So, if by “objective” you mean “completely captured in verbal descriptions and fully expressible using logic”, then I must disagree that the Law/Tao is “objective” in that sense.

I like this answer. However, speaking for myself, I would say more.

I have made clear at other times (although I don’t expect people to necessarily remember this) that my basic position is that we can not really know the nature of the metaphysical, or if there is even anything beyond the physical. I lean towards believing, in my heart, that there is more to the world than just the physical, and I like the philosophy of the Tao and other Buddhist teachings the best, but I don’t believe they are “true” because my belief that we can’t know is paramount.

So for me, talking about the Tao is a way of talking about the unknowable, not a way of talking about the known – the nice thing about this being that it is in keeping with the whole idea of the Tao anyway.

Here’s another quote from the Tao Te Ching:

The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.

All attempts to be specific become part of this world, and thus provisional. The Tao may or may not be “objectively real”, but as soon as we approach it cognitively our understandings become inextricably entangled with our culture, our basic human nature as well as the particularities of our personality, conflicts with other understandings, and so on. In this sense, anything we think is a objective truth can’t be.

The quote above expresses the basic Taoist/Buddhist idea that out of the one true One comes the restless multiplicity of the world – the Tao is the “mother of ten thousand things. We are part of the multiplicity of the world, and our intellectual capacities – our words and logic – bind us o that world and blind us the Oneness.

If one really wants to try to find the Truth – if it is there to find – one has to abandon the attempt to nail it down with words and logic. Words and logic bind the ego to the illusion of multiplicity. The Eastern search for truth involves quieting the mind, freeing ourselves from our attachment to our verbal models of the world, and surrendering the ego.

So, no I don’t believe the things that CS Lewis, or anyone, mentions are objective truths. They are human truths, filtered through the human condition, and subject to all the complexity of both our human nature and the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

If you start with materialist assumptions, you get materialist conclusions.

Your materialist assumption is that the moral code is arbitrary, just one of many codes that could exist. If you start with that premise, then your conclusion is valid, which, of course, validates the original post.

But start with a different premise and see what conclusions you reach. Assume that the Tao is not merely one moral code among many possible codes, but that it in fact exists and is objectively true. Then your comment would be something akin to saying “You say two plus two equals four, but there are an infinite number of numbers that two plus two could equal, so isn’t the probability that you have chosen the correct number as your sum infinitely small?

But people must we willing to give up their assumptions or presuppositions that are incorrect or ineffective. Maybe not give them up for all time and maybe not give up everything about them, but I see no reason to cling to any particular assumption, presupposition or worldview.

You see assumptions driving conclusions. That may be how it works for you, but it’s not how it works for me and many others besides.

If we have two competing assumptions, as you have identified, how do we decide which one is preferable? One assumption hypothesizes that “the moral code is arbitrary” (to use your words). The other proposes that a particular moral code “it in fact exists and is objectively true.”

OK, given your predilection to the second hypothesis, then it’s time for you to put up or shut up. What exactly is the test that detects the existence of the moral code? What is the test to establish that this one moral code is true and not false?

I propose that you create a new thread where you identify the test and run through it several times in different scenarios.

I hope others will echo this call for seeing the test in action. Bring it out. No weasel words, no evasion, no tu quoque.

Show the test and use it. If you don’t or if you refuse, perhaps you can simply take the time to reflect on a word such as “hypocrisy.”

I have not followed this thread (and don’t want to read all the 500+ posts!), so I am not taking any position about the discussions here. I just wanted to thank you for citing one of my favourite principles of all times:

“The map is not the territory.”

You–“Ends never justify means.”

Me–”It depends on the ends, and depends on the means.”

You–Ergo, you believe that there are ends that do, indeed, justify whatever means one believes are necessary to achieve them, right?

No. What I believe is that you should never say never without thinking.

You have a letter to send (the end). You choose to use the U.S. mail (the means). Does the end justify the means?

I am also happy that this thread made it possible for me to defend myself and my beliefs against the distortions, mischaracterizations, and outright lies promulgated by them. Which of us stated outright exactly what we believed, and which of us claimed that this was not the case and that we actually believed something completely different from what we plainly and simply stated?

Glad you finally made that clear to all of us.

“So, when I ask you where you get your morality, you send me to a website which explains this philosophy in detail, even though, in fact, it is the very same philosophy that you have always argued against. Not only do you not accept the “natural moral law,” you negate objective morality, period. Unlike Lewis, you don’t think we “discover” morality; you contend that we “create” it.”

Stephen, you are not even very good at putting words in other people’s mouths, much less reading what is right there in front of you. I have written many things on this subject, both here and elsewhere, and posted links to the things with which I agree, and yet you continue to assert that I believe exactly the opposite of those things.

Why do you do this? Do you claim to know what is in my heart? Do you know me better than I know myself? Have you dived all the way to the bottom of my spirit and found what I am there?

Or have you only found what you wanted and expected to find there, because to find me there (rather than the simulacrum of me that you have created in your own mind) would be intolerable, because it would shake the foundations of your absolutely rigid worldview?

Just curious…

“Do you agree with C.S. Lewis that the natural moral law consists of objective moral truths, or do you agree with Hazel that they do not. I have answered all you questions, and I ask that you answer this one, since everything turns on it.”

As I have pointed out, the “hinge” word of this statement is the word “objective”. I like the explanation of this term in Wikipedia:

“While there is no universally accepted articulation of objectivity, a proposition is generally considered to be objectively true when its truth conditions are “mind-independent”—that is, not the result of any judgments made by a conscious entity. Put another way, objective truths are those which are discovered rather than created.”

I think this captures the sense of the Law/Tao fairly well. If the Law/Tao were not “mind-independent” (by which I interpret to mean that meaning of the Law/Tao depended fundamentally on the generally accepted meaning of the words and logic in which it is expressed by humans), then to me it clearly couldn’t be the whole of the real, objective Law/Tao. As I have stated before, my understanding of the law is captured (imperfectly, of course) by this:

The name that can be named is not the eternal Name
The Way that can be taken is not the eternal Way

Here it is transliterated from the Chinese, followed by three literal translations:

Tao k’o tao fei ch’ang tao

Tao called “Tao” is not Tao

Name called “Name” is not Name

Way called “Way” is not Way

Or, as expressed by Alfred Kobzybski:

“The map is not the territory.”

And here it is in a classical Zen koan:

A master (“roshi”) and an apprentice (“unsui”) were walking in a moonlit garden at night. The master said to the apprentice,

“Do you see the moon?”

And the apprentice said,

“Yes.”

Then the master said,

“Point to it,”

and the apprentice did so.

Then the master said,

“Do you see your finger?”

And the apprentice said,

“Yes.”

And then the master said,

“Never mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon.”

So, stephenB, is the Law the words in which it is expressed, or is it That Which Is imperfectly captured by the words?