only if we add in a premise which links them

And I do.

That he doesn’t know that, or what that premise is, is what proves my point: he is not even addressing my argument. He doesn’t even know what it is.

Read my actual argument: The End of Christianity, pp. 360-61, the entire Argument 2, which provides that linking premise he is ignoring. Particularly premise 2.10.

Thank you Dr Carrier.

I askt Dr Malpass about this, and for whot it’s wurth, he’s rispondid:

Thanks for bringing this up. Of course, it’s easy to claim that the other guy doesn’t understand the argument. For instance, it seems to me that he doesn’t understand the point I was making in the section he quoted ?

Here is what I mean. In the bit he quoted of me, I’m saying that you can get a normative conclusion out of the (desire) + (optimal way of realising desire) pair, but only if we add in a premise which links them. So this first argument is invalid:

I desire x
y is the optimal way of realising x
Therefore, I ought to do y. INVALID

The only way to make this valid is by adding in a new premise, like this:

I desire x
y is the optimal way of realising x
2a. If 1 and 2, then I ought to do y (NEW PREMISE)
Therefore, I ought to do y. VALID

Here is the point. The new premise, 2a, normative. Plainly, it mentions the word ‘ought’.

So the new argument is valid, but it’s not an example of getting an ought from an is. That is, it isn’t an example of an argument with purely descriptive premises and a normative conclusion. It’s an example where one of the premises is normative. It’s getting an ought from two is’s and an ought. That’s why this isn’t a solution to the problem.

He can say that I am just reformulating his solution, and say that I thereby don’t understand his argument. But that doesn’t stop it being, it seems to me obvious, that this isn’t a solution to the problem he claims to have solved. Anyone can get normative conclusions from a set of premises that are at least partly normative. The challenge is to do it with premises that are purely descriptive. Needless to say, Carrier doesn’t do this.

(Prediction: if he responds again, he will say I continue to misunderstand the argument, but he won’t produce a valid argument with purely descriptive premises and a normative conclusion).

That article gets the argument wrong. He incorrectly ignores key premises and syllogisms.

Example: he writes “unless we insert a premise which links what we desire, the optimal way of realising it, and what we ‘ought’ to do, we cannot derive anything about what we ought to do,” which is literally a restatement of my argument—yet he presents it as a critique. He thereby monstrates he does not even correctly apprehend what my argument is, and has no actual response to it.

There have only been three in the entire history of peer reviewed publishing: mine (published by Sheffield-Phoenix in 2014) and Lataster’s (published by Brill in 2019); and the last peer reviewed book on the subject before that, pro or con in fact, was Case’s defense of historicity published by the University of Chicago press…in 1912 (last edition, 1923). I cover its contents in OHJ (see author index).

Only two mainstream defenses of historicity have been published since (I don’t count Christian apologetics, which is deeply unreliable), neither of them peer reviewed (Casey and Ehrman). A few peer reviewed articles critiquing my book are also pertinent (Gathercole, Gullotta, and Petterson; a complete list of responses is here).

As to why no one will produce a peer reviewed defense of historicity in a hundred years since, it’s hard to say. They certainly could; there should be no difficulty getting one through peer review (peer review does not determine if a thesis is true; all it does is determine that it is argued within the standards of the field). Generally, the behavior seems to be just armchair dismissal rather than taking the question seriously. Historicity is treated as an unquestionable fact that requires no defense. Which is precisely why it requires a defense. You can tell even from the peer reviewed critiques they did not really read my book carefully and rarely address its actual arguments; and they produce no contrary argument (e.g. they make no case for the probability of historicity and seem disinterested in doing so). But the fact that even Casey and Ehrman decided to produce sloppy armchair pop market books on the subject, rather than meet the rigorous standards of peer review, suggests the same: they think they can be lazy because they believe no one should even take the question seriously enough to be serious about it. That’s the best hypothesis I can come up with. It’s otherwise perplexing.

As to why my book is “not in agreement” with this never-defended assumption of historicity is precisely that same reason: 95% of scholars refuse to even read my book so as to consider its case. Even the tiny fraction who try to address the book, ignore almost its entire contents, sometimes don’t even correctly describe its argument, and still make no positive case for any probability of historicity. Laziness; and an irrational presumption that historicity requires no defense. In short, all rational methodology is abandoned as soon as historicity is challenged. And as long as that’s how academics behave, they will persist in their irrational, undefended presumptions. Much the same has happened with other clearly-false theories (like the Q hypothesis and, once upon a time, the historicity of Moses and the Patriarchs: see accounts of the latter by Davies and Thompson).

If not can you point me to a scholar that has written such a book that opposes your findings?

If not other such book exists why do you suppose that is so? With all of the Christian books and Theologians out there I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t want to.
Is it because they’ve tried and failed because they can’t pass peer review (or don’t try because they know they can’t pass peer review)?

Also in a sentence can you explain why your book is not in a agreement of 95% of all of the other scholars on this topic (according to Bart Ehrman).

Is this about getting from an ‘is’ (science) tu an ‘ought’ (morality)?

On this u’v been remarkt upon eg here:

https://useofreason.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/richard-carrier-not-getting-an-ought-from-an-is/

Thanks

They’re right. But kind of going at it wrong. It’s kind of like hunting for dinner with hand grenades. I think Christian apologists get distracted by all the explaining of physics at them and assume this misses the point that “if we start with the assumption that God can suspend physics all this is moot.” It’s more important to focus on the second half of this assumption: the probability that such a god exists at all. Otherwise, they are right about Bayesian analysis supporting legend over truth and rendering supernatural gods too unlikely to be explanatorily useful.

https://www.shermjournal.org/home/archives/vol-2-no-1/2020-vol2-no1-04/

The only reason to do anything over anything else is to maximize satisfaction with your life as it actually is and who you have actually in fact become. All moral systems presume this even when they pretend they don’t. I have demonstrated this with respect to even a theistic divine command theory. Likewise Kantian systems. And so on. All the sort of thing we discuss in this class.

And sumwun whu hasn’t got or dusn’t subscribe t’ those wellbeing goals is amoral?