or culture and upbringing], relative and evolving . . . which is conflated with "progressing." 

All of this fashionable thought, frankly, is self-servingly dubious, and a likely source of the perversity long since exposed and rebuked by Isaiah the prophet:

Isa 5: 18 Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, who draw sin as with cart ropes . . .  20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! 

 21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! 

 22 Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink, 23 who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!  [c 700 BC]

Of course, we see here, how the prophet explains in outline, how wickedness and injustice are tied to falsity, moral inversion, self-conceit, bribery and injustice thus misgovernment. This implies that he considers these intelligible, within our intellectual grasp, once we are willing to be corrected towards soundness. 

Similarly, in his farewell address to Israel, Moses writes:

Deut 10: 12 “And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I am commanding you today for your good?  14 Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it  . . . 17 For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.  [c. 1406 BC]  

We already see here, a vision that God is creator-sustainer and owner of the heavens and the earth, including ourselves, that he is not only supreme, mighty and great but also good and wise. Also, incorruptibly just. Elsewhere, God is seen as eternal and of course our Father in heaven. Indeed, at Mars Hill (c. 50 AD), Paul favourably cites pagan poets, in him we live and move and have our being. 

So, although these worthies probably did not understand the detailed, technical significance of such a cumulative picture of God for say the IS-OUGHT gap, or the Euthyphro dilemma, the concept of necessary being and other arguments of recent times, we do find here a vision of the true God as one, as inherently good, utterly wise, without beginning or end [i.e. eternal], creator-sustainer, supreme. 

For example, God commands the good because he is inherently good and utterly wise and loves us. So, his commands are "for your good."

Indeed, that vision finds expression in Isaiah:

 55:1 “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money,  come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.  2  Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.  3 Incline your ear, and come to me;  hear, that your soul may live . . . . 

 6 “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near;  7 let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.  8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.  9  For as the heavens are higher than the earth [--> suggestive of infinity*], so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 

____________

* Here, our perceived space (the space that appears Euclidean) invites the concept of being beyond finite limit, hence it enables us to conceive of infinity; indeed an infinite continuum. BTW, this implies that a truer, fuller, more cogent, ultimately more useful basic concept of numbers is the hyperreals not just the reals.

Yes, as Paul advises in Rom 2, "[our] conscience also bears witness" and "[our] conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse," duly humbling us to recognise that we are fallible, finite, morally struggling and too often ill willed or even stubborn or trapped in evil ways. Yes, there are struggles with and vexed debates over the judgements of God on individuals (such as a Job or a Saul or a David or a Jesus) and over nations whose "cup of iniquity" is so full that they become ruinous plagues on the earth, and we find God to be passionately involved with us: God "SO LOVED  . . ." 

But on the whole we find a coherent view of God that indeed invites the summary that God is inherently good, utterly wise, creator-sustainer, the one supreme and necessary [so eternal and infinite] world root being, worthy of our loyalty and responsible reasonable service. 

In this context, I find that C Stephen Evans has a few thought-provoking words for us:

It is common to refer to our moral obligations collectively as consti-tuting the moral law. Is this simply a way of speaking or does this language capture a deep truth? Many morally earnest people would affirm that there is indeed something about our moral obligations that gives them the status of law. But what kind of law? Must there be a law-giver? If so, who is that law-giver? 

A traditional answer is that morality is grounded in God. Modern and contemporary philosophers have tended to find this view sim-plistic and naïve. In this book I defend the claim that there is truth and wisdom in this traditional view, and that the philosophers who have dismissed the claim have been much too hasty. Our moral obligations either are identical to divine commands or are grounded in such commands. However, I argue that God communicates his requirements in many ways, including through conscience, and this makes it possible for people who do not believe in God nonetheless to have an awareness of their moral obligations . . . . |

 Many religious people have thought that a “divine command” account of moral obligation is a rival to some other popular approaches, particularly “natural law ethics” and “virtue ethics.” An important part of this work is an argument that it is a mistake to think of these approaches as rivals. A religiously grounded ethic needs all three types of accounts to do full justice to all of morality. [God and Moral Obligation (Oxford University Press, 2012) pp. v - vi.]

He could have stopped there, but as a philosopher, he is aware of the deep connexions between the main foci of philosophy:

I hope it is clear that the conclusions reached have profound implica-tions for [philosophy of religion/ our idea of God, and theology, thus metaphysics, epistemology etc.]. In particular, if moral obligations are divine requirements, then humans who are aware of moral duties have a kind of direct awareness of God, and those who do not realize that moral obligations are God’s requirements may nonetheless be brought to see this through reflection on the nature of moral duties [--> thus the world-root level, is-ought bridging significance of the voice of sound conscience, for, post Hume, only in the root of reality can is and ought be bridged; and only the God of such ethical theism can successfully bridge that gap]. [p. vi.]

In a similar vein, William E Mann writes:

The first order of business is to provide an account of God’s nature that is philosophically defensible and adequate to the conception of deity found in the Abrahamic religions. The account that I offer maintains that God, unlike all other beings, is perfect and simple. Perfection entails that God is essentially immutable, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good, a con-scious sovereign and caring [--> so, loving] personal being who has no equals, flaws, or weak-nesses.  Simplicity  entails  that  God  has  no  physical  or  metaphysical  parts, temporal stages, or properties. Philosophical critics may have doubts about the tenability of this account, both as a matter of logical plausibility and as a matter of religious accuracy. It would be rash of me to claim to quell all reasonable doubts. But I believe that several of them are dispelled in the chapters that follow, and I am eager to entertain new doubts.

The second order of business is to account for the relationship between God and the world’s inhabitants. At its most basic level, that relationship is between creator and creatures, a relationship of radical dependency that stands in need of explica-tion. I argue for the theses that everything that is not God is brought into existence ex nihilo by God and is conserved in its existence by God for as long as it exists. God’s sovereignty is, on the view I hold, what makes all true propositions true. This view  must  have  answers  for  three  critical  questions.  First,  if  God  is  somehow | responsible for the truth of all contingent propositions, can the view accommodate human freedom, and if so, how? I argue that on any reasonable conception of human freedom, there is no conflict between divine sovereignty and freedom. Second, what is the status of necessary truths: are they independent of God’s sov-ereignty? On this issue, I reject Platonism and present a quasi-Augustinian account according to which necessary truths are dependent on God. [God, Modality and Morality (Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 1 - 2.]

Of course, as Mann notes from objectors, there is no identifiable greatest finite integer, so the notion of a supreme being of maximal greatness needs clarification. 

A simple, first approximation answer is to recognise adulteration, tainting, or flaws vs that which is utterly pure, say, pure vs adulterated or tainted milk. God being utterly good and utterly supreme is another way of saying that there is no lack in God's essential qualities, which also exist in a context of compossibility. For example, God's supreme power is consistent with his inherent goodness and utter wisdom so he will not do evil. Indeed, evil here emerges as -- roughly speaking -- that which parasites off what is good, frustrating it from its due end, often in hope of immediate advantage (pleasure, power, treasure . . .); but at cost of introducing chaos.

 In turn, echoing Plantinga, as freedom is a requisite of highest goods such as love, credible reason etc, the possibility of such abuse is implicit in a world that can have in it such highest goods. Thus, too, our responsibility as creatures with the gift of freedom to do the good, wise, true. 

These are already a good first ground to recognise the Ciceronian first duties, and first law:

Mann, p. 11, adds another aspect, addressing the stone paradox as to whether God can create a stone so large and heavy he cannot move it (which is intended to suggest that omnipotence is incoherent as a concept):

 Now an ingenious—and I think correct—way of dissipating the [large stone] paradox appears to have been first hinted at by George Mavrodes and developed more fully by Wade Savage. 9  Their approach is to argue that the proposition that God cannot create a stone He cannot move is true, but that it does not specify a task that God cannot perform. It is, rather, the  logical  consequence  of  two  other  propositions—that  God  can  create stones of any poundage and that God can move stones of any poundage. And we would expect these two propositions to be entailed by the proposition that God is omnipotent. Hence, if God is omnipotent, He cannot create a stone He cannot move, but this imposes no limitations on His stone-creating and stone-moving powers; on the contrary, it is a consequence of there being no limits to the poundage of stones He can create and move. [--> Which, further, illustrates that, often, our perceived contradictions are due to inadequate concepts, not to what would be a suggested state of affairs that is not possible of being. Ironically, what is impossible is the suggested stone too big for God to move!]

More can be said, and will be DV. But this is enough food for thought for today. END

The root of reality issue

 In our going concern world, the question of the root of reality is literally foundational -- and yes, we see a now familiar chart yet again (it is that pivotal):

There are of course, several major options, which we need to compare -- knowing that every option will have difficulties, especially as the question is inescapably self-referential (as, manifestly, we are a part of the going concern reality). Nowadays, in the West, evolutionary materialistic scientism is the inculcated and institutionally dominant view, but as Richard Dawkins inadvertently shows, it fatally stumbles in the starting gates . . . over precisely that self-referentiality:

In short, our rational, responsible, morally governed, conscience-guided freedom is critical, even as St Paul observed 2,000 years ago in his AD 57 Letter to the Romans as he interacted with their moral-legal thinking:

Rom 2:14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them . . . 

So, Dawkins shows us that no proposed reality root can be viable if it fails the Pauline test, conscience-guided, morally governed rationality. (And yes, this gives us an opening to ponder the anthropic question that the root of reality must be such that we are feasible.)

What of the idea -- recently championed by physicist Lawrence Krauss (and yes, the afterword is by Dawkins)  -- that the world comes from "nothing"? (Wikipedia summarises: 'The main theme of the book is the claim that "we have discovered that all signs suggest a universe that could and plausibly did arise from a deeper nothing—involving the absence of space itself and—which may one day return to nothing via processes that may not only be comprehensible but also processes that do not require any external control or direction." ')

The problem here, when sophisticated mathematical apparatus is removed, is that a genuine nothing, utter non-being, has no properties including existence, much less causal capability (which requires existence . . .). Straining language itself, were utter non-being ever so, such would forever obtain; as there literally would be no thing, no reality able to change that. 

No wonder, then, that Wikipedia is forced to admit:

George Ellis, in an interview in Scientific American, said that "Krauss does not address why the laws of physics exist, why they have the form they have, or in what kind of manifestation they existed before the universe existed (which he must believe if he believes they brought the universe into existence). Who or what dreamt up symmetry principles, Lagrangians, specific symmetry groups, gauge theories, and so on? He does not begin to answer these questions." He criticized the philosophical viewpoint of the book, saying "It's very ironic when he says philosophy is bunk and then himself engages in this kind of attempt at philosophy."^[10]

In The New York Times, philosopher of science and physicist David Albert said the book failed to live up to its title; he said Krauss dismissed concerns about what Albert calls his misuse of the term nothing, since if matter comes from relativistic quantum fields, the question becomes where did those fields come from, which Krauss does not discuss.^[11]

Notice, the telling comment: "if matter comes from relativistic quantum fields, the question becomes where did those fields come from, which Krauss does not discuss." That is, there is some thing, a quasi physical domain of relativistic quantum fields. That is a physicalist, quasi-spatially distributed zone, sometimes called a quantum foam, in which sub-cosmi bubble up via fluctuations (and being able to fluctuate is a property with causal potential). In short, the prestige and mystique of science solemnly dressed up in a lab coat, is used to try to extend a materialistic world picture beyond the singularity, the big bang. This thus falls under the same self-defeating incoherence we saw from Dawkins.

The suggestion of circular, retro causation is similar. For, the not yet is called upon to be its own source. 

We are still left, then, with the roots challenge that if a world now is, something always was; something able to account for our going concern world. Involving, bridging the is-ought gap without self-referential self defeat and the need to rise above GIGO limited computationalism, as a material computing substrate is no better than the mechanical-stochastic result of its programming and given or detected data.  involving, that eternal being requires necessary being. That is, entities that are framework to any possible world and cannot not exist, e.g. the number 2 and all its kin. (Try to imagine a distinct world W in which by contrast with another W', 2 does not exist or begins or ceases -- already, just to be distinct 2 and is kin, NZQRCR* etc are already there . . . why Mathematics is universally powerful.)

The serious options on the table, then, must include a necessary being that is causally competent and able to bridge the is-ought gap, founding moral government and Paul's rational, responsible freedom. 

That essentially leaves X-theisms on the table. Of such, polytheism cannot answer to the bill of goods, and so we see:

Of these, only ethical theism can soundly address moral government, as is outlined. 

So, we come to St Peter's challenge on the eve of his judicial murder on the manifestly false charge of treasonous arson:

2 Peter 1: 16 For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty . . . . 

19 And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, 20 knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. 

21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

And is we are inclined to disbelieve the 500, that leaves us facing Paul's challenge to Festus, Agrippa et al in open court:

Acts 26:8 Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead? . . . . 25 But Paul said, “I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking true and rational words. 26 For the king knows about these things, and to him I speak boldly. For I am persuaded that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this has not been done in a corner. 27 King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe.”

The uneasy evasiveness of Agrippa's answer speaks volumes. Volumes that echo from AD 39 to AD 2024 and beyond. For, indeed, "this has not been done in a corner." END

"Democratic" relativism vs the universality of core natural law

 It has been suggested, that democracy allows us to vote in our own judgement; or even, ruin. Indeed, that was the verdict of educated people for two thousand years, given the sobering lessons of Athens' marches of ruinous folly during the Peloponnesian War. Or, Bible students may note the repeated fickleness, folly, error and outright injustice of the many crowds, mobs, riots and ill-considered assemblies in the New Testament. 

(Of these, the voyage of folly leading to shipwreck in Acts 27 is paradigmatic, indeed a study in miniature of follies of governance on the ship of state. Not too far behind, is Festus' plaintive plea for help from Agrippa and Bernice: Ac 25:"24 And Festus said, “King Agrippa and all who are present with us, you see this man about whom the whole Jewish people petitioned me, both in Jerusalem and here, shouting that he ought not to live any longer. 25 But I found that he had done nothing deserving death . . . " Is it, then, any surprise, that only a few years later, the Jews rose up in suicidally foolish rebellion, ending in ruin and exile?)

So, then, 

Q: how do we avert the deterioration of democracy into the march of folly madness and injustice of the mob?

ANS: Through the core, natural, built-in law.

For, it is easy to make the mistake that "the majority" [Ac 27:] is always right -- or else, in despair, to assume it is always wrong or always the result of dirty manipulation. Instead, what seems an empty tautology is so:

SOUNDNESS: What is right is right.

That is, our challenge is to soundly, reliably discern the right and to have the integrity and courage to do it even in the face of the notoriously "conflicting thoughts" of Rom 2:15. 

In turn, that points to " the work of the law" that are "written on [our] hearts" of v. 14. 

That is, it is manifest that there are intelligible, knowable . . . but often inconvenient . . . core first duties and first law that emerge as we soundly reflect on key issues and challenges. Duties -- first duties -- that, as they are built into our rational, responsible, conscience guarded freedom, are universal and utterly binding. No king, judge, parliament or referendum can reverse these principles; though of course -- never mind how ill advised it may be -- we are free enough to act contrary to them, at least for the time being until shipwreck (all too predictably) results.

Those who have followed this blog and my other thinking over the years will know, I here allude to the Ciceronian summary of first, branch on which we all sit, duties and principles. Though, today, I want to probe deeper thanks to the foreword by Daniel Mahoney for a translation of a recent (2020) book by Pierre Manent. However, it may be helpful to work our way in by the back door.

First, let us remind ourselves of one of Dawkins' telling cat-out-of-the-bag moments: 

Yes, the establishment evolutionary materialist scientism of our day is self-defeatingly absurd. It cannot account for the necessary freedom to be credibly rational, much less for the resulting challenge of moral government, that we must strive to do the right (though we often stumble). This then allows us to understand the destructive, utterly unprincipled, unsound man:

By contrast, Cicero -- as teased out -- is manifestly right:

Of course, some will object to such boldly stated first principles. On what grounds? 

-- That they err? (= appeal to truth, right reason, warrant and wider prudence)

-- That they are an imposition against freedom? ( = appeal to conscience, neighbour, fairness, justice)

-- That we have no right to impose our "views" or "values"? (= appeal to neighbour, fairness, justice, conscience, and often to implicit imposition of another view!)

-- That theism is suspect, and this is a rush to theism? (= appeal to right reason, warrant, truth; also, failing to appreciate that the IS-OUGHT gap can only be bridged in the root of reality, requiring an IS that is inherently good and utterly wise . . . if you doubt, propose another _____ and show how it bridges ________  . . . rather than ending in immorality, amorality or the notion that right/wrong or good/evil is essentially arbitrary)

-- and the like? (= invariably, an appeal to such said first duties)

Anyway, as we come in the backdoor (having picked the lock), we now find some food for thought posted on the refrigerator door by Mahoney summarising Manent:

Manent reflects on “political action and the common good,” contending that the human good is not unsupported, and that we do not live in a merely arbitrary world; political action, he maintains, should be guided and informed by the old cardinal virtues: courage, prudence, temperance, and justice. As Manent put it in a 2014 essay, | . . . .

 “If we have the right to speak of humanity as a species sharing a common nature, this is because of this pattern of practical virtues, by which we recognize a courageous and just per-son in the human being born in the most distant and apparently dif-ferent latitude.” . . . .  

Manent reflects on the steady displacement of the natural law by the modern conception of human rights. [--> Ironically, your right to say life entails my duty to respect and uphold your life] He questions the widely shared notion of human rights that radically separates them, legitimate as they are in their own sphere, from the ends of human freedom.  [--> the civil peace of justice is due balance of rights, freedoms, duties] Manent rejects the fiction of human “autonomy”—a groundless free -dom, without reasons or purposes, to make our way in the world. Nor is he a partisan of “heteronomy,” where acting human beings take their direction from the will of others. Such categories are far too ab-stract; they tell us nothing about the “rules” inherent in human action itself. Those rules become clear as we act conscientiously in the world, trying to do justice to the sense of right and wrong that defines us as human beings. Starting from moral and political philosophy, from an eminently “practical world,” and not from theology or metaphysics (although Manent is in no way opposed to metaphysical reflection), Manent sets out to recover natural law as the key instrument vivify-ing free will, human choice, and moral and political action. [ Natural Law and Human Rights: Toward a Recovery of Practical Reason (Notre Dame Press, 2020), foreword pp. vii, viii.]

This is already provocative food for thought. But just in Chapter 1, he already goes deeper. As he argues on:

 “Why Natural Law Matters,” Manent highlights the incoherence of a rights project that combines apolitical universalism and a thoughtless cultural relativism. Commentators such as Olivier Roy condemn, for instance, Christian opposition to LGBT rights [--> claims?] but welcome, in the name of cultural tolerance, a far more vociferous opposition to them from European Muslims. The West is always judged severely, in this way of thinking, while the “Other” gets a free pass. As Manent demonstrates, politically and ju-ridically imposed same-sex marriage was not a modest change in the law to make marriage more “inclusive” but a systematic assault on the idea of a normative human nature. It changed the very nature of mar-riage, undercutting its natural foundations. Marriage—“the crucial institution of a human world organized according to natural law”— no longer acknowledges the complementarity of the sexes or the natural foundations of family life. Transgenderism continues this re-jection of the very idea of human nature and an authoritative natural moral law, where sex is radically separated from “gender.” That is surely worthy of reflection and debate before gender ideology be -comes a tyrannical orthodoxy beyond dispute. 

He goes on to indict:

 Machiavelli’s evocative rhetoric and audacious theorizing helped decisively to un-dermine the gap between what people do and what they ought to do, which is the horizon and precondition of all reasonable choice. In his assault on “imaginary principalities” (such as the perennial notion of natural law) in chapter 15 of The Prince, he frees “virtuosos of action,” daring revolutionaries of a new type, from adherence to the natural law. “Necessity,” a willingness to move back and forth between good and evil with an exhilarating alacrity, and immoral daring, become the trademark of those “princes” freed from the constraints of the moral law. They feign respect for that law—see chapter 18 of The Prince—but have no real place for it in their souls. 

There is of course, much more (especially on the pivotal question, "conscience"), but already we have much food for thought towards sound reformation. END

 

The "going concern world" challenge

 I have fairly frequently used a diagram illustrating our worldviews challenges, that speaks of our going concern world:

This, of course, echoes the common business term, the going concern. What it addresses is that long before we of the current generation came along, there was a world in being, playing out dynamics and leaving traces including those of history and of accumulated knowledge. Just to fix to something concrete, consider the context and background involved in this mom-and-pop machinist business in Australia, as it sets about repairing a broken hydraulic arm for an industrial machine:  

In our epistemology-haunted civilisation that is often tempted to give hyperskepticism a default over knowledge, this sort of situation opens up the force of the late Dallas Willard's expansion of the definition of knowledge:

To have knowledge . . . is to be able to represent something as it is on an adequate basis of thought or experience, not to exclude communications from qualified sources (“authority”) [--> compare, "warranted, credibly true (and so, reliable) belief"] This is the “knowledge” of ordinary life [--> knowledge belongs to the people], and it is what you expect of your electrician, auto mechanic, math teacher, and physician. Knowledge is not rare, and it is not esoteric . . . .  

[K]nowledge authorizes one to act, to direct action, to develop and supervise policy, and to teach. It does so because, as everyone assumes, it enables us to deal more successfully with reality: with what we can count on, have to deal with, or are apt to have bruising encounters with. Knowledge involves assured [--> I substitute here, warranted, credible]  truth . . .  [pp. 4, 19 & 20:  Dallas Willard & Literary Heirs, The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge, Routledge|Taylor& Francis Group, 2018. It is worth using a light dusting of algebra to show the undeniability of objective knowledge:

a: Take any reasonably identifiable field of focus, but it is convenient to use morality, M, the subject that deals with good/evil, duty and honour, right and wrong etc, and 

b: identify the claim, there  is no objective moral knowledge -- i.e. there are no claimed moral truths that are well warranted so independent of the error-prone idiosyncrasies of a given personality -- and represent it: ~k(M).

c: Now, ~k(M) is about M (thus every particular moral truth claim m1, m2, m3 . . . mk . . . ), implying that for any asserted positive moral truth, it is objectively the case that ~k(mk) obtains [or else, it would be mere giving of idiosyncratic opinion]; and so it manifestly properly belongs to M, it is a part of that domain of thought, study and analysis.

 d: So, ~k(M) is self referential and self denying, i.e. it refutes itself and is false. This being a case of a commonplace on core claims about central, foundational, hard questions, part of why they bristle with difficulties is that they are deeply self-referential.) Thus,

 e: instead, ~[~k(M)] = k(M) obtains, i.e. the first objective moral truth is, there are objective moral truths. 

f: As a first substantial, indeed self evident moral truth, it is wrong, wicked, evil to kidnap a young child, then bind, sexually torture, rape and murder her for one's sick pleasure. (Those who try to deny, evade, dismiss or distract attention from this yardstick case simply show themselves to be monstrous.)]

The obvious, instant challenge here, is that knowledge confers credibility and so legitimate authority; which irks those inclined to overthrow our legacy civilisation and its traditional institutions. To all such, I say, knowledge belongs to the people and to the real world of competence. Knowledge, in the common received sense, is a commonplace, not a vanishingly rare commodity.

Any intellectual scheme that implies that warranted so objective knowledge is not real, is refuted and fallacious, especially global or rhetorically selective hyperskepticism. Such specifically includes schemes that imply, suggest or invite an infinite chain of required definitions, axioms and proofs, or that our knowledge base is hopelessly circular or ill defined, or that language generally fails at communication (or is irretrievably ambiguous), or that only what is reduced to an algebraic logical scheme is sufficiently exact to be trustworthy, etc. All of this is simply an extension of the principle that as our core discussions are inescapably self-referential, any scheme that leads to grand delusion is self-defeating and absurd.

All of this, is part of our going concern world.

Moreover, that going concern world frame implies that the origins, roots and nature of the world must be such that we are possible and indeed actual. This sort of generic, weak anthropic premise, actually constrains the plausibility of worldviews and associated philosophical, scientific, ideological, religious, historical and natural history claims. So much so, that this preliminary body of considerations must be considered as a preface to and due constraint on any speculative philosophical, epistemological/skeptical and logical scheme. Where, it is helpful for such intellectual ventures to first explicitly acknowledge that going concern world framework.

For example, it seems fairly clear that we are rational (though error-prone), responsible, significantly free, morally governed creatures: finite, fallible, morally challenged, too often ill-willed and stubborn or even willfully blind. In that context, it seems clear that say, Dawkins' remark in River out of Eden (1995) is clangingly, absurdly wrong:

Indeed, it has long been known that something is grossly wrong with lab coat clad scientific atheism (and this shows that no, Dawkins is not making an idiosyncratic error that can be brushed aside; instead, he is just caught in a characteristic, cat-out-of-the-bag moment of inconvenient candour):

 It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.]

No wonder, Thomas Reid had long since observed that "[h]e must either be a fool, or want to make a fool of me, that would reason me out of my reason and senses."

Their name, sadly, is Legion.

Instead of the suggested amoral  world of pitiless, pointless, mindless indifference, we may ponder Cicero's built-in roots of the natural law, our first duties of reason:

Of course, it is highly controversial to suggest that the only serious candidate reality root that bridges the IS-OUGHT gap is the inherently good, utterly wise creator God. The answer to that is, this is philosophy not dogma, propose and defend a candidate of your own: _____ . It will, however, all too soon emerge that of the live option candidates, it is hard indeed to come up with another . . . going concern world . . . factually adequate, coherent, explanatorily balanced alternative. Already, Dawkins shows how the institutionally dominant evolutionary materialistic scientism fails. 

Trying to pull a world out of utter non being is even more embarrassing:

The small-g gods of paganism (and no, this is not a dirty word) are simply not world root reality. And of theism and its kissing cousins, we may see:

In short, we can see how a natural language based exploration of the going concern world lends to clearing the ground for productive reflections. END

The rise of "AI" (Artificial Intelligence) brings ethical concerns and principles to sharp focus

 For quite some time, I have been working on an initiative to help spark first level digital productivity, ranging from "7 - 11 year olds of all ages," through initial multimedia authoring and a first functional programming course. In the course of further work on Unit 1, I have been led to address "AI":

<<AI promises to transform technology, industry and how we live and work. Arguably, it is driving the second Info-Comms Technology (ICT) economic long wave, with massive creation and destruction of wealth ahead . . . and already in progress. To function and prosper in tomorrow's world, we will need to be able to appreciate and be productive in an age of super smart machines. So, then,  this course is a larval stage for building a desirable future for our region.

Such will of course require considerable attention to not only the obvious safety, privacy, rights and security issues, but also to ethical principles, practices and habits at personal, educational, institutional, business, community and global levels. Precisely, as AI systems, increasingly, are "capable of performing complex tasks that historically only a human could do, such as reasoning, making decisions, or solving problems." Power or capability, clearly, entails duties to do good, be prudent ("first, do no harm"), act wisely, and be honourable. Where, as AI is in reality "CI" -- canned intelligence, such ethical behaviour has to start with us. As, it is we who design, organise, program, inform and guide the AI. For example, AI has potential to help create an all-seeing surveillance state, a totalitarian horror that would more than fulfill anything in the notorious AD 95 passage in the Apocalypse, that no one could buy or sell save those who took the notorious mark of the beast. It is only us who can safeguard our liberty.

More broadly, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy outlines:  

 Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are digital technologies that will have significant impact on the development of humanity in the near future. They have raised fundamental questions about what we should do with these systems, what the systems themselves should do, what risks they involve, and how we can control these . . . .  [Key issues include]: Ethical issues that arise with AI systems as objects, i.e., tools made and used by humans. This includes issues of privacy (§2.1) and manipulation (§2.2), opacity (§2.3) and bias (§2.4), human-robot interaction (§2.5), employment (§2.6), and the effects of autonomy (§2.7). Then AI systems as subjects, i.e., ethics for the AI systems themselves in machine ethics (§2.8) and artificial moral agency (§2.9). Finally, the problem of a possible future AI superintelligence leading to a “singularity” (§2.10). [In, Vincent C Mueller, 2020, "Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics."]

Beyond this, AI ethics points to broader ethics of computing and information, thence general ethics. As ethics is now too often inadequately framed, a good first reference for both the AI concerns and broader aspects of ethics, is Cicero's branch- on- which- we- all- sit, built-in first duties:

The naturally evident, first duties and first, built in law that built our civilisation.  Manifestly, the habitually untruthful, unreasonable, imprudent, unfair (so, untrustworthy) person is not someone who we readily, safely do business with. So, too, as Aristotle pointed out in The Rhetoric, Bk 1 Ch 13, "there is a general idea of just and unjust in accordance with nature," noting from Sophocles' Antigone, how "neither to-day nor yesterday, but from all eternity, these statutes live and no man knoweth whence they came . . . " Further, we may adapt Aquinas' summary: the good (especially, the just) is to be done and evil avoided. Thus, we see outlined core principles of the natural, intelligible, conscience attested law that indeed helped to build our civilisation.  And yes, such first duties include duties and first principles of prudent, sound reasoning, as well as pointing to the famous (and, for cause, still widely influential) ten commandments, as "duties to neighbour" suggests. As the Apostle Paul put it, "Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law," having earlier noted how when people "by nature do what the law requires," they thus "show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them." [Rom. 13:10, 2:14 - 15; cf. Exodus 20:1 - 17, Deut 6:1 - 9, Lev 19:15 - 18 and Matt 22:34 - 40 for relevant but frequently overlooked context.] Where, too, the historic vision holds that God -- our utterly wise and inherently good, eternal root and sustainer -- is manifestly our first neighbour, and our host ("in him we live, and move and have our being" [Ac 17:38]). Thus, for good reason, in our God-fearing region God is widely understood to be the ultimate, adequate source of moral government; being the root level is who by goodness and wisdom properly grounds ought. Such ethical theism is therefore pro-civilisational, something that needs to be said in a day where "religion" is too often, increasingly treated as if it were a dirty word. Moreover, this draws out that ethics is tied to the root of our worldviews, even as we can see that there are indeed self evident first duties we should all heed. Bottom-line: morally sound character counts, in AI, in wider computing, in general business, in community and in civilisation.

So, among other things, AI brings the ethical issues of computing in society to a sharp focus.>>

In so doing, it draws attention to the ethical hole in our civilisation, and the urgent need to fill it. First, as computing and information technology sectors are extremely fast moving, capable of transforming the economy and society at unprecedented rates. So, if we make big, Acts 27 voyage of folly blunders, we can now shipwreck our civilisation very rapidly indeed. And not just through the folly of a nuclear war; already we see troubling signs of lawless authoritarian ideologies reaching for mass surveillance and for censorship, even as they marginalise, brand, target and polarise against today's version of Emanuel Goldstein in Orwell's 1984. And, it is clear that computerised theft of elections is very possible, especially if backed by the unaccountable administrative state and wider "establishment." The AI-empowered deep state is all too real. 

But, the problem is deeper than that. 

For, in recent centuries and decades, we have seen increasingly dominating influence of worldviews and cultural/policy agendas that have in them no root level IS that can properly found OUGHT. Radical relativism, emotivism, subjectivism, hyperskepticism and associated atheism (usually dressed up in a lab coat) have run the board, as "religion," especially our Hebraic-Christian inheritance, has been turned into a dirty word through utterly imbalanced emphasis on the sins and follies of Christendom. That want of balance, indeed, was a challenge for drafting the above cited note. 

So, let me pause and highlight from the Ciceronian first duties that indeed, there are branch on which we all sit, inescapable first principles and first duties: to try to object, one cannot but appeal to the same. As this excites strong emotions, let us simply point out that such objections would include: that's not true, or you have to prove that, or you only think you know that, or that's not fair, or that's only your view you are trying to impose on us, etc. All of these, in fact, directly appeal to the said seven first duties: truth, right reason, warrant and wider prudence, duties to neighbour so to fairness and justice. In short, instant absurdity on attempted denial. Just as it says on the tin, self-evident, known moral first truths, first duties and first law. 

We can broaden the result, as morality, M, is reasonably identifiable as that subject that addresses duty, virtue, honour, goodness (vs evil) right (vs wrong), justice (vs injustice) etc. So, the claim that there is no warranted, objective knowledge about morality, ~k(M), is about M, is intended to be objective knowledge, and properly belongs to M. So, the attempted denial -- were it ever successful -- would imply that ~k(M) is an objective, known moral truth. Oops. So, it is false by self contradiction. Instead, we freely assert ~[~k(M)] = k(M). There undeniably is objectively knowable moral truth, starting with this one. In that light, the similarly self evident status of the first duties is unsurprising.

From this, we can revisit the seemingly invincible hyperskepticism, relativism and emotivism etc of our day. For, objectively warranted, known moral truths defeat hyperskepticism, relativism and subjectivism etc. They may hold dominant influence, handing power elites the ability to impose otherwise indefensible perverse, ill advised policies. But, they are dead, doomed to dry up.

And, it is readily seen that there is but one serious candidate reality root that properly grounds Ought. 

Again, our challenge:

Yes, we see here, the inherently good, utterly wise creator God, a necessary and maximally great being. Those who dismiss, reject or evade, need to put forth another candidate that coherently bridges the is-ought gap: __________ 

That blank will prove hard to fill indeed, as the confusions and unsettled state of ethics in our day will readily substantiate. 

This has long been important, the rise of AI now makes it utterly urgent. END

I am troubled at the "definitions" of atheism on offer

 

As we may readily see, we are challenged by a going concern world, leading to core first hard questions regarding the roots of reality.  One of these, is the reality of God, and we often encounter (especially online) those who deny the reality of God, i.e. atheists.

 But, on consulting the Oxford Handbook of Atheism, we find a riot of patently disparate (and arguably inadequately structured) proposed definitions:

Even today . . . there is no clear, academic consensus as to how exactly the term should be used. For example, consider the following definitions of ‘atheism’ or ‘atheist’, all taken from serious scholarly writings published in the last ten years:

1. ‘Atheism […] is the belief that there is no God or gods’ (Baggini 2003: 3)
2. ‘At its core, atheism […] designates a position (not a “belief”) that includes or asserts no god(s)’ (Eller 2010: 1)
3. ‘[A]n atheist is someone without a belief in God; he or she need not be someone who believes that God does not exist’ (Martin 2007: 1)
4. ‘[A]n atheist does not believe in the god that theism favours’ (Cliteur 2009: 1)
5. ‘By “atheist,” I mean precisely what the word has always been understood to mean—a principled and informed decision to reject belief in God’ (McGrath 2004: 175) [Bullivant, Ch 1]

Immediately, 1 is about the belief that there is no God (or gods simply confuses the matter as a small-g god is nothing like God). 2 speaks of a “position” as opposed to a belief, evidently wishing to imply that the position is evidently warranted enough to be knowledge. This fails to acknowledge that claimed warranted, credibly true beliefs – claimed knowledge – still remain as beliefs, even if they are planks of a worldview (a “position”); even before we fail to find adequate warrant . . . is that why some atheists try to suggest theirs is the “default” view?

3 speaks of being “without a belief in God,” but a newborn child is not an atheist. Nor is the lizard living in my kitchen window.

It also seeks to evade the generally understood point that atheists actively deny the existence of God, with implication that they claim to have good cause for such denial. 4 seems to restate aspects of 3, but by using a lower case g, fails to distinguish superhuman entities such as Apollo or Thor or Isis etc., from the inherently good, utterly wise Creator, a necessary (so, eternal, reality root) and maximally great being, the God of ethical theism.

It is 5 that speaks of principled and informed decision to reject belief in God, but that would enfold agnosticism which denies having adequate warrant for theistic belief as opposed to denial of the reality of God.

The more popular level Wikipedia only manages to confirm the riot of disparities (and theism is short for Monotheism, it is not to be conflated with polytheism etc):

Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.

The American Atheists try to be clever, but evidently only manage to be artfully evasive – again, a newborn child is manifestly not an atheist – and, again, small-g “gods” are ontologically different from the necessary being, reality root, inherently good, utterly wise Creator and maximally great, Supreme Being of ethical theism:

Atheism is not an affirmative belief that there is no god nor does it answer any other question about what a person believes. It is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods. Atheism is too often defined incorrectly as a belief system. To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods.

One is tempted to say, that by conflating gods and God, atheism advocates are setting up a strawman, the better to knock it over. While, we may have a right to that inference n the case of highly educated thought leaders who are duty-bound to know the difference between the ontological status of God and that of gods, in most cases, I think we are looking at deep rooted conceptual confusion. Perhaps unflatteringly ignorant, but not willful negligence or outright calculated deceit.

It is clear, that when atheists choose to disbelieve in God, they imply or assume that they have a good enough reason that such disbelief or denial or rejection – it is certainly not merely passive absence of belief – is warranted. Certainly, that is reflected in the Dawkinsian type sneer or attitude: ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked.

However, the logic of being (ontological) hole soon emerges, once we see talking points like, we believe in one fewer gods than you theists do. Or, in the question, who made God, or who designed the designer or the like. For example, in answering ontological or cosmological arguments, atheists may speak of teapots floating in space, or pink elephants or a maximally evil being or the like. In challenging theists on the root of moral reality, they too often resurrect the Euthyphro dilemma, between good/evil is the capricious, arbitrary will of a god, or is independent of the god.

All of these are conceptually misdirected.

Here, it will help to think in terms of possible worlds. Such, being sufficiently complete descriptions of the way our common world . . . or some other suggested or actualised world . . . is, was, or may be: states of affairs. We may then consider entities or beings (or candidates to be such) across that gamut. Some candidates, like a Eucledean Plane square circle, cannot be in any world, as core characteristics are mutually contradictory. These, are impossible of being: yes, the first law of logic applies to the logic of being, something A is itself, A, in light of its core characteristics.

Others, are possible, such as fires, triangles, numbers, us.

Some, may be in some worlds, but not in others; contingent beings. Contingent beings are causally dependent and may have a beginning, an end, and enabling factors.

By contrast, necessary beings will be present in every possible world as part of the required fabric for any such world to exist. For example try to imagine a distinct world W in which two-ness begins, or ceases, or is absent. Manifestly impossible, as W being distinct from say its close neighbour W’ already implies distinction, so, twoness. Two brings with it 0, 1, 2, 3 . . . and the familiar sets N, Z, Q, R, C, and even the hyperreals R* etc. Yes, that is already a very good reason for the universal power of mathematics, the study of the logic of structure and quantity. An extension of the logic of being, ontology.

(And no, Mathematics, handmaiden and enabler of empirical sciences, is not itself such a science. Scientism is discredited from its outset. No, Big-S science does not utterly monopolise or dominate knowledge. It certainly is not Lewontin’s only begetter of truth.)

Right next door to our ABC’s and 123’s, some of the most profound things lurk: infinity, infinitesimals, eternality (as, necessary beings have no beginning or end . . . ), the root of reality, much more. (See, here, and here [more technical].)

There is a further characteristic of a serious candidate necessary being: either, it is impossible of being or else it is actual. For, if not impossible, possible and existing in at least one possible world. But also, not contingent, not causally dependent, so eternal and pervasive across worlds as we saw for two-ness. Similarly, ponder the empty set {}, yes THE as there is just one. Not in any museum display, everywhere influential, invoked even by von Neuman to construct N thence ZQRCR* etc. {} → 0, {0} → 1, {0,1} → 2, . . . {0,1,2 . . . } → ω omega, the first transfinite ordinal. Dare I suggest, too, pervasively present?

Now, too, our going concern world has year after year in succession, it is temporal, causal and thermodynamically constrained: while energy is conserved, it is also degraded; pointing to eventual heat death as cosmic concentrations of energy are used up. But, pointing to the remote past, this has a logic of being result. For, we cannot traverse a transfinite span in successive, cumulative steps. That is, the past of origins is inherently finite, even beyond the big bang. It is false that the past has been transfinite, there was a finitely remote beginning for any world physical enough for the statistics of particle or molecule interactions to give rise to the laws of thermodynamics. 

Where, also, our world cannot have come from a true nothing, utter non-being. Were there ever such non-being, as such can have no causal power, that utter non-being would endure. That is, as a world now is, at finite remove we have a necessary being world root.

Yet further, we are morally governed, right down to the core of our rational being. We have branch on which we all sit duties to truth, right reason, warrant (and wider prudence), and so forth. After Hume’s guillotine that calls for a root able to bridge the is-ought gap. That requires inherent goodness and utter, but in key parts intelligible wisdom. For that, there is just one serious candidate, as has been noted (but which needs to be hammered home): the inherently good, utterly wise creator God, a necessary and maximally great being. The God of ethical theism.

Now, too, as no one seriously proposes that God is causally dependent, we are dealing here with a serious candidate world root. So, either impossible of being or else actual as the required world root. Where, as of the impact of Plantinga’s free will defense, there is no plausible argument that God, thus understood, is impossible of being. So, credibly actual.

A critical, epochal result. END