Secular Morality?

[Cornell]

No, not on your definition of necessity. You're talking about existential necessity:

"I am saying that humans are contingent beings and God is not.

I am not talking about causal dependence, I am talking about 'existential' dependence."

And it's logically possible (and conceptually possible, and ....) for a existentially necessary being to be another way.



Of course it can. Anything that has mental states will have subjective mental states, since every mental state is subjective.



And... so what? God has interpretations, beliefs, feelings, imaginings, and so on. Those are God's mental states. So on your definition, those are not objective.

Anyway, as I explained to you in previous post, God's mental states are subjective on the definition of "subjective" used in philosophy, especially the one used in meta-ethics.



Trivial, since by definition, any X that has a nature will be such that X could not have any other type of nature other than the nature that it has, so that its nature is what it is. And that's because X's nature is specified by listing the conditions C jointly necessary and sufficient. So anything that does not meet C simply would not be X. For example, the nature of being a bachelor can be specified as being an unmarried male. Thus being a bachelor could not have other type of nature than the nature it has, since if it had a another nature, then it wouldn't be being a bachelor. But does not that mean that the existence of bachelors in necessary? Nope.

Nor does it show that being bachelor is objective. After all, subjective things can have natures, such that those subjective things could not have any other type of nature other than the nature that it has. For example, the nature of being a belief (if there is such a nature) is such that being a belief could not have other type of nature than the nature it has, since if it had a another nature, then it wouldn't be being a belief. But being a belief is still subjective.



Nope; necessity does not entail being objective. God's intentions are one of God's mental states, and thus apart of God's individual view and interpretation. Thus they are not objective even on the definition you gave above, in contrast to things like rocks, which are not just apart of some minds views or interpretations. Instead, rocks are mind-independent things.



You haven't shown how it fails. Instead, it's employing the standard definition of "subjective", on which God's mental states are subjective, just like the mental states of every other mind are subjective. This is fairly standard and in line with other sources. For example:

“it may be that what determines the difference in the two contexts is something ‘mind-dependent’—in which case it would be subjectivist relativism—but it need not be. Perhaps what determines the relevant difference is an entirely mind-independent affair, making for an objectivist relativism…Suppose the moral facts depend on the attitudes or opinions of a particular group or individual (e.g., ‘X is good’ means ‘Caesar approves of X,’ or ‘The Supreme Court rules in favor of X’ or ‘God commands X,’ etc.), and thus moral truth is an entirely mind-dependent affair [emphasis added] (2007, Supplement 1.1).”

“After all, the anthropological perspective is possible even in a Berkeleyan universe of pure minds, and something has surely gone wrong if even facts in Bishop Berkeley's globally idealistic world count as objective [emphasis added]. Recall, first, that Berkeley was no error theorist about ordinary objects like tables and chairs; rather, he thought that all along what we mean to refer to with “table” is an idea, so that when Fred thinks “There's a table,” then, even though all he perceives is an idea of a table, he has, by Berkeley's lights, thought something true (2007, Supplement 5.1).”

Well this one is easy

Let me take what you said here

"Anything that has mental states will have subjective mental states, since every mental state is subjective."

You have a mental state, and according to you every mental state is subjective so I can apply this to this huge response of yours and expose the fact that this whole mental state of yours is only true in the eye of the beholder. Now I hope you are seeing why subjectivism is silly and gets people no where.

What you just wrote in this reply is YOUR MENTAL STATE, and therefore everything that you just said is SUBJECTIVE and true for you, and not for me, because the truth of what you are saying is mind-independent and not objectively true. Therefore I can just reject everything you said as it is nothing more than an opinion that amounts to a subjective mental state which has no objectivity.

Subjectivism is garbage and makes all disagreement unintelligible,

[Cornell]

One does not need to believe thhat X exists, in order to know what X exists. For example, I know what married bachelors are, even though I don't believe that they exist. Similarly, atheists can know what God is, even if they don't believe that God exists.



Not really, as I explained elsewhere: http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...010#post237010 ]

What does this have to do with anything I just said? I never said that since you didn't believe in a God, therefore you can't know anything about God...

Again, not really.

First, there can be objectively true claims that are not necessarily true. For example: monkeys exist.

This is incomplete, for one what do you mean by 'exists'

Exists in what? My brain state? An objective reality? Language? Pragmatic linguistics?

By dismissing the relationship between necessity and objectivity you create a big problem with propositions. (that which you are using to utter words that consist of truth bearers)

If there were things that could be objectively true, but not necessarily true then the claim 'objectively true' fails into contingency, and if objective truths end up being contingent then they could have failed to be true in the first place and therefore are not objective.

Objective HAS to work with necessity otherwise objective truths end up having a DEPENDENCE upon contingent objects, and contingent objects are those which could have failed to exist, and if they could have failed to exist then they don't end up having any mind-independence to anything.

Suppose for arguments sake that 'monkeys exist' is objectively true

However this is just a proposition, and if this proposition isn't necessarily true then what exactly is it stating?

It ends up stating that:

P1) Monkeys exist is not necessarily true

P1*) it is objectively true that monkeys exist, but at the same time it is not necessarily true that monkeys exist.

P1**) It is not necessarily true that monkeys exist, and this truth is independent of anyone's opinion

P1***) It is truth regardless of anyone's opinion that monkeys exist, however it is not necessarily true that monkeys exist at the same time.

By keeping a relationship between necessity and objectivity there are no problems with coming up with a coherent proposition.

P1****) It is necessarily true that monkeys exist, and this truth is independent of anyone's opinion

Second, there can be subjectively true claims that are not necessarily true. For example, even if it was necessarily true that God commands that X, that statement would still subjectively true, not objectively true. Hence divine command theory being a form of moral subjectivism.

“it may be that what determines the difference in the two contexts is something ‘mind-dependent’—in which case it would be subjectivist relativism—but it need not be. Perhaps what determines the relevant difference is an entirely mind-independent affair, making for an objectivist relativism…Suppose the moral facts depend on the attitudes or opinions of a particular group or individual (e.g., ‘X is good’ means ‘Caesar approves of X,’ or ‘The Supreme Court rules in favor of X’ or ‘God commands X,’ etc.), and thus moral truth is an entirely mind-dependent affair [emphasis added] (2007, Supplement 1.1).”

“After all, the anthropological perspective is possible even in a Berkeleyan universe of pure minds, and something has surely gone wrong if even facts in Bishop Berkeley's globally idealistic world count as objective [emphasis added]. Recall, first, that Berkeley was no error theorist about ordinary objects like tables and chairs; rather, he thought that all along what we mean to refer to with “table” is an idea, so that when Fred thinks “There's a table,” then, even though all he perceives is an idea of a table, he has, by Berkeley's lights, thought something true (2007, Supplement 5.1).”

You are totally negating the fact that I think that moral truths are grounded in 'God's nature' and God's nature just is what it is, and isn't because of what his mind thinks, his mind and nature work hand and hand with each other, so therefore because God's nature is a certain way, any moral command by God is objectively true.

You are just applying your concept of God and assuming that all Theists follow your concept.

I have news for you, not all Theists think alike and share the same conception of God.

Therefore your argument fails

[Cornell]

So, by his own nature then, god is a determined and so mindless thing, incapable of subjective thought or action? So God, having no subjectivness, didn't subjectively choose to create, didn't subjectively choose a plan or purpose for that which was created through him. So, in what sense is god a being, or a mind? God according to this definition sounds more like the naturalists definition of existence. "Existence is a brute fact, the evolution of which is determined by it own nature."

God's mind is a part of God's nature as they work hand and hand with each other.

God is mind in the sense where God can rationalize and use objects of reason.

Subjectivism doesn't make up a mind, the ability 'rationalize' does.

Your godless universe doesn't have this amazing attribute when it was building itself from itself or popping itself into being from nothing...whatever nonsense you think happened.

[JimL]

God's mind is a part of God's nature as they work hand and hand with each other.

God is mind in the sense where God can rationalize and use objects of reason.

Subjectivism doesn't make up a mind, the ability 'rationalize' does.

Your godless universe doesn't have this amazing attribute when it was building itself from itself or popping itself into being from nothing...whatever nonsense you think happened.

And why would an omniscient being who acts in accordance with his nature have the need to rationalize or use objects of reason? Btw, just like you, I don't think anything happened, I just don't think that the eternal is a being.

[Cornell]

And why would an omniscient being who acts in accordance with his nature have the need to rationalize or use objects of reason? Btw, just like you, I don't think anything happened, I just don't think that the eternal is a being.

The only way that God can act in accordance with its laws is by its awareness of participating in rational inference so it has to use rationalization otherwise it wouldn't be able to act in accordance with anything, because it wouldn't be able to consciously act at all.

[JimL]

The only way that God can act in accordance with its laws is by its awareness of participating in rational inference so it has to use rationalization otherwise it wouldn't be able to act in accordance with anything, because it wouldn't be able to consciously act at all.

The substance of existence is not conscious, is not a mind, but it acts in accordance to its own nature. If your argument is that there are objective laws that god must consciously and rationally follow, then in what sense is he God?