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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that The doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) provides a solution to the Euthyphro dilemma.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.DDS requires that God's essence and existence are identical, but this collapses the distinction between what God is and that God is, making divine necessary existence unintelligible.
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    • 2.If God just *is* goodness itself, then 'God is good' becomes a tautology that strips moral predication of its normative force, leaving the Euthyphro dilemma unresolved rather than dissolved.
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    • 3.Aquinas's own interpreter Scotus argued that formal distinctions in God are required for coherent predication, meaning simplicity strict enough to dissolve Euthyphro is too strict for theology.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.The DDS solution presupposes that God cannot will otherwise than the good, but divine omnipotence as standardly construed entails God could have willed differently, reintroducing arbitrariness.
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    • 2.If God's willing is necessary and not free, as strict DDS demands, then divine commands lack the deontic authority required to ground moral obligation, as Wainwright and Quinn have argued.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.The Euthyphro dilemma asks: does God command the good because it is good, or is the good good because God commands it?
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    • 2.If God commands the good because it is good, then God's willing is subject to an external standard logically antecedent to God, which undermines divine sovereignty.
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    • 3.If the good is good because God commands it, then the content of morality would be arbitrary because it is subject to God's free will.
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