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The Abrahamic Conflict between Objectivism and Subjectivism

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  • The Abrahamic Conflict between Objectivism and Subjectivism

    Within the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, there seems to be a tension between at least two traditions:
    An objectivist (or realist) position that recognizes that actions can be morally right or morally wrong independent of what Gos says, commands, etc.

    A subjectivist position that claims that actions are morally right or morally wrong in virtue of God's commands, say-so, etc. This is often called divine command theory, or DCT for short.

    Some background on this tension:

    "Muslim patients and cross-gender interactions in medicine: an Islamic bioethical perspective"
    http://pmr.uchicago.edu/sites/pmr.uc...ve,%202010.pdf
    "While the philosophical debates on the use of reason within the Islamic ethicolegal traditions is beyond the scope of this paper, Islamic bioethical reflection is shaped by two broad tendencies. The first is a tendency toward theological voluntarism or theistic subjectivism: God alone defines the standard of right and wrong, thus ‘good deeds are good only because God commands them, and evil is evil because God forbids it’.20 This belief by itself would lead to a near-total dependence upon revelation to guide human conduct. However, the second tendency holds that God’s commands are purposeful and as such ‘human reason in dependence upon revelation can discern rules and apply them’, thereby allowing the intellect to enter into the equation.20"


    "Beyond Divine Command Theory: Moral Realism in the Hebrew Bible"
    http://www.hts.org.za/index.php/HTS/...ewFile/160/237
    "Strong arguments for the presence of DCT in the text include the giving of seemingly unnecessary commands (as to Adam and Eve or the rituals of Leviticus) and even seemingly immoral commands (e.g. the commanding of Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, of the Israelites to plunder the Egyptians, the slaughtering of the Canaanites, Hosea being told to marry a prostitute, etc. […]). In philosophical terms this would mean that the Hebrew Bible took for granted a subjectivist yet universalist form of cognitivism that one might contrast with other forms of ethical subjectivism (e.g. ideal observer theory, moral relativism, and individualist ethical subjectivism) , moral realism (which claims that moral propositions refer to objective facts, independent of anyone’s attitudes or opinions) [emphasis added], error theory (which denies that any moral propositions are true in any sense), and non-cognitivism (which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all) (306).

    [...]

    Yet because DCT is anachronistic in the context of the Hebrew Bible, the upside is that in the context of the moral–realist trajectories in ancient Israelite religion the Euthyphro’s Dilemma qua dilemma is in fact a pseudo-problem. For while the Hebrew Bible often implies that YHWH commanded something because it is good the deity was not made redundant, thereby as is the case with DCT when this divinity–morality relation is opted for. The reason for this is that, unlike what is assumed in Euthyphro’s Dilemma, the ancient Israelites were not optimists in their religious epistemology. Even though the moral order was believed to have existed independent of the divine, the divine will – if the deity was of the moral type – was still believed to be humanity’s only access to that order. The deity was thus assumed to function in relation to the moral order as an instructor, a mediator, a judge and an authority on right and wrong – not as its creator [emphasis added] (308-309)."


    This opens up an interesting question: what sort of tradition will various Abrahamic monotheists opt for? Will they opt for the realist/objectivist tradition? Or will they opt for a subjectivist tradition of blind obedience? Some Abahamic monotheists have clearly made their decision...

    Originally posted by seer View Post
    There is no good reason to think that objective moral facts actually exist, or that if they did that they would have any authority, or in any sense be preferable to theistic moral law.
    "Instead, we argue, it is necessary to shift the debate from the subject under consideration, instead exposing to public scrutiny the tactics they [denialists] employ and identifying them publicly for what they are."

  • #2
    Back in the olden days, when people studied Medieval philosophy/theology, this was referred to as the difference between natural law and theological nominalism. The former believed that God revealed himself and other truths through nature and human reason. This tradition was Aristotelian, Thomistic and continued by the Jesuits (in degraded form) in Catholicism. The other tradition thought that it put a higher value on the transcendence of God, his absolute freedom, and our inability to understand him and reality apart from revelation. This neo-Platonic and Augustinian tradition was kept alive by Bonaventure and the Franciscan school and (also in degraded form) was dominant among Luther and the other Protestant reformers. The former lost touch with its fundamentally apophatic dialectic, while the latter devolved into litteralism and anti-intellectualism. It wasn't until the early 20th century that a few seminal Christian thinkers began to put the pieces back together again and, frankly, a new synthesis still eludes the Christian intellectual tradition for the most part. It may be that Christianity is entering a new Dark Ages. A few will keep the dream alive, but their contributions may not be recognized until they are gone.
    βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι᾿ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι, τότε δὲ πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον·
    ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους, τότε δὲ ἐπιγνώσομαι καθὼς καὶ ἐπεγνώσθην.

    אָכֵ֕ן אַתָּ֖ה אֵ֣ל מִסְתַּתֵּ֑ר אֱלֹהֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל מוֹשִֽׁיעַ׃

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    • #3
      Yeah, I'm not making any headway in my proposed neo-Cartesian transformation of "I think, therefore I am" (that got lost in Solipsism questioning whether we can prove an external world exists or whether one might just be dreaming or deceived by a demon) into "I think, therefore I was". I hold it necessary to presuppose our intelligences (soul, consciousnesses, whatever) must precede our individual existence, which in turn entails reincarnation or the existence of God creating each person individually. This in turn dismisses the many incompatible epistemologies and metaphysics such as materialism, irrationalism, or atheistic Idealism or Rationalism and sets the table for investigating and determining Truth as in whatever religion can measure up--most likely Christianity in some medieval Realism or such, torn between Aristotelianism or Platonism perhaps.
      Near the Peoples' Republic of Davis, south of the State of Jefferson (Suspended between Left and Right)

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