Quote from: JimBobOz...
If a belief about something which is not true, a "false belief" is not "delusional", then what is? How do you distinguish "false beliefs" from "delusions"? And if you can't, you are saying that religious people - having what you call "false beliefs" - are delusional?

One can have a false belief simply because one makes a mistake or interprets the available evidence incorrectly.  A 'delusional belief' is a belief that one holds in the face of overwhelming evidence against it.  

Quote from: JimBobOz...
What is the test of the truth of a belief? In science, the test is whether that belief - "hypothesis" - explains the data, whether it gives you good results. So if a religious belief gives the people good results - make them happy and well-socialised - isn't that belief in fact "true"? Isn't the test of the worth of something the results it gives?

The test of the truth of a belief is how well the evidence supports that belief, and/or what kinds of arguments (rational justifications) can be given in support of that belief.  In the case of the POE argument that has been the main subject of this thread, facts about the world (the existence of widespread suffering) provide one premise in an argument that concludes that a certain conception of God does not exist.  

I've never encountered a definition of 'truth' that held that it consisted in 'happiness'.  It's a complete nonstarter, if for no other reason than the fact that a single proposition cannot be both true and false.  That is, if my belief in astrology makes me feel happy, and thus astrology is 'true', but your belief that astrology is rubbish makes you feel happy, and thus astrology is 'false', we end up with the case that astrology is both 'true' and 'false' – but that's patently impossible.   (In contrast the propositions 'belief in astrology makes me happy' and 'belief that astrology is false makes you happy' can both be true.)

Look, I'll happily concede that false beliefs might be instrumentally useful in getting people to feel happy.  When children believe in Santa Claus, I'm sure they derive some happiness from that belief.  But that's an entirely separate question from whether the belief itself is true or false.

Quote from: JimBobOz...
So if a "false belief" makes people happy, is it not in some sense a "true belief"?  

No, it's a false belief that makes people happy.  That's all it is. If someone believes in astrology or that the earth is flat those beliefs might make him feel very happy, but his happiness does not render them 'true'.

Quote from: JimBobOz...
If the test of the truth of belief is not the results it gives (happiness, social integration, etc), then what is?

Whether that belief is supported by the available evidence and argument.  Beliefs, whether true or false, might have positive consequences.  But those positive consequences do not determine whether those beliefs are true or false.

Quote from: John Morrow... At the core of every philosophical moral model is the assumption that people care about the foundation assumption (e.g., Utilitarians assume that people care that others are happy, Libertarians assume that people care about liberty, etc.).  If a person doesn't care about the foundational assumption, the whole thing falls down and that's exactly what happens with psychopaths.  Moral arguments that are quite effective with people who do care and ineffective on psychopaths, even when they are very intelligent and rational individuals...

This is actually false.  You're confusing questions of moral justification with questions of moral motivation in the above passage (indeed, your entire analysis seems to rest on this confusion).  

While the two kinds of questions are clearly related, they are nonetheless distinct.  In particular, consequentialists (including of course utilitarians) explicitly distinguish between the justification of a moral theory (in the case of utilitarianism, the notion that happiness/pleasure is the one 'intrinsically good thing') and the question of how to get people motivated to act in accordance with what morality requires (maximising overall happiness).  

In the case of utilitarianism, the question of motivation is wholly separate from the question of utilitarianism's philosophical justification -- so much so that many utilitarians argue that getting people to do the 'right thing' for incorrect reasons can be morally required (under the right circumstances).  In addition, the utilitarian philosopher Henry Sidgwick famously pointed out that, based on individual reason alone, there is no compelling reason to be either a rational egoist (as per the psychopaths that you make such a big deal about) or a universal hedonist (i.e. a utilitarian).  Nonetheless, Sidgwick felt that this fact in no way undermined the 'objectivity' and 'universal applicability' of utilitarian moral theory -- and he was perfectly right to do so.

Now some moral theories (e.g. Kant's) do hold that motivation is a necessary part of moral justification (i.e. if something is required morally it ought to motivate us on the basis of reason alone, at least in some sense).  But again, a more sophisticated understanding of the relation between the emotions and rational deliberation -- including the cognitive role of emotions in decision making -- could yield a modified version of Kantian ethics (or 'contractualism' more broadly speaking) capable of withstanding the concerns that you raise.  This would require pointing out that Kant's own model of rational deliberation was incorrect insofar as it failed to incorporate the necessary cognitive and affective funtions of the emotions into it, and revise it accordingly.

In short, your point about moral motivation has absolutely no force against most consequentialist theories, and while it should worry philosophers attached to a broadly Kantian approach in ethics, it looks like a worry that can be resolved.

Quote from: John MorrowI'm not responding to several points because either (A) we simply aren't going to see eye-to-eye on them and/or (B) I think you are being morally consistent, even if I don't agree with you.

Fair enough.

QuoteBoth birth control and sterilization make it possible to have sexual activity without reproducing in most cases.  It's what's allowed the birth rate in the Western world (including Japan) to drop so low.  It's not as if everyone has suddenly taken a vow of celibacy.

This actually supports my point. That we have used our greatest natural weapon to circumvent the biology of reproduction simply shows how strong our instinct is to engage in reproductive activity, even if reproduction is not our conscious goal at the time.

QuoteWhat would such a world look like or be like to live in?

As I'm not an all-knowing god, I have no idea.

Quote from: John MorrowThat's a moral judgment that, in fact, many psychopaths would disagree with.  Their "damage" is that they lack any emotional compulsion to behave morally.  In other words, they are what people become without that irrational little part of their brain that compels them to want to be good.  And they look at everyone else and think they are irrational fools.

Forgive me if I don't put much stock in the moral judgement of psychopaths. Also, lacking moral compulsion is often not the only damage they suffer. Plus, I wouldn't actually call our instinctual drives irrational, as they are tools that have evolved with us in order for us to survive both as individuals and as a species.

QuoteReally, they don't, if for no other reason than the vast majority of animals on the planet are insects and fish, many of whom have no "social community" worth speaking about and they are quite willing to eat even their siblings.  Even many of the more intelligent mammals exhibit behavior that is amoral or immoral by human standards.  And then there are animals like bees that value the lives of their community above their own (they die when they sting) because the vast majority of bees also don't reproduce.

Yet even many insects and fish do have social communities, and even those that don't rarely engage in activity which would threaten to destroy either their own, or any other species. On the contrary, they normally take only what they need to survive themselves. They don't appear to act out of malice or emotion. This is in their own best interests, as destroying their food sources would lead to their own destruction.

QuoteIf the animal is not a social animal, it's instincts and "morality" are often very different than human instincts.  And, ultimately, it doesn't make morality rational.  In fact, it pretty much acknowledges that it's instinctual.

 Who said morality is rational? I wouldn't really call it irrational either, as it seems to me to be outside of rational thought. It's a tool used to help us survive. Like any tool, it can used for both rational and irrational purposes. Otherwise, I agree that it is instinctual.

Quote from: GRIMJustice is a result of evolutionary psychology and the enforcement of what is best for the survival of the group, as are mercy and compassion. Love is simply how we experience sexual and emotional attachment as a participant rather than as a studier of it.

I'm not trying for the sociological proof of God's existence, even Lewis couldn't pull that one off

What I'm saying is that human beings tell each other stories to let each other know what it means to be human and how the universe works.  Some of the stories we call art, some we call science and some we call religion.  The "science" collection of stories are just inherently more reliable

Quote from: AkrasiaWhy are you assuming that ‘emotional responses’ are necessarily irrational?  This is a flawed assumption.  Many of our emotions might be either arational or even necessary for proper reasoning.

Not a flawed assumption at all.  

For the sake of argument, let's assume that emotions are not irrational but arational.  What does that change?  If a moral argument can stand on reason alone, then whey does it need to be built upon an emotional foundation?  And if it must be built upon an emotional foundation that cannot be replaced or explained by reason alone, then why is the label "irrational" inappropriate?

Quote from: AkrasiaIf certain emotional responses are necessary for good reasoning and decision-making (e.g. see Antonio Damasio’s Descartes’ Error), then your alleged challenge to moral theory as ‘irrational’ because it involves ‘emotional responses’ is a complete non-starter.

I've looked at some reviews and comments on Damasio’s Descartes’ Error.  One review quotes his introduction as saying, "I had grown up accustomed to thinking that the mechanisms of reason existed in a separate province of the mind, where emotion should not be allowed to intrude, and when I thought of the brain behind that mind, I envisioned separate neural systems for reason and emotion ... But now I had before my eyes the coolest, least emotional, intelligent human being one might imagine, and yet his practical reason was so impaired that it produced, in the wanderings of daily life, a succession of mistakes, a perpetual violcation of what would be considered socially appropriate and personally advantageous."  If that's the basis for Damasio’s book, then I'd call it Damasio’s error.  

First, it's a big assumption to assume that his characterization of the person in question is correct.  Perhaps they are not as rational or emotionless as Damasio assumes.  

Second, assuming that he's correct about his characterization of the person, for the sake of argument, the reason why a perfectly emotionless and rational person could make any number of mistakes is that they are making apparently rational decisions based on missing, imperfect, or inaccurate knowledge.  

Third, Damasio is making the assumption that the person should care that they are violating socially appropriate and personally advantageous behavior and that it is somehow more rational to care that be indifferent to such violations.  I would argue that's simply Damasio's built in morality and values speaking.  Essentially, he's starting from a preconceived notion of what's right and wrong, good and bad.  

That's not an argument that emotional responses are "necessary for good reasoning and decision-making" or "necessary for proper reasoning".  It's an argument that emotional responses are necessary for being perceived as normal by people with those emotional responses and, possibly, an argument that emotional responses are required to be successful among people who have them (though there are plenty of successful psychopaths).  It all begs the question of why a person should care about being normal, socially acceptable, or even successful.  Independent of the values that both you and Damasio seem to be imposing on such people, there is nothing wrong with their reasoning.

Now, if you (and Damasio) want to acknowledge that reason, alone, does not produce good social and material outcomes for people, I'll agree with you.  But that doesn't mean that emotions are rational.  It means that rational though, alone, is inadequate for certain things that a human might want to do.  And I find it a curious sort of gymnastics that you both seem to be doing to claim that turning over decisions to emotions is rational.  And if a person's emotions tell them that God is real and it helps them to be successful and happy, is that rational, too?

Now, if you want to stick to Damasio and think I'm not doing him justice, why don't you try paraphrasing the ideas that you think support your point rather than dropping names in what amounts to an appeal to authority?

Quote from: AkrasiaFurthermore, there is no reason why moral philosophers cannot incorporate this fact into moral theory.

So it's a "fact" now?  Are you seriously making that claim?

Quote from: AkrasiaIndeed, many leading contemporary moral philosophers are doing precisely this.  In meta-ethics, expressivism/quasi-realism is based on precisely this kind of analysis of moral discourse, and yet does not yield the kind of moral scepticism that you seem to endorse.

What's wrong with moral skepticism and why are people so vigorously trying to run away from it?  Is it because it's irrational?  Because it's wrong?  Or because it just feels wrong or frightens people?

Quote from: AkrasiaRegarding the psychopaths that you seem to find so fascinating, it seems rather easy to say simply that such individuals, because of the absence of the relevant ‘moral emotions’ in them, are simply impaired when it comes to moral reasoning.

In what way are they impaired?  Did you read (or reread) the paper I posted a link to earlier?  You might also find this web page interesting.  Essentially, the psychopath considers themselves to be at an advantage because they are not constrained by the burden of moral emotions and, frankly, a lot of examples suggest that they aren't always wrong.  So in what way is the psychopath impaired?

Quote from: AkrasiaIn short, you’re assuming that emotions are fundamentally irrational, and that emotions and reason are fundamentally distinct.  Both assumptions are wrong, and so your alleged challenge to moral theory (including concepts like ‘human rights’ and ‘justice’) is consequently wrong.

Considering "emotional" and "rational" as opposites when it comes to moral reasoning should hardly be a socking idea to you.  Demasio admits to once thinking that way in the quote I presented earlier.  And I hardly think your reply has proved anything other than a philosopher can beg the question with the best of them.

Quote from: AkrasiaThis is actually false.  You're confusing questions of moral justification with questions of moral motivation in the above passage (indeed, your entire analysis seems to rest on this confusion).

Not at all.  My point is that moral justifications seem to presuppose moral motivations and certain emotional responses and, as such, require those things because it asserts them as the foundation of the argument.  Without them, the justification fails.

Quote from: AkrasiaWhile the two kinds of questions are clearly related, they are nonetheless distinct.  In particular, consequentialists (including of course utilitarians) explicitly distinguish between the justification of a moral theory (in the case of utilitarianism, the notion that happiness/pleasure is the one 'intrinsically good thing') and the question of how to get people motivated to act in accordance with what morality requires (maximising overall happiness).

Ah, then you are totally missing my point.  I'm not talking about how how to get people "motivated to act in accordance with what morality requires".  What I am saying is that if you remove the assertion that "happiness/pleasure is the one 'intrinsically good thing'", for example, the whole utilitarian argument falls down (actually, I'd argue that utilitarianism further assumes that one should care about being good to others).  And that assertion is not rational.

Quote from: AkrasiaIn addition, the utilitarian philosopher Henry Sidgwick famously pointed out that, based on individual reason alone, there is no compelling reason to be either a rational egoist (as per the psychopaths that you make such a big deal about) or a universal hedonist (i.e. a utilitarian).  Nonetheless, Sidgwick felt that this fact in no way undermined the 'objectivity' and 'universal applicability' of utilitarian moral theory -- and he was perfectly right to do so.

So Sidgewick is basically acknowledging that being a rational egoist is just as rational as being a utilitarian.  OK.  So what does that tell us?

Quote from: AkrasiaBut again, a more sophisticated understanding of the relation between the emotions and rational deliberation -- including the cognitive role of emotions in decision making -- could yield a modified version of Kantian ethics (or 'contractualism' more broadly speaking) capable of withstanding the concerns that you raise.

What is the cognitive role of emotions?  How do they further rational thinking and true beliefs?

Quote from: AkrasiaIn short, your point about moral motivation has absolutely no force against most consequentialist theories, and while it should worry philosophers attached to a broadly Kantian approach in ethics, it looks like a worry that can be resolved.

So if you define "rational thought" to include arational or even irrational emotions, then you don't have a problem.  Interesting.  

Maybe you should read Joshua Greene's philosophy dissertation based on his findings during his research into the biological mechanism behind moral decisions because he talks at some length about how people build intricate arguments around things that boil down to, “Why do I say it’s wrong?  Because it’s clearly just wrong.  Isn’t that plain to see? It’s as if you’re putting a lemon in front of me and asking me why I say it’s yellow. What more is there to say?”

Quote from: SigmundForgive me if I don't put much stock in the moral judgement of psychopaths.

You don't have to trust their self-assessment.  You need only look at their success.

Quote from: SigmundAlso, lacking moral compulsion is often not the only damage they suffer.

What other damage do they suffer?  Name a few specific things.

Quote from: SigmundPlus, I wouldn't actually call our instinctual drives irrational, as they are tools that have evolved with us in order for us to survive both as individuals and as a species.

And why should we want to survive both as individuals and as a species, especially if the world is as awful as you are claiming it is?  I find it humorous that you damn God for making the world so horrible yet you defend as rational instincts that mindlessly make us want to survive as individuals and as a species.  Huh?

Quote from: AkrasiaWell I don't see how this escapes the basic challenge posed by the POE argument at all.

The PoE is only effective if it can masqurade it's own values as Catholic. The general form excludes those psudo-Catholic values.

QuoteI'm not sure what you mean by this.  The 'step' (i.e. conclusion) of inductive versions of the POE is the result of assessing the likelihood that a deity that corresponds to the traditional monotheistic one could exist.

It is exactly that claim of correspondence that is unjustified. It's only basis is equivocation of the secular and theological meanings of benevolent. When the actual qualities of triple-o and God are compared the correspondence fails. (For example: does not allow deer to burn in forest fires VS. allows eternal torment in hell.)

QuoteInductive versions of the POE argument hold that, based on the available evidence, we have very good reasons to think that such an entity does not exist (just as, analogously, we have very good reasons to think that phlogiston doesn't exist, or that the sun doesn't go around the earth, etc.)...

Obviously a strawman like triple-o could never exist. It is the analogy between triple-o and God that remains unjustified.

QuoteWhat is it to 'choose' to believe something?  Could I 'choose' to believe astrology... pixies... Thor and Loki...

I think one ought to believe what can be justified (and to the extent that it can be justified).  If I guide myself on the basis of that fundamental norm, I am not 'free' to believe in astrology, pixies, Thor and Loki ... or the Christian God.  I am not free to believe these things because it would be irrational to do so.

That is your choice. You had the option to use both senses (reason and revelation.) You chose follow only one of those senses and not the other. What I fail to see is why your personal choice is binding on me either as a mathematician or as a Catholic.

QuoteWhat is frustrating about (at least many) religious people is that they try to limit their beliefs to what can be rationally justified in many aspects of their lives (e.g. they take medicine when sick, they believe that the earth is round, etc.), but when it comes to religious claims, their epistemic standards for believing something drop away.

Love makes us do crazy things. I love Jesus, I love my wife, I love my children and I love math. I can't rationally justify any of those relationships, but what am I supposed to do? Pretend they don't exist?

QuoteFinally, I didn't 'ignore my conscience/revelation' in coming to the conclusion that atheism was the most rationally justified metaphysical worldview available.  My conscience is fine – indeed, I would have ignored my conscience had I chosen to believe something that reason tells me is extremely unlikely to be true.  As for 'revelation' I've never experienced it, let alone ignored it, if by 'revelation' you mean some kind of supernatural experience.

Well call it whatever you want but it sounds like your conscience has no emotional or spiritual inclination? In that case we're both nothing more than the product of our consciences. You followed yours out of the church, I followed mine in.

Quote from: SigmundI don't get the point here apparently.

I don't want to derail the thread but take a look at Matthew 13 where Jesus explains that some people recieve the word but nothing comes of it. Also notice that he speaks in parables to prevent some people from understanding and turning to him. I.e. despite what your Protestant friends may have said, it is a 'bibilical truth' that the Bible does not auto-convert everyone who reads it.

QuoteYet the very reason the bible was compiled was due to disagreement about whether Jesus was divine, with the church split even then. So why isn't the eastern orthodox interpretation valid? Plus, were books omitted by the council of Nicea? Who can truely say anymore?

The 'reason' the Bible was compiled was that the churches came out of hiding & persecution and got to compare notes. Secondly, although Arianism originated in the East it is not the teaching of the Orthodox Church. They retained Trinitarianism --the distinctive creed of Christianity. Lastly, you can be absolutely certain that books were excluded from the Canon (that was the whole point! ) The challenge to Faith is: did they exclude rightly?

Quote from: John Morrow... If that's the basis for Damasio's book, then I'd call it Damasio's error...  

Well, whatever.  The fact of the matter is that there is a large literature and debate concerning the cognitive function of emotions.  I merely mentioned Damasio as one especially well-known representative.  Since this is a region in which there is more investigation to be done, it would be premature to assert any definitive conclusions one way or the other.  

However, you seem to be assuming that if the emotions play any necessary role in practical reasoning that somehow moral theory is dead.  Sorry to disappoint you, but this simply is not the case.  Many leading contemporary moral theorists accord to the emotions a necessary (though not sufficient) role without holding that the emotions are irrational, or that doing so undermines moral discourse.  

Quote from: John Morrow...
Third, Damasio is making the assumption that the person should care that they are violating socially appropriate and personally advantageous behavior and that it is somehow more rational to care that be indifferent to such violations.  I would argue that's simply Damasio's built in morality and values speaking.  Essentially, he's starting from a preconceived notion of what's right and wrong, good and bad....

No, sorry.  The point is that in order to engage in effective practical reasoning certain emotions need to function in people.  There are a number of experiments that document that people with impaired emotional responses to certain environmental cues actually reason about risk far more poorly than people with those emotional responses (despite the fact that both sets of people seem equally able to ratiocinate).  Why should we think that it would be different in the case of psychopaths?  Both kinds of emotional deficiencies produce deficiencies in the ability of persons to engage in practical reason (in the one case, deliberations about risk, in the other case, deliberations about their relations with others).

Quote from: John Morrow...
And I find it a curious sort of gymnastics that you both seem to be doing to claim that turning over decisions to emotions is rational.  And if a person's emotions tell them that God is real and it helps them to be successful and happy, is that rational, too? ....

It's not 'gymnastics' at all.  Rather, you're confusing what is generally known as 'theoretical reason' (roughly, observing phenomena from a third-person perspective -- judgements that concern what to believe) with 'practical reason' (roughly, deliberating from a 'first-person' perspective about 'what to do').

Now, I might from a third-person perspective form the belief (say, based on the work of Damasio and other neurologists) that certain 'automatic' emotional responses might be necessary for people to make good decisions in particular situations.  That's a belief I have about the way people are.  But it doesn't really tell me what to do (at least not by itself).  Moreover, that belief is not formed on the basis of the emotional responses of which it provides an account.  But it might lead me to hope that when I engage in practical reasoning that those emotional responses do kick in at the right time.  (By analogy, I might have a belief about the way in which the heart works.  My possession of that belief does not actually affect the way in which my heart works, but it surely can make me hope that my heart is working the way that it should!)

Quote from: John Morrow...
Now, if you want to stick to Damasio and think I'm not doing him justice, why don't you try paraphrasing the ideas that you think support your point rather than dropping names in what amounts to an appeal to authority?
....

Believe it or not, I actually have a job.  So I apologise if sometimes I try to make a point quickly rather than explain it to your satisfaction.  

Quote from: John Morrow...
So it's a "fact" now?  Are you seriously making that claim?
....

I think that there's a fair amount of support for the view, but labelling it as a 'fact' may be premature.  

Quote from: John Morrow...
What's wrong with moral skepticism and why are people so vigorously trying to run away from it?  Is it because it's irrational?  Because it's wrong?  Or because it just feels wrong or frightens people?...

I assume that you are advancing something like John Mackie's 'error theory' of morality (roughly, that claims about moral properties refer to things that do not actually exist, and so are all in some sense 'fictions')?  

Fair enough, but you should know that that position in meta-ethics is a minority one, and is one that has been widely criticised in the decades since it was first advanced.  (Although I notice that your hero Joshua Greene seems to support some version of it).  I personally don't find it convincing; or rather, I find at least two alternative meta-ethical views far more plausible, but it probably would not be helpful to get into those here.  

If you'd like a good survey of contemporary views in meta-ethics, I recommend the introduction to: S. Darwall, A. Gibbard, and P. Railton (eds.), Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).   (Also, a short reply to Mackie's error theory on behalf of moral realism can be found at: http://stopthatcrow.blogspot.com/2006/03/errors-of-error-theory-mackie.html .)

Frankly, though, even if some version of moral scepticism or error theory proved to be the correct account of moral discourse (i.e. the correct meta-ethical theory), it would not change my views about the non-existence of God at all (after all, Mackie also famously formulated the POE argument as a valid deductive argument in the mid 20th Century).

This is why I find this whole meta-ethical discussion orthogonal to the subject of this thread.  

Quote from: John Morrow...
In what way are they impaired?  
....

They are not impaired in terms of pure ratiocination.  But they are impaired in terms of practical reasoning – just as people who (because of brain lesions) are impaired with respect to threat and risk assessment.

Quote from: John Morrow...
Considering "emotional" and "rational" as opposites when it comes to moral reasoning should hardly be a socking idea to you...

It is neither socking nor shocking to me.  My overall point is merely that you seem to think that this one claim about psychopaths and the role of emotional responses in moral motivation is a devastating one for moral theory and necessarily yields moral scepticism.

Sorry, but that just isn't the case.

Quote from: John MorrowNot at all.  My point is that moral justifications seem to presuppose moral motivations ...

No, not for all meta-ethical theories.

There is a fundamental distinction between what is known as 'internalism' with respect to moral propositions and what is known as 'externalism'.  

Internalists hold that in order for a moral proposition to be 'correct' it must be one that will motivate a properly situated individual.   Thus 'Kantian' internalists, for example, think that reason alone should provide this motivation (at least when one is reasoning well).  Now the orthodox Kantian view is one for which your point is an objection.  But even there, it may not be decisive, at least for moral philosophers willing to revise and rework a broadly Kantian moral theory to accommodate a cognitive function for emotions in practical reason (which may be fair enough if we come to conclude that Kant's own account of practical reason is empirically unsupportable).  I don't mean to defend this approach, but it strikes me as one not wholly without promise.

On the other hand, we have 'externalism' with respect to moral propositions.  And externalists hold that it is not a necessary condition for a moral proposition to be true that it motivates people (let alone all people).  So externalists simply deny your basic assumption.  And most consequentialists (including most utilitarians) are externalists about moral reasons.

Quote from: John Morrow...  What I am saying is that if you remove the assertion that "happiness/pleasure is the one 'intrinsically good thing'", for example, the whole utilitarian argument falls down (actually, I'd argue that utilitarianism further assumes that one should care about being good to others).  And that assertion is not rational.

I'm not sure what you're trying to claim here.  The utilitarian merely holds that happiness/pleasure is the one thing that all sentient creatures seek for its own sake (even psychopaths).  When we combine this claim about objective value with a commitment to impartiality (the normative component of utilitarianism) we end up with utilitarianism.

How we motivate people to act in ways that will maximise overall utility over time is a wholly separate question.

Anyhow, I'm not trying to defend utilitarianism here, but I don't think that it is in any way vulnerable to the objection that you're trying to level against it.

Quote from: John MorrowSo Sidgewick is basically acknowledging that being a rational egoist is just as rational as being a utilitarian.  OK.  So what does that tell us?

Well, very crudely, Sidgwick thought that rational egoists were emotionally impaired, since they lacked a sense of 'humanity' and 'sympathy' despite being fully rational.  Consequently, utilitarians should design institutions and practices that cultivate a sense of sympathy as much as possible in people, and also design institutions that deter and punish those people (psychopaths) in whom this capacity is absent, in order to better maximise overall happiness in society.

Quote from: John MorrowWhat is the cognitive role of emotions?  How do they further rational thinking and true beliefs?

Read my previous post.  Look at the work of Damasio and other neurologists and cognitive scientists working in this area.  It's a complicated topic.

But the short answer is that they don't help us form 'true beliefs' in terms of explaining the way the world works.  Rather, they help in practical deliberation (i.e. deciding 'what to do' in particular circumstances) because they make certain features of our environment (internal and external) especially salient (often in ways that aren't explicit to us).  In various 'gambling experiments', for example, people with impaired emotional responses to subtle environment cues performed far more poorly when deliberating about what to do than people with healthy or 'normal' emotional responses.  The ratiocinating of both sets of people, in contrast, was comparable.

Quote from: John MorrowSo if you define "rational thought" to include arational or even irrational emotions, then you don't have a problem.  Interesting.  

I'm sorry you misunderstood me earlier.  Hopefully things are clearer now.

Quote from: John MorrowMaybe you should read Joshua Greene's philosophy dissertation based on his findings during his research into the biological mechanism behind moral decisions because he talks at some length about how people build intricate arguments around things that boil down to, "Why do I say it's wrong?  Because it's clearly just wrong.  Isn't that plain to see? It's as if you're putting a lemon in front of me and asking me why I say it's yellow. What more is there to say?"

Maybe I should read Greene's dissertation, but I find the quote irrelevant to the discussion.  I've read contemporary debates in meta-ethics, as I'm sure Greene has.  I can't imagine that he managed to defend a dissertation at Princeton if he actually attributed such a simplistic view to people working in contemporary meta-ethics.

Quote from: malleus arianorum...  It is exactly that claim of correspondence that is unjustified. It's only basis is equivocation of the secular and theological meanings of benevolent. When the actual qualities of triple-o and God are compared the correspondence fails. ...
...Obviously a strawman like triple-o could never exist. It is the analogy between triple-o and God that remains unjustified.

*sigh*  
The simple fact is that many Christian philosophers and theologians have taken the POE argument very seriously throughout the ages and even today.  I seem to understand what they're saying, their attempts to respond to the argument, etc.  Their understanding of 'God' appears to be challenged by the argument.  I've had 'real life' discussions with Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish philosophers on this topic.  Based on this accumulated experience, I simply do not buy your attempt to 'wave away' the argument because you think that the POE argument doesn't address your conception of God.  

In any case, I doubt that there is anything more that can be said about this matter.

Quote from: malleus arianorum...
  That is your choice. You had the option to use both senses (reason and revelation.) You chose follow only one of those senses and not the other.

:confused:
How could it be a 'choice' if I don't have any sense of 'revelation'? Where is it located?  How do I 'exercise' it?  How do I distinguish it from 'wishful thinking'?  

Quote from: malleus arianorum...
What I fail to see is why your personal choice is binding on me either as a mathematician or as a Catholic.

Hey man, go ahead and believe in pixies, Santa Claus, unicorns, astrology, or God.  Whatever.  I'm not trying take away your right to believe false things.

Quote from: malleus arianorum...
 Well call it whatever you want but it sounds like your conscience has no emotional or spiritual inclination?

It has an 'emotional' component, of course.  But if by 'spiritual' you mean something supernatural in nature, well then I know that I've never experienced that.

John Morrow,

At the risk of repeating a point made earlier, but just to be clear: even if some version of moral scepticism or error theory proved to be the correct correct meta-ethical theory, it would not in any way change my view about the non-existence of God (how could it?), or my view that it would be better for me to know the truth about morality (viz. that it is only a 'fiction') than to persist in a false belief about it.

(Of course, as I've noted earlier, I don't find the reasons that you advance in favour of moral scepticism convincing, but that's a wholly separate matter.)

Quote from: Akrasia*sigh*  
The simple fact is that many Christian philosophers and theologians have taken the POE argument very seriously throughout the ages and even today.  I seem to understand what they're saying, their attempts to respond to the argument, etc.  Their understanding of 'God' appears to be challenged by the argument.  I've had 'real life' discussions with Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish philosophers on this topic.  Based on this accumulated experience, I simply do not buy your attempt to 'wave away' the argument because you think that the POE argument doesn't address your conception of God.

What I think malleus is saying is that the PoE does not and has never presented a huge crisis for the Christian religion.  It's a first year theology or seminary problem - the Christian equivalent of the Zen primer koan "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

One of it's uses is to illustrate how theological language has a more precise meaning than everyday language.  When used in a theological context "omnipotent" doesn't simply mean "all-powerful" and "benevolent" doesn't simply mean "nice"

I haven't waded back through this thread to see who first raised it and the context in which it is raised, but if anyone used it in an attempt to disprove the Christian concept of God (as if God is a theorem that can be proved or disproved!) then they've missed the point

Theology is an attempt to understand humanity's collective experience of God.  Christians understand God to be nice and all-powerful, but (as the PoE shows) this isn't consistant with our experience of the suffering we see in the world.  So something else is going on here and the formal description of the PoE is a great starting point to discuss all sorts of concepts surrounding, God, freedom, evil, good, etc., etc.