In the same way, the morning star just is (i.e. is identical with) Venus.

Can we use a set model and say everything in set A, is simultaneously wrong and forbidden by God?

It’s not wrong because it’s forbidden by God, nor is it forbidden by God because it’s wrong, it’s just both at the same time.

Maybe I’m just confusing myself more.

I have my doubts, though, that the versions of DCT presented by many intro textbooks does reflect the inchoate views of the students. In fact, it seems to me that when students attempt to respond to the criticisms of DCT in the textbook, they are struggling to articulate, in an inchoate manner, some of what many contemporary advocates of DCT would say in response. Of course, being students without training in philosophy, their responses are confused and not well articulated, and then the professor just shoots them down.

From my observations, this is fairly typical procedure when it comes to teaching DCT in intro courses. But it is, imho, a procedure that reflects extremely poor teaching practice. Why not take up the student’s inchoate responses and develop them along the lines of what contemporary DCT theorists say? Why not present DCT (as well as every other ethical view taught) in the best light possible, instead of just knocking down the weakest versions of it? (BTW, this goes for other ethical views as well. For example, even though I’m no ethical relativist, when I have had the occasion to teach an ethics course, I have tried to give what I thought were the strongest versions of relativism. I don’t think we do the students a favor by knocking down strawmen).

As for Pojman’s merit as a philosopher, well, let me say that the guy gave us some great anthologies (and I suspect that he also had beautiful hand writing )

Your complaint about my objection to your mathematical illustration misses the point. The point is, your comparison with mathematics (or the distance to the sun) supposes that moral facts aren’t normative facts. If they are normative facts, then as explained, the relationship between them and divine commands is plausible after all.

What’s more, it’s no good pointing out that what you write goes through “a peer review process.” Heck, just showing it to your friends to see if they like it would be “a peer review process.” But would it pass peer review and get into a scholarly peer reviewed journal on philosophy of religion? Your lines of argument have all the hallmarks of simply not being checked by any critics whatsoever.

It does no good to quote another critic of divine command ethics making the same mistake that you make. Sure, Pojman might say that DCT involves the claim that ““Moral rightness” simply means “willed by God,” and “moral wrongness” means “being against the will of God.”” But so what? Is he right? Do any proponents of DCT actually say this? In fact they do not. You can’t really be saying that because Pojman engaged in an unscholarly misrepresentation, it must be alright for you to do so as well.

Lastly, it’s absurd to protest that: “it seems disingenuious to complain that an introductory summary doesn’t address everything you think that it should.”

Keith, thr problem isn’t that what you wrote is too short or not detailed enough. The problem is that what you say is actually false, and the lines of argument your outline are attrociously poor.

The illustration with 2+2=100 is an illustration of an objective truth, and how something that is objectively true cannot be made so simply by God’s commands. If ethics concerns objective truths, the point of the illustration remains.

I never said that “moral claims are like mathematical claims” in the sense of being necessarily truth. The point of that illustration would hold whether moral facts are necessary or contingent, so your complaint about that is misguided. For instance, if the distance between the Earth and Sun remained 93 milliom miles after God said “The Earth is 9 miles from the Sun,” his mere say-so would not change the objective truth of how much distance there is between the Earth and the Sun.

Your uncharitable assumptions about our peer review policy are simply false. In fact, scholarly paper submissions do go through a peer review process, which is why it takes some time for new material to be added to the modern library. Indeed, one of our referees specializes in metaethics and has addressed Adams’ version of divine command theory in print multiple times.

The modern library subject index descriptions, like the one you contest, were added for the purpose of making the issues much more accessible to our readers, given that individual essays are often very detailed and presuppose some familiarity with issues. The “Intro to…” descriptions I added are meant to be just that, introductions. I try to limit them to no more than three paragraphs. They are not intended to explain every variation of divine command theory (or whatever), anymore than my description of Aquinas’ traditional ontological argument in that summary description is meant to apply to modal versions of the ontological argument.

If you want to get into such subtle variations, the actual essays in the library are the best place to find them, such as Graham Oppy’s Secular Web work on modal ontological arguments (whom, by the way, is the author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the same), or in this case Stephen Sullivan’s essays on divine command theory.

Finally, my characterization of divine command theory is based on the late Louis P. Pojman’s characterization:

http://academic.cengage.com/resource_uploads/downloads/0495502359_124757.doc

Namely:

b. Three theses
1. Morality (i.e., rightness and wrongness) originates with God

2. “Moral rightness” simply means “willed by God,” and “moral wrongness” means “being against the will of God.”

3. Since morality essentially is based on divine will, not on independently existing reasons for action, no further reasons for action are necessary.

If that’s tantamount to what young Earth creationists say about evolution, you should perhaps ask Cengage why they’ve print multiple editions of the textbook by the late West Point philosophy professor. I doubt Pojman would be “immediately be laughed out of town.”

I’ve used a variety of sources in preparing course materials for introductory ethics courses, Pojman among them, though I primarily rely upon James Rachels’ The Elements of Moral Philosophy.

So most of my reasoning in that introductory description you cite is based straightforwardly on their introductory work, though some of what I wrote is simply working out the implications that follow from that survey of the issues (such as the last paragraph and the discussion of objective truths using mathematical truth as an example).

Incidentally, I never claimed to be an expert in metaethics, though I do have a secondary interest in it, and enough familiarity with ethics to teach introductory courses on it.

And in any case it seems disingenuious to complain that an introductory summary doesn’t address everything you think that it should, just as it would be disingenuious to complain that our historical library material might be questionable (when we have an explicit disclaimer that the material there is simply historical documentation of past freethought works). Much of “Reason the Only Oracle of Man” is questionable to me, for instance, since I do not endorse Ethan Allen’s particular brand of deism.

What does he have to lose?