Dispositionalism - Blake Bauserman

 As I was writing my term paper, which originally sought to inquire about the source of myth, I took an unexpected direction into the realm of deontology, divine command theory, and dispositionalism. I would like to take this post to highlight the latter of these three.

Dispositionalism is a method by which God creates the world. Interestingly, this theory ties itself up heavily within the Euthyphro as it has a strong relation, whether negative or positive, to theistic meta-ethics.

Ben Page defines dispositionalism as the act by which God creates objects with dispositions, forming natural laws. It is a sort of two for one deal. He uses the example of objects with a negative charge. God creates an object with a negative charge with the ability to repel other negatively charged objects. As a result, this creates a law by which negative charges repel other negative charges. This, too, can exist within morality.

God has the ability to create which page calls definitional essences, which could be thought of as a universal ethic in this case. The existence of these are logically necessary but can take many different forms. In this sense, God can create goodness how he sees fit. A world can exist where murder is the norm. In this case, it would be done by creating a rational creature by which their rationale states that murder is acceptable; thus, murder is acceptable. Though this is an experimental case, this is to say nothing of any universal ethic within our world.