Clutch

Again, I think the claim was that the moral property nihilist would be disposed to say that torturing children is neither evil nor not-evil; hence, to assert an instance of (3). But this requires interpreting 'not-evil' as equivalent to 'good' -- in which case, we would never allow the required inference from not-(torturing is evil) to (torturing is not-evil).

Scorpion

It took me a while to get at the bottom of this - if I understood this right you're critizising (3) on the grounds that it introduces 'good' into the argument and then uses it to say things about 'not-evil' in (A)... I never got that deep into it since (3) had worse fallacies in it (for example that in the given argument the whole moral property nihilist position is an unsupported assertion and as such can not be used to prove anything whatsoever)

Originally I read the 'good and evil do not exist' statement as unnecessarily complex for the purposes of this argument since mere 'evil does not exist' would have sufficed (if true) to show that (1) and (2) are meaningless.

Then again, I may have completely misunderstood where the argument with all its fallacies was supposed to be going

-S-

Clutch

Well, you might be bang-on here. I'm just guessing. But my take was that the moral nihilism was an assumption to be reductio'd. And then the question is, where's the fallacy in this reductio? Answer:

not-(x is evil) /= x is not-evil, if 'not-evil' =df good

mnkbdky

This is essentially right. Just because (2) is true does not mean that (1) is false. There is a fourth option, (4) it is morally neutral to torture infants for pleasure. (1), (2) and (3) are not a complete set. (4) is needed to complete it.

It is a fallacy of ambiguity or false dichotomy.

Is that a cut? Are you saying the argument has no depth? Is that a cut?

Now I will give my actual argument on a new thread, which will be up later tonight. This argument will be much more involved. It will argue that if good and evil exist, then, they have their essences of goodness and evilness essentially. Good and evil are what they are due to their nature and are not arbitrarily given their essence by linguistic convention, by the will of man because of cultural practices or by the arbitrary will of God. The claim is that moral cultural relativism is false and metaphysical moral concreteness is true. If Plato asked, "is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious becuase it is being loved by the gods?" (Euphr. 10a), I would affirm the former and present him this argument.

But first let me give credit to Semiotician for the first objection. I had not thought of this. Furthermore, replacing evil with good is more to my point. So I thank him or her for that.

semiotician

Thanks for the thanks.

I am new to discussions at this level of philosophy and found it intriguing to see others disecting and analysing a statement.

Defiant Heretic

Yes, good catch, semiotician. Welcome to the forum.

Scorpion

Err... OK, now I'm very, very

So you're saying that the truth of

"it is false that it is evil to torture infants for pleasure"

does not imply the falseness of

"it is true that it is evil to torture infants for pleasure" !?!?

I have extreme difficulties in accepting this. Perhaps you meant something else?

-S-

Scorpion

Now wait a second... what is going in here anyway?

I suppose you're thinking something along the lines of

~(x is evil) /= x is ~evil, if ~evil = df good

First of all I have this feeling that you can't have negations on the left side of the definition at all, but since I'm not sure if it's allowed I won't dwell on that.

I'd prefer good=df ~evil instead (it should have the same logical consequences) for clarity though... (for surely you're not trying to assert that the definition ~evil = df good changes the meaning of ~evil to mean something else than ~evil???)

Anyway, I am utterly unable to understand what this definition has to do with the truth of

~(x is evil) /= x is ~evil?

This looks false to me regardless of how 'good' has been defined?


-S-