Alexander Pruss's Blog

Combine these two rather Stoic theses: No one can make the fully virtuous person worse off Doing what is morally wrong always makes you w...

Suppose random quantum processes result in deep marks on a stone that spell out: Thou shalt not eat goat. – God What would need to be tr...

A normative power is supposed to be a power to directly change normative reality. We can, of course, indirectly change normative reality by...

On divine desire variants of divine command ethics, necessarily an action is right just in case it accords with God’s what God wants. But i...

Some people think that a constituent (whole or partial) of consent is some sort of inner mental act of agreement with the thing one consents...

Once upon a time, there was an isolated village in the mountains. It had a large electronic billboard. Every so often, unsigned demands appe...

Some divine “command” theories do not ground obligations in commands as such, but in divine mental states, such as his willings, intentions ...

Here is a question I have wondered about and have never heard or seen much discussion of: What does it mean to say that God engaged in som...

Suppose that the captain impersonates an admiral and yells: “Turn hard to starboard!” The sailors ought to turn hard to starboard and the ca...

I think one of the most powerful objections to divine command theory is MacIntyre’s question as to which divine attributes make it be the ca...

Parents have the authority to command their children and parents have a special duty to care for children. Officers have special duties of c...

I used to think one could get by without assertions in a society, using only promises. Here's the trick I had in mind. Instead of assert...

Commanding is meant to create an obligating reason for another, while requesting is meant to create a non-obligating one. Promisin...

I saw a woman with a tattoo that said only: CAVEAT LECTOR.

Suppose I say to Bill: "Make all of your papers be between two and four pages." Bill hands in an eight page paper for h...

One way to help out a sceptic about something is by arguing that what she is sceptical about is way more widespread than she think...

Either God does or does not have moral obligations. If he has moral obligations, divine command theory seems to be false. Divine co...

This post pulls out one strand from my argument here and makes it into an independent argument, under the inspiration of Chris Tw...

The following is even rougher than is usual for posts.  It's notes to self mainly. Consider this anti-self-referentiality (ASR) thesis...

A standard line of objection against divine command theories is centered on the counterfactual: Even if God commanded it, tortur...