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Discussing Plato’s “Euthyphro.”
Does morality have to be based on religion? Are good things good just because God says so, or (if there is a God) does God choose to approve of the things He does because he recognizes those things to be already good? Plato thinks the latter: if morality is to be truly non-arbitrary, then, like the laws of logic, it can’t just be a contingent matter of what the gods happen to approve of (i.e. what some particular religious text happens to say).
We’re joined by Matt Evans, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan to discuss the text, which seems to be not as directly related to modern debates regarding the Divine Command Theory as we thought going into this. Ah, well. We cover all the angles and Seth spends the last bit going on about Judaism. Oy!
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End song: “False Morality” by The MayTricks, from the album Happy Songs Will Bring You Down (1994) Read about it.
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One of the best ever. Dylan’s use of car overhang on his driveway as a legitimate though hilarious philosophical example stood out to me as a high point for the show and everything it stands for. Matt was a great guest and I hope you guys can lure him back at some point. Thanks guys.
Thanks wr! It was a fun read and conversation. We really appreciated Matt joining us.
–seth
I’m happy to say that Matt is interested in returning… he suggested we do a David Lewis episode. I was surprised by his interest/expertise in the analytic philosophy approach to metaphysics, and Lewis on modality is a great (and weird) example of that. We’ll need to get there through Kripke, though… which we incidentally also have a repeat guest (Matt Teichman from our Frege episode) tenatively lined up for. I doubt these will happen before late spring, though.
Mark do you ever think you guys will touch Kripke on Wittgenstein or is that too meta?
We’re planning on Investigations then Kripke. I don’t recall how much of Naming & Necc commented on Witt.
I was more of sections of Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language-Kripke which mine and I suspect a lot of people’s introduction to Kripke.
Roger Scruton reads Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument from the PI as the death-blow to the last vestiges of Cartesian skepticism hanging on in analytical philosophy. That is, he thinks it achieves what Hegel wanted to do but did not do clearly enough, which is to demonstrate the intrinsically social character of reason and the absurdity of most modern skeptical dilemmas:
http://philpapers.org/rec/SCRCNW
-tom
This is actually a review of Kripke’s book “W on Rules and Private Language” where Scruton argues Kripke’s interpretation is wrong:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2254269
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Can God make a sandwich bigger than he can eat? Classic- I laughed for 10 minutes after that. I wish that people would divorce the Divine Command theory from such an argument of Plato. Today’s God is not the same as Zeus and his bunch. I can understand talking morality as from God and if it is, is it moral because He spoke such or is it moral on its own? These are great question to wrestle with. Even as a Theist I hate talk of taking a 21st century Abrahamic notion of God and placing it in Plato’s context. Ah, Augustine what have you done?
How about an interview with Alex Rosenberg on his new ATHEIST’S GUIDE TO REALITY? He develops a piquant alternative to both Plato and theists: “nice nihilism.”
Philosoraptor listens to this podcast…
http://h.images.memegenerator.net/instances/500x/14391767.jpg
Love it!