Philosophers and monotheism.
Historically many philosophers who are considered great have been monotheistic and their philosophy geared towards a hierarchy with God at the top. Plato,aristotle,descartes,Berkley,kant,newton,and others.
How do you view this?
Where these guys deficient in their logic or where they on to something?
How do you view this?
Where these guys deficient in their logic or where they on to something?
Comments (101)
I guess it all boils down to the question, what's the difference between many gods, each with faer own specific mood and one God with different moods?
An explanation is in order: In polytheistic traditions, each god has a specific mood by which I refer to those qualities that are unique to faer e.g. in Hinduism, the poster child of polytheism, Vishnu is the preserver, Brahma is the creator, and Shiva's the destroyer. However, if you take a close look at such schema, all these qualities (creating, preserving, destroying and others) can be found, in varying degrees, in single individuals. A similar pattern can be found in the Greek pantheon I'm told. I suppose that someone, at one time, found out that the Gods were simply personifications of qualities that can be found in one person...monotheism is just a stone's throw away from there.
Another issue is a logical one. Suppose there are two gods, mutatis mutandis my argument should work for greater number of gods. One god, call it A and the other god call it B. Since both are gods then everything true about A should be true about B i.e. A is omnipotent, B is omnipotent; A is omniscient, B is too; and last but not the least A is omnibenevolent just as B is. According to the Leibniz's (controversial) law of the identity of indiscernibles, A = B i.e. there's only ONE god.
A different problem would be this: Imagine if more than one god is possible. All are omnipotent of course. If one commands there to be rain in Seattle and another commands there be no rain in Seattle then, it would have to both rain and not rain in Seattle. This is a logical contradiction. Our assumption that more than one god is possible is false. There can be only ONE god. QED.
And there is. All you have to do is reason carefully and not decide what's what in advance (which most are totally incapable of doing) and God will be discovered.
Most contemporary philosophers do not believe in God. But most of them are hacks (is there a Plato or descartes among them?). And they don't argue against God, they just take it for granted that God does not exist. It's like the soul. They don't argue against the soul, they just assume no soul exists and then wonder how to fit the mind into their naturalist ontology.
Take metaethics. Does morality require God? Yes, of course it does. This has been known for centuries. But the view is dismissed out of hand by most contemporary philosophers on no better basis than the 'Euthyphro' combined with their conviction that no god exists (but that some things are right and others wrong). It's terrible. Contemporary metaethics is consequently a debate between those who think morality is a peice of cheese and those who think it is a kind of dance.
People routinely underestimate what an omnipotent being can do.
I come more from a Jungian perspective on God, and a general open questioning approach. However, you have just mentioned there being one omnipotent God and it has lead me to wonder about the contrasting pictures of the wrathful Jahweh of the OT and the picture of the forgiving Christ in the NT. Do you think that the two can be reconciled?
What logical necessity is there for all gods to be "omnipotent" and to all want contradictory things at the same time?
I think it is perfectly possible for there to be many lower gods ruled by one supreme God and each fulfill his or her own function in harmony with the others.
It looks like @Trinidad has been banned from the forum. But I tend to agree with your statement. I'm just not entirely sure about "omnibenevolent". Good or benevolent, yes, but does he have to be "omnibenevolent"?
I am asking because God's supposed omnibenevolence is often used to argue against the existence of God on the grounds that omnibenevolence implies that there should be no evil in the world, etc.
I suppose it also depends on how benevolence is defined.
I agree that if there is a God, then presumably he is omnipotent. But I don't see why he must be omnibenevolent.
Even if he is omnibenevolent, I think his benevolence would be governed by his will.
Omnipotence itself may have more than one meaning. It would probably mean power that is unsurpassed and unlimited by anything else.
Good question. But do they have to be reconciled?
I think that it can be a source of confusion for people. On one hand, the God image represented by Christ appears to be full of compassion, but the God of the OT as angry. Jung, who is coming from a psychological perspectives, believes that the angry God is on the rise in the dark destructive tendencies of humanity. Stepping slightly aside of this, we could interpret it to mean that whatever force behind nature is showing vengeance in the form of climate change and Covid_19. But, I am pointing to this as one way of seeing things and I am not saying that it should be taken too literally.
Also, I do think that your earlier point about the idea of thinking about many gods being ruled by a higher one is interesting, but it is probably more in line with polytheism, or paganism.
The concept of one God over many did arise in a polytheist context, but I believe it is also discernible in monotheism, though in a slightly different form, e.g., one God over many angels.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I believe that they represent two different functions. One teaches humans through fear, the other through love and wisdom. But even the Christian God may be seen as angry when he sends thunderstorms, earthquakes and other natural disasters. After all, it is God who controls meteorological phenomena and nature in general.
Jesus himself is said to be the supreme judge. So, though he may not be angry as such, he certainly judges us in the afterlife and punishes the evildoers according to their deeds. In fact, in early Christianity, he was more often represented as a heavenly ruler than on the cross as became customary later.
It is true that in Christianity God is overseeing the angels, and I was certainly taught the story of Lucifer and the fall of the angels. I believe that it was probably more based on the ideas of John Milton's 'Paradise Lost'. However, I expect that Milton drew upon other sources. Also, I think that many people have interpreted earthquakes and catastrophes as representing the wrath of God.
One idea which I came across by a rather controversial figure, Benjamin Creme, was that Jesus was only the Christ from the time he began his ministry. However, Creme's ideas are very unusual, with an emphasis on Jesus and Buddha being brothers in bringing forth Christ consciousness. However, Creme was expecting the emergence of Maitreya, who he believed was living in East London, since 1977. Creme died a few years ago, in his 90s. Of course, in some ways he was a cult figure, and I don't think that his ideas are really taken very seriously.
And nor should they. Maitreya definitely reminds me of Theosophy. So, it isn't entirely surprising that not many take him seriously. Although, I can easily imagine the New Age crowd of the 1970s being into stuff like that. When people no longer believe in traditional spirituality, they just make up a new one. It becomes a fashion and people just love being fashionable or "cool". Who needs Christianity when you have Theosophy or this or that kind of "Wonder Yoga"? And, unfortunately, there are always those who are ready to exploit the gullible masses.
Personally, I have nothing against new ways of manifesting one's spirituality. But I think that having some knowledge of more traditional forms tends to give you the advantage of having a sense of what is genuine and what is not. Some of my friends keep dragging me to all sorts of venues to meet this or that "guru" and I must say in 99% of cases they turn out to be fake, though I have no doubt that some of them are delusional enough to imagine that they actually have a direct line to God.
If you are omnipotent you are the arbiter of moral goodness (and all normative and evaluative properties - thus she will be Reason). Moral goodness will be constitutively determined by your attitudes. Will an omnipotent being fully approve of herself? Yes, because she's omnipotent and so if she disapproves of anything about herself then she can change it. Being fully approved of by Reason is what being omnibenevolent involves. Thus, if omnipotent, omnibenevolent too.
1. Moral imperatives are imperatives of Reason.
2. All imperatives have an imperator
3. The imperatives of Reason have a single imperator: Reason
4. Thus, moral imperatives are the imperatives of a single imperator
That imperator will be God. Why? Because they'll be a mind. If you think something mindless can issue imperatives you are insane.
And that mind will be able to do anything because she won't be bound by the imperatives of Reason.
So, omnipotent.
And I have just explained that an omnipotent being will also be omnibenevolent.
And she'll be the arbiter of knowledge too, so omniscient.
An omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent mind is also referred to as God.
Now stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Two Planks.
I definitely went through a big theosophy stage a few years ago. I attended meetings and I went to Creme's last lecture before he died. I was not really convinced of his ideas but I did find transmission meditation, which he developed, as being helpful, as I went to several workshops. But, I do think that it is easy to get carried away with such ideas. But, I do think that time on this forum has enabled me to look at ideas from a far more critical angle than previously. At times, I was floundering in a sea of all kinds of weird and wonderful possibilities.
Unfortunately, that often is the way things tend to go if you are not careful. In my case, I think that knowledge of traditional Platonism has saved me a lot of trouble and wasted time. Our teacher used to tell us how Plato criticized rival systems and made us write essays on this or that system and how it compared to Platonism and I learned quite a lot from that. Of course other systems and traditions can have interesting teachings and practices to offer but once you have developed a certain degree of critical thinking it is very easy to spot dishonest individuals who are trying to take advantage of people's ignorance. And there are literally thousands of them. But I believe that Jung can also be helpful in giving you a sense of sanity and of what you can trust and what you can't.
As for whether the immoral deeds and sufferings and ignorance that pervades this world is incompatible with the existence of God, there is near universal agreement that they are compatible. We can imagine circumstances under which an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being would permit suffering and wrongdoing. And that's sufficient to establish their compatibility.
I would admit that such suffering and wrongdoing provides some reason to think God does not exist if other things are equal.
But once we are clear that God has been proved, then the immorality and suffering and ignorance of the world becomes a puzzle, not a problem. For example, I have excellent evidence my phone enables me to post messages here. It is doing so right now. But it is a puzzle to me how. Nevertheless, that I cannot resolve the puzzle is not evidence that my phone is not enabling me to post messages here.
Or an all-providing nanny as some think. I definitely agree that God is under no obligation to be good at all times and in exactly the same way people want him to be, just as parents don't have to be good in exactly the same way children imagine they should. Otherwise he would be subject to people's whim and cease to be God. Unfortunately, people tend to have the habit of putting an anthropomorphic spin on God because they are not used to thinking in more abstract terms and forget that they are talking about God and not the neighbor next door.
I can't say I'm exactly weeping, but well done. :up:
There are exceptions, of course. Such as when someone is about to do something that will significantly harm an innocent other. And good people also intervene when someone is going to harm themselves through ignorance (a paternalistic attitude towards children is, for instance, appropriate).
But we can use our intuitions about what it is good for us to do to gain insight into why God allows the immorality, ignorance and suffering gs of the world. There's a limit to that, for those intuitions are for us, and so in using them to gain insight into God, their source, we are using them for a purpose for which they were not primarily designed. But they can still give clues, I think.
Yes, but you keep forgetting that there are many definitions of God. If you are talking about 1st-century CE Roman Empire, for example, then "omnipotent" and "omniscient" sounds about right. I don't know about "omnibenevolent" and to be honest I don't care. The Platonic definition of the One as "unfathomable" and "indescribable" sounds good enough to me. The Church Fathers were happy with that too, so who am I to disagree?
Maybe he can. But if he has no reason to do so, why should he? So, he doesn't.
Of course, were he to do it, he would approve of it - for he is not going to do something he does not want to do - and so at that point it would be right for him to do it.
In this way one can see how God can do anything, and anything he does will be right.
I present arguments. You say I haven't. I present explanations. You say I haven't. You just don't have a clue.
I agree. We certainly have powers of intuition and reason. All we need to do is use them. Ideally, this is what philosophy is supposed to teach us to do.
Have you read Jung's short piece on Job? Your God sounds like that God. Your God demands complete non-freedom in submission because your are islamic in your understanding and want a unbeatable super-figure to justify and restrain yourself
I never said that I agree with everything that @Bartricks says or does. But he does make some good points that people may find worthwhile considering. I think atheist philosophy tends to get a tad boring after a while, so theism brings a bit of variation. Keeps the brain from ossifying and fossilizing if nothing else. But this is just my opinion.
Of course in philosophical terms God is an idea. But it is an interesting idea that can inspire people to think and do good things. Plus, what else is there? What good would it do to contemplate a vacuous sky or a picture of Karl Marx? Rather boring an uninspiring, don't you think? The whole point of having a mind is to create and contemplate ideas and to manifest our freedom of thought. The role of philosophy is to stimulate thought not to suppress it.
There is a pitfall in the middle of religion just as there is in atheism. Religion I think does more good than harm in the West in this time, but that is because there is a balance with people who don't agree with religion.
Quoting Apollodorus
Philosophy!
Quoting Apollodorus
A lot of atheists' ideas involve mathematics in some ways. "Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry." B. Russell, Study of Mathematics
Quoting Gregory
It's not 'my' God. It's God.
Quoting Gregory
Not anything I said. Just gibberish.
Psychoanalysis would simply view your arguments as a confidence in yourself. Are you Islamic or subscribe to no religion?
Quoting Gregory
Psychoanalysis is not a person - it doesn't have a view. And don't focus on me, focus on the arguments. You Buddhists are so self-absorbed - I'm not.
I can disprove arguments for God.
1) necessary
2) contingent
3) neither
4) or something else
3 and 4 are correct.
Yes, of course there is philosophy. Cogito ergo sum. That's why Plato introduced the concept of ideas. Without ideas we go braindead. Even mathematics can be boring or turn you into a nutjob if you don't watch it. ????? ????, meden agan, "nothing in excess". You need some balance to stay sane.
Socrates was an atheist. Plato and Aristotle believed in a different thing which did not involve gods. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, never believed in gods. Sartre and Camus did not believe in gods. Russell forumated the reason why not to believe in gods, or to believe. Of the moderns, Lucas, Strentenholz, Beckermeier, Gerd Muller, Kocsis Tibor, Puskas Ocsi, and many others don't believe in god.
Your argument, my friend, reeks of the fallacy of "appeal to authority". In other words, no.
It's not a possibility. There's no question you're finding this bewildering.
You ask why an omnipotent being would be omnibenevolent. I tell you. I take you through it in baby steps. But you're already so determined that you're right, you can't understand what I am saying, right?
Shall we do it again? (It's said the average person needs a new idea explained 7 times before it'll sink in. And that's an average person).
An omnipotent person can do anything.
That's what omnipotent means.
So an omnipotent person can do anything.
Repeat that, ooo, 30 times so it sinks in.
To be able to do anything, you need to be Reason, the source of all norms and evaluations.
Therefore, an omnipotent person will be Reason. Repeat that 30 times too. And don't change the wording into Wooden nonsense (reason is an aspect of God, or whatever). An omnipotent person will be Reason. Not 'a reason'. Reason.
What is it to be all-good? It is to be fully approved of by Reason. That's why, if you're all-good, you have no reason to be any different. Which is another way of saying that if you're all-good, then Reason doesn't favour you being any different to how you are. Which is what would be the case if Reason fully approved of how you are. Which is what being all-good consists in.
So, again, repeat 30 times. "Being all-good, and being fully approved of by Reason are one and the same"
Now.....will Reason fully approve of how she is? Yes. Why? Because she's all powerful, remember? And so if she disapproves of anything about herself, she can just change it. So......she'll fully approve of how she is.
And she's Reason. And what are you if you're fully approved of by Reason? You're all-good, that's what.
So, an omnipotent person will also be omnibenevolent.
That's called an 'explanation'.
It's beautiful. It's elegant. You should be in absolute awe of it.
So, is your argument that we should have no self-confidence and that if we do we are "Islamic"? Would you mind expanding on the logic of that?
Says who?
Plus, @Trinidad has been banned. You're talking to yourself.
I have a God too. I take it out for walkies three times a day. It loves the walkies. It shits all over the place, and I collect its leftovers in a plastic bag. I first put a leash on it, because that is the law's requirement around here.
..... Waitta second. You guys are not talking about gods... you talk about dougs. Diffenent subject, sorry for the interruption.
No, he means there is only garbage coming out of you, and the only type of people who can tolerate themselves while being you, are shit-eating gentlemen full of self-confidence.
No disrespect.
Aha, you mean like yourself. I cannot but concur then. You are soo right and soo bright, you know.
And sometimes we talk about Marx. Not "diffenent". Same subject.
Really? Well this should be good. What are you going to do for an encore? "I jump grand canyon on peddling bike"
Quoting Gregory
Er, no. Just no.
Yes, but some may argue that they are all foreigners, so they don't count.
Quoting god must be atheist
Well, you've just appealed to the authority of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and many others. So, presumably, you reek even more. So, sorry, but nope.
Quoting god must be atheist
Yes, "forumated" is exactly what I thought they did. I totally agree.
It is good to know that you spend part of everyday picking up the excrement of others. This world is a prison, and you've taken it upon yourself to punish yourself. Well done: God would approve.
What one earth are you on about now? You're just flailing around trying desperately to find problems. Shall we recap: omnipotence implies omnibenevolence in that an omnipotent being will also be omnibenevolent. No problem there, then. They're not incompatible properties. You think they are, for goodness knows what reason. But they're not. Omnipotence positively implies omnibenevolence, as I keep explaining over and over and over again.
Now what you're doing is trying to raise an entirely different challenge - this time to do with God's relation to time. You vaguely remember hearing or reading that there is some kind of a problem. Well, what exactly?
Why is the idea of god so powerful if she is infinite? Why not finite? Why not be awed by a finite god?
Philosophy and spirituality deal with infinite things. Its odd that you don't understand infinite things, but you don't seem like a true philosophy person to me. God can be finite or infinite. They kind of cancel out logically but they are great ideas, good for growth beyond Ego
Er, what? I mean, what are you on about? Reason can do anything, because Reason constitutively determines what's possible. Thus the omnipotent being would have to be Reason because otherwise the omnipotent being would be constrained by the laws of Reason (Reason and Reason alone has the power to make contradictions true, and to make anything true, for what it is for a proposition to be true is for it to be being asserted by Reason).
Anyway, that's all way above your intellectual pay grade, clearly. Quoting tim wood
No it doesn't. They're equivalent properties. It's like saying 'that makes cheese prior to fromage' or some such nonsense.
Quoting tim wood
No, the issue is what is it to 'be' good. And to 'be' good is to be such that Reason fully approves of you. Slow. Did you repeat these things 30 times to yourself like you were told? I hope you didn't try and understand it all in one go.
The point was that you don't know what infinite being means, so you have not gone through the Plato stage, let alone beyond it
Where did I say God was infinite?
So you see design and contingency in the world. You say a mind must be behind it. But why say it's all powerful. You already said you don't know what an infinite God is. But your God has infinite contradictions it can create. So it's infinite contra what you say. But wait, why does this mind have to be infinite in your view?
Your opinions are contingent
And you can't read. I said rewritten not reread
Agreed, the thousands of gods that are, for example, part of the Hindu & Greek pantheon are not omnipotent, in fact their powers need a lot of help from cunning I'm told - reminds me of Superman and Lex Luthor. Might want to initiate an inquiry in that direction - brains vs brawn.
Also true that for things to get done, assuming there's some kind of committee/council of gods, harmony is a must. If not, any plans they have won't see the light of day.
In short, there really is, at least based on my previous arguments, no logical necessity for monotheism.
What I want to do now is to offer a different argument that just popped into my head.
First a few things that need to be clarified:
1. Polytheism, by my reckoning, makes a lot of sense. Look around you - there's one word to describe the situation earth is in, "chaos". There's one possibility that could explain it - many gods (polytheism) vying for supremacy or simply disagreeing with each other over the world and how it shoud be run.
2. Atheism: There are no gods. What's mighty interesting is a world without any god would also be chaotic. In other words, having many gods bickering over the world is equivalent to a world in which there are no gods, the results in both cases are identical - disorder.
Polytheism = Atheism. It's a paradox!
Suppose now that a believer is given the options:
1. Polytheism
2. Monotheism
The believer can't choose polytheism (1) because that can't be distinguished from atheism. Hence the believer will opt for 2. Monotheism. Put simply, if you must believe in the divine, you have to subscribe to monotheism (2).
One might then conclude the monotheist is not yet out of the woods because one god is incompatible with the facts of the world (the chaos/disorder therein). That's a (small) price monotheists are willing to pay so long as they can be distinguished from atheism which isn't possible if they were polytheists.
Make any sense?
Quoting Bartricks
It seems the argument for monotheism has nothing to do with the God's powers. See my argument in my reply to Apollodorus.
I just thought Christopher Hitchens' quote might just spice up the debate. See vide infra.
[quote=Christopher Hitchens]From a plurality of prime movers, the monotheists have bargained it down to a single one. They are getting ever nearer to the true, round figure.[/quote]
Unfortunately, for the late great Hitchens, having zero gods (atheism) is a gateway to having not one but many gods (polytheism).
Well, that's exactly how they used to see it. There was a council of gods ruled by a supreme God as can be seen from the OT:
The LORD is greater than all gods: Exodus 18:11
Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods? Exodus 15:11
God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods. Psalm 82:1
In general, each city or city-state had a patron god that was worshiped above other gods. there was also a national God who was above other gods. Zeus was the "King of the gods" among the Greeks, Yahweh was the Lord of all gods among the Hebrews, etc. So, monotheism started with henotheism and monolatry. As long as you regard one God as being above everything else, it doesn't really matter in any significant way. So, from that perspective, there is no great contradiction between monotheism and polytheism.
But I don't agree on the chaos/disorder aspect. I can't see too much of that where I live in any case. It all seems pretty orderly to me. Perhaps not 100% perfect, but could be worse, so why complain?
Bu there can be more than one. There is no reason to suppose there is more than one, for adding another will not explain anything that could not be more efficiently explained by one. But there can be more than one.
This isn't hard.
I am still waiting for a puzzle. You haven't shown that there is the least problem with the omni properties. I indeed,I have shown how they flow from omnipotence.
But anyway, sensing that you were out of your depth and unable to comprehend how someone was so easily dealing with what you were convinced were serious problems (despite being unable to say precisely what they were), you flailed about and guffed a lot of hot air about God and time. Now, what is the problem with time supposed to be, Planky?
Now, Timmy Two Planks, what is the problem with God and time? Come on Planks, what is it?
All those guys had different definitions of the apex (God), but most took the existence of pyramidal Natural Hierarchy for granted. The notion of a non-hierarchical (egaliatarian) Nature seems to be a rather modern idea. Obviously, that classless concept does not describe how-it-is, but how-it-ought-to-be. Since the order of the real world (red in tooth & claw) is not Edenic (Lions eat grass and play with Lambs), they conclude that it was not created by someone as smart, or moral, as themselves. Hence, our disorderly world, with random acts of cruelty, is a result of erratic events instead of intentional intelligence. QED
However, that idealistic appraisal seems to assume that an all-powerful God would or should create only perfection. But perfection is complete & static, with no room to grow. So, what if the top guy (mono a mano) intended instead to create an ongoing logical process that approaches perfection gradually and slowly? In that case, the current hierarchical structure of evolution would make sense in terms of Bayesian Logic. No? :chin:
Bayesian Logic :
probabilistic logic that evolves over time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability
Truth is the property propositions have when Reason asserts them. So that means......she's got control over what's true.
There's no greater control than the control Reason has.
If you think there is, then either you think there's reason to think there is greater control possible - in which case you're appealing to Reason and just being dumb - or you think there's no reason to think there's greater control possible.
Now, answer my question - what's the problem with Time Timmy? It's looking like you dun don't know.
Is God finite or infinite?
I wouldn't count on personal experience to draw any conclusions about the state of the world. World wars (2 of them and the 3rd on fhe horizons), the 1918 flu pandemic and the ongoing COVID-19 one, crime rates are appalling in some parts of the world, climate change issues, etc. In short, disharmony is the name of the game.
A glass can be half empty or half full. It's all a matter of perspective. If you insists on seeing chaos and disorder everywhere and at all times, then probably that's what you will see.
You - you - mentioned a supposed problem with time after it became dimly apparent to you that you weren't able to say why omnipotence and omnibenevolence weren't compatible. I mean, you are going to just keep saying there's a problem, right, even though I have shown you time and time again that omnipotence leads to omnibenevolence and you have raised no criticism. You've just gone 'what?' a lot.
I can't understand what you have just said about time. But an omnipotent being can do anything including divesting themselves of omnipotence. So they are not determined always to be omnipotent. They most likely will, of course, but your assertion that if one has omnipotence one always does is false given that an omnipotent person can cease being so whenever they like. So I don't know why you think otherwise.
It is monistic not because it posits one mind, but because it posits one 'kind' of thing - immaterial minds - and then seeks to understand everything else in terms of them.
Morality exists as the imperatives and values of Reason. And Reason is a mind and she's omnipotent and omniscient due to being Reason and we can infer that she will be omnibenevolent because being omnibenevolent involves being valued by Reason and she's going fully to value herself becasue she has the power to change anything about herself that she disapproves of.
An omnipotent being can do anything and thus they can commit any immoral act. Why do you think she would not be able to commit any immoral act?
Sorry, forgot about this. What kinds of immoral acts are possible in realities consisting of just one mind? Who could be the victim, other than the victimizer? A cosmic mind could harm itself (be a victim of itself), I suppose, but self-harm is not immoral. If I, the one mind, choose to self harm and torment myself with unpleasant thoughts, it is my right to do so as an autonomous agent. Nothing immoral has taken place.
All I can say is anyone, that includes you, knows more than me about world affairs - I don't watch the news often, nor do I read much, listening is not my strong suit. I'll defer to your better judgment then. G'day.
I don't endorse that view - it is an idealist form of solipsism and it is patently absurd. But if it were true, then morality would still be what it is - the imperatives and values of God - it is just that the only person subject to those evaluations and imperatives would be God herself.
Anyway, it is not my view and it is indefensible.
There's an external sensible world. It is made of sensations. Sensations exist as the sensations of a mind. Therefore there is another mind bearing the sensations constitutive of the external world. Therefore solipsism is false.
I have a sensible body through which I can express attitudes and objectives and so on. And I am disposed to attribute minds to sensible bodies that sufficiently resemble mine. My reason tells me that this practice is epistemically justified - that is, what I believe in this way I have epistemic reason to believe - and that it is epistemicaly responsible to infer the presence of other minds on such a basis as well. As it is unlikely this would be the case if there were no minds associated with those other sensible bodies, most likely there are minds associated with those bodies. Thus solipsism is false.
The first and last arguments are arguments anyone can use against solipsism, the second is an idealist case against solipsism.
It is ironic that idealism is associated with solipsism given that it is even less plausible on that view than others.