Various topics (continued from a Facebook convo)

(1) The Moral Argument
====================



Maybe not a transcendental foundation, but if a property exists in reality, it must have some kind of ontology or other. Moral properties are no exception. Either morality exists solely as part of the natural world (moral naturalism) or it exists to at least some degree as part of the non-natural realm (moral non-naturalism). One of these has to be true, because if morality exists neither as part of the natural realm nor as part of the non-natural realm, then it follows that morality does not exist as part of reality at all. If morality exists, some type of ontological explanation or other must be correct.

However, as I argued before, morality (of the sort I’m talking about) does not exist solely as part of the physical realm; so if moral properties exist they must have some type of transcendent ontological component, hence the argument from ontological simplicity.



I go through it step-by-step; which step do you find confusing?

Remember that I’m trying to describe what would happen if we posited just one nonphysical entity to ontologically ground objective moral values and duties and describe what the entity would be like, and I defined “authority” as being the source of some obligation. So what would this entity be like?

First, this entity would transcend the physical world; this step should understandable as well as unsurprising, since I am after all talking about a nonphysical entity.

Second, the entity in question is also the foundation of objective moral obligations, and as the source of moral obligation is must also have authority in the sense that it imposes moral duties and grounds the oughtness of those duties.

Third, for morality to be objective and universally binding, the entity must impose moral duties with supreme and universally binding authority, because moral duties supersede any other duties that any (other?) person or culture might create for themselves.

Fourth, the entity must exist in every possible world (and therefore have necessary existence) to ground morality in every possible world, because morality is metaphysically necessary. While multiple entities spread about in different possible worlds grounding morality is logically possible, if we’re looking for the simplest explanation it is preferable to posit just one grounding entity to explain morality’s metaphysical necessity (see also this recent blog article). And finally, the entity must also be eternal, since at no time and in no circumstances can metaphysically necessary entities fail to exist.

If there’s something you still don’t get, it might be helpful to point to a specific step.




But why think this is true? For each premise there exists loads of people who find the premise plausible for reasons quite independently of accepting the conclusion, as illustrated by the fact that there are loads of atheists who accept premise 1 (believing that objective morality probably doesn’t exist if atheism is true) and loads of atheists who accept premise 2 (though of course no atheist accepts both). So it does not seem at all implausible that there existed some agnostic who came to believe that premise 1 is probably true (and that objective morality is indeed unlikely on atheism) while also believing premise 2 is likely true (that there are at least some objective moral truths, e.g. that torturing infants just for fun is morally wrong independently of human opinion) and thus concluded that argument gives at least some evidential force for theism. So again, why think the argument is question begging?

Perhaps you think the argument question begging because nobody would not accept the conclusion if they believed all the premises are simultaneously true, but since this sort of thing is true for any deductively valid argument, this doesn’t seem to be a good reason.



Indeed, as might be revealed by looking at a fuller version of the quote:



The idea God entails objective morality due to bribes or threats is not even remotely implied in my quote.



You apparently don’t quite understand what I was trying to accomplish, largely because I apparently should have fleshed it out a bit more. You seemed uncomfortable with accepting the first premise even if only as a material conditional, but you really shouldn’t because you believe it is unlikely that objective morality exists if atheism is true, and also because it is likely that objective morality exists if theism is true. Why should that make you feel less uncomfortable? It can be shown mathematically that E is evidence for hypothesis H (in the sense of raising H’s probability) if the following is true:

Pr(E|H) > Pr(E|~H)

The probably of E (objective morality) given H (theism) is high, and you and I both believe that the probably of E given ~H is low. Thus if E (objective morality) exists it is evidence for H (theism). So we both basically accept premise 1 in a way that would make objective morality constitute evidence for theism if objective morality exists. Hence, I thought this sort of thing should make you feel less intellectually uncomfortable in accepting premise 1. It does seem that the existence of some invisible nonphysical component of reality transcending our opinion that says we shouldn’t do certain things is significantly more likely on a theistic worldview than on atheism.



Well, by “perfect” I’m using Merriam-Webster definition 1a, and for “good” I’m using Merriam-Webster definition 2a(1).

I realize you may find these definitions inadequate, but I’m not sure I (or anyone else) can define them to your satisfaction. I could for example say by “perfectly good” I mean “morally perfect” but you would likely consider that unsatisfactory due to “valuation terminology.”

Still, as a rough and ready approximation I could define “moral values” as the sort of qualities (as kindness and compassion) that we ought to value in the “unconditional ought” sense, and a “perfectly good” being is one who does so to the maximally conceivable degree.



I already said it wasn’t! Or perhaps you are referring to the response to your objection, to which my point was this: I wasn’t making an objection in the claim you quoted; you seemed to misconstrue what you were criticizing (and that was my objection to your objection).



That…doesn’t really have anything to do with showing that it isn’t an unconditional ought. The existence of an unconditional ought doesn’t imply that the oughtness doesn’t supervene on other states of affairs. Rather, an unconditional ought is contrasted with a conditional ought in that a conditional ought is solely about what helps accomplish certain states of affairs, whereas an unconditional ought refers to what ought to be simpliciter. Of course, prohibiting torturing infants just for fun may help accomplish certain states of affairs, but that’s irrelevant; the existence of an unconditional ought does not imply that following an unconditional-ought obligation can’t help actualize certain other states of affairs.




Here’s the clarification:



Yes, I’m aware this doesn’t answer all your questions about morality, but it is an important clarification nonetheless given your apparent confusion of the sort of morality I’m talking about.

You ask, “What makes an action something we ought not do?” This is a good question, but one not addressed by moral semantics (defining moral terms) but rather moral ontology (the foundations of morality).

That said, my own view is that moral normativity is grounded in God, that e.g. moral wrongness is one and the same property as that which God forbids. However, it should be noted that my moral semantics does not say this to be so, i.e. it isn’t true by (my) definition of the term “morally wrong.”



Well, there is what I’ve called “The Red Button Test” (actually not “the” test since there a number of variants) that I’ve used before. Imagine a red button that, if you press it, tortures an innocent child to death but you get billions of dollars. If you _really_ believed that there’s nothing wrong with torturing the child for money, why not press it? As you imagine your finger hovering over the red button, ask yourself: is torturing the child to death for money morally permissible, or is this something you really shouldn’t do?

I’m willing to bet that most people who profess to be moral nihilists wouldn’t press the red button, and in my times of doubt I give myself the red button test to confirm that I really do believe pressing the red button is something I shouldn’t do.



Well, sort of. We can use simplicity to argue for it being simpler that the universe has a uniform operation of tis laws, but otherwise it’s largely an assumption. You say, “The fact remains that we can test the validity of the laws in far regions and need not rely on it as an assumption.” but in practice that clearly isn’t what happens when we put forth claims regarding astrophysics, e.g. the assumption that the speed of light in a vacuum is the same as it is far out in space as it is in our own tiny observed section of space-time. Yes, we can use the principle of parsimony to argue for that assumption’s probability, but still, that doesn’t contravene my claim that astrophysics does in fact rely on this assumption.



Why do I need to convince you that this sort of simplicity is preferable to yours? That doesn’t seem to be a requirement for the claim that explanations which have greater Swinburnian simplicity are ceteris paribus more likely to be true.



It’s an explanation, but by my lights it’s not much of one. Regarding this claim:



If you disagree, we might have to agree to disagree, and we can call my argument “The argument from Swinburnian Simplicity” if you prefer.



That isn’t a valid example because neither X or nor ~X are “things” but rather propositions. By “things” I mean members of the concrete world, like rocks, mountains, snails, and trees. It seems more plausible that there is a possible world in which no contingent thinsg exist.



Right, my view allows for the necessary existence of a thing to be a brute fact.

At any rate you don’t quite seem to have addressed the trilemma that showed the three options for a contingent entity grounding morality were unsatisfactory.


(2) Analytic and Necessity
====================



You misunderstood me (though I should have made myself clearer). I wasn’t talking about any particular wet stuff but the substance of “that wet stuff.”


At best this would be equivocating; we still wouldn’t really be making a meaningful scientific (empirical) discovery about the chemical composition of a substance if we’re redefining terms (what we called “water” before isn’t the same as what we call “water” now, hence we’re not making a discovery about “water” per se). Even if we had practical reasons to define the term, we didn’t really make a scientific discovery of water’s chemical composition if we defined the term that way.



This still doesn’t quite address my objection. My objection is that, on your view, we could not say “We were mistaken about what we thought water was composed of” since water was by definition H2O. Does this seem to be an acceptable consequence to you? Isn’t it more likely that scientists would say that we were mistaken about water’s chemical composition?

I think the answer is yes. It seems more likely that the “real” definition of water is that it’s a “name” for a certain substance, a name that by itself makes no assumptions to its composition, which is why “water is H2O” is a real discovery, something we learned about water that we did not know before.

(1 of 2)

=====Morality=====

"Either morality exists..."
In what sense does a morality exist? I think it is clear that it exists merely in the sense of propositions, definitions, etc. It does not really have proper instantiation (it is not "there" like a rock is "there"). Moreover, one morality "existing" does not preclude another from "existing" as well, and this would seem, on your view, to demand that two necessary beings existed who disagreed with one another. I think this stems from the vagueness of how you use "morality": perhaps you should explain what you mean by it.

"Either morality exists solely as part of the natural world (moral naturalism) or it exists to at least some degree as part of the non-natural realm (moral non-naturalism)."
Suppose we alter this to "moral properties are either natural properties or they are not natural". I think this merely depends on what you mean by "moral": we can define "moral" such that it only takes into account natural properties (preventing harm, etc.), or we can define it using some not-natural properties (commanded by god, etc.). It all depends on what "moral" means!

"I go through it step-by-step; which step do you find confusing?"
Given some conclusions, others plausibly follow, but it is the earlier conclusions I find problematic. For instance, I find it unintelligible to say that someone imposes duties (all someone can do is impose demands, which the one commanded can make into a duty for herself). I also don't see how or why we need something new at all. Nor do I see how it is intelligible to say that an authority grounds oughtness. This seems like an impermissible attempt to bridge the is-ought gap. Person P tells me to do action A: but why ought I do A?

"But why think this is true?"
Depending on what the second premise is saying, either the second premise is false (morality is not of that sort, or that sort of morality does not obtain), or the first premise is false (god is irrelevant to the sort of morality the second premise describes) (I may be abusing language somewhat, but it is only for brevity). To beg the question, you could merely make the second premise such that I would think it is true, and justify the first premise by saying "god exists" (a falsehood implies anything).
I don't care about the number of people who believe either premise: I think many of them are wrong.
"So again, why think the argument is question begging?"
I did not say it would all be question begging: I said either the first premise has no justification, the second premise has no justification, or the justification for at least one premise is the conclusion.

"The idea God entails objective morality due to bribes or threats is not even remotely implied in my quote."
Nor is the idea that I think it was implied by mine. What I am saying is that the only thing I think god could add to morality is as providing incentives for heeding certain demands (and possibly for enhancing epistemology, though that seems, at first blush, problematic).


You apparently don’t quite understand what I was trying to accomplish, largely because I apparently should have fleshed it out a bit more.

"You seemed uncomfortable with accepting the first premise even if only as a material conditional, but you really shouldn’t because you believe it is unlikely that objective morality exists if atheism is true, and also because it is likely that objective morality exists if theism is true."
I think you had best be careful here. I don't think objective morality, as you describe it, exists at all, nor even that it makes much sense. I think that morality can be objective, certainly (as I have described on several occasions).

"It can be shown mathematically..."
I don't think this is true: this is merely taken to be what "E is evidence for H" means.

"The probably of E (objective morality) given H (theism) is high, and you and I both believe that the probably of E given ~H is low."
This is not at all true. Let your conception of objective morality be OM1, and mine be OM2. Let H be "theism is true". I think that P(OM1|H)=0, because I think that P(OM1)=0 (well, we have problems in if P(H)=0, so we'll assume arguendo that P(H)=/=0, and I think you would agree). I think that P(OM2|H) is decently high, but only because I think H has nothing to do with OM1, that is, I think P(OM2|~H) is decently high, and that P(OM2) itself is pretty high.
Supposing, per impossibile, that P(OM1) were not very low, I think that it would not be the case that P(OM1|H)>P(OM1|~H).

"So we both basically accept premise 1 in a way that would make objective morality constitute evidence for theism if objective morality exists."
Er...not at all. I specifically reject the first premise on all but the most technical grounds (anything implies a truth, for instance).

It seems like being absent from the discussion for so long made you forget my position on the matter.

"Well, by “perfect” I’m using Merriam-Webster definition 1a, and for “good” I’m using Merriam-Webster definition 2a(1)."
Well, "good" is there described using terms such as "virtuous" and "right" (MW itself goes on to define virtuous=exhibiting virtue. Virtue=morally good behavior or character.)

"I realize you may find these definitions inadequate, but I’m not sure I (or anyone else) can define them to your satisfaction."
I doubt that. I think even you could define them if you gave it some thought, though I would hope you would then see the failings of your current position.

"Still, as a rough and ready approximation I could define “moral values” as the sort of qualities (as kindness and compassion) that we ought to value in the “unconditional ought” sense, and a “perfectly good” being is one who does so to the maximally conceivable degree."
But what does it mean that we ought to do something? I think you have the logical order wrong: we ought to do X because we value Y. Valuing necessarily precedes any sense of oughtness, as we must always appeal to something to explain why we ought to do something. Saying that an ought is unconditional is to say that we simply ought to do it (not because god tells us to, or because it would maximize wellbeing, or because doing so would embody virtues, etc., but just because), and as such I don't see how you could convince any rational person to do that thing, unless they themselves already agreed with you that it ought to be done. It leaves you incapable of convincing someone who disagrees with you. Moreover, I see nothing about this that would necessarily apply to any rational being. Suppose there were some rational being who disagreed with you that X ought to be done: how could you convince him?

"That…doesn’t really have anything to do with showing that it isn’t an unconditional ought."
I think it clearly does. It's not that we ought to do it simpliciter, but rather we ought to do it because XYZ are valuable.

"Rather, an unconditional ought is contrasted with a conditional ought in that a conditional ought is solely about what helps accomplish certain states of affairs, whereas an unconditional ought refers to what ought to be simpliciter."
The fact that it can be construed as a conditional makes it, by definition, not an unconditional ought: if we want X, we ought to do Y. I don't see it as meaningful to speak of oughts as anything other than conditionals. For any "unconditional" ought you give me, I am confident that I can at least construe it as a conditional. If we don't do this, then it makes no sense how we could answer the question "why ought we do X?". This question is not answered by saying "because it is an unconditional ought", as that merely describes the fact that we can't give a reason for doing it: we simply ought to.

"Of course, prohibiting torturing infants just for fun may help accomplish certain states of affairs, but that’s irrelevant; the existence of an unconditional ought does not imply that following an unconditional-ought obligation can’t help actualize certain other states of affairs."
Then it seems impossible to see why we ought to do the thing. There seems to be no reason why we ought to do the thing.

"You ask, “What makes an action something we ought not do?” This is a good question, but one not addressed by moral semantics (defining moral terms) but rather moral ontology (the foundations of morality)."
The two are or may not be wholly distinct. What I am asking is "what does it mean that we ought not do it?", which can be coupled with "what is it about it action that renders it something e ought not do? How do we get to "ought"? "

"moral wrongness is one and the same property as that which God forbids."
This seems to render it conditional: we ought to render it because god commands it, or, it is conditional upon god commanding it. However, why should we obey god? If that is an unconditional ought, it cannot be issued from god himself, as that would be circular.

"Well, there is what I’ve called “The Red Button Test”..."
All the test shows is that we have some moral beliefs, not that any of them rests on any unconditional oughts. I can tell you now that I think it makes sense to call something objectively moral/immoral, and that this involves absolutely no unconditional oughts. The test is difficult, as it forces us to prioritize personal gain and the torture of someone unknown. It would seem troubled by the possibility of using that money for charity or to prevent the torturing of different infants (some consequentialists may say to press it so that we can save other infants with the money). (I will also assume that getting the money will not have adverse inflationary effects)

"I’m willing to bet that most people who profess to be moral nihilists wouldn’t press the red button"
Why think that? A nihilist may say "there is no such thing as good or evil: hence, it is neither evil for the child to be killed, nor good for me to take the money. So I can just make an arbitrary decision, and I choose to save the child".

"and in my times of doubt I give myself the red button test to confirm that I really do believe pressing the red button is something I shouldn’t do."
But clearly it would seem that " I ought not push the button" is not an unconditional "ought", as it is based on the other ought "I ought not cause or facilitate the torturing of children". I would argue that even this ought can be reduced further to the basically tautological level "I ought do what promotes/protects/pursues what is valuable". That is, the oughts can all be reduced to the level of conditionals appealing to values.

=====Simplicity and Explanations=====

"We can use simplicity to argue for it being simpler that the universe has a uniform operation of tis laws, but otherwise it’s largely an assumption."
Well, it's not totally an assumption: it's an inference/induction based on a certain limited set of evidence (we observe them to be uniform so far as we have observed, and make the inductive inference that they are uniform throughout). Our belief that they are uniform is based on evidence and simplicity and is not ad-hoc in the given instance (I presume YEC-proponents concede that the laws are pretty uniform on Earth, just based on scientific evidence). It is the fact that the hypothesis of uniformity has been so incredibly successful, both in predicting specific observations and explaining past observations, that makes it justifiable.

"You say, “The fact remains that we can test the validity of the laws in far regions and need not rely on it as an assumption.” but in practice that clearly isn’t what happens when we put forth claims regarding astrophysics, e.g. the assumption that the speed of light in a vacuum is the same as it is far out in space as it is in our own tiny observed section of space-time."
Well, it is not simply an assumption: as I said, it is an inference/induction based on a limited set of evidence, as is most anything in science. I think it would be better to call it a theory at this point, or at least a principle, but certainly not an assumption.

"Why do I need to convince you that this sort of simplicity is preferable to yours?"
Well, if you want it to be useful in arguing against me, getting me on board with your criteria would help.

"...[E]xplanations which have greater Swinburnian simplicity are ceteris paribus more likely to be true."
I don't think that is always the case. It is often the case, as Swinburnian simplicity uses several other types of simplicity that I think do make things more likely true, but it also includes a lot of excess.

"That isn’t a valid example because neither X or nor ~X are “things” but rather propositions."
It was merely an example of how neither disjunct can be necessary, while the disjunction itself is. I think you failed to give this any due consideration: if we find that a certain sort of thing is necessary, we are not warranted in concluding that exactly one being exists, present in and identical across all possible worlds. All we can say is that in every possible world there is a being of that sort, not necessarily identical. For instance, if A and B are both of the right sort, maybe A exists in half the worlds and B in the other half: neither is necessary, but the disjunction "A or B" is necessary.

"At any rate you don’t quite seem to have addressed the trilemma that showed the three options for a contingent entity grounding morality were unsatisfactory."
Your trilemma seems very confused: you seem hung up on this idea of "ensuring" thet there is some being. What "ensures" that god exists in every metaphysically possible world? The same answer would be given for why a certain sort of thing (though not any one particular thing) exists in every metaphysically possible world.

=====Analytic/Synthetic Necessary Truths=====

"I wasn’t talking about any particular wet stuff but the substance of “that wet stuff.” "
This doesn't seem to clarify anything... How are you defining "water"? By pointing to it, as you would point to a man? By describing it, and saying that anything that meets that description is "water"? How? By the first method, the fact is not generalizable at all: two identical looking (and acting) cups of liquid might have wholly different chemical compositions. I it is by the second one, then either "being H2O" is part of that description or it isn't. If it is, then "Water is H2O" is analytically true, and if it isn't, then, again, we could have a sample of stuff that met the definition of "water", and yet was not H2O.

"At best this would be equivocating; we still wouldn’t really be making a meaningful scientific (empirical) discovery about the chemical composition of a substance if we’re redefining terms (what we called “water” before isn’t the same as what we call “water” now, hence we’re not making a discovery about “water” per se)."
What we have is a substance. We affix a name to this substance and call it "water", based on various macroscopic properties (that is, anything with those properties is "water"). We later learn something about the substance called "water" and learn that it has some chemical composition. We can either make this composition part of what it means for a thing to be "water", or an accidental aspect of what water can sometimes be (for instance, if we learned that water is found on Mars, this would be an accidental aspect, as water need not be on Mars. Or, if we learned that water has a particular color, we would use that color to define what water was: it would be a necessary condition for a substance being "water"). What we discovered was that a substance had a certain chemical composition, and we had been calling that substance "water", so we kept the name. But this had the effect of making water *by definition* H2O.

Here's a question I would like to hear (or read, but that sounds (looks?) so wrong) you answer:
If we found a sample of a substance that had all the macroscopic properties of water, but when we examined it closely, it was not H2O, which would you say:
A) "I guess not all water is H2O"
B) "This non-water stuff is very much like water"
That is, it either is water, or it isn't: which would you say it was?

"My objection is that, on your view, we could not say “We were mistaken about what we thought water was composed of” since water was by definition H2O."
If the definition of "water" includes its composition, we cannot be wrong about what it is composed of (we defined the term, after all). If it does not include its composition, we would never have specified what it was composed of, and "water" could potentially have different compositions (that is, two samples could have different compositions and both still be "water"). If it does include its composition, but we later find that, for a given sample, it had a different composition than we thought it had, then we would learn that what we thought was "water" actually wasn't, or vice versa.

"I think the answer is yes. It seems more likely that the “real” definition of water is that it’s a “name” for a certain substance, a name that by itself makes no assumptions to its composition, which is why “water is H2O” is a real discovery, something we learned about water that we did not know before."
But if "water" does not restrict the composition, then we can have two samples of different composition that are both "water". We could only learn about samples of stuff we call water, not about water generally. You could say that it is inductive: all the stuff we call water has, so far, turned out to be H2O, but this would then be provisional and limited, and it certainly does not seem that the term is used in that way.

=====Cause/Explanation of the Universe=====

"This doesn’t really answer my question"
I think this is largely because I don't know that you expect or want. The question is simply too loose to have any good answers.

"...f you want a definition of mind, I’d say definition 2a of the Merriam-Webster dictionary."
Let's see what MW has to say: "the element or complex of elements in an individual that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons". Basically "the thing in P that does XYZ". Ok, well my thing is the thing in the world that does EFG. (Odd that you would choose a definition that basically defines the term based on what the thing does).

"This is nearly an admission that you don’t have any real content for this alternative;"
I have all the content that the explananda requires. Maybe there is other superfluous content, but I don't have it. All I know is that it is an entity (I imagine it as a point) that does certain things and is separated from other things in certain ways.

"With such vacuous or near-vacuous content, we can scarcely call this alternative an explanation."
I don't see why not. It postdicts everything a super-mind does, and predicts exactly the same things as a super-mind (namely nothing), and is, I would argue, simpler, as it has many fewer properties and attributes.

"Well, the way it does so falls under the umbrella of explananda (as I am using the term)."
Then I think you are using it in a unusual (and possibly ad hoc) way.

Note that simplicity and explanatory scope are both factors in making evolution a good explanation.

"But suppose we ignore that; my alternative cause for evolution can predict all the same data evolution does,"
Does it? How does it do that? please tell me how it does so.

"...[M]y alternative cause, for which I give no details for beyond it being physical and not evolution while also bringing about the explananda"
But that is not what an explanation does. An explanation does not simply tell you that something is the case, it tells you how or why it is the case. In my proposed example, the how or why is given by this entity existing that has the sole capability of making universes in a random and simultaneous fashion. Why is there a universe? Because this thing produced it, or because a super-mind decided to make one. Why is there trans-phylum genetic similarity? Common ancestry+random changes+natural selection, or... what? What are you offering? A-thing-that-explains-trans-phylum-genetic-similarity? Yes, that is what we want, but simply calling a thing that won't make it that (just as calling a man an athlete won't make him one). My cosmic explanation has enough content to explain the explanandum (and a bit more, for example, fine tuning (as we discuss below)), while your alternative evolutionary "explanation" simply professes to explain, while it does no such thing.

"Perhaps the existence of the universe does raise the probability of your alternative cause to some degree, but due to the vacuousness of your third alternative I don’t think it does so by very much;"
I'm not sure you can say this with much certainty. Simply based on the hypothesis that a super-mind exists, I don't think the probability of our universe existing is raised very much (the super mind need not have made any universe, or could have made a different universe, or made this universe then destroyed it). Now, we can augment the hypothesis with several conjuncts (and this super-mind desires to make humans, and it desires them to be embodied independent moral agents, and it desires to make them specially, etc.), but this renders the explanation more complex and more ad hoc. On the other hand, given my explanans by itself, the probability of our universe existing as-is is 100%. That is, if U=our universe exists as-is. M=a super-mind exists. F=a universe-factory exists, then we have
P(M|U) / P(F|U)=P(M)P(U|M) / P(F)
(If this is greater than one, M is favored, if it is less than one, F is favored)
Now you could argue that P(F) is so low as to render this very high, but I could argue that P(M) is so low and/or that P(U|M) is so low or inscrutable as to make the ratio low or inscrutable. On the whole, I think your claim is not very well grounded.

"This is a bit of a straw man; recall that my proposed explanation in this variety of the LCA was not one with all the attributes you’ve attributed to it, but rather an unembodied mind (which may or may not have all the attributes associated with it—the argument has no say on that matter)."
This seems to be an odd move. Are you saying that the explanation does not also have these other properties? Unless the being in question also has these properties, it is only a super-mind, and not the Christian God. As such, it would seem that you were arguing for deism or even polytheism, which I am fairly sure you are not. Clearly the thing would be simpler if it did not have these properties. But even a mind qua mind is less simple than my explanans: a thing being a mind depends on it having several other properties (thinking, feeling, perceiving, reasoning, etc.), so at least in that sense it has more properties than my explanans.

"Because mine has greater appeal to the familiar, mine seems to be the best explanation (if we were to have an explanation)."
Again, I don't think that that fact, by itself, makes it a better explanation (we've already discussed this).

"In the broadest of senses yes, but I’m sure the majority of philosophers would agree with this sentiment."
Nevertheless, I think we should be careful in how we describe the causal power of a mind. At most, it seems, we are used to minds having internal power (causing thoughts, considerations, etc.), and at most minimal external power (though even this is very problematic: where does the brain end and mind begin? How can a mind affect the physical brain, and how does it do so?).

"After all, even if minds are essentially brains, brains surely cause things to happen; that’s just a biological fact."
I'm not sure appealing to physicalism (or materialism) is going to help you here. A physicalist would possibly deny the metaphysical possibility of an unembodied mind, or say that such a concept was so different or absurd as to render it impermissible. It is certainly true that brains cause things, so if we identify the mind with some feature of the brain, we can easily identify how minds cause things. But this is obviously not what your explanans is saying. The explanans is a mind with no brain, so how would such a thing a) exist (a physicalist might think it couldn't) and b) cause anything (a physicalist would see it either as impossible or very difficult).

"Well, to illustrate how unacceptable this seems, imagine if I did that for an alternative theory for evolution: the cause is physical but not evolution, and I give no further details about what it is beyond causing the explananda."
But how does it cause/explain the explananda? How does a mind cause a universe? In the cosmic case, we are looking for something with two properties: causal influence, and extra-universality. So long as the thing meets these two criteria, it is at least a candidate. For evolution, the number of properties is much larger, as there is a large amount of data to be explained (several billion years of fossils, millions of species, billions of genes, geological data, behavioral data, geographical data, etc.). To be a rival candidate, it would have to explain all of these. However, it must also compete with rival explanations (in a manner like survival of the fittest ) in power, scope, simplicity, ad-hoc-ness, predictive power, global coherence, etc. If it can meet the first set of criteria, it is a candidate. If it can compete with rivals, then it is a viable alternative.

"At least part of what constitutes a good explanation is less vagueness and more real content about what the explanans is."
Ask me any specific question (like a yes/no question), and I will (try to) answer it.

"What’s more, if the alternative so vastly different from what we normally experience that we can’t even describe it further, then this counts against the explanation even more heavily."
It's not that it is indescribable, it's that it is not fully known or understood. We can take Occam to mean that we should not add content to an explanation unnecessarily.

"Right (notice my explicit appeal to background knowledge here) but that doesn’t contravene anything I’ve said; it’s still the case that the explananda (snowshoe markings) is evidence for the hypothesis (the markings were caused by snowshoes) even though background knowledge plays an important role."
As you've phrased this, it seems unintelligible. The hypothesis "the markings were caused by snowshoes" is unintelligible (not improbable) unless there are markings (otherwise, what is being referred to? What markings?).
If we did not have our background knowledge, it seems obvious that we would have no grounds for thinking that given markings were caused by a certain contraption. And given our background knowledge, we don't even need to have any given instances of snowshoe markings, as we would say that any markings of a certain pattern were very likely made by snowshoes.

It seems that explanations should be independent of their explananda even in principle, if we are to subject them to probabilistic analysis (the proposition "the markings were made by snowshoes" cannot be analyzed unless the markings themselves are granted): it does not seem to make sense to analyze P(the markings were caused by snowshoes| there are no markings). For instance, the explanation for seeing certain markings in the snow is not "the markings were made by snowshoes", but rather "snowshoes are a common tool for crossing snow, in relatively widespread use, that make a distinctive marking in the snow (which we then describe)". The explanation for seeing a massive body fall to the floor is not "the massive body was attracted by gravity to the earth" but rather that "all massive bodies are attracted by gravity to the earth", or even more generally that "all massive bodies undergo mutual gravitational attraction, and the earth is a massive body". I'm not sure this sort of thing holds generally (I'd have to give it more consideration), but it seems like this is either the proper form of explanations, or at least a superior form of explanation.

"As I have conceded, the idea that an unembodied mind caused the universe appeals [(do you mean "does not appeal"?)] to the familiar to a complete degree (assuming we do not have knowledge of another instance in which an unembodied mind causes a universe), but it is the explanation that by far appeals to the familiar the most—we are intimately familiar with minds causing things to happen."
But we are also familiar with mechanistish things causing things to happen (indeed much more so and less controversially than minds). We are familiar with murderers causing things as well, so why would not a murderer explain an eclipse? Because the sort of thing being cause is of a completely different sort. And this is the case with a mind: we have no evidence that a mind does or can do anything like create a universe. What a mind causes, if anything, is of a completely different sort than the creation of universes.We have just as much experience with minds causing universes as self-caused or causeless things (arguably more in some of the latter cases). We have evidence that animals make tracks, so why is not an animal a viable explanation for explaining our particular markings? Why are not the tracks evidence that an animal made them?

"In contrast, your universe-factory thing is so unfamiliar as to more or less defy human description"
Again, it's not that it's indescribable, it's that there isn't much to be described.

"but that’s pretty much the extent of the description for your “alternative cause".”
Not at all: I can tell you some of its properties (timelessness, spacelessness, mechanistishness, etc.) and partially how it makes universes (simultaneously and randomly).

"We can look at this way; it seems that any alternative we can’t think up is likely to be even less familiar than minds causing things (consider for example your alternative cause, which nearly defies human description beyond it being an alternative and a cause) thus making it less likely to be a better explanation."
I think this sort of view of explanation is problematic, as it seems to force ontology to meet our epistemic limits. I think I can always, in this case, run an argument parallel to how you defend against the argument from evil (but also, any argument you give, I think I could make into a defense of the argument from evil).
Suppose it were ontologically the case that a non-mind, mechanistish thing were behind the universe (arguendo): would we expect to be able to understand it, describe it, know about it, etc.? I don't think we would, and thus our inability to do so in no way counts against it as an explanation.

=====Probability and Evidence=====

I gave the case of probability some thought, as I consider it very intriguing. I'm not sure if what follows represents a change in my position, a refinement of my position, a fuller exposition of my position, or a reaction to your position once I had better understood it.

As regards probability, let us examine what it means to say "there is an X% probability that P". I think we should distinguish two cases: the first case I will call statistical probability, and the second indeterministic probability. In the statistical case, before we look there is already a fact of the matter about P: it is either wholly true or it is wholly false. The probability merely rests on incomplete knowledge (an instance would be that, say, 50% of people are male. We pick a person, not knowing anything about them, and ask what is the chance that this random person is male: the answer is 50%, but the person is either already male or not). In the indeterministic case, there is no fact of the matter right now as to what P is. It's not that we don't know enough right now to predict, it's that we can't possibly know enough right now. However, we can determine the probability (X%) of P being true, that is, if we had identical circumstances in N identical worlds, in about (N*X/100) of them, P would come out true (an example of this would be quantum mechanical, or an idealized coin flip). We can show the difference as that between an idealized coin already flipped (but lying hidden) and an idealized coin to be flipped.
Not sure it's wholly relevant, but I just thought it was interesting and potentially important.

Next, evidence is always relative to some background knowledge. E is evidence for P, only if we already have some idea about P. The technical definition typically says "E is evidence for H iff P(H|E&K)>P(H|K), where K is some (appropriate) background knowledge. This is because P(H) is typically inscrutable, or will inherently presuppose some background knowledge (so it is best to make it explicit).
Therefore, we must always ask "relative to what background knowledge?". What is evidence for a claim on some background knowledge may be evidence against a claim on some other background, or no evidence at all.

In Bob's case, we must first begin with the probability of him being able to swim just on some background, for instance, the fact that he is a human, and some fraction X of humans can swim. Suppose X=80%>75%. In that case, the fact that he is from Springfield will be evidence against his being able to swim. Suppose X=50%<75%, in that case, the fact that he is from Springfield will count for his being able to swim. And if X=75%, then his being from Springfield won't be evidence either way.
I think it is important to note that the order in which evidence is presented is incidental: we typically build our background knowledge chronologically, but what is actually important is what we take as background.

"But you’ve given a false analogy here, one in which we do have further relevant information beyond the statistic. A more apt analogy would be one in which a person has randomly chosen a number between 1 and 5, we know that 60% of the numbers between 1 and 5, and we are given no further relevant information."
If I say n is an integer between 1 and 5 (inclusive), then we say that n is prime with 60% probability. But that is only because n has no identity: it does not refer to any specific number. In this case, the probability is indeterministic: n has no identity as yet, and so there is nothing we can find out about it. If instead we said "Joe has picked an integer between 1 and 5 (written it down, say): what is the chance it is prime?" We would again say "60%", but in this case the probability is statistical. However, if I lay bare the number and ask "4 is a number between 1 and 5: what is the chance it is prime?" The answer will either be 100% or 0% (in this case, clearly 0%). It all depends on the background information we take: for instance, we could play dumb and pretend not to know which numbers between 1 and 5 were prime, and then we could answer "60%" again.

"Clearly our evidence would suggest that the number is likely prime."
That's a bit of an understatement

"In case it wasn’t clear, I had implicit in mind the “no further relevant information” clause (this sort of thing is similar to the ceteris paribus stuff philosophers have implicit sometimes)."
But you must include at least some initial background, otherwise the case is intractable.

I think I understand better what you mean now. However, I would stress again that evidence is always relative to some background information: it is not time-dependent as background-dependent. When we say "X is evidence for Y" the background must either be specified, or else it is implicit. We must therefore strive to have a fuller description: "X is evidence for Y based on B". This proposition never ceases to be true (supposing it is true), so long as the variables are held constant.

Ye gods your posts are long! I’ll try to cut some stuff and trim it down to make our discussion less unwieldy.

(1) The Moral Argument

When I say that “morality exists” I mean that moral truths and properties (as moral rightness and wrongness) exist. What do I mean by “morality”? A rough and ready description is as follows. Morality includes moral values and moral duties. Moral duties consist of what we morally ought and ought not to do, with the “ought” in question being the unconditional ought, e.g. an action is morally wrong for someone only if they ought not to do it. As a rough and ready approximation I could define “moral values” as the sort of qualities (as kindness and compassion) that we ought to value in the “unconditional ought” sense, and a “perfectly good” being is one who does so to the maximally conceivable degree.



I was using an extensional definition; describing what “stuff” objective moral values encompass; as such it is the case that compassion etc. is stuff that we ought to value, even if it is also true that we ought to do something (e.g. help people) because something has value (e.g. humans have moral value). I still think it is the case, for instance, that we ought to value people.

To recap the moral argument: I argued that if morality exists, it has to have some type of ontology to ground it. I’m trying to describe what would happen if we posited just one nonphysical entity to ontologically ground objective moral values and duties and describe what the entity would be like, and I defined “authority” as being the source of some obligation. So what would this entity be like?

First, this entity would transcend the physical world; this step should understandable as well as unsurprising, since I am after all talking about a nonphysical entity.

Second, the entity in question is also the foundation of objective moral obligations, and as the source of moral obligation is must also have authority in the sense that it imposes moral duties and grounds the oughtness of those duties.

Third, for morality to be objective and universally binding, the entity must impose moral duties with supreme and universally binding authority, because moral duties supersede any other duties that any (other?) person or culture might create for themselves.

Fourth, the entity must exist in every possible world (and therefore have necessary existence) to ground morality in every possible world, because morality is metaphysically necessary. While multiple entities spread about in different possible worlds grounding morality is logically possible, if we’re looking for the simplest explanation it is preferable to posit just one grounding entity to explain morality’s metaphysical necessity (see also this recent blog article). And finally, the entity must also be eternal, since at no time and in no circumstances can metaphysically necessary entities fail to exist.

If there’s something you still don’t get, it might be helpful to point to a specific step.



OK, so there are clearly some things you don’t understand about the argument. Remember, I had defined “authority” to mean being the source of some obligation. Anything that is the source of moral duties would ipso facto be imposing those duties (confer Merriam-Webster definition 1a of the term). Thus, authority by definition (the definition I’m using anyway) grounds oughtness, and imposing an obligation is by definition (the definition I’m using anyway) something applied by authority. So these matters are really unproblematic.

If you still think there’s a problem, please point to a specific step (e.g. the first or second) you are having trouble with.



What you said was, “the premises cannot be simultaneously true without begging the question,” which seemed false (there are reasons for each premise that do not rely on accepting the conclusion). If you’re backing away from your earlier claim with this new one, so be it, but the first premise obviously has justification; you and I both believe it to be justifiably true!



Of course it is! Where B is your background knowledge and E is objective morality, you believe Pr(E|~H&B) is low, right? It follows then that Pr(E|~H) is low because the background knowledge is left implicit in these sorts of things. To borrow a bit: from another blog I read, you believe the following equation is true

No God + Background knowledge = objective morality probably doesn’t exist



But as I pointed out before, the existence of God entails objective morality (God is presumably morally perfect independently of whether we think he is, e.g. he was morally perfect before we humans existed), so Pr(OM1|H) = 1. At any rate, it surely is awfully overweening to hold Pr(OM1) = 0. In light of things like brain-in-vat thought experiments, you don’t seem at all warranted with holding the nonexistence of objective morality with absolute certainty on par with cogito ergo sum.

Unfortunately there’s been a lot of confusion about what an unconditional ought is in philosophy:



You don’t seem to quite understand what an unconditional ought is. An unconditional ought is “raw” oughtness. So when I say that You ought not to torture infants just for fun this proposition means that you ought not to torture them, period. The proposition is not saying anything more (e.g. it does not say either way whether there’s a reason we ought not to torture them, and it does not say either way whether not torturing them helps accomplish some other state of affairs), and I’m not saying anything less. The unconditional ought is simply saying what ought to be, and it says no more and no less.

What this means (among other things) is that a proposition like You should not torture infants just for fun can be a true unconditional ought even if there is a reason not to torture the infant just for fun, and even if not torturing the infant just for fun helps accomplish some other state of affairs.


I frankly find this nonsensical. By definition, “the thing” here is just the obligation not to torture infants just for fun; it is true by definition that we ought to fulfill our moral obligations. Asking “Why ought we follow our moral obligations?” is a bit like asking “Why are all bachelors unmarried?”



Again, a conditional ought is solely about what helps accomplish a particular state of affairs, e.g. “You shouldn’t turn the oven temperature too high” implicitly meaning “If you want the cake to turn out well, you shouldn’t turn the oven temperature too high.” Grounding morality in God doesn’t make the ought in question a conditional ought; You should not torture infants just for fun is still using the unconditional ought sense even if it is the case that in following this obligation you accomplish some other state of affairs.



Yes and no. The purpose of the Red Button Test is to show that one really does believe in morality despite claiming not to. Granted, you could say that your own belief about morality existing is wrong, but you could do so only on pain of irrationality (a bit like saying, “It is raining but I don’t believe it is raining”). If the Red Button Test works, it is rational for you to believe in objective morality. Even though it is technically true that what is rational to believe could still be false, it seems to me that, in general, rational beliefs are more likely to be true than irrational ones.



Arbitrary? Am I to believe that the person would turn away billions of dollars for no reason? The idea that the decision not to press the red button is arbitrary is not at all plausible. It is far more plausible that the professing moral nihilist wouldn’t press the button because deep down they believe that pressing it is something they really shouldn’t do.


(1a) Simplicity and Explanations



Philosophers have long realized that this sort of reasoning is circular; my making the inductive inference you are itself relying on the assumption of uniformity; e.g. that the present will be like the past.

But suppose we ignore that. Compare the theory that uniformity is localized within our extremely tiny yet observable-by-us space-time segment but not uniform elsewhere. This theory is empirically identical to the theory that nature is in fact uniform in places we have not observed it. So how to inductively justify one over the other? Simplicity (a simpler ontology) seems to be the answer.



OK, so your position (if I am understanding you correctly) is that Swinburnian simplicity also includes factors that don’t make a theory more likely to be true ceteris paribus. But what factors might those be?


But then it’s still not a valid example of a necessary disjunction of possible things where not any one of them necessary.



Not quite, as one option of the trilemma is that there is nothing ensuring the existence of a necessary thing. Recapping the trilemma, the question is how to explain the existence of a contingent morality-grounding entity G in every possible world:

(1) In every possible world there is some contingent entity X ensuring that some morality-grounding entity G exists. But this simply pushes the problem back a step; what ensures that there is such a contingent entity X in every possible world?

(2)There is no explanation; it just happens to be the case that there is a contingent entity G in every possible world grounding morality. But since the number of possible worlds is quite literally infinite, it seems extraordinarily improbable that there just happens to be a contingent entity G in every possible world.

(3) There is something metaphysically necessary that ensures there is a contingent entity grounding morality.

But as I argued, there are severe or fatal problems with each of these options. The best one seems to be option (3), but then Swinburnian simplicity suggests we go with the simpler ontology of a necessary entity grounding morality.

You asked, “What "ensures" that god exists in every metaphysically possible world?” The answer is the nature of God’s own necessity; God is by nature metaphysically necessary.


(2) Analytic and Necessity



I suppose one could do that, yes. “By ‘water’ I mean the essence of that liquid over there,” or something like that. Think of how the medieval folks defined water before we knew of its chemical composition.



If it were a lexical definition (rather than the sort of definition that describes what we believe water’s intensional characteristics to be) then my objection holds: we wouldn’t be making any meaningful scientific (empirical) discovery about the chemical composition of water (games of equivocation not withstanding), but clearly we did. Or is your response to this objection to simply bite the bullet, that we did not in fact discover anything knew about water when we learned of its chemical composition? Note that we can believe water being H2O is a necessary truth without believing it is true by definition. If you still don’t see that, think back to the moment it was discovered that water was H2O. Was it true, right then and there, that water being H2O is true by definition? Or was it a genuine scientific (empirical) discovery?



Assuming there is no further relevant information, I’d go for option B.



This doesn’t really seem to clearly address the objection at all. Is your response to the objection to simply bite the bullet? That upon discovering that what we called water (the essence of the substance that is in rain, oceans, etc.) was not H2O but something different, that “We were mistaken about what we thought water was composed of” would not be a true sentence?


None of this really addresses the problem. In one sense “water” does restrict composition, in that it is in fact true that water is H2O. However, water being H2O is not true by definition, as can be revealed by the following two facts: (1) if it were true by definition, then water being H2O is not an empirical discovery; we did not learn anything knew about water when water; (2) if we had found out that the substance we called water (the essence of the substance that is in rain, oceans, etc.) was not H2O but rather something subtly different, then “We were mistaken about what we thought water was composed of” would not be a true sentence.’

====Morality and the Moral Argument====

"When I say that “morality exists” I mean that moral truths and properties (as moral rightness and wrongness) exist."
As always, this depends on what you mean by "rightness" etc., but let's see if you clarify that.

"What do I mean by “morality”? A rough and ready description is as follows. Morality includes moral values and moral duties. Moral duties consist of what we morally ought and ought not to do, with the “ought” in question being the unconditional ought, e.g. an action is morally wrong for someone only if they ought not to do it."
Again, what does it mean that someone ought (not) do X? Typical definitions would either make it circular (defining it in terms of morality) or conditional (advisable for some end). Suppose we say "you ought to do X iff it is your obligation/duty to do X". Well, then what does "obligation/duty" mean? It is typically used to mean something equivalent to "a demand/expectation with a punishment for failing to do it" (as in legal or social obligations). Clearly this won't do in a moral discussion (it could be the case that we would be punished for giving to charity or defending the oppressed or telling the truth), so you will have to explain what you mean. You say "I defined “authority” as being the source of some obligation". Even this is difficult to unravel: in what way is any authority the source of obligations? Well, the law has legal authority, but all that means is that if we fail to abide by the law we can expect punishment. This is the point: what can an authority do in terms of "oughts"? It seems the only thing is impose a carrot/stick system of rewards and punishments. But certainly an authority could reward or punish arbitrarily, and might does not make right. So what does the authority do? Again, all it can do is issue a certain set of demands or expectations, reward adherence and punish transgression. It brings nothing else to the table.
You seem to think that an authority can impose duties that are presumably more than demands with enforced consequences. If so, how?

I think the only way to speak of morality in such a way that avoids all these issues is to acknowledge that values are native and axiomatic. That is, we can only appeal to the values a person holds to get them to do anything freely (in the sense of without literal external, physical coercion) (regardless of who is the one trying to educe an action: even god must appeal to our values of bliss/non-suffering in the heaven/hell scheme). If we want people to do things voluntarily, we must appeal to their values. Therefore, as values are primary, all oughts are conditional: "if you want X, you ought to do Y". The only context in which it makes sense to say "you ought to value X" is in "If you value Y, you ought to value X". I think this approach is infinitely simpler and more successful than any alternative (including yours) that I have yet encountered, and I think it is the most general, robust, and simple one that encompasses all the data.

As to your steps, it seems they almost all follow basically by your definitions, and thus trivially. But I would contest the applicability of your definitions. As you have ignored (it seems) my rebuttal to your post (a genus may be necessary while no species (or particular, unique and selfsame entity) is), I merely refer you to my earlier comments. However, I would say that your definitions are not adequate and do not reflect what we mean by them in the relevant context.

"Anything that is the source of moral duties would ipso facto be imposing those duties (confer Merriam-Webster definition 1a of the term)."
The MW definition is equivalent to "might makes right". The examples (tax, rules, punishments) given are imposing of certain behaviors via consequences or punishments. If you think that that is enough for morality (a punishment awaiting immorality and a reward awaiting morality) then you have a highly inadequate view of morality, in my opinion, that reduces to something like egoism on a long timescale.

"What you said was, “the premises cannot be simultaneously true without begging the question,” which seemed false (there are reasons for each premise that do not rely on accepting the conclusion). If you’re backing away from your earlier claim with this new one, so be it, but the first premise obviously has justification; you and I both believe it to be justifiably true!"
Let me be absolutely clear: depending on what P2 is conveying, I would not consider both P1 and P2 to be simultaneously justifiable unless the conclusion were granted (in which case P1 would be trivially true, and P2 could be cast in such a way that I would agree with it). I am well aware that you would disagree, but we both already knew that (you are the one promoting the argument!).

"you believe Pr(E|~H&B) is low, right?"
That depends on what E is referring to. If it is referring to morality as you conceive it, sure, but only because I would not consider that morality (I would consider it arbitrary rules enforced with rewards a punishments, which is nowise worthy of "morality" as I understand it). If we are going by your conception of morality, I would consider the probability that that holds vanishingly small if not 0.

"[Y]ou believe the following equation is true[:] No God + Background knowledge = objective morality probably doesn’t exist"
Sure, but only because, if its your conception of OM that we are talking about here, "Background knowledge = objective morality probably doesn’t exist", and adding or taking away god does nothing about it (or, if you like, adding god perhaps does something about it, but that would render the argument affirming the consequent).

Here's the deal:
1) I don't think that what you think of as "objective morality" exists, though if it does, we are not currently justified in thinking it does (a being could command me to do something without my hearing the command or knowing about it). Thus, based on your definitions I think P2 is false or unjustified.
2) Based on what morality I think does exist (indeed, any sort that could exist and be rightfully called "morality"), this morality is wholly independent of god: god could exist or fail to exist and it would still be around. Thus, based on my definitions, I think P1 is false.
Either way, the argument cannot succeed. That is, unless you can show that, on your definitions, "objective morality" does exist, but that would amount to showing that god exists and he issued them. On your definitions, I think the argument is basically of the form:
a) If god does not exist, stuff god says does not exist. (duh)
b) Stuff god says does exist. (prove it)
c) Therefore god does exist

"But as I pointed out before, the existence of God entails objective morality (God is presumably morally perfect independently of whether we think he is, e.g. he was morally perfect before we humans existed), so Pr(OM1|H) = 1."
Suppose that is true: "If god exists OM exists, OM exists therefore god exists" is not a valid argument. But even so I still think this is problematic: what on earth does "morally perfect" mean, especially as applies to god? If god is the one issuing the unconditional oughts (though I think that is meaningless) then it is stupid to say he abides by them or whatever. Joe can tell people to watch football and then watch football himself. If "morally perfect" means "like god" then "god is morally perfect" is wholly vacuous, as god could be malicious, proud, deceitful etc. and still be "morally perfect" as he would be perfectly like himself. Suppose he then commanded us to deceive one another: that would flow from his character etc. This whole thing is an insult to one's intelligence, in my opinion.

"At any rate, it surely is awfully overweening to hold Pr(OM1) = 0."
I suppose it depends on what exactly you are trying to say in OM1. As further described, I suppose P(OM1|H) is pretty high, but the only problem is that I consider P(OM1) negligible or inscrutable. For all I know a stranger has made demands of me of which I am unaware and has the power to punish me for failure to adhere to them or reward me for adhering to them. But that is not in any way related to what is moral or not.

"In light of things like brain-in-vat thought experiments, you don’t seem at all warranted with holding the nonexistence of objective morality with absolute certainty on par with cogito ergo sum."
I was considering it on par with "there is a married bachelor" (it is nowise like what "morality" is, and thus is a contradiction in terms). Perhaps there is a being who made demands of us and will punish and reward us accordingly, but this is in no way related to morality.

"So when I say that You ought not to torture infants just for fun this proposition means that you ought not to torture them, period."
I don't think an ought is meaningful unless the conditional is understood (I would consider any and every "ought" standing by itself a conditional in disguise). Again, I don't think you have really explained what you mean by "ought". If there is any reason behind it, I would not consider that unconditional, as it can be derived syllogistically: "If X then you ought Y, X, therefore you ought Y". I still think it is true (as Hume says) that we cannot derive an evaluative/prescriptive conclusion without an evaluative/prescriptive premise. Again, so long as I can construe any unconditional ought as a conditional ought, it is simpler simply to say that all oughts are conditional (we don't need to introduce the new idea of an unconditional ought when a conditional one will do).
To justify any ought, you will necessarily have to appeal to a value: if you disagree, present me an unconditional ought that you can justify without appealing to a value. (I would say this makes them necessarily contingent: the action being prescribed is in pursuit/promotion/protection of some value, though this need not necessarily be a consequence in the sense you describe)

"The unconditional ought is simply saying what ought to be, and it says no more and no less."
But what do you mean by "ought to be"? You never seem to explain what on earth you mean by this.

"Asking “Why ought we follow our moral obligations?” is a bit like asking “Why are all bachelors unmarried?” "
Supposing it were obvious that we had any moral obligations in the way you describe, I think that is more or less true. But suppose we instead ask "why is it our moral obligation to do X?" or "are we morally obligated to do X?" or "why ought we do X?", it seems all you can say is something like "god said so". But why are we obligated to do what god said? And where did that obligation come from (from god?)? And how is that "obligation" any different than a demand with enforced consequences?

"Again, a conditional ought is solely about what helps accomplish a particular state of affairs"
I think this is too narrow, as it would only rebut a consequentialist view. A deontologist or virtue theorist (or someone else) would still be able to say that they were conditional, just not on consequences "if you want to abide by Kant's categorical imperative, you ought to do X" or "if you want to be a virtuous person, you ought to do X" or "if you want to promote sentient wellbeing and autonomy, you should not torture infants for fun". But even a consequentialist would say "if you want to avoid the state of affairs in which infants are being tortured (which is bad for reasons XYZ), you should not torture infants for fun". There are a myriad ways to justify not torturing infants that renders it a crappy example of a supposed unconditional ought.
But if it were an unconditional ought, why would it matter if it were commanded by god? It then does not seem that, in that case, we ought do it per se, but only if god commands us to do it (this may happen in every possible world, according to you, but it still renders it contingent on god in some way).

"If the Red Button Test works, it is rational for you to believe in objective morality."
I disagree: even a cultural relativist could say "according to the social norms of my culture, it is immoral for me to press the button". It would only rule out a relatively narrow swath of egoists.

"Arbitrary? Am I to believe that the person would turn away billions of dollars for no reason?"
Maybe because he felt like it, or because he doesn't like red, or buttons, etc. You seem to confuse a nihilist (someone who does not think moral properties obtain (or can obtain)) for someone who thinks that they should do what benefits them personally. Maybe they say that they should not push the button because they personally value the life of the child, even if it is not intrinsically moral or immoral that the child should live or die. Nothing is prescribed in an objective sense, but, for whatever reason, they choose to save instead of kill the child.

====Simplicity and Explanations====

"Philosophers have long realized that this sort of reasoning is circular; my making the inductive inference you are itself relying on the assumption of uniformity; e.g. that the present will be like the past."
I don't quite agree: based on evidence it seems that X is a general rule, as it held for N cases. We thus, inductively, suppose that X will be the case in the (N+1)th case, based on induction, and it turns out that it did (and it continues to do so for a very large number M of cases). What justification do we have to think that that the (N+M+1)th case will still conform to the rule? Well, it did for all the N+M cases before it. It's not that we are assuming uniformity by applying induction, but rather concluding uniformity from induction. It is a conclusion, not an assumption in this formulation. (probably, if ~uniform, induction will not hold. Induction holds, therefore probably uniform).

"Compare the theory that uniformity is localized within our extremely tiny yet observable-by-us space-time segment but not uniform elsewhere."
Well, let's test this by trying to find a case where the inductive rule does not hold (it makes a prediction that is falsified). If we can't then we are still justified, but if we can, then we were wrong, and so be it. If you could make an astronomical observation of something that defies a general rule (energy/momentum not being conserved, something moving faster than the speed of light, entropy decreasing, etc.) you could win a Nobel prize. The rules are always open to counterexamples (which can either overturn the rules or be themselves explained). In fact, this happens not infrequently in cosmology (we don't observe our own solar system expanding, and yet we observe the universe expanding).

"But what factors might those be?"
Simplicity, as I see it, can be sufficiently encompassed by making fewer assumption or having less content. The rest is superfluous or entailed (it is simpler to leave it at that!).

====Analytic and Necessary====

"But then it’s still not a valid example of a necessary disjunction of possible things where not any one of them necessary."
Holy crepes. It is exactly what I said: an example of how neither disjunct in a disjunction can be necessary, while the disjunction itself is. In the same way, the disjunction "A exists or B exists or C exists..." can potentially be necessarily true without any of A,B,C,... themselves being necessary. As I said earlier, it seems conceivable that a genus be necessary (in the sense that the genus is instantiated in every possible world) while not species in that genus is itself necessary (A and B can both be part of a necessary genus while both are themselves only contingent: the nonexistence of one "forces" the other to exist).

"You asked, “What "ensures" that god exists in every metaphysically possible world?” The answer is the nature of God’s own necessity; God is by nature metaphysically necessary."
Sure and the genus of morality grounding things is necessary as well by its nature, while no species in that genus is itself necessary: any given species could fail to exist, but all species could not possibly fail to exist in the same world.

"Think of how the medieval folks defined water before we knew of its chemical composition."
Let's examine various ways they could have:
1) "That substance in that bucket over there" (that could turn out to be H2O, but that is not in any way generalizable. The contents of that bucket need not be identical to another: two buckets could conceivably have substances with identical macroscopic properties but different microscopic properties).
2) "The substance that has the macroscopic properties XYZ" (again, that leaves open the possibility that something have those properties and not be H2O: there could be multiple different substances of differing compositions that have the same macroscopic properties)
3) "the liquid produced from distilling the contents in the oceans/seas/lakes/rivers" (how could we identify the substance in all the seas/rivers/lakes, etc. from a finite number of experiments? Could then not be heterogeneous, or change with time? Again, there is no way we could find out by one experiment or a few that all the oceans are filled with one sort of substance: tomorrow we may find that the oceans are filled with a mixture of different substances, both with similar or identical macroscopic properties).
For instance, let's look at the first OED entry (with usages dating back to 897 CE): "The liquid of which seas, lakes, and rivers are composed, and which falls as rain and issues from springs. When pure, it is transparent, colourless (except as seen in large quantity, when it has a blue tint), tasteless, and inodorous." After this is the following note: "Popular language recognizes kinds of ‘water’ that have not all these negative properties; but (even apart from any scientific knowledge) it has usually been more or less clearly understood that *these are really mixtures of water with other substances*." See that? They are mixtures of water with something else: water is more than where it can be found and certain macroscopic properties. There is some underlying unity to water (what, we don't know yet). The rest of the usages in this category refer to location, use and macroscopic properties, to which a suitable non-H2O could very much qualify. The second and third sets refers to it as a potable, the fourth and fifth for its uses (washing, boiling, healing, etc.). The sixth for its location (rivers, etc.). The seventh as a means of navigation, etc. (there are 14 total of these colloquial sorts of usage).
Finally, we get to the second class of meanings where we hit pay-dirt: "The substance of which the liquid ‘water’ is one form among several; now known to be a chemical compound of two volumes of hydrogen and one of oxygen (formula H2O); in ancient speculation regarded as one of the four, and in pre-scientific chemistry as one of the five elements of which all bodies are composed." Note that this is a very good intensive definition that encompasses the rest (the seas are filled with H2O (impure)).
So, to cut a long story short, unless we define water as H2O, we leave open the possibility for doppelwassers (things that meet all the criteria for "water" (have the same uses, can be found in the same places, etc.) but are not H2O), in which case "all water is H2O" would not be necessarily true. If you are content with saying "the contents of this bucket are H2O: I'm not sure about the rest" that's fine, but that is altogether too weak to have much philosophical import.

What happened when we tested samples of distilled lake-contents and found out that it was made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen is that we changed what we meant by water: we now had a proper intensive definition that covered the rest of the uses. We learned what this stuff we have been calling "water" really was, but we thenceforth made it so that a thing was "water" if and only if it was H2O. No longer would we say that any old clear, tasteless, liquid in a river was water (perhaps colloquially, but not rigorously). It is, conceivably, possible that the contents of rivers are not actually H2O (despite the innumerable tests and confirmations), in which case we would simply revise what "water" meant (it would need a new intensive definition).

"Or is your response to this objection to simply bite the bullet, that we did not in fact discover anything knew about water when we learned of its chemical composition?"
We changed what we meant by "water". If XYZ had the same macroscopic properties of H2O, an ancient would happily consider it "water", whereas a modern would not. It was not defined as H2O prior to the modern age, but it is now, just as "star" means something else now than to the ancients.

"Note that we can believe water being H2O is a necessary truth without believing it is true by definition."
That's the whole point under contention!

"Was it true, right then and there, that water being H2O is true by definition? Or was it a genuine scientific (empirical) discovery?"
We discovered that a particular substance had a certain composition. This substance had the historical name "water" and so we kept it (catchier than dihydrogen monoxide). However, what we meant by it changed (that is, its definition): we would thenceforth (or shortly thereafter) only consider substances that had that composition to be properly called "water" and other substances, regardless of how similar they were to H2O, to be mere impostors.

"Assuming there is no further relevant information, I’d go for option B."
Exactly! It could not possibly qualify to be called "water" unless it was H2O.

"Is your response to the objection to simply bite the bullet? That upon discovering that what we called water (the essence of the substance that is in rain, oceans, etc.) was not H2O but something different, that “We were mistaken about what we thought water was composed of” would not be a true sentence?"
Only in an equivocal sense: we historically called what rain and rivers were made of "water", but this has been superseded by the better definition of composition. What we could say is that we need to revise what we mean by "water" to better suit how we otherwise use it. We know that "water" refers to a specific substance. The macroscopic, geographic etc. properties are not primary, but they help us choose the right word when we find the underlying substance. The macroscopic/geographic facts are necessary for a thing to be water, but not necessary and sufficient, which is provided by the chemical formula. Even if the formula turns out to be inaccurate, the necessary conditions remain. Thus, what we learned when we found "water is H2O" is the necessary and sufficient condition for something to be water, whereas before all we had were necessary conditions (unless some substance could be found in rivers/lakes, and boiled at 100C and was liquid at room temperature, etc., it could not be water. However, a substance could pass all these qualifications and still not really be water in a strict sense). Thus, the discovery changed what "water" meant, or at least added to what it meant. Nevertheless, it made "water is H2O" true by definition (i.e. analytically).

"(1) if it were true by definition, then water being H2O is not an empirical discovery; we did not learn anything knew about water when water;"
Again, this only reflects a purification of understanding and a change in meaning.

"(2) if we had found out that the substance we called water (the essence of the substance that is in rain, oceans, etc.) was not H2O but rather something subtly different, then “We were mistaken about what we thought water was composed of” would not be a true sentence.’ "
See above.

====The LCA, cause/explanation of the universe, choosing explanations====

"So far we have no answers to that question."
The fact that it does not fall into a narrower genus is nothing against it. In the early stages of understanding, all we can do is describe it based on what it does and what it is not (so it is with very many things: the electron was initially defined as that thing that was stripped off amber rubbed with silk, or that thing that is discharged from the anode. We gradually build up and simplify its properties based on observation, but all we can do with the universe factory is think of it from an armchair, and maybe think of ways to test it).

"It’s for the reasons I explained earlier; all you can tell really tell me is that it’s an alternative cause (“alternative” in that it isn’t an abstract object or unembodied mind, “cause” in that it allegedly produces certain effects) and that’s it!"
How does a mind cause a universe? No one knows: magic, for lack of a better term. So that's how this thing causes universes: magic. The total dearth of the mind alternative is why the universe factory can be left so vague--it has so little to do (get a universe) and so little to compete against (a thing that magically makes universes too). Evolution is a detailed and evidenced rival: we can say how darwinism leads to life as observed (we don't need to appeal to magic) and so an alternative must also provide a how, a procedural account of how things came to be as observed.

"I might as well say my alternative to evolution is an explanation (I don’t specify what it is except that it is physical and yields all the same data somehow)."
It's great that it does that: but HOW? Note that my "how" is the same as your "how" for the creation of the universe (the thing being hypothesized can make universes, by what seems to us to be magic). All I am replacing is the "what". We have loads of evidence for how natural selection can do X (we don't simply say natural selection does X by what seems to us to be magic), but none for how your alternative does X, as your alternative doesn't even bother to give the way that it does it.

"Let D be the data that evolution predicts/explains/etc. I say, “My alternative to evolution is that it caused the organisms to appear in such a way to produce data D.” My theory would then predict all the data evolution does."
No, it would assert all the same data. An explanation of X is not simply X. It doesn't explain anything: it says what is apparent, namely, D. It's not that it has less content, it that it has no content whatever. If it uses the same mechanism, then it is the same explanation. My alternative can use the same mechanism as a mind because the mechanism for making universes is "we don't know/magic". If you had a viable mechanism by which a mind could make a universe *that I could not likewise use* then a mind would be better than a universe factory as an explanation.

"And that’s kind of a problem with your proposed third alternative; with a personal being causing the universe we can think of a “why” behind it (e.g. God valued there being other human beings to share in his glory)"
That is of course a final "why" not an efficient "why". I can provide such a why as well: "because it is the nature of this universe factory to make all the universes, ours included". What you cannot give is a pushing "why" (e.g. water flows downhill because it is pulled to lower elevations by gravity, not "because the city was on fire, so Steve broke the dam to put it out"): why is the universe how it is? because god did some sort of magic to make it that way. Well, so did my universe factory.

"I can say that my alternative cause for evolution yielded data D deterministically and not simultaneously."
Well, by randomly, I don't mean that it happened by chance to make this one, but rather that it makes universes randomly (in no specified order, if we can even give them an order) and simultaneously so that it makes all possible universes, and ours inevitably emerges.

"But only with the same ad-hoc conjuncts like “the thing created the universe.” "
What? We don't assume it made the universe, but rather that would follow (clearly that would be a conjunct of yours as well. In fact, it would seem to be a conjunct in any explanation, by your standards, that the thing being explained was produced). I don't assume that it would produce our universe, but rather that follows from the fact that it makes all universes (or at least a large infinite number). I still stand by the point: "a super-mind exists (or once did)" is not sufficient fully to explain the explanandum, while mine, by itself, is. That is, P(universe|supermind)<P(universe|universe-factory)=1. Did the supermind have to make the universe? Was it in some way compelled to? Could it have decided not to?

"No, I’m saying that the hypothesis in question doesn’t say either way. The conclusion doesn’t argue for the Christian God specifically but rather for a transcendent personal cause (which may or may not be the Christian God)."
Either you would argue that on background evidence, we conclude that this mind is the same as the Christian god, or you unjustifiably make these the same. Either this thing has these properties or it doesn't: if it doesn't, then it's not God, and this isn't an argument for Christian theism, or it does, and then it is more complex. You can't have it both ways.

"To rephrase my point, I believe that ceteris paribus the theory that has a greater appeal to the familiar (e.g. appeals to a token of a known type versus one that doesn’t) is more likely to be true. Do you disagree with this?"
I think I do: I don't think it makes it more likely to be true, though it can make it more epistemically justifiable. To say that it makes it more likely true is to say that things are probably familiar, which seems epistemically arrogant.

"Because it seems that we do in practice use this principle; for example we are more likely to attribute spoon-bending to some already-existing human ability over some novel power if we can think of a way an ordinarily-powered human could do it."
I don't think this is relevant: we have a perfectly adequate explanation that accounts for all the data. Again, whatever rival to "he bends it with his hands (or whatever)" you propose will have to be able to compete with "he bends it with his hands (or whatever)". This is also simpler in terms of the types of causes (why introduce psychokinesis when the well-established cheirokinesis will do?). We have loads of independent evidence that hands can bend spoons, and precisely none that minds can bend spoons. Likewise, we have precisely no independent (that is, excluding the given case) evidence that minds can make universes, and just as much independent evidence (none) that universe factories can make universes, so it's a tie.

"Can you describe what it is beyond what it isn’t and what it causes?"
An entity with the described properties. I still don't know what sort of answer would satisfy you. It does not fit into a familiar genus, but who cares? I don't think we can claim to have an exhaustive familiarity of every possible genus of things.

"Even if it’s true that “the markings were caused by snowshoes” is unintelligible without there being markings, this hardly makes my claim that the explananda (snow snowshoe markings) is evidence for the hypothesis (the markings were caused by snowshoes) false or unintelligible."
I flatly disagree. If H presupposes E ("the markings were caused by X" presupposes markings) then we cannot even evaluate, with any meaningfulness P(H|~E), and thus cannot evaluate P(H|E). Again, by this absurd system any explanation would have as evidence for itself the explanandum. "The markings were caused by aliens" could use the markings as evidence, or "the markings were made by a fiendish demon" or "the markings were made by a strange new animal" or any number of other possible explanations. Moreover, if we have no background knowledge whatever concerning how markings are or were made in snow (or how people interacted with snow, or what animals lived in or near snow, etc.), we could not possibly favor a strange hypothesized contraption to a strange new animal.

"we are intimately familiar with minds causing things to happen. Contrary to your insinuation, it is not all that controversial that minds cause things to happen (the most popular physicalist view is that our minds do, since our minds are essentially our brains)."
Again, appealing to physicalism will do you no good here, as the "mind" being proposed is not a physicalist mind. The mind in question is a non-physical mind, and I think we have absolutely no familiarity with nonphysical minds causing anything (or even existing at all). If you want to appeal to physicalism, you have to play by physicalism.
Essentially what you would need to do here is first controvert physicalism even to propose an extra-universal mind (a physicalist would certainly not accept any such thing: he would reject it as metaphysically impossible on his view).

"What in the word is “mechanistish”?"
You objected to my calling it "mechanistic" so I coined a new word to avoid petty squabbling and convey what I mean. Mechanistish extends mechanistic. It means "acting by inherent properties in a deterministic/stochastic way". Basically, it would mean acting in a way that was mathematical in nature. In this way all physical things are mechanistish, but not necessarily vice versa. This would not, however, apply to god, as he can act, presumably, as he wills: his actions do not or at least need not conform to a set pattern or distribution.

"My guess is you mean “machine-like.” But how on earth is your alternative like a machine?"
A machine in the sense of "acting by inherent properties in a deterministic/stochastic way". A watch does not act arbitrarily, though it can act deterministically according to set properties.

"It is not built by anybody, nor is it even composed of matter."
I would not count these as essences of machines: they apply to machines as we have them, but not every possible machine (no humans we have yet come across have green skin, but having green skin would not disqualify someone from being a human, I would say).

"In contrast, my alternative isn’t merely like a mind, it is a mind."
Well, if we are going by uncontroversial instances, if it is a mind, where is its body? All minds, as far as we have known them, have been attached to a body. You could say that being attached to a body is not an essence of a mind, but then I can use similar argumentation.

"Even if it’s true that “the markings were caused by snowshoes” is unintelligible without there being markings, this hardly makes my claim that the explananda (snow snowshoe markings) is evidence for the hypothesis (the markings were caused by snowshoes) false or unintelligible."
Well, let's look at this again:
The probability that there are markings, supposing that snowshoes made the markings is 1 (there could not fail to be markings if snowshoes made the markings, after all). Let M="there are markings", and let S="Snowshoes made the markings". Then, P(M|S)=1. This implies that P(M&S)=P(S). In that case, P(S|M)=P(S)/P(M)>=P(S). For simplicity, let us suppose for now that we will only consider explanations for which P(explanandum|explanans)=1. In that case, all explanantes would be made more probable by the explanandum by the factor 1/P(explanandum). Thus, whatever had the highest prior probability would become the most probable. But it already started out as the most probable, and hence the explanandum does nothing to help choosing an explanans: we can just as well go on whatever has the highest prior probability.
Suppose that we don't just consider explanations for which P(explanandum|explanans)=1. In that case, it seems much harder to see how the explanandum would help:
P(explanans|explanandum)=P(explanandum|explanans)*P(explanans)/P(explanandum). The probability for the explanans is increased by how well it explains the explanandum (P(explanandum|explanans)), by how likely it is without the explanandum (P(explanans)), and by how unlikely the explanandum is (P(explanandum)). Note that, regardless of the explanans, everything gets the benefit of the unlikelihood of the explanandum, so really only the first two factors are relevant in choosing an explanans, namely, how well it explains and its prior probability.

We can here introduce a measure of ad-hoc-ness, P(explanandum|explanans)/P(explanans). I think this is a decent first attempt as a measure: if P(explanans) itself, sans explanandum, is very low, then it will be very ad-hoc if it makes the explanandum very probable. For instance, a magic imp that only appears on sundays to affect die rolls has very low prior probability. However, it would perfectly "explain" why, today, I rolled a six on a die. We can see that it is ad-hoc because P(explanandum|explanans) is close to 1, while P(explanans) is very very small, and so P(explanandum|explanans)/P(explanans)>>1. On the other hand, universal gravitation don't become very much more probable given a high-school experiment, as its probability is already so very high without it. Thus, if we let:

A(explanans)=P(explanandum|explanans)/P(explanans) (the ad-hoc-ness measure) =W/P(explanans)
W(explanans)=P(explanandum|explanans) (the how-well-it-explains measure)
G(explanans)=P(explanans&explanandum) (the goodness measure of the explanans for the explanandum)

(I have included in G P(explanandum), as this is common to all explanantes.)

G=W^2/A. That is, it goes quadratically with how well it explains the explanandum, but inversely as how ad hoc it is. If it explains it well but is ad hoc, it will still be low. If it explains it poorly but is not ad hoc, it may be high. It is only if it explains it well and is not ad hoc that it will be good, relative to other potential explanations.

In the case of the tracks, unless we have some background knowledge of snowshoes, we definitely cannot say that "the tracks were made by snowshoes" is a better explanation than "the tracks were made by an animal". Certainly if we know of animals living in snow, the probability of regular tracks being made by an animal is decently high, even if we don't know of the particular animal that makes these exact tracks. Background knowledge is key. If both would suffice to explain fully the explanandum (i.e. P(explanandum|explanans)=1), then prior probability is the only relevant factor. If we have no knowledge of snowshoes, then they will be a very ad hoc explanation just to explain some markings in the snow, whereas a new animal will be much less so if we already know there are animals, or animals that inhabit snowy environments, etc.

In the case of the universe, if we have no other reason to think there even could be an extra-universal mind, then introducing one just to explain one thing is very ad hoc (a universe factory would be too, but it is unclear which would be more so). If you have other reasons to think there could well be an extra universal mind, so as to make the hypothesis less ad hoc, please give them. Otherwise, I would say the case is undecidable (and hence my alternative is just as viable as yours), or even that mine is superior to yours.

"we are intimately familiar with minds causing things to happen."
Again, I would not agree, at least not in the relevant sense of the terms. Certainly we are aware of brains causing things to happen, but this supermind has/is no brain. A physicalist would just say that the mind is based in the brain and is necessary for the mind, so he would nowise assent to any current evidence supporting this hypothesis. What you are speaking of as a "mind" (independent of any physical stuff) I would say we have no evidence such a thing does or even can exist. What you would need to do in order to get any sort of evidence on your side would be to demonstrate some form of dualism, where the mind is separate in some way from what it acts upon, so that there is a hope of it existing by itself sans brain. Unless you are willing to defend dualism, I would say you have no evidence whatever for a dualistic mind (a mind unconstrained by physical substrate) causing anything. What we are more uncontroversially familiar with are mechanistish, physical things causing things to happen, and if your explanation is not of this sort, it can't inherit its evidence (fortunately, mine is).

"My hypothesis appeals to a token of a known type, whereas yours doesn’t quite do this, at least not to the extent that mine does."
Mine is an entity, a thing, etc. Certainly we are familiar with those, at least as much as we are with other minds, and likely more so (minds being entities, and all). Again, the fact that it does not fit into a smaller category is no skin off my nose. Insofar as your thing is a mind, it otherwise fits into no familiar category. Supposing we take abstract objects as uncontroversially extra-universal entities, my thing is closer to them in that it can be modeled or described in terms of them (i.e. mathematically). A mind, on the other hand, is much further removed, having subjectivity, conceptions

"So, basically what we have here is a creator deity except that it’s not a person but something else that isn’t a person or an abstract object,"
And all we have in the supermind case is something that's not an abstract object or a mechanistish thing.

"Yes, if it were true, we wouldn’t be able to understand it, describe it etc. just like if spoon-bending were to due some novel supernatural power (arguendo) we wouldn’t be able to understand it, describe it, etc."
Sure, but what reason do have even to suspect that spoon-bending is so caused. We have no excuse even to think it could be (I would say we have no excuse to think that god has a good excuse for the suffering, so the same sort of thing would apply. However, in the universe case, the excuse we have is in explaining the universe. In both of the other cases we have perfectly good and simpler alternatives (hands and cosmic apathy, respectively), whereas in the present case we have no such thing).

(1) The Moral Argument




You can ask, “How do you define A?” I say, “A is B.” You reply, “But how do you define B?” I say, “B is C.” You can reply, “How do you define C?” And so on until I run out of synonyms. I suspect that not even the dictionary can meet your demands. By “ought” I’m using the definition present in Merriam-Webster (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ought). You can then ask what I mean by obligation, I define it as something you should do. You then ask what I mean by “should” I mean that it expresses what you are supposed to do. You then ask what I mean by <em>that</em> term, and so on. I question whether it is humanly possible to satisfy what you seem to be demanding here.



That will depend on your metaphysics. In my case, God being the source of moral obligation is just a brute fact.



Suppose it is true that to get someone to do anything freely is to appeal to their values. It doesn’t at all follow that all oughts are conditional. It could be (for example) that there are some unconditional oughts and that the only way to get them to do them is to appeal to what they value.



The one big datum your approach misses is that when people speak of moral oughtness, they have in mind the unconditional ought. I want to know whether I really ought to do something (in the unconditional ought sense), and not just whether my actions accomplish some particular state of affairs (which is all a conditional ought can ever be). Or do you really believe that when most people refer to moral oughtness, they do not mean the unconditional ought and are really mean some sort of conditional ought?



If you say you’ve already addressed it, I can say I’ve already addressed what you adressed. Let’s take this for example:



This sounds like the sort of thing I’ve already addressed (namely, option (3) in www.maverick-christian.org/2013/11/a-simplicity-objection-to-moral.html). If this is not what you are saying, what response of yours do you think I haven’t addressed?



Unfortunately this involves completely misconstruing my position, especially since the definition I cited simply says, “to establish or apply by authority.” Neither the definition nor what you quoted at all implies “might makes right.”


Where E = objective morality, H = theism, and B is some appropriate background knowledge



But arbitrary rules enforced with rewards and punishments is not my conception of morality at all.

To recap, morality includes moral values and moral duties. Moral duties consist of what we morally ought and ought not to do, with the “ought” in question being the unconditional ought, e.g. an action is morally wrong for someone only if they ought not to do it.

As a rough and ready approximation I can (extensionally) define “moral values” as the sort of qualities (as kindness and compassion) that we ought to value in the “unconditional ought” sense, and a “perfectly good” being is one who does so to the maximally conceivable degree. If you don’t already know, an extensional definition is one that simply points to all the instances a concept extends to, e.g. extensionally defining “city of Minnesota” by listing all of Minnesota’s cities.

Hopefully with this misconstrual cleared up, we still agree that Pr(E|~H&B) is low.



That doesn’t follow at all, since God entailing the existence of objective morality (which it does, e.g. God was morally good prior to humans existing) doesn’t change the structure of the argument:

1) If not-P, then not-Q.
2) Q
3) Therefore P

Where P = objective morality exists and Q = God exists. That God entails objective morality would not make the above argument form invalid, nor would it somehow transform the argument form into the fallacy of affirming the consequent.



It’s hard for me to sort out what straw men or confusions you’ve made here; beings commanding things are irrelevant to the argument. My definition of “objective morality” does not at all require that showing objective morality exists amounts to showing that God exists and he issued it. The justification for premise 2 is entirely different. If your conception of morality completely does away with the unconditional ought, then you don’t have morality as most people normally use the term (when they say e.g. that something is morally wrong with torturing infants just for fun).



See above where I define “perfectly good” and bear in mind I was offering an extensional definition of moral values.


I an curious indeed how you perceived a contradiction in a concept you seem to claim not to have understood.




That an ought is unconditional does not imply that one can’t have some reason for following that ought. For example, we ought not to torture infants just for fun because we ought not to torture innocent sentient life just for fun. Something being an unconditional ought also does not imply that following the ought doesn’t accomplish some particular state of affairs (it is thus possible for a conditional ought and unconditional ought to coincide). I have repeatedly explained what an “ought” is but it appears that no extant dictionary is capable of satisfying you.



All these questions seem to be going a bit beyond the scope of what we’re talking about, but since you asked, it is my view that God is the source of moral obligation, and we are morally obligated to do something because it is God who imposes those obligations. We are obligated to do what God commands because God has the ought-to-be-obeyed quality essentially, and his having that quality is a brute fact (and so it doesn’t quite “come from” anywhere, at least not outside God). Obligation is different from enforced consequences because the terms mean two different things; I’d ask you to look up the terms in a dictionary (e.g. definition 3a of Merriam-Webster for “obligation”) but I’m not sure that would do much good, given that all my attempts to define the term “obligation” to your satisfaction seem doomed to failure.



It’s not too narrow; that’s how the philosophical term is actually defined! This conception of what a conditional ought is has nothing to do with rebutting a consequentialist view.



Which would be irrelevant; the it is still rational for you to believe in objective morality if the Red Button test works (cultural relativism is intellectually indefensible, albeit for somewhat different reasons).



All of this seems like an implausible explanation for the typical professing moral nihilist. Moreover, we can modify the scenario to account for extraneous factors like simply “feeling like” not pressing the red button.

To see this I’ll split it up into two parts. Scenario 1: the red button gives you vast personal gain (billions of dollars) and does nothing else. Suppose the desire to not press the red button can be overcome with relative ease, like overcoming the temptation to not eat a nearby chocolate bar; to make it more concrete, imagine you're given the choice between a nearby chocolate bar and pressing the red button. It seems the typical moral nihilist would press the red button.

Now consider Scenario 2: where the temptation to not press the button is of equal intensity as that of Scenario 1 but the result of pressing it would be torturing an innocent child to death in addition to the person obtaining vast personal gain. This is important: the stronger desire is to press the button, and the easier choice is to not value the well-being of the child over the money. In scenario 2, the typical moral objectivist would resist the (perhaps mild but genuine) temptation to press the red button because she believes it is morally wrong, but the moral nihilist has no such motivation. It seems if the moral nihilist really believed that there’s nothing at all wrong with torturing the child for money, he would press the red button in Scenario 2 just as he would in Scenario 1. But I believe that as the typical professing moral nihilist’s finger hovers over the red button, he would resist the (perhaps mild but genuine) temptation to press it, and fight the urge to not value the child’s well-being even if it were the hard choice, because on some level he knows that pressing the red button is something he really shouldn’t do.

We can summarize my reasoning with the following deductive argument:

1) If the typical professing moral nihilist really accepted moral nihilism, they would press the button in Scenario 2.
2) It is not the case that the typical professing moral nihilist would press the button in Scenario 2.
3) Therefore, the typical professing moral nihilist doesn’t really believe moral nihilism.

It seems to me that the typical professing moral nihilist on some level knows that pressing the red button is something they really shouldn’t do, and so they would resist the (perhaps mild but genuine) temptation to press it.


====Simplicity and Explanations====



That is still assuming that the present will be like the past, and so the reasoning still hasn’t escaped circularity. I’ll quote Peter Lipton since he might be able to explain the famous philosophical problem more articulately than I:


Pointing to past successes as evidence that it conservative induction will be successful in the future assumes precisely what is to be proved: namely, that the future will resemble the past. Quoting Lipton again:



So the past success of ‘More of the Same’ inductively confirms it will be successful in the future if we assume ‘More of the Same’ is correct, but the past success of ‘More of the Same’ inductively disconfirms it will be successful if we use the ‘It’s Time for a Change’ inductive reasoning. We’re still left without a non-circular way to justify uniformity.

In contrast, the principle of simplicity provides a non-circular means to argue for uniformity.


(2) Analytic and Necessity



You seem to have forgotten this:

As I said, that isn’t a valid example because neither X or nor ~X are “things” but rather propositions. By “things” I mean members of the concrete world, like rocks, mountains, snails, and trees. You have still not provided any valid example of a necessary disjunction of possible things where not any one of them necessary. The fact that it’s an example of something else is irrelevant.


This seems to run afoul of the trilemma I have already presented, in which case how do you propose escaping its horns?



Not really; given the information we have today, there’s only one possible substance that could have fit their description in any satisfactory way. Or perhaps your objection is that there is some possible world where they have given this description and it turns out the liquid is not H2O but XYZ. True, but then you’d be confusing an extensional (or ostensive) definition with an intensional one.


Except that you’re confusing intensional definitions with extensional (or ostensive) ones. The “that liquid stuff found in A, B, and C” is more of an ostensive definition rather than an intensional one.


That doesn’t answer my question. Is your response to this objection to simply bite the bullet, that we did not in fact discover anything knew about water when we learned of its chemical composition?


You still haven’t given me straight answers to my questions. So I’ll try a different approach; consider the following deductive argument:

1) If water is simply H2O by a priori definition, then the discovery that water is H2O is not a scientifically meaningful, empirical discovery.
2) The discovery that water is H2O is a scientifically meaningful, empirical discovery (i.e. we needed a posteriori methods to learn this).
3) Therefore water is not simply H2O by a priori definition.

No more dodging the issues, and please no more dodging questions: which premise do you believe to be false? You could try denying the first, but if water is simply by a priori definition H2O, then no empirical discovery was needed to know of water’s chemical composition. But “Water is H2O” was known only through empirical investigation; it was not something that was known a priori.

In one sense, water is H2O by definition (an extensional definition) but it is not an a priori definition since we relied on a posteriori methods to describe the extension of “water.” So “water is H2O” is a necessary truth (if our a posteriori methods have been successful) but knowledge of it has relied on a posteriori methods.

Re: defining "ought", my point is that you are over-relying on an intuitive notion of "ought". Unless we can define "ought" in non-moral terms (e.g. conditionally: one ought to do X if one wants Y and X facilitates Y). Otherwise, we rapidly devolve into circularity. Granted, at some point all definitions, if demanded enough, will be circular (there is only a finite number of English words). However, they should not be so circular as to give no understanding. Suppose someone has no understanding of morality, or you cannot rely on their understanding being significantly close to yours: how would you explain what you mean by morality to this person?
The trouble with your definition is that it can scarcely get past one iteration of definitions: you ought to do something iff it is your obligation to do it, and something is your obligation iff you should (i.e. ought to/are supposed to) do it. A synonym cannot function as a definition if that synonym itself is not understood or is functionally identical. "Ought to" "should" and "(be) supposed to" etc. are basically interchangeable, and are essentially duplicates. Can you give an understanding of one that does not rely on the others? Failing to do so, it seems that you yourself don't have an adequate understanding of what you are trying to convey.

"I question whether it is humanly possible to satisfy what you seem to be demanding here."
I assure you it is, as I myself can satisfy my own criteria, albeit not with your conception of "ought". If your conception of "ought" cannot satisfy this (not very stringent) requirement, then it counts against your conception all the more.

What happens if someone doesn't do what they ought to? If the answer is "nothing", then the supposed fact that they "ought" to is irrelevant. It could just as well be true that they ought to do some other thing and fail to and it would in no way affect anything. If "ought" is to be meaningful, it must have some import. Clearly it can be the case that X ought happen and X does not happen (otherwise the prescription would reduce to a description: X will happen). So why even care about the ought at all? How is an irrelevant ought of any significance? This, I think, is a significant point. I repeat: What happens if someone doesn't do what they ought to?

"That will depend on your metaphysics. In my case, God being the source of moral obligation is just a brute fact."
I think this is significant.
Is it a brute fact or necessarily true (note that the two are not the same, at least not necessarily)? We could say it is a brute fact that when I observed an electron it had up spin, but that is nowise a necessary fact. It seems that claiming it as a brute fact is a rather big concession, and perhaps not one that you would like to make, on further consideration.
It seems like you are saying that the fact that we ought to do what god commands is a brute fact, but then why not merely make the rest of the obligations brute facts as well?

"Suppose it is true that to get someone to do anything freely is to appeal to their values. It doesn’t at all follow that all oughts are conditional."
It does follow that all oughts must be made into conditionals if they are to be relevant. Otherwise we just have "Why ought I do X?" "Just because". Not that answering "What happens if I don't do X (a thing I ought to do)?" with "something bad" turns it into a conditional ought: you ought to do X to avoid the "something bad" that would otherwise result (likewise with a "something good" positive incentive). The general cost of not doing something one ought is regret, which can be dished out in a number of ways (e.g. punishment or no reward, which are the most primal).

"It could be (for example) that there are some unconditional oughts and that the only way to get them to do them is to appeal to what they value."
In other words, there are some oughts that happen to be unconditional, but the only way to make them effective is to make them conditional.

"The one big datum your approach misses is that when people speak of moral oughtness, they have in mind the unconditional ought."
Do they? I don't know that they do. This unconditional ought is something most people have probably not even considered, content to leave it just as "ought", and that being good enough. I would wager most people, when asked why they should not torture a child for sport would say something like "because it hurts the child (and that's a bad thing)" not "because I am unconditionally obligated not to do so" or "because god so commanded it". Regardless, even if most people wouldn't say they agree, that is irrelevant: this is not decided by majority vote.

"I want to know whether I really ought to do something (in the unconditional ought sense)"
This concept is still so nebulous (and/or vacuous) as to be of not much use. "Why ought we do X?" seems always like a valid question, in fact, it seems a cornerstone of meta-ethics. The unconditional ought necessarily must answer "just because: it is not something we ought do because it does something (and this something is of value), but merely we ought to do it, full stop." On the other hand the conditional ought is perfectly happy "we ought to do it because XYZ (and this XYZ is ether valuable itself or works toward some further value, and is thus secondarily or instrumentally valuable)".

"and not just whether my actions accomplish some particular state of affairs (which is all a conditional ought can ever be)."
Perhaps (as is often the case) we are speaking past one another. I am saying An ought is conditional when it can even possibly be cast as one: "If X, P ought to Y". Presumably, an unconditional ought is one for which "P ought to Y" is simply by itself true. In this sense, we can make literally any "ought" conditional, as if "P ought to Y" is by itself true, we can put literally anything in the antecedent: if Paris is the capital of France, you ought not torture children for sport. If 2+2-5, you ought to strive to be virtuous. So we can then say an ought is unconditional if it can stand a lone as true without being in a conditional (e.g. "P ought do Y" would be necessarily true by itself). However, I would say it can never be the case that "P ought to Y" can be true by itself, separate from any valuation system. There is some valuation system wherein torturing children for sport is by definition a good thing, and thus something one ought do (if a psychopath wants pleasure and has access to a child, and doesn't care about the wellbeing of the child and can escape the consequences of torturing the child, he ought to torture the child. Let me note here that this is in no way condoning it: it is just the rational outcome of considering what the psychopath values). The point of the conditional is to pair the ought with its valuation system, the only context in which it can make sense.

"Or do you really believe that when most people refer to moral oughtness, they do not mean the unconditional ought and are really mean some sort of conditional ought?"
While I don't think they are really considering the difference, I do think they are, fundamentally, thinking in a conditional way. Either the action itself will be valuable (supposing that is possible), in which case it would be conditioned on itself, in some sense, or conditioned axiomatically, or else it will be conditioned on something else which is either valuable itself or instrumentally valuable.


"This sounds like the sort of thing I’ve already addressed (namely, option (3) in www.maverick-christian.org/...). If this is not what you are saying, what response of yours do you think I haven’t addressed?"
The response you quoted above! It is at least conceivable that there be a collection of things such that the collection is necessary in a disjunctive sense, while no member of that collection is itself necessary. That is, it is conceivable that there be some collection of things at least one of which must exist in every possible world (supposing that anything at all can be necessary, which I assume you'll agree to). If one did not exist, some problem would ensue, but nothing is lost or gained by which particular member is instantiated and which is not: so long as there is at least one, all is well. In that case, none of the members would be necessary while the collection of members would be necessary in a disjunctive sense. I have not seen any meaningful interaction with this point on your part.
As to (3), this is not really what I am saying. For whatever reason that god is supposedly necessary, in that same way this collection is disjunctively necessary. That is, whatever circumstances lead to [](god exists), the same or similar circumstances lead to []((A1 exists)v(A2 exists)v(A3 exists)v(A4 exists)....)). We can say it is a property of the collection qua collection, and it does not extend to the members (just as weighing one ton is a property of a heap of sand while it does not extend to the members). This whole business of "ensuring" is silly, as I have already mentioned. We need no guarantors for necessity: that is what makes it necessity.

"Unfortunately this involves completely misconstruing my position, especially since the definition I cited simply says, “to establish or apply by authority.” Neither the definition nor what you quoted at all implies “might makes right.”
Basically what I am trying to get at is that simply saying "that's wrong", unless the person cares, will have no effect. "Wrong", as you use it, *unless there is some associated repercussion for transgression*, is impotent: it is simply and unnecessarily added on. It is like the lumeniferous ether. And nothing of this sort is what I nor anyone I have known thinks of when they think of morality. You speak of "immoral" as just what we shouldn't do, and why shouldn't we do it? Because it is immoral. You are just tossing around labels. The sort of morality you describe could be completely absent without any effect on anything (as, by your own admission, it is not concerned with effects). In that case, how can you say it exists (if that's the right word) at all? Suppose you say we have some sort of sense of it. But then that would have an effect: it would be the effect of compunction, guilt, regret, or reward. It would come down to something like "you should do it or else you'll get a bad feeling". I really can't see how, unless there is something that distinguishes choosing rightly from choosing wrongly, your view of morality is in any way relevant or even discernibly present.

"But arbitrary rules enforced with rewards and punishments is not my conception of morality at all."
Then it is even worse: it is rules without any enforced repercussions whatever.
Surely they are rule-like: they issue from an authority and are to be followed. Sounds like a rule, at least partly. Do we have reasons to follow them? If we have reasons, we would follow them even if they were not issued from this authority. If there are no reasons, it is irrational to follow them. Are the reasons just that the authority will reward/punish us? Then it is a case of might makes right, and there is no reason other than hope for reward or fear of punishment that drives us. Do you say the reason is because they were issued from an authority? That seems like no reason: that seems like an appeal to authority. Do you say the reason is that these have the quality of coming from this authority? Who cares? If we have no independent reasons and won't be punished or rewarded, then it is irrational to heed it. There is no example (I wager) you can give where we follow something *just because* person P says it. It is wholly irrational, I say, to think something is true or do something simply and only because person P says it. In fact, it seems at least conceivable that any person could tell us to do anything: swallow arsenic, burn down an orphanage. If it is against the nature of this thing to command such acts, appeal to the nature, not the commands. Even appeal to the hypothetical nature, and do away with thinking the being itself exists or need exist. Do it because it would be in the nature of such a being were one to exist (which sounds like virtue ethics: we don't need to posit an ideally virtuous person to emulate one). We need neither commands nor a being: what we need are reasons.

"To recap, morality includes moral values and moral duties. Moral duties consist of what we morally ought and ought not to do, with the “ought” in question being the unconditional ought, e.g. an action is morally wrong for someone only if they ought not to do it."
But again, you can't say *why* we ought not do it. We ought not do it just because: because that's how the oughts are. Why? Don't ask so many questions. I will repeat what I have said previously: how is a duty that someone doesn't recognize (they don't feel in any way duty-bound to do it) differ from a mere demand or expectation?

In the end, the unconditional ought, if disconnected entirely from effects, consequences, repercussion and everything of that sort, are wholly moot. Obey the ought, nothing happens, disobey and nothing happens. Why obey? Because it's an ought (you have stipulated that). But in what way at all is it worth the name? There is nothing that makes it something we ought to do except your insistence that it is something we ought to do. Your answer to "why ought we do X?" or "what males X something we ought to do?" is simply to assert that it is something we ought to do with no reason behind it: we ought to do it period. This is ludicrous. You seem to have made out this objective morality to be just as elusive as the god you are trying to argue for.

I doubt I can convince you otherwise, but regardless, you will have to admit that the moral argument doesn't work when taken along with my view. If you want to try to attack my view, I invite you to try. I honestly think I will have a much easier time convincing others that my view is superior than you will. Your view, to me, seems like, no offense, sophisticated nonsense.

Note that your (1) is not the same as the first premise of the typical moral argument, which would instead be if ~Q-->~P (i.e. the converse). If we used instead P1 of the moral argument, the syllogism would certainly be affirming the consequent. You can feel free to strengthen the first premise to ~Q iff ~P, but that runs the risk of being used in the syllogism: ~Q iff ~P, ~P, therefore ~Q. I have often thought the first premise of the moral argument was carefully chosen that way to protect against such a counterargument.

"beings commanding things are irrelevant to the argument."
Odd: I thought you explained unconditional oughts as commands of god. Otherwise, how do you make sense of these unconditional oughts? Presumably they depend in some way on god (otherwise, we could have them and no god, and thus P1 would be false). So how?

"My definition of “objective morality” does not at all require that showing objective morality exists amounts to showing that God exists and he issued it. The justification for premise 2 is entirely different."
My response would then be that your use of OM in P2 is inconsistent with your use in P1. There is nothing in moral experience that hints to anything god-dependent. If you disagree, perhaps you ought to give better justification for P2, being careful that what you are justifying the existence of is the same as in P1.

"If your conception of morality completely does away with the unconditional ought, then you don’t have morality as most people normally use the term (when they say e.g. that something is morally wrong with torturing infants just for fun)."
I very much disagree. Even if most people don't realize it, I very much think they are using it in the conditional sense, even if only implicitly. I even think you are doing the same. Perhaps the closes thing to unconditional oughts in my view are the native axiomatic values I mentioned, but these in no way require anything supernatural.

"I an curious indeed how you perceived a contradiction in a concept you seem to claim not to have understood."
As I understood it, it would be like using "triangle" to refer to squares. It is simply abuse of terminology. What you call "objective morality" is only such in name. It in no way uses those terms appropriately: it is neither objective (it ultimately depends on a person), nor is it morality (it does not relate to morality, properly conceived).

"That an ought is unconditional does not imply that one can’t have some reason for following that ought. For example, we ought not to torture infants just for fun because we ought not to torture innocent sentient life just for fun."
But why ought we not to torture innocent sentient life just for fun? Perhaps because of some other "ought": but how far can this go on? At a certain point, you will have to say "just because", or else become circular. If you ever say "because god commanded it" or something like that, you seem to be faced with a seemingly insuperable epistemic obstacle: how do you know that? And if you can tell how you know that, the MA becomes useless, as you can merely cite that as your evidence for god.

"I have repeatedly explained what an “ought” is but it appears that no extant dictionary is capable of satisfying you."
There are, just not the usages in those dictionaries you have cited. The usages you cite are the same vague and circular ones you employ and which pervade common usage. They are good enough for daily life, but not for serious discussion.

"All these questions seem to be going a bit beyond the scope of what we’re talking about, but since you asked, it is my view that God is the source of moral obligation, and we are morally obligated to do something because it is God who imposes those obligations. We are obligated to do what God commands because God has the ought-to-be-obeyed quality essentially, and his having that quality is a brute fact (and so it doesn’t quite “come from” anywhere, at least not outside God)."
So all oughts come from god except the ought to obey god, which is just there. It's good to know, but it still seems silly. What happens if we fail to obey god? Does he punish us? In that case, obey *because* you wish not to be punished. If he doesn't punish us, is there some other detriment that will result, or some, something else that will affect what is of value to us? If so, do it on account of that. Otherwise, *in what sense at all is it something we ought to do*? Why do it at all? Suppose someone simply didn't wish to do it, regardless of how much you or anyone else insisted that he ought to: why would he care. The "ought" you speak of is merely a label. It carries no import or relevance.

"Obligation is different from enforced consequences because the terms mean two different things;"
An obligation will either be a mere demand/expectation (something demanded expected of us that we don't recognize as making us duty-bound) or not a mere demand/expectation (D or ~D). It will either have enforced consequences or no enforced consequences (C or ~C). Let's go case-by-case:
D&C) This is a demand with enforced consequences. This is akin to a law or a social expectation. We ought to do it to avoid the consequences, if we don't like them. If we don't care about the consequences, it is not different than the next case. This is a case of might makes right: someone imposes their wishes by demanding they be followed, and punishing those who don't and/or rewarding those who do.
D&~C) This is a demand with no enforced consequences. We can follow it or not with no difference. This is impotent and is useless. Nothing about it changes anyone's actions or ways they would act.
~D) In this case, we feel duty-bound to obey. This is a genuine obligation: regardless of enforced consequences, we fell we should obey it if only from a sense of dutifulness. Possibly, enforced consequences make us more inclined to obey.
You can take your pick: it must fit into one of the above categories (by logical necessity). If it is the first, then it is might makes right. If it is the second, then it is irrelevant. If it is the third, then we don't need god: we already feel duty-bound to do so. Even without someone telling us, we can tell that hurting someone will make them like us less. Thus, if we want someone to like us, we shouldn't hurt them. Based on our valuing their esteem, we feel duty-bound not to obey them.

"I’d ask you to look up the terms in a dictionary (e.g. definition 3a of Merriam-Webster for “obligation”) but I’m not sure that would do much good, given that all my attempts to define the term “obligation” to your satisfaction seem doomed to failure."
Especially when the definition you cite is "a condition or feeling of being obligated". Again, an obligation must fit into one of the above categories. Dictionaries tend to be descriptive, and non-technical dictionaries are usually far insufficient for detailed discussion. You make this out to be my fault in some way, but you are the one who can't give a non-circular adequate definition. The fact that you get these poor definitions from a lay source is not worth much.

"Which would be irrelevant; it is still rational for you to believe in objective morality if the Red Button test works"
That is literally just an assertion to the contrary. The fact that you would forgo personal benefit for the sake of an unknown stranger in no way shows that there are some unconditional oughts pervading the world. It shows that you care about strangers, even unknown ones, at least more than you care about some personal monetary benefit. How this in any way goes to show that there is some unconditional ought has yet to be shown.

"(cultural relativism is intellectually indefensible, albeit for somewhat different reasons)."
This is just to admit what I said: it doesn't work for cultural relativists, and you would need to appeal to something completely different to deal with them.

"All of this seems like an implausible explanation for the typical professing moral nihilist."
If it is a real nihilist (someone who believes there is nothing intrinsically moral or immoral, right or wrong, better or worse), then he might not press the button for any number of reasons, none of which have to do with it being moral/immoral. Perhaps he cares personally about others, though he recognizes that that is mere personal preference. You seem to have meant "moron" or "hypocrite" when you said "nihilist". A nihilist is not an egoist: a nihilist can consistently do things for any number of reasons, just none of those can be moral reasons (because X is moral/immoral I should/shouldn't do it).

In the 2 scenarios, you set them up as though they are the same for a nihilist, when that need nowise be the case. In the first scenario, the choice is between vast personal gain and trivial personal gain. In the second, the choice is between vast personal gain with infinite cost to another or not. A nihilist need not value his gain higher than another's loss. Again, a nihilist has other things driving his choices, *the only difference is that moral considerations are not among them*. We could just as well ask him if he would press the red button if he would get a billion dollars but both his legs would be chopped off and incinerated. Again, the nihilist still can value things personally, he just wouldn't say anything has intrinsic moral properties. Thus, the nihilist could personally value humankind over monetary gain and thus not press the red button.
We can see that you think the nihilist is a hypocrite just by looking at your conclusion: "Therefore, the typical professing moral nihilist doesn’t really believe moral nihilism."


====Simplicity and Explanations====

One problem I see with the so-called "principle of revolutionary induction, ‘It’s Time for a Change’, (TC)" is that it cannot be self-consistent. While "More of the Same" (MS) can be applied to itself consistently (MS applied yesterday, and according to MS, MS will apply today, so MS applies today, and so forth forever), TC can't. TC applied yesterday, then, according to TC, TC won't apply today, so MS will apply today, and will do so forevermore. MS is stable while TC is not (it seems to decay to MS).
Another problem is that it is almost impossible to support TC. The sun rose for the past 1000 days, so, by a TC hypothesis, it won't tomorrow. The next day it rises, so shouldn't that count against TC? Presumably not, but why not? Suppose it actually doesn't rise the next day. In that case, what would we then expect: it not to rise the thereafter (which would seem to count against TC), or to come up again the next day, and alternate forever thereafter (which is really just MS of a different sort), or what? Even if only because it is empirically unverifiable/unfalsifiable should TC be dismissed.
"The question of justification, however, does not ask which method of inference has been successful; it ask which one will be successful."
If we go by MS, we would expect it to continue to be unsuccessful. If we go by TC, we would expect it to be successful (at least on the next instance). Suppose we find that it is unsuccessful: would that validate MS or only fuel TC (because it failed, it must be even more likely a time for a change!)? The trouble with TC, as I've noted, is that it can't even support its own success. If it always applied, it would count against it, as well as if it never applied. Would then what would be best for it be to sporadically and unpredictably apply? But we don't see that, either. There is no way by which we could even try to lend support for it, whereas MS gives a clear way to give it support, and, lo and behold, it gets that support. It all comes down to what we have observed. If TC were ever applicable, we would have expected it to have come up at least a few times (that is, rules should have reversed).
The only way we can tell which one will be supported is to wait and see. But the more times we wait and see, and it comes up negative, the more it counts against TC and for MS.

We need not beg the question to argue against TC: we merely take it from both viewpoints in turn. On TC, we would never expect the current principle to apply for very long. Thus, if TC is initially true, we would expect, eventually, MS to become true, whence-after TC would never become true again (as MS would just keep making MS true). If MS is initially true, we would never expect anything other than MS to be true. Thus, MS is far and away more likely to be true.
It sort of seems odd to me that MS and TC can both claim past regularity as increasing the likelihood of their predictions. As I show in the document I sent you, this property of TC renders it immensely improbable given past regularities, and makes MS greatly probable, even without any major considerations of simplicity.

"In contrast, the principle of simplicity provides a non-circular means to argue for uniformity."
Again, I don't think I was ever very much against you on this point. I do however think it does something more important: we could give other principles, like "the same sorts of things tend to happen until the year 5000, at which point they change". These couldn't be argued against like TC. However, they are so arbitrary, ad hoc and un-simple that simplicity does more help here. We prefer "always" to "until (arbitrary) date X" because it is simpler.

"As I said, that isn’t a valid example because neither X or nor ~X are “things” but rather propositions."
I intentionally said "things" and not "entities" precisely because I meant X to be a proposition. I don't think I can give you a disjunction of necessary entities (personally, I don't think such a disjunction is possible, for instance, because I think the empty world is a possible world). The point is that we can say it is conceptually possible, in the sense that we can form a clear conception of what it would mean, even if an example is lacking. However, just as much as I can conceive of a necessarily existing entity, I can conceive of a necessarily existing class of entities, none of which are themselves necessary (in the sense I have been describing). You have given no reason to discount this conceptual possibility. I have recently been discussing a very similar point with someone else, and what I have found is that it comes down to a quantifier shift fallacy:
"For every possible world, some member of class C (e.g. minds, morality-grounders, etc.) exists in that world" does not by itself imply "For some member X of class C, in every possible world, X exists in that world". In the same way "Every woman has a woman who is her mother" does not imply "there is some woman who is the mother of every woman".
If you say it is the nature of an entity to be instantiated in every possible world (something I would say is impossible, as natures don't and can't include modalities), then it is the nature of this class to be instantiated in every possible world. If you say it is a brute fact, likewise with this class.
On your blog post on this ("a simplicity argument...") you write "any contingent entity can fail to exist" which is sort of imperfectly accurate. An entity is contingent iff there is some possible world wherein it does not exist, and some in which it does. An entity could exist in every single world but one and would still be contingent, or it could only exist in literally only one world and still be contingent. A thing is contingent iff it is neither necessary (in every world) nor impossible (in no world). It isn't that we can take any world with a contingent thing and be sure that we can find another world which is every way the same except that it lacks that one thing (clearly not: we can't have a world without space, but with spatially-extended things). Thus, it is at least conceptually possible that it be the case that there is some group of things, each of which exists in some worlds but not all (i.e. is contingent), and yet the group is such that at least one member of the group is in every possible world.

"This seems to run afoul of the trilemma I have already presented, in which case how do you propose escaping its horns?"
Firstly, I don't see your trilemma as a true trilemma, in that it is not exhaustive (nor even coherent, in that some of the "horns" don't make sense). This whole business of "ensuring" by an external thing is nonsense. There is a difference between explanation and "ensuring": the explanation is the nature of the class. There doesn't "just happen" to be a contingent member of this class in each world, rather, there necessarily is one. This isn't just tossing the class to the four winds and hoping one ends up in each world.

"Not really; given the information we have today, there’s only one possible substance that could have fit their description in any satisfactory way."
Not necessarily: at least in some possible world there could be some substance that meets all those criteria and yet is not H2O. Again, perhaps it is true that location, use, etc. are enough to specify it in our world, among the substances we have in our world, but the claim is that "water=H2O" is necessarily true.

"Or perhaps your objection is that there is some possible world where they have given this description and it turns out the liquid is not H2O but XYZ. True, but then you’d be confusing an extensional (or ostensive) definition with an intensional one."
It can't possibly be extensional, as there is water throughout the universe unbeknownst to any lexicographer, much less one writing hundreds of years ago. If it is merely ostensive in the sense of "this bucket" or "these rivers" etc., then it can't possibly be applied universally: stuff we find on mars will just be "like that stuff we mentioned earlier", but we can't possibly say it is "water" as we weren't pointing to it before (maybe we could say it is "water-like", but no more). Unless we give an intensive definition, we have nothing but a poor approximation that can't possibly extend universally.

"The “that liquid stuff found in A, B, and C” is more of an ostensive definition rather than an intensional one."
But what if someone poured some XYZ into those places? Would the XYZ then become "water"? It would meet the definition. Or what if some other liquid starting displacing the H2O in A, B or C? Again, extensive and ostensive definitions have some use, but certainly not when dealing with substances. You could say "water is that substance of which lakes and rivers are made, etc." but then lakes and rivers could, in some possible world, be made of XYZ, or could even be displaced by XYZ in our world.

"Is your response to this objection to simply bite the bullet, that we did not in fact discover anything knew about water when we learned of its chemical composition?"
I will repeat what I have been saying, if you are intent on repeating what you have been asking: earlier, we did not know what water was made of, but we knew (or at least strongly suspected) that an underlying substance was at the root of the overall unity. Before we had uncertainty and makeshift definitions, now we have certainty and a very robust definition. The situation now is significantly different than pre-discovering that what had been called "water" was H2O all along. Now, we cannot even say with coherency "what if water isn't H2O?" or, if we could, we would be meaning something slightly different by "water" than we normally would. Before, all we had was this liquid that collected in certain places, had certain uses, etc., but we didn't know what, at base, it really was. However, we essentially knew that this substance had some underlying constitution as reason for its unity. However, before, "water" could, epistemically, have been a mixture of various things. We could have no assurance that there were no doppelwassers: indeed, nothing by which we defined "water" excluded them. Once we found out what "water" was made of, we made it such that doppelwassers could not possibly be "water" but merely "water-like". What we did was find out what "water" really was, but what we then did was make it so that we could never again be wrong about it. Doppelwassers are still a possibility (at least epistemically or metaphysically), but we could not possibly call them "water".
I feel I have merely been repeating myself, and also feel that you have. I think this point is tired: you seem either unwilling or unable to see things from my view. Again, I am becoming more and more convinced that it is not some point of subtlety that I am missing, but you that is missing the obvious. I'm willing to call it quits on this.

"1) If water is simply H2O by a priori definition, then the discovery that water is H2O is not a scientifically meaningful, empirical discovery."
What on earth is an "a priori definition"? What we learned is that "distilled contents of rivers" or "this sample of stuff" was made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Insofar as that distilled contents or that sample was previously called "water" (as it fit the earlier definition) we did "discover" that "water is H2O". Again, what was once meant by "water" and what is now meant by "water" are not quite the same: modern understanding is such that it could possibly not be found in certain places, or not have certain uses, but it would necessarily be H2O. Suppose in another universe with slightly different laws H2O behave quite differently. It is, perhaps, a red paste. What would you say: "that stuff is not water" or "water behaves differently there". I think you would say the latter. Clearly this shows the difference between old and new usages: a person who meant by water only its uses, properties, locations, etc. could not possibly call that "water" as it meets none of those criteria. It would be some strange paste, fundamental composition notwithstanding. However, I think we would and should call that "water". Therefore, "water is H2O", can't be an a posteriori necessary truth (maybe "this sample of stuff is H2O" could be).
In short, I don't buy this premise.

"In one sense, water is H2O by definition (an extensional definition)"
I very much disagree: it is quite clearly an intensional definition.

====The LCA, cause/explanation of the universe, choosing explanations====

Re: the alternative universe-causing thing. I would not say it is vacuous so much as vague. It is not lacking meaning, but being broad in meaning. You seem really quite hung up just on the fact that I can't give it a name or fit it into a box. I acknowledge your concern, but I find it of basically no weight. Maybe it has other properties, but I don't know enough about it to say what these are. My inability is from ignorance and limitation on my part, not on any failure on its part. I told you essentially how it makes universes (randomly and simultaneously) and how it can be described (mathematically). I don't care a whit that you don't think it's that great. Bully for you. Take it to your therapist.

"This is irrelevant and does nothing to contravene my claim that it predicts the data (you seem to have read “explain” instead of “predict”)."
Nothing just "predicts". If it just "predicts" X because you have merely bundled that into what it is, then that is not "predicts" that is "asserts". X predicts Y because of something. GR doesn't predict that energy warps spacetime, it asserts it, and it uses that as part of a theory to predict other effects. It is not built into GR that Mercury's perihelion will precess, but rather it predicts that based on what it asserts, and the fact that it does so successfully lends credence to the assertions. So if you merely assert that XYZ will happen if your theory is right, you theory boils down basically to a statement of the data "My theory is that D is the data", which is not vacuous but daft. "Predict" means to say in advance what will happen, and a *scientific prediction* predicts *based on* certain models. Saying that we have the data we do gives neither a prediction nor a model. Even giving a prediction of something with no basis or with irrational basis is not scientific. My hypothesis asserts that there is a universe-generating thing that generates universes randomly and simultaneously. This would predict that there would be universes (such would naturally follow), and that our universe would inevitably be produced (in the simultaneous, random outpour of universes). This does not merely say "our universe exists and is as it is": that is a statement of fact requiring no hypothesis nor theory. It cannot compete because it is not a competitor.
This absurd example you give is not even analogous. It provides no rebuttal and is so ill formed even as a counterargument that it cannot even stand on its own feet.

"But this seems vacuous (unlike my example), akin to saying “it makes all the universes because it makes all the universes.” "
How would you answer this question for god? "God valued there being other human beings to share in his glory" why? Because he's all-good. Why? Because it's his nature. Well, that just boils down to saying "it's in his nature to wish to make universes and it is in his power to do so". Likewise with this thing: it is in its nature to produce universes in such and such a way and it is capable of doing so. I am not saying "it makes all the universes because it makes all the universes", but rather, "why does it make universes?" is because it is the nature of such a thing to make universes, in the same way it is in the nature of light to travel at the speed of light. Maybe there is a deeper underlying mechanism for how it makes universes. I don't know so I won't pretend to be able to say. "Why does X do Y?" can always be answered either in "because there is a further, underlying process" or "because it is in its nature". Science goes for the second all the time. Why does energy warp space-time? Well, it's its nature to do so. Eventually this will have to be the answer. Why does gravity pull things together? What can we say? I think "because gravity is by nature attractive" (in other words, because it is in its nature to do so). Saying it does so by nature is not just to say it does so because it does so. If you think "because it is in its nature to do so" is inadequate, I think "because god wanted to" is far more inadequate.

"Untrue, since you omitted the ceteris paribus condition."
The ceteris paribus condition would be everything other than familiarity, yes? This would mean that two hypotheses that were in every respect pretty much the same except that one appealed more to what was familiar and the other appealed to what was less familiar, the former would be more likely true. That is to say that familiarity by itself increases the likelihood of truth. Perhaps epistemically, but I don't think ontologically. I think clearly not, as familiarity is clearly subjective: what is familiar to one may not be to another. Thus, it would come down to saying "if it is more like what I am familiar with, it is more likely to be true", which, I still think, seems epistemically arrogant.

"Does it really seem epistemically arrogant (for example) to attribute spoon-bending to some already-existing human ability over some novel power if we can think of a way an ordinarily-powered human could do it."
We do not say hand-bending is more likely than mind-bending simply because we are more familiar with it. We do so because there is no evidence that anyone can produce that mind-bending happens or even is possible. A remote tribe is much more familiar with fire heating something, but if we come around with a microwave oven and demonstrate it working, heating with no flame, then they will (I think, at least eventually) believe us (they might not understand it, but they will believe that we can heat with no fire), despite the fact that they are far more familiar with fire heating things than this strange new box. If evidence could be brought forth for mind-bending spoons, even if it were far less familiar than hand-bending, we should believe it. However, since not a jot of evidence has been so brought forth, we should treat claims of mind-bending with deep skepticism (if not dismissal), as indeed we do.

"None of which contravenes my claim; we are still more likely to attribute spoon-bending to some already-existing human ability over some novel power if we can think of a way an ordinarily-powered human could do it."
That's not exactly what is happening in these cases. What do you mean when you speak of a case of spoon-bending? What are the circumstances? Suppose we see a bent spoon: what are we to think happened? Well, any number of things: maybe it was run over, or got caught in a drawer, or someone bent it with their hands, or, we might add, it might (that is not to say could: we mean it in an epistemic sense) have been bent with the mind. Suppose we see a man take a spoon, remove it from sight, and return with it bent. Should we think he bent it with his mind (perhaps he claims to have done so)? I don't think so: we merely take Bayes' formula and look at what the likelihood that he can bend spoons with his mind, given a bent spoon. In this case P(bent spoon|he can't bend spoons with his mind) is quite high: we know many ways he could have bent it without his mind. Suppose he lays it on the table (which, we have checked, is ordinary in every way: we control the whole environment and have eliminated all the sources of trickery we could think of), and then, as we watch, with his hands at his sides, contorts his face with his eyes screwed shut, and the spoon bends. Should we then think that he can bend spoons with his mind? I think that would be darn good evidence, as P(the spoon bent in the way described|he can't bend spoons with his mind) seems like it would be rather low. We could hypothesize that there was some other form of trickery, and test for it. But the display would at least count as evidence for spoon bending, even if it didn't make it credible. We might say it was at least a remote possibility now, instead of a quasi-impossibility.

What I will say familiar (though perhaps not as you describe it, in terms of tokens and types) explanations have is higher priors than unfamiliar ones, at least in most circumstances. However, given sufficient evidence, low priors can be overcome. I don't think, however, we can say that an explanation is more likely just because it it a token of a familiar type, if such a token is nevertheless far removed in other ways.
Suppose we are pre-GR and we notice some strange things happening to Mercury in its orbit. Surely we are much more familiar with minds causing odd motions than we are energy causing space and time itself to warp and affect the motion of anything (indeed, we don't even recognize the effect of things affecting space and time at all). Should we, then, say that some spirit or agent is affecting the orbit of Mercury, and marginalize the space-time one as being of a far too unfamiliar type? No, at least not in retrospect. I think this smacks very much of god-of-the-gaps reasoning. Suppose we are cavemen. According to you, we are familiar with minds causing things, but not, say, atoms or energy or gravity or electromagnetism or microbes or the earth's rotation causing anything. We should then say that minds cause everything! Why even bother with science, if that would only involve appealing to the unfamiliar? However, it is clearly the fact that it is unfamiliar that draws (at least some of) us to it. We want to become familiar with the unfamiliar and entertain its possibility.

"Are the markings evidence for hypothesis S? Clearly the answer is yes; something is evidence for a hypothesis if it makes the hypothesis more likely than it would have been without the evidence, and it’s clear that the markings on the snow fit the bill."
At least arguendo, let's say the markings are evidence for snowshoes, as they render them more probable. However, that's almost irrelevant if every other competitor to explain the markings is made proportionally more probable by the markings. The goal is to choose the best explanation, presumably, and taking the markings into consideration doesn't help one bit in choosing from other candidates for what made the markings. Why is that? Because whatever was initially the best candidate to explain any such markings in snow remains the best candidate. The markings being "evidence" didn't move anything along. I'll even grant that explananda can serve as evidence for explanantes, but in most cases, indeed in the case at hand, this doesn't mean much. The explanandum is evidence for every sufficient explanans, and won't help us in choosing between them. Whatever had the highest prior probability will have the highest end probability: the ranking won't change. So perhaps you are right, but your being right doesn't affect the conversation. At best, it was tangential, though informative. In the end, we are back where we started: assessing prior probability.

Let me amend my categorization. It is not just "a thing" but "a thing that generates things" (we are familiar with those), "a thing that acts according to a mathematical nature" (we are well familiar with those), "a thing that behaves randomly or unpredictably" (we are familiar with those, or are at least becoming more so), "a thing that is not a mind" (we are familiar with many of those), etc. On the other hand "a mind" is pretty much the only facet or collection of facets with which we are familiar with your thing. Note, however, that you lose ground considerably when you combine this aspect of being a mind with its other properties "a mind that exists with no body" (we are, I submit, in no way familiar with one of those). In fact, this is where familiarity might hurt you: the fact that it is familiar brings with it common properties, and its not having those common properties (e.g. having a body), conflicts with its familiarity. For instance, suppose I said "I know you are familiar with computers that use electricity to work, but this is a computer that uses glaciers to work". You are certainly familiar with a computer, but the additional fact that it works using glaciers so much conflicts with what you think of computers that you can't even put the two together. Sure it is of familiar type, but it's being of another type also so much conflicts with the first as to render it epistemically inadmissible as an explanation for anything.

At the end of the day, we have two things: one sort-of familiar but combined with torturously unfamiliar qualities, the other generally unfamiliar, both endowed with the magic capacity to make universes from nothing. If you think yours is better, I'll disagree. However, I am adamant that you cannot justifiably dismiss mine, though perhaps you might prefer your own (for what could not possibly be theologically motivated reasons ).

"We simply find a new force that fits the description (one that has made it appear that a proton* has the same mass as a proton)."
Note that this is not a way to falsify it, but rather verify it. My "How?" was in reference to your claim "it’s not unfalsifiable in principle" which you never, even in the original quote, backed up.

(4) Anything that begins to exist has a cause

"Here’s my definition of “cause”: that which brings about an effect or result (e.g. the existence of another thing). This doesn’t seem inappropriate to common understanding (see definition 1b of Merriam-Webster)."
Common understanding is not what we need here: we need a systematic, deeply-founded understanding that is not merely a vague notion. "bringer-about" might be a halfway-decent first step, but it is nowhere near enough for a technical discussion.

"To recap the scenario of the ball and the glass: the ball is thrown against the glass and it has a 50% chance of breaking the glass."
Again, what does it mean that it breaks the glass? One understanding would be that it causes the glass to break, but then I would merely ask "what makes it so that it sometimes has the capacity to break the glass?" If "nothing", then it's being able to break the glass is uncaused, if "something", then what? If you merely mean "50% of the time, when the ball strikes the glass, the glass breaks.", to which I would ask what makes it a "glass breaks" time rather than not? If "nothing", then that itself is uncaused, if "something", then what? Here we have two identical panes of glass, with two identical balls flying toward them in identical ways. In the next moment, both strike their respective panes. Yet, thereafter, one pane shatters and one stays intact. Why the difference? If there is no reason, the difference has no explanation: saying "it does so 50% of the time" doesn't *explain*, it merely *describes*. Likewise, if we asked "what caused the one to break the glass and the other not to?" we cannot do so. Indeed, what brought it about that one broke but not the other? Clearly nothing about anything preceding the strikings (as, by construction, until then, everything was identical), so was it something at the striking? Nothing seems to be different. There seems to be no cause, no "bringer-about" of the difference. If they were different beforehand, that would be a "bringer-about". Saying the ball caused the glass to break still doesn't say what caused the ball to cause the glass to break. T best you can remove it only a few steps. You seem satisfied with only removing it one.

"My claim: if conditions C make it more probable for thing X to come into being, and X comes into being when no factors apart from C brought X into being, then C (albeit perhaps indeterministically) causes X to come into being."
Once more: you are presupposing that C brought X into being. How do you know that C brought X into being? I will at least somewhat agree that if A brings B into being, then A at least participates in causing B, but we don't yet have the fact that A brought B into being. Why don't you seem to get this? Why think that A is doing any bringing? Maybe A is just permitting B to happen without bringing it to the point of happening. An open door does not bring the groceries in, but it does permit them to be brought in. You are immediately conflating "C made X more probable" with "C brought X into being", which is, of course, a major part of our dispute. I think the two are at least possibly separable, whereas you are begging the question ab initio by including it in your very concept.
Note also that this is merely a definition on your part. This is just saying what you will consider "cause" to mean. I can perfectly well agree that you think so, but that doesn't have any bearing on what "cause" (as an ontological phenomenon) actually is. You can say that "if Joe Schmo thinks C causes X to come into being, then C causes X to come into being" but that won't have any bearing on the matter either. Your insistence on this definition is next to irrelevant in the truth of the matter. A man may be willing to call a square a "triangle", but it still has four sides.

"Though I suppose then we could quibble about what it means for something to “bring about” something else, and it might well turn out that we are just working with slightly different definitions."
I think that is almost a certainty. I can clearly distinguish between "bring" and "permit", the former being sufficient and the latter being merely necessary. This is why I insist that cause be sufficient, and hence not possibly indeterministic.

"At any rate, my definition of “bring about” and by consequence “cause” is such that if conditions C make it more probable for thing X to come into being, and X comes into being when no factors apart from C brought X into being, then C (albeit perhaps indeterministically) causes X to come into being,"
And this is no wonder at all, since you have "bring into being" already inside your definition. Essentially, what this comes down to is "if A brings B into being, then A brings about B (i.e. causes B)", which seems empty of any meaningful content.

"I hold to agent-causation, in which “uncaused” doesn’t really work here (an agent causes the event, and the agent need not be uncaused)."
However, if the agent is in every case caused, that seems to lead inevitably to causal determinism.

"Suppose though that we say that the ghost’s decision is a completely uncaused event, and that there are no factors apart from leaving the front door open at midnight to bring about the event."
Again, the door being open did NOT bring about the event. It merely allowed it to happen. I really think you need to draw the distinction between making and allowing. All the door being open does is allow the ghost to come, or, at most, cause him to see an open door. Apart from leaving the door open, nothing will increase the probability of his coming, but it in no way brings it about that he comes (otherwise he would always come when the door was open).

"Do you agree?"
Yes

"I don’t believe this is adequate; what of the scenario in which x begins at t=0?"
I assume you mean "in which x begins at time t_min." However, that's the whole point. I wouldn't even consider something beginning to exist if there was no earlier time at which it did not exist. I draw the distinction between "existing at some earliest time" and "coming into being". If you have a film of a man, does he begin to exist (in the film) in the first frame? I think not: even in the first frame he exists, and it is not as though he transitioned into being there. Likewise with time: if there is no time when something is absent, I say we can't say that it began to exist, that it came into being (as from whence could it have come? There is no point at which it did not exist). Rather, if we "rewind" time, we merely get to an earliest point at which the thing exists, but no point at which it actually begins to exist.

"I must again caution you that I am not offering a definition but an analysis."
It seems you must be offering a combination: you are giving necessary and sufficient conditions for "X begins to exist" to hold, and I am too. This seems describable as "defining" "X begins to exist". A definition, I think, should include an analysis.

"We’ll probably disagree on this, but I’m confident that the “no first moment” thing is metaphysically incoherent, since it leads to things like the Grim Reaper paradox."
And no less would the other sort: we could set it up so that, instead of the first reaper who kills you, it is the last, which lead to the same sorts of issues. However, what happens when something is replaced at time t? Either it or its replacement (or neither, but certainly not both) exist at time t, and so either one must lack a first moment of existing or the other must lack a final moment of not existing. Either way, if the paradox is successful, there will be a problem. However, I don't think the GR paradox is a real paradox at all, so you're right that we would disagree on it.

"I don’t think in this case where there is no first moment of beginning to exist that it really does “start” to exist."
Excellent: then the universe is like that, and thus never began to exist, and yet is perfectly past-finite, as all the evidence and theorems say.

"Where does it start? It doesn’t start to exist at A, for the simple reason that it doesn’t exist at A."
I would say that that is not true. It begins at the transition from non-being to being, whether or not it exists at the point of transition.

"we would instead have some weird thing that is very close to beginning to exist but not quite."
Again, that could be the universe, or even something in time, like a chair or an electron or what have you.


(5) Fine-tuning

"The claim, “If we do see it, it is more likely not to have come by chance than by chance alone” seems to make no more sense than “If I do see me win the lottery, it is more likely not to have come by chance than by chance alone.” Notice the parallel reasoning:
Maybe I could win the lottery. But why should we expect to find this to be the case? In fact, as this event is independent of my being here and is itself calculably improbable to occur by chance alone, we should positively expect not to see it. If we do see it, it is more likely not to have come by chance than by chance alone (as is not surprising, we don't see it anyway)."
Well, how do we establish agents in the real world. We find a potsherd buried underground. It is possible to have gotten there by chance without an agent, but it is highly, highly unlikely. This seems just as much a problem for you: winning the lottery and the meteor shower are can both possibly occur by chance, so how do you distinguish one as an accident and one as intentional? Mere improbability? What if you won a lottery that was even more improbable than a meteor shower event? Say you lived in a world with an enormous number N of people such that 1/N was lower than P(meteor shower), and everyone played in a lottery and you won: how could you say it wasn't chance but foul play? Again, I think we need only put this into a Bayesian analysis to see what it would suggest. Unless we are so wholly committed to naturalism that we give P(deity) a zero prior, I think a meteor shower event would at least count as evidence for a deity, even if it did not prove it outright. Granted, such a meteor shower could come by chance, but it is far less likely than, say, a mere pattern of meteors, or gibberish written in meteors, or something unintelligible, or something far shorter and smaller. We should very much more expect any of those than something meaningful to us, if one such does appear by mere chance. There is a place for detecting the action of persons, though not so much as IDers make out. However, I would ask why you don't think claims of Jesus on toast count as evidence for god but a meteor shower like that would. The likely answer is because one could easily happen naturally, especially with such confirmation bias. Just as much as you could say "but it's still possible for a meteor shower to spell out something by chance, given a multiverse" I can say "but it's still possible for a meteor shower to spell out something by chance, even given no multiverse".

"If we are to accept a “we won the cosmic lottery” explanation for our fine-tuned existence, there doesn’t appear to be any reason to reject the “we won the cosmic lottery” explanation for the meteor shower once we’ve already accepted the existence of a cosmic lottery. But if you think of one, please let me know."
Because that isn't what the multiverse would say: the multiverse would increase the chance of some universe being fit for us, and necessarily, wherever that universe is in the multiverse, we would necessarily find ourselves there. It might be vastly unlikely that some one universe get lucky, but the universe defined as "ours" will necessarily be the winner. Take a bunch of universes numbered one to N. Randomly make one life permitting. What's the chance that universe X became life-permitting? 1/N (quite low). What's the chance that the universe that has us in it is that life permitting universe? 1.0 (quite high indeed). Our universe is by construction the winner. We do not take a universe, label it "ours" and then ask what the chance that "our" universe is life permitting, rather we find the universe that is life permitting and label it "ours". In a kingdom of N eyeless people, one man has eyes. What is the chance that Joe (a member of the kingdom) has eyes? 1/N. What is the chance that the man who sees his reflection is the one with eyes? 1.0. See (haha) the difference?
But when it comes to other random things unrelated to our being here, they remain just as improbable. The probability of the meteor shower is not changed by our being here: it could just as easily (in fact, more probably) occur in a universe without anyone to see it. In the one case, we necessarily emerge from the lucky universe and make it ours. In the other case, we would just happen to be lucky enough to also land in a universe with this strange phenomenon. What you propose would mean that the universe we came into was twice lucky: once to be life permitting, and once to have this strange phenomenon. Improbabilities of independent events multiply, and hence we should not expect more the universe to have this event given that we are here, whereas, given that we are here, we cannot be surprised to learn that the universe is such as to hospitable to us.
This is not a subtle point. The "argument" you give for (1) is completely empty of any demonstrative force. In all honesty, you should really just think harder about this or look at some of the literature on it. I have even heard theists admit that this is not an issue with the multiverse. I find it rather hard to comprehend that you continue to fail to understand this. Our universe is inevitably life permitting. It is not inevitably filled with unlikely phenomena unrelated to our existence and subsistence.

But regardless, I think the FT argument is still a bad argument generally. In its more sophisticated presentations, it relies on a lack of background information so as to construct the prior for a life-permitting universe to be small. It relies on epistemic probability instead of stochastic or ontic probability, such that merely having a large number of options makes each option epistemically unlikely, even if it isn't stochastically unlikely (this is called the principle of indifference).
For instance, suppose you see a wall that stretches as far as you can see in both directions. In it are set a large number N (millions or billions) of doors. All of them are blue except for one red one, and you are told that a man will exit from one door: what is the chance he will exit from the red door? Well, you have no reason to think that any one door is more or less likely than another, so you say "1/N". Suppose you then learn that some fraction f of the doors are really just doors covering wall, that is, when you open those doors, you just meet with a wall: there is no chance a man could exit from them. Well, then you say "1/(1-f)N". You then learn that some doors are far less likely to be exited from, for instance, because some of the doors are very difficult to get to (from the other side), or have simply fallen out of use. You would then further adjust your probabilities. Suppose you then learn that, on the other side, all the doors have a sign reading "entrance" above them, except the red one which has a sign reading "exit". Then the probabilities would be quite high. Your initial valuation of "1/N" can then be seen to be quite flawed. We then see that mere number of epistemic possibilities, none initially more probable than another, is at least potentially irrelevant in saying that some occurrence is improbable (unless that occurrence is literally impossible).
Suppose you say that a man exiting the red door, as it had low prior probability, is something of a small miracle (miracule?). Suppose instead of being colored, all the doors were numbered, each having a different number. What is the chance that, for any given number x (in the range of the doors), the man will come through door x? Well, 1/N. But then a man exiting any door will be a small miracle, and if that's true, we should say that a man exiting any door is a small miracle, as we would not expect a man to exit through any given door. But clearly that is nonsense if you hear "the man came through door 159327", is that so miraculous? Suppose he came instead through door 623498, or 801451, or 036713? All of them are small miracles! Given our very limited background information, any given occurrence whatever is a small miracle! Why is it that when we hear he made it through some door, it is no miracle, but when we learn which door it was, it becomes a miracle?
However, suppose that we saw a large number M men come through, one at a time, some through one door, some through another. Suppose most men came through the red door, but others came through other doors. We would then confidently say that the red door is probable, wouldn't we? We would then not be surprised that the first man to come through a door came through the red door. However, if we saw no men ever come through the red door, we would say the probability of one coming through the red door next would become ever more unlikely. I think the reason this happens is that we have very little confidence that our initial probabilities reflect the actual probabilities. We might say that the epistemic prior probability of the meta-statement "the probability that a man comes through any door is equal" has low prior probability. Maybe it is higher than the prior of any other competing statement, but nevertheless it is low. We thus have no or very little reason to suppose that our supposition of a uniform distribution is very accurate, and thus little reason to suppose that the red door really is improbable. In general, we have little reason to suppose anything: no guess is yet justified.
Now suppose we take the space of all possible universes and assume that every region of a certain volume has the same epistemic prior probability of occurring. We then take any small volume, and see that a random universe has a small chance of landing in that volume. But supposing it is certain that some universe exists, clearly we will always be able to find a neighboring volume to that universe such that we can say "it is improbable that the universe should be in this volume". In the same way, a man can be of absolutely average hight and we can say that even that is improbable (the chance that he is within one millimeter of average hight is very low). As in the case of the doors, some universe is guaranteed, but any given universe is unlikely (in fact, since there are infinite possibilities, we would have to say it has probability zero), and any small volume of universes is unlikely, life permitting or not.
In short the claim carries no weight whatsoever. So we are in some small region of phase space: so would any universe. But that alone does not mean that our universe is unlikely. In fact, no real measure of probability has been produced, only "there are many options, and we can't a priori favor any, so we are forced to assign them all equal probability". It is a lack of information that makes it improbable. So what information would actually make it improbable? Well, suppose we had some well-supported theory by which we could make a definite prediction about the distribution of universes that we would expect, or even had data about the parameters of other universes. Then we could say that ours was unlikely in more than a "there are many options, and we can't a priori favor any, so we are forced to assign them all equal probability" way. However, suppose we took the latter approach: then there would have to be universes apart from our own (say N of them), and if we include our own among the bunch, the probability of there being a life permitting one would, experimentally, be at least 1/N, which gives an expected number of lifer permitting universes of at least 1.
In short, I don't think it has been shown that a life-permitting universe is genuinely improbable (more than just "there are many options, and we can't a priori favor any, so we are forced to assign them all equal probability"), nor do I think it is of much significance if it is (supposing other things are true as well, e.g. that no other particular sort of universe is much more probable, that is, that the distribution of other universe is not heavily biased elsewhere). What design does is not just the improbable, but deviation from equilibrium (which are statistically unlikely to occur by chance alone, in many cases). In the case of universes, we have no way to suppose an equilibrium (a uniform distribution has no real equilibrium: all states are equally likely) from which ours would deviate.


(6) Argument from evil

Regarding Theophilus' (TP) view of "good":
"the reason why God allows horrible things to happen is that in God’s eyes it is good for us humans to try to overcome and wipe it out (by advances in medical technology, learning to share our food with the hungry, etc.) with the limited abilities we have, and that it’s better for humans to do this than God doing it for us."
TP's view need not have any new notion of "good" at all. All he is doing is proposing a theodicy: why god allows evil is because it is good for us to overcome (or try to) evil. What we gain by battling evil is more than what it costs us in doing so, at least in the long run. It is not that uncommon a theodicy. However, it is not a very good one, as I will describe.

TP's view is still problematic. Hopefully TP wouldn't say these horrible things are good by themselves (or else he can kiss goodbye the hope of anyone buying into his notion of "good". In fact, maybe we should just torture him to death, if suffering is so good!) but only insofar as they help us reach things that are actually good (compassion, technological advancement, etc.). The horrible things are only instrumentally good. But suppose we could achieve these things without the horrible things, or at least without so much of the horrible stuff (that is, suppose that it were actually feasible that that might happen). Then his theodicy wouldn't work, as god could have achieved exactly so great a result without so much horrible stuff. As I think such a case is eminently plausible, the theodicy still doesn't do anything. Now, you could always claim "well, you just can't see the whole picture", but then neither can Theophilus (he is only human after all). Every theodicy is just a "maybe, for all we know..." way out. None could possibly (or at least has) actually justify the evil, only suggest some possibility that might excuse god, for all we know. However, I think Theophilus' view still couldn't explain anonymous, isolated agony, like a rock climber who falls, becomes paralyzed and suffers immensely before dying over a week without anyone ever even knowing of his death (or, if they do, it is only far too late). That certainly wouldn't go toward any community building or technological advancement or anything (arguably soul-building, but that's a different theodicy).

Many theists (e.g. WLC) say that god has no moral duties and basically for that reason could never do anything immoral. Even if there were objective morality, it wouldn't really apply to god: god could torture someone forever for sport and still not be immoral, as he has no responsibility to be moral. However, in arguing a theodicy, there is a fine line between arguing that god is good and that god is just a jerk. I would basically say that anything that introduces a double standard for god and for men makes god a jerk, at least in the sense that if he were a man (pace Jesus), he would be a jerk (that is, if a man acted like god in some instance, that man would be a jerk). If a man is a jerk for torturing an innocent child, or standing idly by while a child suffers (fully able to relieve the suffering), then that man is a jerk. If a man afflicts his children in order that they might work together to overcome it, that man is a jerk. You can conceivably say that god is both justified and a jerk (in the sense given), but nevertheless you depict god as a jerk, afflicting his children in order to improve them, not helping his children so that the other children will instead help (even when they are incapable), afflicting them without explaining why, letting children afflict one another in order to let them remain "free", etc. If any man did this, that man would be a jerk (dentist examples don't work, I don't think, as in those cases there is informed consent, and the dentist can say to those inquiring why he did what he did). If a criminal on trial said he gave his child cancer in order to improve his character, would we accept that? I rather think not.

"if the atheist rejects objective morality then the argument has no evidential weight for the atheist."
I disagree as I already explained: the atheist in question (not me) might believe that only if god exists (for some reason) then OM will also exist. On the other hand, if there is no OM, then there is no reason or explanation why god would value one thing higher than another. TP's claim collapses as god, still being omniscient, would not believe something wrong, e.g. that anything was the best possible thing, as there would be no objective "best". We merely get TP asserting that god would have such and such opinion or whim, which could, I suppose be true, but there is no way of using that as a demonstration. God would still be a jerk insofar as we would consider him one, and he wouldn't even have the refuge of doing something with good reasons, as his reasons would just be his arbitrary choice to value X over Y.

"it would have no evidential weight for Theophilus for example, and because the atheist rejects objective morality, the atheist has no grounds for saying that Theophilus should believe that God would not allow evil, because that’s not true on either the atheist’s worldview nor is it true on Theophilus’s worldview."
It's only that if god were good he wouldn't allow evil: saying that there is no OM, at least on your account, amounts to saying that god is not good, at least in any objective sense. Remember that the argument from evil just says that the three "omni"s are incompatible given evil. If one of the "omni"s (omni-good) is impossible, then there would be no argument from evil, I suppose, but nor would there be a tri-omni god. I can well accept that if god is not required to be good that he can be anything: jerk or saint or indifferent. On a "no-OM with or without god" worldview, nothing could possibly be all-good in an objective sense, and hence god, if he is all-good, can't exist as such. On a "no-OM only without god" worldview, it would still make sense to say there is evil, at least assuming there is a god. Assuming there is a god, then, we run the argument from evil as usual and find that there can't be a god. This is in contradiction with our assumption, hence our assumption is false, that is, there is no god. Now TP could say that the argument from evil couldn't work as the OM that would be in place is such as to make what we observe excusable. But the opponent could then do two things: deny that even on TP's OM it is excusable (as I sketched above), or deny that the OM that would result would be TP's.

"Right, but you’d still run into the same problems I mentioned earlier."
What might those be? I never found where you responded to this.

"Without objective morality, there is no objective fact of the matter about what sorts of evils God would allow, which means you’d be in dire straits in trying to justify P2 within any atheist’s non-moral-objectivist worldview, and you couldn’t justify P2 within the confines of the typical theist’s worldview either, in which case this argument from evil has no rational weight for either atheists or the typical theist."
I very much disagree. We could say that, if god existed, the pointless suffering of the innocent is an evil that god would not countenance. I find it nowise an improvement on the matter that they get some recompense for such suffering. Better never to have lost than to have lost and recovered.

"Unfortunately “pointless suffering” is not strictly part of your argument"
Argument from evil? I think we would almost inevitably be talking about pointless suffering. Not part of my argument? I think I have either mentioned it before or am at least allowed to introduce it. Regardless, "hey, you didn't mention that earlier" is not a valid objection

"Theophilus can just say pointless suffering is good"
On his view, would it be? By pointless suffering I just mean suffering that never results in any good for anyone. On TP's view, suffering is good because it leads to other good things (community, technology, etc.). Suffering, on his view, is not good in itself, but rather instrumentally. Thus, as pointless suffering is by construction not instrumental to other good, he would have to deny that any existed, and if we could demonstrate that any did exist, he would be proven wrong.

"It’s not too hard to ascribe a teleology; perhaps the person making the algorithm likes to see numbers appear in a certain way, in which case the numbers would appear random but they would actually have a purpose (they are engineered to delight somebody)."
That's still not teleology, really. There is nothing intrinsic about the numbers that they build to some thing, but rather it is a fact about the person that he happens to enjoy some sequence of numbers. Maybe this person literally enjoys a random sequence: he likes pressing a random number generator and seeing what comes up. Regardless, the numbers don't progress anywhere, rather they just are. Sure the numbers might make someone happy, but that's about the person, not the numbers. Conceivably, for any sequence of numbers, regardless of what they are, they could make someone happy, and what specific sequence makes a certain person happy is perfectly arbitrary. I think you agree that numbers are a bad example and you give a better (though, I think, flawed) one below.

"Or to use a better example, a person looking only at a fraction of a mosaic might think that the color splotches are random and purposeless, when in fact they have a purpose."
This is a better example, but I think it is also unsuccessful. Let's look at a mosaic, or pixels on a screen. Typically, the one is correlated with its neighbors: there are lines, sharp divisions between adjacent parts, patterns that repeat on a fairly small scale, gradual changes in shade and color. If the colors do just seem random, chances are the local image is just noise. If it is noise, even as part of a picture that might use it, it could just as well have been replaced with different noise with no reduction to the image. Patterns that only repeat on very large scales but which on any smaller scale are indistinguishable from noise are typically used to simulate noise (pseudorandomness).
Suppose an ant on a mosaic found something that seemed non-random, say a clear border between two adjacent regions, one black one white, that continued on for at least a long while (to the ant). Certainly the ant should take this to be evidence of non-randomness, as such is quite improbable if it were just randomness. Thus, we see P(design| perceived non-randomness)>P(design). However, this means that P(design|perceived randomness)<P(design). Even if P(design|perceived randomness) is only very slightly less than P(design), nevertheless the sheer number of instances where we see apparent randomness, but would accept it as evidence of design if we didn't, steadily add up.

"“Better” according to what standard?"
Getting more in, more who freely come to god, more who are of nobler character, etc. What is god's goal? Whatever it is, I think there's a better way of doing it. Presumably it is something like the above.

"For example, because of Theophilus values and what Theophilus believes is good, there is no better way because it is eminently good for the suffering to exist in the way that it does."
I don't think that's true. Again, on Theophilus' view suffering is still instrumental. It is not good in itself (otherwise, the world with the most suffering would be the best, or at least adding suffering to this world would make it better), but rather it is good only in light of what it produces which are either themselves good or also only instrumentally good. Suppose we could add more suffering to this world to produce more of what Theophilus deems intrinsically or more fundamentally good (community, compassion, technology, etc.). Then there would be no excuse for why god didn't improve the world in this way. Or, maybe we could get just as much community and compassion without so much suffering. Again, then there would be no excuse for this unnecessary suffering. If Theophilus says suffering is good for its own sake, I say we torture him. It would be for his own good! But regardless, if Theophilus says suffering for itself is good, he is not using the term in anything like normal usage. If god thinks suffering is good for itself, we could not call him good by anything like the common definition: he could not, then, be tri-omni and the argument nevertheless succeeds.

"Even if true, this goes away from the problem of evil (the idea that if God existed he wouldn’t allow evil of type X to occur) and simply an argument from simplicity and lack of evidence."
Err... ok. Maybe it's not the same point, but it certainly is related. Care to respond to it?

"I think it’s a remarkable act of intellectual arrogance to say that our finite minds could do that in the case of a being whose mind is infinitely beyond ours; we could not reasonably expect to see the “why” behind most things a being like that does, and also it does seem that if we could not think of a reason why God would allow evil, it would have at least the superficial appearance of there being no morally sufficient reason for God to allow evil."
There is a fine line between humility and self-deprecation. I don't suppose you know, say, Russian, but I think you would agree that you could spot the difference between a passage of the brothers Karamazov and a page written by a monkey banging on a Russian typewriter. You could distinguish between a photo you-knew-not-what-of and an identically-sized array of randomly colored pixels. I don't expect you know how to make a Swiss watch, but you could distinguish a Swiss watchmaker at work from an inexperienced, bumbling fool. I never said we would be able to discern every little thing that was part of his plan, all its inner workings, but I think we would be able to discern a plan from no plan at all. There could be a long string of things whose delicate precision we couldn't understand and yet we could tell it was progressing in a certain direction. What we must ask is which should we believe: that there is a plan at work infinitely beyond us that only gives the impression of a haphazard sequence, or just a haphazard sequence. The choice seems more than obvious. If we could discern a plan, that would count in god's favor, I assume (or would you say that anything we thought we discerned could be just as faulty as anything we thought we couldn't discern, as there is no chance we could ever discern the. Therefore, necessarily, if we cannot discern a plan, it must count at least somewhat against him (P(B|A)>P(B) <--> P(B|~A)<P(B)).

Here's a short list of things we can't seem to agree on:
1) What moral terms (e.g. moral, ought, obligation, duty) mean.
2) Whether objective morality (properly understood (if we could even agree on that)) could/might exist sans deity.
3) Whether there are (or even could be) unconditional oughts (see above).
4) What the Red Button Test would show.
5) How/if we can justify induction.
6) What simplicity is and how it should be used in choosing explanantes.
7) Whether some class of things could be necessary (in a disjunctive sense), at least conceptually.
8) What "water" means and what was changed when someone found that a sample of stuff was made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen.
9) What is a viable candidate to explain the universe.
10) Whether a super-mind is a better or worse explanation than a universe factory.
11) Whether "Something (I don't know what) that says 'we will find all the data D that we do find' " is an explanation of D.
12) What role familiarity plays in choosing explanations.
13) Whether the explanandum itself is relevant for choosing an explanans (supposing each considered explanans is sufficient to produce the explanandum), even if it does provide evidence for the explanantes.
14) What a cause is/what "cause" means, and whether an indeterministic cause is possible.
15) What a beginning is/what "begin" means.
16) To what degree a multiverse would explain fine-tuning.
17) Whether suffering etc. counts against god.
18) Whether moral realism is required to argue from evil.
19) Whether we as humans should expect to be able to at least distinguish an apathetic universe from a caring universe.
Probably more...
Maybe we can never come to an agreement on these points, and will slowly run out of the energy to argue for/against them. I hope not, but it seems ever more likely.


=========================================================

As another topic, I should like to ask you about some stuff you said concerning determinism (whether it means no free will and means no rationality). First, let's settle on some definitions:

Determinism (generally): given a past, there is a unique future. If two worlds have the same past, they have the same future.
Note that this may be less stringent than just saying that initial conditions determine all future events, though such a case woudl necessarily fall under this description.

Causal determinism: future events are the inevitable effects of prior causes.
Note that this is a subset of the above: we can have events that are uncaused (e.g. things popping into being), so long as every world with the same past has them.

We can also distinguish between macroindeterminism, or epistemic indeterminism, and microindeterminism, or ontic indeterminism. The former results from there being simply too many factors to keep track of and the system being so chaotic as to be epistemically infeasible to predict. An example would be a gas as classically conceived or weather, if it is purely deterministic. If you could say "if only we knew more, we could have predicted what would happen", you are speaking of the former. The latter results from actual, genuine indeterminacy, in that there are events for which no prior set of circumstances is sufficient to educe. An example of this could be quantum events (which in basically every picture are genuinely indeterministic) or idealized events, like the toss of a perfect, idealized coin. The former could be "deep down" deterministic, while the latter couldn't be, even in principle.

I will also add here another idea, which is likely irrelevant, but worth, I think, noting.
Inverse determinism: given a future, there is a unique past. I'm not sure if this can have any real application, at least here.

"Free will" is a bit more slippery. You give (paraphrased) "the ability to control ones actions and to be responsible for them". I think even if that is right, it may be insufficient for our purposes, but I'm not sure that is even wholly right. Let's use it for now, and see how it fares.

What I would like to ask is how do we acquire our first ideas, beliefs, desires, thoughts, etc.? Presumably we do acquire them somehow, but how? These initial ideas/beliefs/desires/thoughts are crucial, as each subsequent decision is at least partially based on them. Beliefs etc. are constructive in that we use what he have at one time to change what they are in the future. We are clearly not giving them to ourselves as they are first, and surely there must be some set of these that can be called first or quite close to it.

Does someone/something else give them to us? Then we are not responsible for them, nor anything they are then used to produce. Does no one/nothing else give them to us (are they just randomly produced upon birth)? Then neither we nor anyone else is responsible for them or anything they produce. To what degree are future ideas/beliefs/desires/thoughts reliant on past ones? It seems if we are to retain rationality the bond must be quite close, otherwise random or unintended ideas/beliefs/desires/thoughts would be constantly butting in among those that we meant to produce. Thought would be a mess. So future thoughts are dependent to a high degree on past thoughts. But then the initial set is crucial. We do not determine our initial states, our natures, what we shall experience, the outcome of random choices. We choose neither our natures (and if we could, by what would we choose them?) nor how we are nurtured.

This all seems pretty deterministic, no? Well, not necessarily. Here's a model of thought which, though pretty simplistic, can suggest how thought (etc.) might still be indeterministic. I use a computer for simplicity.
We have a computer that is, at each clock tick, presented with a set of cards, of which it chooses one. The card it chooses next is based on a complex algorithm involving past options, past selections, and present options: given those factors alone is the next card chosen. We have several such computers that all begin identically, with the same programming. If the set of cards presented to each computer is the same, all computers will always choose the same cards. However, suppose that at least some of the cards sometimes are generated randomly, that is, some cards sometimes in the set presented are randomly chosen. Then we have both that all future choices are dependent only on the past and present, and that the future is not determined. We can call this input-indeterminism-output-determinism (IIOD). On the other hand, the algorithm could be such as to sometimes choose with some degree of randomness (e.g. generate a random number between 0 and 1. If it is >=0.7 choose card A, if it is <0.7 choose card B. This might be useful for choosing the first card, when no factors have been yet introduced). Clearly this will also be indeterministic, even when the set of cards presented is the same for all computers. We can call this IDOI (easy to figure out). On the other hand, we can combine the two to get IIOI, which will clearly also be indeterministic.
All of these suggest ways that indeterminism can be salvaged. However, it still does not settle my original question: how is it that we get our initial ideas/beliefs/desires/thoughts which are then used to accrue more or sift between what we have? Suppose we know so much about the mind that we know that if we do X to a child, he will grow up to be a criminal, but if we don't the child won't. X could be saying something, injecting him with something, having him experience something, etc. Is it then the child's fault that he becomes a criminal? I think we would say no, as there was nothing the child could do to avoid it. Or, suppose that some child is just born a criminal, that is, given facts about its initial self a life of crime is inevitable: it is then not the child's fault for becoming a criminal either. How can we be said to be responsible for anything, if we are not responsible for our initial nature, and all our subsequent nature (inclinations, preferences, beliefs etc.) are dependent on previous natures?

Let's look at the account you give of compatibilism. Somehow we get some brain state, and that leads to the next, and so forth. But the first one is out of our control, so we are not responsible for any of the subsequent ones.
Well' let's look at a non-physical account. Instead of brain-states, we have soul-states. Suppose one soul state is not tied to the previous. How is it produced? If it is by prior soul states alone, then this suffers the same fate as your compatibilist argument (either both fail or both succeed), as we could merely trace back soul-states to an initial one for which we could not be held accountable.
So what if they are produced, at least in part, by something else? Well, we have no control over that something else, so we can't be held accountable for what it does or how it affects us, and hence what it would then result.
So what if they are produced, at least in part, randomly? Then clearly we can have no control over this randomness, so we can't be held accountable for what it does or how it affects us, and hence what it would then result.
So it seems tricky to determine how introducing a non-physical thing actually helps anything, as it too must still act according to logic.

You seem partial to agency theory (which is almost universally elsewhere pertains to management and economics), which you define as:
"the view that we have free will, that indeterminism is true with respect to our actions such that we can choose among genuine alternatives, and that free will is an act of agent-causation whereby an agent (person, self) causes effects." That is to say, an agent is basically a sort of first cause, an uncaused cause. So say an agent makes a free decision, A or B, then that choice was not caused by anything. I think this is many ways problematic. Suppose there is literally no reason for the choice. Both A and B have nothing going for them above their alternative (e.g. left or right, up or down, heads or tails, yes or no), or maybe you are just said to choose A or B which are really other hidden things. Suppose you choose A and learn that that choice means an innocent man will be killed, whereas if you had chosen B he would have been given a million dollars. Are you responsible for his death? I don't think we would say so. Suppose you are forced to make the choice between killing unknown innocent man A and unknown innocent man B. Are you responsible for the death of the one who dies? Sort of, but I don't think we would hold you accountable, at least not to the same degree.
So, if the choices are perfectly equal, I don't think we can be held accountable for making one choice to the other. But suppose there are good reasons for choosing at least one option. Then we would have to employ some sort of valuation system to determine which reasons counted for more, but how to choose a valuation system? Presumably, we would need a valuation system to choose between valuation systems, but that's not possible. So either someone or something else gives us one (but how have they chosen theirs?) or else it is randomly chosen/assigned. Either way, we cannot be held accountable for our initial valuation system, as either we did not choose it or we chose it randomly. So regardless, it seems we cannot be held accountable for what we choose, whether we do so with reasons or without them.

Assuming the above is successful, we have:
1) If determinism is true, free will is impossible.
2) If determinism is false, free will is impossible.
3) Therefore, free will is impossible.

On the other hand, we could also say:
X="if it is true that we aren't responsible for our initial state and the former states produce subsequent states, then we can't be responsible for our subsequent states. Also, we don't control our initial states"
1) If X then, if determinism is true, free will is impossible.
2) If X then, if determinism is false, free will is impossible.
3) Then, if X, then free will is impossible.
4) Free will is possible.
5) Therefore, ~X.
6) If ~X, then, on determinism, free will is possible.
7) Therefore, on determinism, free will is possible.

A similar thing can be said for rationality. Say we have a computer that has the following properties.
It has super-advanced semantic parsing capabilities. That is, it can parse things (images, sentences, etc.) into symbolic propositions with great accuracy. It has a memory bank both of things it has seen (propositions it has considered and the inputs from which they were derived) but also those which it accepts as true (its "beliefs"). It can also generate new propositions from the collection of other propositions. It also attaches to each proposition a probability which represents the probability to which the computer takes it to be true. For example, the proposition Xv~X would have a 1.0 attached to it, while X&~X would have a 0.0. This computer has certain rules for assigning these probabilities: these rules we might call rules of rational inference. These are rules we would generally accept as being rational to follow, such as go where the evidence leads. They are likely a bit complex, but they at least include self-consistency. We could say that these rules are metabeliefs, in that they are themselves propositions, but propositions that describe how to deal with other propositions. Either way, this machine acts deterministically, and I think we would say it is at least pseudorational (it acts like a rational person, in a sense). Or, we could have a person who simply chooses to live his life in such a way, such that his beliefs are deterministically governed by what is presented to him. I think we do this ourselves: we choose to be largely deterministic as it provides great benefit (consistency, reliability, etc.).

Suppose the determinist says the human mind is like this (though perhaps a little less exact on the probabilities and with a worse memory, etc.). In that case, the human mind could be deterministic and rational, and thus determinism does not preclude rationality.
You say in your article that the reasons for thinking something must be freely chosen, but that seems unnecessary and even problematic. We do not freely choose to believe that a man stands before us when we see one, rather we can't help it: the belief forces itself upon us. Granted, some of the more troublesome sort suppress this instinctive belief and say "no, it could just be an illusion", perhaps until the man strikes him across the face. Nevertheless the belief was not freely chosen, as one freely chooses chocolate to vanilla, but rather resulted even involuntarily. It seems many (if not most, if not nearly all, or even all) beliefs are of this sort, where we can't help believing something, at least given other things we believe. A purely rational person could not help believing that X if he believed that Y and that if Y then X. Thus, rationality and freedom do not seem so intimately connected.

You give as an example:
"To illustrate the idea of unthinking and impersonal causes, suppose a man believes a certain economic policy [for sake of example, communism] is the best one because a strange brain tumor is causing him to think so."
Well, can the man give a reason? Let's ask him why. I don't think physiology affects belief quite in the way you seem to describe. I don't think he woke up one morning believing communism was best, but rather there was some process of rationalization somehow triggered by this tumor. But this does not necessarily mean that he is irrational. Perhaps he has just come up with new argument, or reevaluated old arguments. Certainly there are rational people, I would say, who think communism is best. It seems unclear at best that the mind, even on physicalism, would work as you suggest: I think there is more of function and less of just structure to be accounted for.

I think you are sort of mischaracterizing or misunderstanding hard determinism in your posts. You can believe in a soul and still be a hard determinist. Also, a hard determinist doesn't see himself as just a puppet to nature (at least not necessarily), but rather that he is the master of his own actions, just that the way he makes his choices are completely determined by previous things. He was born some way, and given that, he was "destined" to make his choices (mind you he still thinks he makes them himself) in a certain way. He is still rational, in fact, he can't help but be (largely) rational (in the same vein as the above).

"Recall that under hard determinism, mindless and blind physical causes produce all our beliefs, rather than a mind having some control in producing them."
But under the physicalism you are critiquing, our mind just is some collection of physical things. These physical causes *are* the mind. Thus it is both true that physucal things produce our beliefs and that a mind produces them. You are begging the question by assuming these are mutually exclusive.

Your alien calculator scenario (you seem quite fond of speaking of aliens and neurochemical manipulation) is quite poor, I must say. It is so much a straw man of the position you are critiquing that it is wholly disanalogous and dismissible. In your scenario, aliens simply believe whatever is given them, whereas no physicalist would ever accept. You make the spurious distinction between the person and what produces the beliefs, whereas, even on physicalism, these are at least intimately related.

I think this is plenty for you to respond to for now.