If I can present an analogy to make clear the meaning:
Within the Trinity, the Father begets the Son. However, there was never a case/state where the Father existed without the Son. They always have and will exist together as one God.
The argument is simply that Goodness is grounded in Existence in the way the Son is grounded in the Father. Existence and Goodness are always together as one nature of God.
So while for humans, we can separate existence and goodness into two different concepts; for God, existence and goodness (and love and justice and mercy) are all the same concept.

>I understand that the Thomist says God is something like goodness.

Well actually it is the other way around. True Goodness is God. What we experience is "like goodness". It is the human that experiences goodness in the analogous sense. And this is the conclusion of the reasoning process (i.e. if the argument holds, it has to be true).

And not to be snotty, but I reiterate my criticism that "we know morality when we see it" doesn't strike me as more reliable than the systemic thought of the Thomist system. ;-)

I had to come back, sir because I'm not sure I have addressed your reply.

If you consider why you do what you do, (at least all of your intentional actions) you can see that this (the need to actualize your nature) is true.

I believe I have attempted to identify this need to actualize the 'good' within oneself with obedience

Thus the moral law exists: it carries its authority because it drives us to the end.

This does not actually identify what 'exactly' the moral law 'is'. I understand Jesus to be the fulfillment of the law. I associate this with Truth, although within the Trinity there is an inter-relationship between truth, the way and the life: a unity so that Jesus also says I am the Way, the Life and the Truth. But it was truth that he emphasized when he was before Pilate, and I also believe it supports the association made between Jesus and the Logos and Kant's Pure Reason.

To turn away from our end is to act unintelligibly. I don't
mean that it's disobedient: I mean that it's actually incoherent. We wouldn't be able to ascribe a rational motive to our actions in this view

One of the insights I appreciate within the deontological ethics of Kant is the difference between moral and amoral actions. I have benefited so much from his insistence that moral action requires intentionality. We need to be conscious or aware of what we are doing, why we are doing it and how we are doing it. So much of what is considered moral action is possibly far more 'mechanistic' than the 'doers' think it is. Thus I would place the development of rational coherence with respect to our thoughts words and deeds as the adjunct of a life of obedience, that is the need to actualize the good within oneself through a growing ability of 'rational discernment'.

The rational coherence I believe is a gift (of the Holy Spirit). which I have identified with Beauty/Order/The Sublime/Teleology. Insights comes to us unexpectedly, for instance. But Jesus said, that no one goes to the father except through him, - The Truth - The fulfillment of Judaic law (The Commandments of Moses) and the Beatitudes, if I'm not mistaken. Is this what you consider to be The Moral Law as distinct from Natural Law? If it is, I do not believe there is any conflict in our positions. We also have legality, for instance, which I take to be external or mechanistic law, another amorality, which would distinguish it from the development of a moral consciousness, which can only happen through the unique experiences of each and every one of us, as 'individuals' although hopefully united in love with others, for the love of God. (The real 'moral' law!!!!!).

Thank you.

Thanks for the detailed answer!

I think you aptly addressed his point in the first part, and think that's a good objection (and hopefully at some point Joe can answer it). It was a bit ironic, even, how Joe quotes G.E. Moore during his rebuttal, even though I think G.E. Moore's ethical philosophy is a serious challenge to Joe's argument.

The definition Joe provides for the good is very close to St Thomas's definition, as I read it, and I think you make his point in your response to me:

But, Aquinas didn't mean an object of the will by "desire". As Ed Feser explains: when calling goodness 'desirable' "Aquinas does not mean that which conforms to some desire we happen to contingently have, nor even, necessarily anything desired in a conscious way. Here as elsewhere, it is the notion of the final cause -- the end or goal towards which a thing is directed by nature -- that is key." Feser, Aquinas, p. 35

You (via Feser) seem employ Joe's exact test for objective morality right here. Joe's rule is:

Could there exist a person who does not want to achieve X?

Desires that we contingently have are therefore not the objective good, according to Joe (because they are not identical for all people). The goals toward which we are directed by nature are objective goods (because everyone wants to achieve those). In this way at least, Joe's ethics is not significantly different from Aquinas's.

I understand that the Thomist says God is something like goodness. But, this claim doesn't strike me as informative because he cannot say in a literal sense what it is about God that is similar to goodness. He can only say that what is similar in God to goodness is similar to something else. And that in turn is similar to something else, and so on. At no point can the Thomist tell us something literal about God that'd allow us to understand what he's drawing an analogy with.

Thank you. I have noit felt up to 'competing' within the formal arguments, but I'm glad my rhetoric presented a case. I considered two examples, Kant, whose categorical imperative would be based on an interpretation of a subjective mandate to 'choose' the governing maxims within an individual's life. He supports this position by saying that if an individual's morality was not based on his/her individual assessment of what within the regulative criteria of universality and necessity, that because the morality was chosen by another, it would by definition be pragmatic: that is based on the purpose of 'pleasing another' or conforming to the standards or rules of 'another'.
The other example was that of Leonard Cohen's song in which I interpreted the 'Hallelujah' as an expression of purpose, also based on indefinite ascertainment of what constitutes a higher order.
I have already thought out in another section a rhetoric of 'obedience' in which I have put forward the proposition that to be obedient is to meet the demand to 'constantly' better one's appreciation/understanding within a development which may be theistically or naturally inclined towards a 'greater good'.
These general observations I believe set forward the 'reality of the world'.
Within the theism of Catholicism there exists the 'maxim' for instance that because the purpose of sex is to propagate, that the use of condoms is not conformable to a moral law. Although I have myself been 'chaste' since I determined that I no longer wanted children, my life could serve as such an example. However, I could not, can not consider myself worthy of being called a Catholic saint, because there are other factors; an avoidance of sexuality because of a trauma related to a sexual assault within my teenage years. The point here is that within real-life situations the individual's moral choices may, indeed usually, if not always, rest of factors which could in comparison with an absolute moral law, depend on seemingly arbitrary and diverse factors. I think that very few if any moral decisions within the context of the 'pressures of daily' living, and the complexity of human characteristics (which can be described as limitations within the scope of 'virtues') escape the limitations of our 'sinful' nature.
I hope these examples (Kant and Cohen) reveal that reality.
It is very consoling to think of ourselves as virtuous and even believe that we are following the 'essence' of moral law as defined by the Church. But how difficult is it to comprehend let alone live up to the 'highest' standards of morality. But as I have identified obedience with self-reflective power that can ascertain one's own individual limitations, perhaps we can agree that it is this obedience, even if not fully understood or acted on, which constitutes the purpose that can be identified with a God-governed moral law.

It would be possible to cite examples, of course, from even the Old testament, which I believe could easily demonstrate the difficulty in ascertaining what constitutes the higher purpose. Perhaps humanity has advanced in the ability to 'recognize God's will'. I have identified through Cohen's song, purpose with the holy and the broken. Despite this, I believe that there is a ground within moral choices that is dependent on rationality: that is reason and faith, no matter how, within the sinfulness of human nature, these are interpreted.
Thanks for accepting my rhetorical attempts to understand and address these issues. I can only hope that there is some reason and faith evidence within the 'argument'. Thank you.

Joe: Hm, how could I say that a computer is like a mind if I didn't know what a computer was? It seems like I'd have to know what a computer was before I could reasonably compare or contrast it with something else. Otherwise, I couldn't tell whether my analogy made sense.

It's occurred to me that I don't think we're actually reasoning analogously when we're talking about the Thomistic God. In order to reason analogously, we have to have literal descriptions to draw the analogy between. But, in the case of God, there are no literal descriptions available.

Hey Paul, thanks for the question. My bad, I may have misunderstood his first argument.

If Joe is defining the objective good as "wanting to achieve X" my response would be something like this:

First, I do not think that 'goodness' is definable. I mean, we could stipulatively define goodness as whatever we wanted as we could any term. But, stipulative definitions aren't true or false, and I could just stipulate otherwise. Furthermore, there is clearly a lexical definition of goodness. But, what I mean is that I don't think we can analyze goodness into more comprehensible parts: it's a basic notion. In defense of this, I'd employ G.E. Moore's Open Question argument, by asking of any proposed candidate for 'goodness' whether that thing is good. If it's an open question, then it seems we haven't secured an identification. I think this works particularly well when we try to define goodness as 'God', or some such.

Second, it's unclear to me why everyone would have to want to achieve X in order for X to be *objectively* good. The only condition for objectivity we've given is that a value or duty hold independent of our attitudes towards it. Isn't it coherent that X be good, hold independent of our attitudes towards it, and yet *someone* not want to achieve X? It seems so to me. Perhaps people can't want something unless they think it's good, but must it actually be good?

Finally, and this is of less importance, I've noticed some curious deviations of Joe from Thomism, and this seems to be one of them.

Joe seems to derive his position from Aquinas' claim that goodness is what all desire. But, Aquinas didn't mean an object of the will by "desire". As Ed Feser explains: when calling goodness 'desirable' "Aquinas does not mean that which conforms to some desire we happen to contingently have, nor even, necessarily anything desired in a conscious way. Here as elsewhere, it is the notion of the final cause -- the end or goal towards which a thing is directed by nature -- that is key." Feser, Aquinas, p. 35

Joseph: "You can't not seek it: whether you behave selfishly or selflessly, you're seeking to actualize your nature in some way. If you consider why you do what you do (at least, all of your intentional actions), you can see that this is true."

If this is visible to us as you say, then why do we need to bring God into it? Why can't we just accept it as a fact of reality and proceed from there, bypassing God.

Steven,

But if you said that a computer is like a mind, and didn't know what a computer (or, if you prefer, a mind) was, it seems that you'd have some analogical knowledge, right? I mean, certainly, you wouldn't know the thing directly, but it doesn't seem like you'd be intellectually empty-handed. If analogies tell us nothing, why describe anything analogously?

I.X.,

Joe