Euthyphro Dilemma: The Emptiness Problem

"Is what is good commanded by god because it is good, or is it good because it is commanded by god?"

The emptiness problem stems from the second horn of the dilemma. The divine command theorist is commited to saying that what God commands is good. They are also commited to saying that God is good. This makes is appear as if what is reall being said is an empty tautology. If what is good is what god commands then in order for god to be good all he has to do is to follow his own commands, or that in order for god to be good he has to not do anything he forbids himself to do. It may be true, but the meaning is empty.

One type of response to this is to deny that the tautology is empty or insignificant. An example that has been given is to say that water and H2O is a tautology and is scientifically significant. They might claim that this means that the tautology about god would therefore be significant. The problem with this is that water and H2O are similar, but are not true synonyms (as there are no synonyms in the english language). You simply cannot say something significant all the time by changing H2O with water. For example, it has some meaning to say that H2O is the chemical symbols for water. If water and H2O could be used interchangeably but keep the significance of a sentence then we could restate the above into: H2O is the chemical symbol for H2O, or water is the chemical symbol for water. There is something significant to say in the first sentence, but the following two sentences lost the meaning and became empty tautologies, such as what happens with god's actions being good because he doesn't forbid them.

Another response would be to deny that saying god is good is a tautology. If being good is to do as god wills/commands, then it might appear as if it could be false for god to do as he wills. There are many people that might will themselves to do something [like exercise more, stop smoking, etc] but don't end up doing so. It is therefore concievable that god could perform an action that does not follow his own will, and therefore we must reject that this is the root of his goodness.

This usually leads to another response in that it is claimed that god's goodness is of a different kind than human goodness, or that divine command theory only applies to human goodness. This seems to lead back to a previous problem in that there seems to be a criteria for goodness for god that is independent of his will or commandments. It appears as if god is subject, once again, to a definition of goodness that is independent of his will and commands. If something else defines god's goodness, we still cannot be sure that what is good follow from his subjugation of goodness for himself, and can still draw that the possibility remains that what he commands of wills could be arbitrary in addition to goodness being independent of him (which the divine command theorist does not want to claim).