Does morality exist?

[Ender]

Why not allow for the possibility that at least some assertions of value may have truth value?

I do not rule out that possibility but what I am asking for is for someone to explain why we should believe that it does, not that it might.

If you say that they can never have truth value because their truth cannot be empirically verified, you are taking an anti-realist position because you are putting limits on what can be regarded as real as only that which can be verified. In other words, you are declaring everything that cannot be verified as unreal.

Don’t ascribe any position to me; I have no idea what an anti-realist position is. If it helps, here is what I’m asking: What is logically inconsistent with the position AntiTheist has taken? I am not pushing my own belief here, I am addressing the question I raised in the OP: If God does not exist, can morality objectively exist and if so what is its source? AntiTheist answered the question by saying no, morality cannot objectively exist, and (within the constraints I set (e.g. God does not exist)) I cannot find a flaw in his logic.

Ender

 

[Leela]

I do not rule out that possibility but what I am asking for is for someone to explain why we should believe that it does, not that it might.
Don’t ascribe any position to me; I have no idea what an anti-realist position is. If it helps, here is what I’m asking: What is logically inconsistent with the position AntiTheist has taken? I am not pushing my own belief here, I am addressing the question I raised in the OP: If God does not exist, can morality objectively exist and if so what is its source? AntiTheist answered the question by saying no, morality cannot objectively exist, and (within the constraints I set (e.g. God does not exist)) I cannot find a flaw in his logic.

Ender

You are trying to put the burden of proof on others, but you are willing to assert that some propositions (scientific ones) have truth-value whether or not God exists, correct? AntiTheist wants to say that moral assertions cannot have truth value if God does not exist. Why not? Why are you willing to assert that, say, the law of non-contradiction is either true or false, but a moral assertion such as “slavery is evil” cannot have truth value? If you can’t come up with good reasons that stand up to scrutiny to say why truth applies to one but not the other, then it seems to me that if you are willing to apply the notion of truth to scientific assertions, you should be willing to apply it to moral assertions. It seems to me that so far every attempt to show how moral assertions suffer epistemically in comparison to assertions of fact has failed.

For example, we don’t think that the fact the not everyone believes a given fact or that there is no way we can think of to get consensus on the truth of a fact (whether or not we can prove it) is any problem for the notion that there is some truth of the matter of fact.

Best,
Leela

 

[Ender]

Huh? I’m just re-stating what a non-cognitivist anti-realist believes.

I have no idea what a non-cognitivist anti-realist is, let alone what he believes. You tell me what you believe and I’ll tell you what I believe.

…the same way that I know numbers [et al] exist: Either through inference to the best explanation, through the principle of sufficient reason, or through a priori logical probability.

The equation 2+2=4 can be proven, but it can only be proven because it is based on the axiom that 1+1=2. At its most basic level, mathematics is based on axioms - which are statements accepted as being true without requiring any proof. I think morality falls into the same category.

Ender

 

[Ender]

Not all norms are moral norms, however. That is, they are not based on an attempt to integrate one’s social standards to conform to what is right or good.

This would be true if there was an objective standard against which we could compare behaviors, but you cannot say someones social standards don’t conform to what is right or good unless those terms have objective meaning. How do you know there is such a thing as right and good and that you - but not the Aztecs - know what it is?

That’s why it is important to point out, as Syntax has, that much so-called moral thinking is really just laziness - it is not based on a genuine attempt to apprehend what is good and right.

Are you suggesting that my failure to understand the logical flaw in AntiTheist’s position is because I’m too lazy to figure it out? I (and he) may be wrong but I would think that the fact that I started this thread to address specifically this question would indicate that laziness is probably not a good description of my approach to the subject.

Ender

 

[Ender]

I’m not sure if you’re noticing the difference between “universal moral laws” and the “universality of moral laws”. The former is a reference to putatively universal moral propositions; the latter refers to the property of ‘universality,’ universality

OK, I understand the distinction. What I am interested in discussing is whether universal moral laws objectively exist and what is their source. I assume you aren’t contending that they exist because of the universality of moral laws.

To say that the application of a category to a kind of being is universal is obviously to make a putatively ‘objective’ claim, and to do so is obviously to deny that it is a function simply of ‘purely personal preferences.’

Whatever, I granted that that term was not applicable.

No, but the point is that skeptical claims stand in need of justification.

All claims stand in need of justification. What I am asking for is an explanation for why the claim that morality objectively exists is any more logical than the claim that it doesn’t.

To say that it exists objectively is to say that it exists independently of the choices of individual

Agreed.

• in other words, if someone chooses not to be moral, they are choosing to be immoral, not amoral,

This assumes that morality exists (otherwise all choices would be amoral regardless of what we thought of them) but that is the very point we are debating.

Why distinguish between ‘truth’ and ‘objective truth’?

I don’t. My use of “objective” was applied to morality to ask whether there are universal moral truths or if all morality is merely personal.

Ender

 

[Ender]

I just knew this confusion was lurking somewhere between the concepts of “objectivity,” “belief,” and “truth” as in the “what is true for you may not be true for me” fallacy.

I’m still looking for an explanation of why this is a fallacy (as opposed to simply a (valid) claim that it hasn’t been proven true.)

Betterave goes on further to clarify the notion of epistemic justification, essential for whether or not our *belief *that X counts as knowledge that X

Is this another way of saying that it is more probable that moral truths exist than that they do not?

So we are more or less *justified in holding * a proposition to be true if and only if it satisfies one or more of the following conditions:

(1) the proposition is apprehended inductively through an inference from most observed cases to all cases

So if most or all people believe something is true we are justified in holding (is that different than “believing”?) it to be true, and that our belief/holding has some bearing on whether it is in fact true?

(2) it itself is a 1st principle or axiom which is indibutably certain commanding universal assent.

Axioms are true by definition. What we are discussing is whether the conclusion that “objective morality exists” can be derived from the axiom that “God does not exist.”

Ender

 

[Ender]

You are trying to put the burden of proof on others

I am happy to share the burden of proof. You give us proof that your position is true and I’ll (let AntiTheist) defend his (which, by the way, is the same position Dostoyevsky took).

you are willing to assert that some propositions (scientific ones) have truth-value whether or not God exists, correct?

Absolutely.

AntiTheist wants to say that moral assertions cannot have truth value if God does not exist. Why not? Why are you willing to assert that, say, the law of non-contradiction is either true or false, but a moral assertion such as “slavery is evil” cannot have truth value?

Is the law of non-contradiction based on an axiom? Would the law still hold if the axiom was changed? If evil does not exist then slavery by definition cannot be evil, but if God does not exist how is it that evil exists?

I’m going to go lie down now.

Ender

 

[AntiTheist]

Well, it looks like it’s the usual philosophical run-around on this thread from the moral realists. Redefinitions, double-meanings, and constant obfuscation of reality. Surprise, surprise indeed.

Let’s go back to “Happiness is better than misery.” I may have mispoke when I said it was “meaningless” – I meant rather that it doesn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know. It simply puts the label “happiness” on actions a person likes and values and puts the label “misery” on actions a person doesn’t like and doesn’t value. We already know that people value the things that they value more than they value the things that they don’t value – that’s what “valuing” means.

“Happiness is better than misery,” I’m saying, isn’t a value judgment; it’s simply a relabeling of valuing and not valuing.

So let’s actually turn our attention to a value judgment: “Having pleasurable mental feelings is better than undergoing suffering.” *

Here’s another value judgment: “Undergoing suffering is better than having pleasurable mental feelings.”

If these value judgments have truth values, then one of them has to be false. Which one is false and how do you tell?*

 

[geekborj]

\You can demonstrate that gravity exists. Similarly demonstrate that morality exists. You can’t do it because morality is a fairy tale.

How can one demonstrate that gravity exists? When i see something (or someone) falling, is it just because of my senses? Am i being fooled by my brain into thinking of the “falling motion.”

While many argues about physical “proofs” of ideas, these are all figments of the mind. Everything falls into a “fairy tale” of the mind.

Either: (a) our minds are wired to think and perceive about the patterns in Nature, which does not actually exist; OR (b) there really is a pattern in Nature that we only perceive partially or incompletely (yet).

The fact that morality is an issue for human beings, there must be something in Man that yearns for something that should lead him to the Absolute.

 

[Betterave]

So let’s actually turn our attention to a value judgment: “Having pleasurable mental feelings is better than undergoing suffering.” *

Here’s another value judgment: “Undergoing suffering is better than having pleasurable mental feelings.”

If these value judgments have truth values, then one of them has to be false. Which one is false and how do you tell?*

Do you remember Sytax’s comments about the good not being definable, although we can give instances in all sorts of contexts of things that are objectively good? “Better than” means “more good than” so the same comments apply. Therefore the answer to your question is: Neither proposition is either true or false - they have not been defined relevant to some context by which we can apprehend what they actually mean, i.e., by which we can apprehend them as instances of the ‘more good’ or not. You could throw in a ceteris paribus clause and we might have something to say, or modify the content to make it properly abstract such that we can say something entirely abstract about it, the way you want us to (e.g., “Malice is morally better than benevolence”); or you could say something concrete, something with an adequately circumscribed context for our concepts to be applicable to it (e.g., “Fr. Damien was a better person than Josef Mengele” or “Sidney Crosby is a better hockey player than Kobe Bryant”). But none of this has truth-value in your view, you’re stymied, you don’t know what to say in any of these cases - “is it true… or false…?”

 

[Betterave]

This would be true if there was an objective standard against which we could compare behaviors, but you cannot say someones social standards don’t conform to what is right or good unless those terms have objective meaning. How do you know there is such a thing as right and good and that you - but not the Aztecs - know what it is?

My claim is not that I know the good and the Aztecs did not - that question is irrelevant. So how do we know if they *meant *to act in conformity with the good? Same way we know anything else about what they thought… And for the simpler case of those who are not dead, we talk and - amazingly! -we understand each other! (Some people are not good at this, but nonetheless, that’s how it works - there never was an original isolation of our purely personal judgments within our own private domain of subjectivity - that’s a story that just doesn’t match our experience - unless perhaps you’re autistic - but even then…)

Are you suggesting that my failure to understand the logical flaw in AntiTheist’s position is because I’m too lazy to figure it out? I (and he) may be wrong but I would think that the fact that I started this thread to address specifically this question would indicate that laziness is probably not a good description of my approach to the subject.

No. In your case it’s confusion, a genuine failure to understand. It seems that you *are *motivated by a desire to apprehend the right and the good, not just lazy, but you’re just not understanding the conceptual structure of particular arguments about situations that you take to be counter-factual. (We might suspect you’re not *highly *motivated to understand morality without God, however, since you believe in God.) You’re more honest than Anti, at least - you seem to understand that you don’t understand, while he just complains that the arguments against him are incoherent obfuscations - without ever addressing specifics (oddly enough) - I think we could call that laziness, or maybe just self-indulgence, but whatever it is, it would be nice to get some more engaged feedback, to have a sense that he’s genuinely trying to understand the case against him.

 

[Syntax]

Page 1

Well, it looks like it’s the usual philosophical run-around on this thread from the moral realists. Redefinitions, double-meanings, and constant obfuscation of reality. Surprise, surprise indeed.

Uhh…do you have any examples for us to support this claim? In the following two posts, I will show your own “Redefinitions, double-meanings, and constant obfuscations of reality.”

Let’s go back to “Happiness is better than misery.” I may have mispoke when I said it was “meaningless” – I meant rather that it doesn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know. It simply puts the label “happiness” on actions a person likes and values and puts the label “misery” on actions a person doesn’t like and doesn’t value. We already know that people value the things that they value more than they value the things that they don’t value – that’s what “valuing” means.

Still, this doesn’t sound correct to me since some people value things that don’t make them happy (heroine, excessive wealth). So happiness is not always synonymous with what I value or what I like (unless you’re an extremely liberal utilitarian who incorporates masochism into his definition of “happiness.”)

“Happiness is better than misery,” I’m saying, isn’t a value judgment.

huh?..of course “happiness is better than misery” is a value judgment. What do you think “better-than” means? (you are also confusing different kinds of value-judgments which I will show in the next post).

“Happiness is better than misery,” is simply a relabeling of [a persons] valuing and not valuing.

“Relabeling” of a person’s valuing and not valuing, eh? This is false. I’ve already addressed this in post #122. You mean to say that the meaning of the statement “Happy is better than misery” is identical to the meaning of the statement “individual X values happiness more than misery.” I’ve already shown this leads to a contradiction in the other post, so you must not be understanding what I said. But I will repeat my argument here since it is more refined.

The principle of the linguistic reduction of statements says that if the meaning of one statement can be reduced to the meaning of another statement, then the two statements are identical in meaning. But your claim above ends up in a contradiction. And if it ends up in a contradiction, then the two statements are not identical in meaning because neither statement tolerates a substitutional paraphrasing of the other.

(1) The meaning of “X is more valuable than Y” is identical to the meaning of “individual T values X more than he/she values Y.” (your premise)
(2) Individual A values happiness more than he values misery. (premise)
(3) So happiness is more valuable than misery. (1,2)
(4) Individual B does not value happiness more than he values misery. (premise)
(5) So happiness is not more valuable than misery. (1, 4)
(6) So happiness both is and is not more valuable than misery. (3, 5)
–contradiction

The point is that you cannot reduce statements made about happiness to statements made about indivduals. Both linguistically and logically the translational paraphrase simply won’t work. What are you not understanding here? And where is your counterargument? In the next post, the following are all very different kinds of claims you need to distinguish:

continued…

 

[Syntax]

Page 2

(A) “Individual x values happiness”–which is a statement of fact about a person and is empirically verifiable.

(B) “Happiness itself is a valuable thing.”–this is axiomatically true and is about the intrinsic value of happiness itself independent of context and individuals. Though not directly empirically verifiable, it is supported inductively by the empirical claim, “Most (if not all) people value happiness.” So happiness must be something most people value. So happiness must be a valuable thing. If you think “happiness is a valuable thing” is either false or truth-valueless, you will need to explain why you think this inductive logic is mistaken, or why you think the noun “happiness” does not refer to any thing that people in fact desire, because, clearly, most people desire something designated by this very term. Intuitively, happiness exists, has intrinsic value for people, and so has the property of being-valued.

(C) “Suffering itself is a valuable thing”–this is axiomatically false and is a statement about the intrinsic value of suffering itself independent of context. Though not directly empirically verifiable, it is supported inductively by the empirical claim, “Most (if not all) people do not value suffering in itself.” The reasoning holds the same here as above.

(C) “Happiness is more valuable that suffering.”–this is a comparative value-statement which varies from one context and individual to another, so the statement has a truth-value which varies. But this isn’t problematic because it is still consistent with what all of us find to be objectively good. I show this below.

(D) “A person always ought to pursue more happiness at the expense of suffering”–this is a normative claim about what one ought to do with respect to this value (and is utilitarian in spirit).

(E) “A person *ought not * always pursue happiness at the expense of suffering”–this is another normative claim about when it is permissable and impermissable to pursue happiness. You might find this as a derived moral principle from a Kantian ethical principle such as “One ought to do one’s moral duty unconditionally.” So even though happiness is a good thing, there are some circumstances in which it would be impermissable for a person to pursue the value of happiness, namely, when the pursuit of it would be contrary to one’s duties.

So let’s actually turn our attention to a value judgment: “Having pleasurable mental feelings is better than undergoing suffering.” *. Here’s another value judgment: "Undergoing suffering is better than having pleasurable mental feelings."If these value judgments have truth values, then one of them has to be false. Which one is false and how do you tell? *

You are conflating statements of comparitive value which vary from one individual and one context to the next with what we find intrinsically valuable–so the truth-value of the above statements can change. However, "pleasure is valuable in itself " is axiomatically true. “Suffering is valuable in itself” is axiomatically false. Just about everyone unanimously agrees with this here, and the person who thought otherwise (perhaps a masochist?) would be saying something incorrect. But there are two things value-statements are not which you might be confusing.

First, when I say “Pleasurable mental feelings are valuable” I am not erecting this statement as expressing that pleasure itself is an absolute value. In other words, the potential fulfillment of pleasure can be overriden by other things we find valuable, such as knowledge, discipline, hard-work, justice, and friendship. A person’s individual priorities will always organize the importance of these different values with respect to his present pursuits, his character, and his personal tastes. So when someone finds knowledge more valuable than pleasure, or vice-versa, he is not claiming that knowledge is an absolute value that holds for himself and for everyone across all contexts and circumstance at the expense of other values–but this shouldn’t detract from the fact that knowledge in and of itself is always a valuable thing. Anybody who thought otherwise would be believing something false.

Second, an intrinsic value-statement is not a *moral principle *that dictates we should always pursue this value at the expense of that value; there are always exceptions to pursuing the fulfillment of one value over another, because in some contexts the pursuit of this or that value, say, pursuing pleasure at the cost of someone else’s human dignity is morally wrong. This is precisely why normative statements are so important; they provide rules for us about when it is permissable and impermissable to pursue our the fulfillment of our values.

 

[Leela]

Is the law of non-contradiction based on an axiom? Would the law still hold if the axiom was changed? If evil does not exist then slavery by definition cannot be evil, but if God does not exist how is it that evil exists?

I agree that if evil does not exists then slavery cannot be evil, but I don’t understand why the existence or nonexistence of God has any bearing on whether or not something can be rightly called evil. My claim that slavery is evil is not based on an axiom that God exists. Why do you assume that it must?

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Well, it looks like it’s the usual philosophical run-around on this thread from the moral realists. Redefinitions, double-meanings, and constant obfuscation of reality. Surprise, surprise indeed.

you complain about this

Let’s go back to “Happiness is better than misery.” I may have mispoke when I said it was “meaningless” – I meant rather that it doesn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know.

then you immediately do it your self

 

[Syntax]

I agree that if evil does not exists then slavery cannot be evil, but I don’t understand why the existence or nonexistence of God has any bearing on whether or not something can be rightly called evil. My claim that slavery is evil is not based on an axiom that God exists. Why do you assume that it must?

In the Symposium Plato asked the question, “Is piety good because the gods decree it, or do the gods decree it because piety is good?” I think a theist’s intutions about the necessity for a transcendental being to be the source and ground for what is good is very well-motivated, but I don’t want to get into that here. As Plato’s remark suggests, the question is which proposition is logically prior: (a) something is good because God decrees it, or (b) God decrees it because it is good. Both have problems and advantages. The former has the advantage of making normative/value statements binding on all individuals, but has the disadvantage of suggesting that God’s decrees are arbitrary. The latter has the advantage of explaing why God decrees what he does when he sets up a moral law, but has the disadvantage of making the Good something outside of God’s creative act and hence fails to have any sanction for humans or for God. Just a thought…

 

[Betterave]

OK, I understand the distinction. What I am interested in discussing is whether universal moral laws objectively exist and what is their source. I assume you aren’t contending that they exist because of the universality of moral laws.

I’m not sure what you’re asking about here. Maybe this will help?: Putative moral laws exist and if these are truly moral laws, they have the property of universality, i.e., of being unconditionally binding in each and every situation to which they apply (we affirm this simply from their analytic definition and/or from the conceptual structure of the institution of belief by which we apprehend them). There are no good reasons to doubt that many of the putative moral laws we apprehend are objectively grounded (true moral laws) and many good reasons to think that they are objectively grounded (in our institutions of reason-giving and the basic conceptual structures by which we grasp reality). Therefore, there is no reason to believe that they are merely grounded in personal preferences and it is unreasonable to think that they are so grounded.

You might object: but why not accept Anti’s alternate ‘basic conceptual structure’? It’s novel and unintuitive, sure; but why not? Well, why would we do that? So that we can defend rapists and murderers? No, that’s not what Anti wants. So rapists and murderers can justify themselves to themselves? Unfortunately, that is what Anti’s position implies, but that doesn’t seem to be his stated motive. So why? It’s so we can grasp reality as it really is - that’s the claim I’m hearing, at least. But what makes Anti think that this is the way reality really is? Perhaps he admires his own humility in not imposing his personal categories of reality on ‘objective’ reality? But that can’t be it; that’s exactly what he’s doing. Do you have anything to suggest? What do you think motivates Anti’s position?

All claims stand in need of justification. What I am asking for is an explanation for why the claim that morality objectively exists is any more logical than the claim that it doesn’t.

So now you are using the property “more logical” as your basis for making existential claims? I’m not sure how that is supposed to work. “What is logic?” is one of those fascinating questions. I think that logic in the broad sense is the “gathering of (subjective and objective genitive) being.” Let’s just say here that the logic of existence is phenomenology - that is the gathering of the being that appears, that shows itself to us as itself (sorry if that doesn’t mean much to you - try to meditate it). When we apprehend really existing things it is a matter of our being open to having them show themselves to us, as something. One particular mode of appearing as something is appearing as the instantiation of particular concepts, so mastery of concepts allows things to appear to us. One of the things that appear to us is our practical mastery in the domain of morality, our ability to reflect upon our preferences and to form judgments on their basis. Judgments are not preferences, they are practical (action-directed) axioms based on our preferences, and they can be, qua judgments, public statements of value, and therefore public practical axioms. Moral judgments, then, instantiate the possibility of public practical axioms in a particular way, namely as unconditionally binding imperatives in terms of which we recognize and interact with the collection of features of reality that we call moral - virtue, vice, right, wrong, good, bad, admirable, base, beautiful, ugly. These ways of apprehending reality are not proposed to the individual such that she can agree to see the world in these terms or not. When we look at our own capacity for understanding what is, these are objectively constituted categories of reality that are given to us and transcend, contextualize, give meaning to, our personal preferences.

Quote:

• in other words, if someone chooses not to be moral, they are choosing to be immoral, not amoral,
  This assumes that morality exists (otherwise all choices would be amoral regardless of what we thought of them) but that is the very point we are debating.

I’m not assuming morality exists - I’m pointing out the rules governing moral categories. These rules show that (and how) morality exists - and of course they are not people, so they are unable to assume morality exists (and of course no individual invents them as a matter of personal preference).

 

[itinerant1]

There is an objective ground for morality. It is called the “natural law” or the “natural moral law,” which is the same everywhere and at all times. There can be no genuine understanding of morality or ethics as long as natural law is neglected.

 

[Syntax]

I’m still looking for an explanation of why this is a fallacy (as opposed to simply a (valid) claim that it hasn’t been proven true.)

“What’s true for you many not be true for me” is a very nonsensical way of talking and confuses matters all-too quickly, not exactly a logical fallacy. Believing is a private mental act, and the propositon which is what that believing is about is a public object which everyone can discuss about. Only propositions are true or false, acts of believing are not true or false. Sometimes we interchange “belief” with “proposition,” and this is fine when we say, “your belief is false.” But really we are talking about the content or object of that belief–the proposition–not the act of believing itself.

Suppose that Susie, the cat, is sitting on the mat. Suppose John believes that Susie is on the mat. And suppose Bill believes that Susie is not on the mat. So what (the proposition) John believes is true and what (the proposition) Bill believes is false. And what each believes cannot both be true because that would be a contradiction. It is just silly to say that “what Bill and John believe is true for them”–which doesn’t make any sense.

What Bill believes is false, so what we really mean when we say “what Bill believes is false is true for him” is only that “What Bill believes is something Bill thinks is true, but what Bill believes is something that is, in fact, false.” But why not just simplify this without the truth-predicate and say either,“What Bill believes is false” or “Bill believes X, and X is false.” After all, we are not interested in what Bill thinks, we are interested in whether or not the content of what Bill thinks is true. So you need to get rid of the “truth”-predicate when talking about the content of beliefs that are false; it just doesn’t make any sense with respect to them.

Is this another way of saying that it is more probable that moral truths exist than that they do not?

That’s one way of saying it, yes.

So if most or all people believe something is true we are justified in holding (is that different than “believing”?) it to be true, and that our belief/holding has some bearing on whether it is in fact true?

huh?..No, universal consensus (or the fact that everyone believes X) is not a justification at all for believing, holding, or thinking X is true oneself–this is called the “ad populum” fallacy, or, “the fallacy of the herd.” If somebody thought that just because everyone believed it, that he should believe it too, he would be making this error.

Induction is an inference from observed cases of X occurring to the conclusion that X will always occur in the future (or has occurred in the past), such as, “This apple always falls to the ground when I let it go. Therefore, it will always fall to the ground when I let it go.” But inductive inference makes no reference to what others believe–it is irrelevent.

“Believing” could certainly be synonymous with “holding,” yes. But “believing X” is not synonymous with “justified in believing X.” since one can have an unjustified, and hence irrational, belief, such as those found in astrological “predictions.”

Axioms are true by definition.

No. Axioms are self-evident and necessarily true, but they are not definitions. “A bachelor is an unmarried man” is a definition; it is necessarily true; but it is not an axiom. “Happiness is valuable in itself” is an axiom, but not a definition. A definition defines a word with other synonyms and is true in virtue of the meanings of the words alone. An axiom combines disparate elements together that are not exactly synonymous; but the axiom is still necessarily true. 1+1=2 might be an axiom or a statement that expresses the identity of the value identified by each expression on both sides. But I wouldn’t call this equation a definition of “1+1” since “1+1” is an operation, not a term. “1” is term, “2” is a term, but neither of them can be defined (unless you adopt set-theory).

What we are discussing is whether the conclusion that “objective morality exists” can be derived from the axiom that “God does not exist.”

“God does not exist” is not an axiom, nor is it a definition.

 

[Syntax]

you complain about this

Originally Posted by AntiTheist
Well, it looks like it’s the usual philosophical run-around on this thread from the moral realists. Redefinitions, double-meanings, and constant obfuscation of reality. Surprise, surprise indeed.

Quote:
Let’s go back to “Happiness is better than misery.” I may have mispoke when I said it was “meaningless” – I meant rather that it doesn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know.

then you immediately do it your self

Nice call, warpseed. I also have decisively shown that one of his claims leads to a contradiction–twice now–but with no response. So it seems Anti thinks employing double-standards are permissible for him but not for the rest of us.