S.A.TAN

Let me play the devil's advocate

The following is a formulation of ethics which along the way manages to weasel out the existence of God

We are faced with the question, which is best one to use? Here is my proposition - Kantian ethics and its derivatives are superior ethical formulations.

Let us consider this by juxtaposing social contractarian and utilitarian with Kantian.

Premise1
assumption1
social contract is based on and only on mutual advantage
assumption2
utilitarian is based on and only on social relations
assumption3
kantian is based on and only on pure reason

premise2
all principles inductively arrived at through experience of external data cannot be proven to be valid
(David Hume proposed to cast down all the principles of scientific knowledge by asserting that since principles are derived from external data and external data itself is not garanteed to remain as it were in the past. Then the principles themselves which were inferred from these external data in the past cannot be garanteed to hold for the future and if these principles cannot with CERTAINTY be shown to be immutable with the passage of time, they cannot be inviolable principles.)

Conclusion
4)This test of Hume knocks down any principle which depends on external data, including utilitarian and social contract and even gut feel

Does Hume dispose of Kant?

premise1
pure reason according to Kant is also a priori knowledge and a priori knowledge does not depend on external data (knowledge which has existence that is independent of and comes before sense perception and experience, knowledge which is inherent in the structure of the mind)

premise2
Hume's test only disposes of principles derived from external data.

conclusion
This test of Hume cannot dispose of principles based on a priori knowledge which is independent of external data

The above premises and conclusion demonstrate that kantian is superior when contained within the assumptions and the acceptance of the veracity of his links between a priori, pure reason and categorical imperative.

Also, it demonstrates that Kantian is not a moral given in that there is no rational basis to accept it. If the categorical imperative is based on pure reason and pure reason is based on a priori knowledge....the next thing we should ask ourselves is what engineered that a priori knowledge?

If a priori knowledge is a matter of design...then surely the categorical imperative is also a matter of design. ie: the means of conceptualizing it were provided with a purpose.

Has the devil's advocate proven the existence of a God?

Koyaanisqatsi

I'm just going to go out on a limb here. "No."

Others will no doubt slog through the quagmire more minutely, so I'll just try to provide the overall.

This is how these arguments invariably go, IMO (from a twenty thousand foot fly-by):

I seek to prove the existence of an objectively existing god (i.e., a god that exists independently of my own imagination), who, through his existence, in turn mandates objective reality (I do this in order to thinly veil my ultimate objective--pardon the pun--which is to establish an objective morality, but that's neither here nor there).

To do this, I will first have to call into question the objectivety (the "out thereness") of existence so that I can then, ultimately, come right back around in order to establish the objectivety of existence. Thus, a whole series of non-causal links that are all, perhaps, technically correct in that they follow the proper formatting rules and regulations of modal logic are presented that take full (and unwarranted, IMO) advantage of the simple fact that human reasoning processes are necessarily incomplete, since human reasoning is a dynamic, not a static process.

The mind can always envision an infinite regress and because of that "loophole," a wedge can be placed into the degree of certainty human perception is necessarily limited by; the wedge of "there can be no absolutes."

The loophole works like this: Since we can never know anything to an absolute certainty (yet can still function on a primal level as if we do know things for an absolute certainty; i.e., if I sit in a chair, the chair--eventhough it is ultimately nothing more than a glowing fog of atoms--will sustain my own glowing fog of atoms, instead of those fogs simply passing through each other due to all that space at a subatomic level), therefore, God must account for this disparity.

The problem being, of course, that if God does indeed factually exist (i.e., not just a figment of imagination), then the loophole proponents of this argument require to be true is, ipso facto, not true and never was; it does not exist.

Put it this way. Assume a god exists. This means that an absolute objective reality can be a priori established as extant, which in turn means that humans can rely upon this a priori construct to effectively remove any degrees of uncertainty that the loophole of human reasoning outlined above requires to be true.

In other words, if a god exists, then there is no degree of uncertainty to human reasoning (in regard to the perception of objective reality).

Yet, to get there, the proponent must first establish to be true that there is a degree of uncertainty necessarily to human reasoning (in regard to the perception of objective reality), thus destroying the entire argument and proving instead that a god can not exist, since human reasoning is necessarily uncertain.

To use a theist analogy; it's like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

By this I mean, you can have a Premise A, for example, that is necessarily true in order to arrive at a valid conclusion, but the valid conclusion arrived at in turn means that Premis A is necessarily not true and never was.

Thus, it seems to me, you have a syllogism that may be technically sequitur, I guess, but ultimately non-sequitur in a larger framework. Again, I will leave the minutia of modal logic to others not clouded by years of THC induction to figure that one out in more formal terms .

And, no doubt, school me once again in that minutia . I thank you.

Theli

Perhaps you could help me out here, why would we require past experiences to be infallible in order to act one them?
A part of your argument seems to suggest that since there is a slim chance that our memories are false we should discard them. But without external data, what excacly should we act on?
And about this "priori knowledge", I wouldn't go as far as calling it knowledge (instincs would be a better choice of words), why would this have to be designed?
And why by the christian god? How does designing instincs entail omniscience for instance?
There are some HUGE leaps and gaps in your argument.

Jobar

Until I am told by a much better philosopher than I that this isn't just the gibberish it sounds like, I am putting it in ~Elsewhere~. I admit the faint possibility that there is a point buried somewhere in the fog, but it's so well hidden I sure can't see it.

Theli

Alot of moving today?

Wiploc

I grant that there is some degree of doubt about the conclusions of all inductive logic. That doesn't make those conclusions wrong, or even probably wrong, or even plausibly wrong.

The categorical imperative, on the other hand, is just false, demonstrably so using the deductive logic that you seem to prefer. Therefore, by your test, the other systems would seem to be superior.

But none of this has anything to do with which system we ought to follow. You are off-base when you suggest that we ought to follow the moral system with the best logical basis. That's hardly what morality is about.
crc

keyser_soze

I'm going with the mod on this one...I can't for the life of me(without some sleep at least) figure out where the spaghetti string starts and ends. Can you refine this morass, and/or give some hints as to what you are trying to accomplish?

keyser_soze

I'm going with the mod on this one...I can't for the life of me(without some sleep at least) figure out where the spaghetti string starts and ends. Can you refine this morass, and/or give some hints as to what you are trying to accomplish?

keyser_soze

Whoa...server hiccup. What happened? "Server too busy" Too many visitors....cool.