Why ought one do that which is good?
Why should one do that which is good? No, I don't think that good is synonymous with, "something one ought to do". For example, most people would agree that selling all your worldly possessions and donating the money to charity is something that would be good. However, that doesn't mean that one is obligated to do so. Please input into this conversation with your own takes.
Comments (336)
As a simple answer we ought to do what is good just because it is good. We ought to do what is best just because it is best. In real life it is more complicated than that though, because although we share a common humanity, we are also all different. If selling all your worldly possessions and giving the proceeds to charity would be good for you, better than any other course of action, then you ought to do it. But it may not be the best, most appropriate course for you, and we should never do anything on the basis of some abstract principle.
I'll go to the evolutionary answer. What is the evolutionary advantage of being good? Well, it keeps you as part of the group, and belonging to a group meant the difference between survival and perishing. (Maybe it still does.) A social animal relies on acceptance in the group.
I'll add to that - it feels good to do good.
You ask, Why are we obligated to do good? then you give an example where you conclude we are not obligated to do good. So, youve answered your question - we are not.
One doesn't have to. But if one wants to, you know, live, it is highly recommended.
I suppose you mean, why do anything you don't have to or aren't legally obligated to. That's a fair question. In business, it's all about accounting and running a tight ship, no room for pesky things such as empathy, trust, and warmth. That's why societies have laws; you stay in between the lines and your business remains your business. Of course, people love supporting companies that at the end of the day seem to "have a heart", whether they have generous employee policies or donate to charities, because at the end of the day, we are all human and involved in this crazy journey of life together. You never know when it might be you who is under the bus or suddenly not well off, knowing people who don't mind lending a hand just makes society a better place to be, which makes the workforce more productive, and ties into national security as well. It's a neat little package that all makes perfect sense, really.
But you ought sell all your worldly goods and donate them to charity. You also ought be self-reliant, which depends on your having worldly goods. You are going to have to work out some sort of balance.
That is, your posited counter example to synonymity does not quite work.
And so is right, we ought to do what is good just because it is good. What is good is what we ought do, and what we ought do is what is good.
, , that we have evolved to do something or to prefer something simply does not imply that we ought to do that thing. There remains the logical gap between what we do and what we ought do. Until you get your heads around that, you are not even addressing ethical issues.
This ignores human nature. It's akin to saying, "Do this because I said so."
Humans operate on a system of rewards and punishments. If you do good, there will be rewards. if you do bad, there will be consequences.
Quoting Banno
The use of the word "ought" implies guidelines externally put on us. So, okay, what guides us? I would say that belonging to the group is our biggest social motivator.
This seems wrong to me. I don't think I see the equivalence in usage.
What is good seems relative to a person's will - self-centred. What is good for one may not be good for another. Murdering is great for the murderer, shitty for the murdered's family.
What we ought to do seems relative to the will of others - other centred. We ought not murder because other people don't want us to.
That's how it seems to me too.
How does it ignore human nature, and how is it akin to "Do this because I said so"?
Correctly analysed, I don't think anyone should do what is good.
As mentioned, we operate on a system of rewards an punishments.
Quoting Banno
It's not giving a reason for doing good.
Sure. Ought we?
Quoting Questioner
The point is that "one ought do good" is no more informative than "one ought do what one ought do" or "doing good is good".
I can understand that. It's human nature to take and covet and much worse, that is true. However in this case, "being a team player" is not simple evolution but long-crafted social institution that has advanced greatly so over the millennia. We have new understanding of psychology and sociology that seems to offer near-empirical evidence as to what builds and sustains societies that last and what factors, behaviors, and deviations lead to their collapse. Being of high social regard for pleasant demeanor, selflessness, and going above and beyond means more people will have your back, in a simple cost-benefit analysis sort of way. On the inverse "no one wants an untrustworthy person around" is another simple yet relevant example that seems to stand the test of time and type of society. Bear in mind I was partly answering the OP with a possibly misconstrued notion of it seeming to ask: "Why should we not do bad things" as opposed to "Why should we (go out of our way to) do good".
This question seems moot, since we do. We would have to totally reprogram human brains to get away from that. We would have to be a totally different species!
Quoting Banno
One ought to do good because it contributes to their survival.
Then you are choosing not to make ethical considerations. You assume that how things are is how they ought be, a recipe for stagnation.
Quoting Questioner
Why ought one contribute to our survival?
There's this whole big area of reasoning that you are avoiding.
Yep.
You're probably right. But the question seems simple. "Should we do good?" Of course, we should do good. I always feel good when I do the right thing. Then I can better respect myself.
But I am also a big believer in the biological basis of behavior, and primitive motivations.
That's the right response to the OP.
Cheers.
Quoting Questioner
That might be so, but it is important not to conclude that what is the right thing to do is what makes you feel good.
I guess it depends on the person and i am only speaking from my own experience.
I wonder about those that are pleased with themselves in the act of helping others. They are happy to help, reward to self in it AND they are rewarded from acting, helping another by the reaction they get, the need is something they crave, to be needed...personality attribute, perhaps...not going there (I will though) Rewarded in the act and after in praise. Sometimes gifts or cash if they are lucky or really manipulative.
I think, it's important to note the feeling we get from doing this "good," and is it relevant to consider. How much time was avail. to weigh out the options, THINK, and make decision in how to proceed. What was going on around you? How is the decision instinctual for some and debated by others? That instinct is there for both, the brain is working the mind is silently focused.
How quick was the mind made up before the body catches on? Guilty? Is that a gut feeling, the body reacting to one thing while the will goes or stays where it ought...and does/will/has. SO what is the move? To help or to pass? Is this step verifiable? I think so...
Your experience is as valid as anyone's.
Quoting Questioner
It is worth considering what can be said about what we ought do as well as what I ought do. How should we set things up, collectively? See for instance Rawls veil of ignorance.
Quoting Questioner
And again, is the goal to achieve "the highest level of being human", or just to do what is right?
But, why, perhaps is what Questioner (and to an extent myself, if not for purposes of discussion) may wonder. It seems self-evident, sure. Well, tell us why. Naturally I find the reasons plain as day, as I've posted, but for the sake of philosophic inquiry and higher understanding, make the argument, why not?
You're not seriously suggesting this is an actual position are you? This is tautological and unworkable.
Nb: is that a. R. Fripp reference or something else I'm not aware of?
A good conundrum for myself.
Why should one, in the general sense, do good is much harder for me to answer than why the good is attractive.
For one tempted by the good there is no "Why do what is good?" -- it's a light that brings moths in to burn them up.
No one is obligated by anything in the existential sense -- we are all free to choose.
But you do what is good because that's what you do (at least, as long as it helps others -- there's a darker side to this that hurts others, but that's not what I mean by the good)
Another example - should one be needed: Jack deserves to be tortured (as he freely tortured others). it is good when a person gets what they deserve. Yet it is not right to torture Jack.
Another demonstration that we are dealing with different concepts is that the property of goodness is a property that anything can have (in principle). States of affairs, character traits, intentions. But the property of rightness is a property that only actions can have. Actions can be good too, but they're not the same concept as acts and only acts can be right.
Biology can inform ethics without ethics being reducible to biology.
In some sense, intentional action seems to always seek after some good. For example, when we eat, we seek some good, be it the enjoyment of the food, the satiety of our appetite, good health, not offending a cook, etc. Likewise, people generally play games because they enjoy them.
This holds true for bad acts as well. We generally steal because we want the good of getting to possess what is stolen, or else of the thrill of stealing, etc. As points out, the murderer normally seeks some good, the reestablishment of their honor, vengeance, etc.
In ethics, we are concerned with what we [I]should[/I] want. It is clear that we can want things that are not good for us, like wanting to engage in adultery even though we know this would be both wrong and disastrous, or the alcoholics desire for a drink they do not wish to have the desire for.
The human good, human flourishing, living a good life, being a good person, etc. involves biology but cannot be wholly explained by it. We might allow that human beings are by nature social animals, and that status is important for self-actualization, but still see that the way status is gained and maintained depends heavily on culture and individual preferences.
Virtue, on the classical view, involves not only doing the right thing but also wanting the right things. Virtue can be trained. Research suggests that people can indeed habituate themselves to wanting good things. The virtues are what allow one to act justly in challenging situations, or just habitually. Doing what is good while not enjoying it is mere continence. Obviously, it's preferable to be happy while doing what is right.
I think another factor here is self-determination. Is our happiness dependent on good fortune. Health, wealth, lovers, status, time for hobbies, etc. can all be lost. They often are at some point in a life. A virtuous person is insulated from these losses. Many historical paragons, saints and sages, seem practically immune to bad fortune, penning sublime works and focusing on a concern for others as they undergo imprisonment or torture, or face immanent execution. In a sense, then, the pinnacle of virtue also becomes a sort of self-determining flourishing.
And of course, virtue helps with freedom even in less extreme cases. Being courageous, prudent, charitable, magnanimous, temperate, etc. help one avoid the traps that land people in situations they cannot easily escape, be it heavy debt, weight they cannot lose, bullied in a relationship, in family feuds, etc. Virtue cannot preclude these, but it both prevents them and makes them manageable.
I do think this is a problem modern ethics creates for itself. It tends to be more rules based (an after effect of the Reformation and theologies that precluded any strong role for human virtue). Even as the theology has crumbled, the structure has often remained.
Another problem is making the "moral good" a sort of sui generis "goodness" cut off from all other goods (e.g. being a "good baseball player," "good cars," etc. ) I much prefer simply acknowledging that bad things have some good to them, or some [I]apparent[/I] good. In this case, it's easier to explain immoral acts in terms of people falling for appearances. This is concupiscence, the love for mere apparent good.
Why engage in vices? Because they are fun, which [I]is[/I] a good. Why do so many people, especially (young) men, come to idolize and mimic characters with glaring character flaws (we could consider the long standing appeal of Tyler Durden of "Fight Club" or Tony Montana of "Scarface")? Because these characters [I]do[/I] embody some virtues in dramatic fashion. Tyler Durden is smart, courageous, iron willed, etc. They have some of the key ingredients for flourishing in spades. Such characters just also lack other virtues or have glaring vices.
You should want the virtues because they are most likely to make you flourish, and because they help others flourish (which is key to our flourishing and freedom at any rate). You're safest when everyone around you is freer and wants what best for you. If they only do what is good for you because of coercion, then your happiness is unstable because that coercion can break down (and you are not free to remove that coercion without consequences).
As Saint Augustine says: "Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices." Epictetus, the philosopher-slave, makes a similar point.
And there's the rub. If the individual conscience is the sole arbiter of virtue, then who's to say that's not good? Suffice to say that St Augustine holds convictions on that question which may not be shared by others, even if I myself can plainly see the sense in them. So again in the absence of a summum bonum it is hard to see what provides the pole to the moral compass, so to speak.
Good brings happiness. Bad and evil brings unhappiness. Doing good feels good and makes one happy. If happiness is the purpose of life, doing good makes sense. Because doing good brings happiness.
Doing good out of obligation can be good, but it doesn't always bring happiness. Doing good because it is good thing to do brings happiness.
IMO, the highest level of being human is to be your most true, authentic self. This means getting the most in touch with your natural instincts, with your "wild knowing." The question becomes, does this coincide with doing right or doing wrong?
Are we born compassionate, and learn aggression, or are we born aggressive, and learn compassion?
What is our genetic predisposition before the environment makes its mark on us?
Much food for thought. The relationship between ethics and biology. From what you've said, I take it to mean that ethics is something bigger and beyond biology. Then, what else are we?
This reminds me of the story about the two sons of an alcoholic. One son grows up to be an alcoholic. When asked why, he answers, "I watched my father."
The other son grows up and stays completely away from alcohol. When asked why, he says, "I watched my father."
How do we explain the difference between the two sons?
Actually, it is our own actions that we must always present to other people as being good and right, we must talk about ourselves as "I'm only doing what is good and right" and "I'm only acting in ways one should act".
Metaethics and virtue signaling go hand in hand.
I want to emphasize this point. Its a big fork in the road for ethical theory. You can try to define ethical words like ought and good and right to mean, roughly, referring to the stuff weve evolved to choose or prefer, all things being equal. But you cant just do it by fiat; this requires a powerful argument, because it cuts against the grain of how those words have always been used. You certainly cant just stipulate it on the grounds of some sort of obviousness or scientific/evolutionary knowledge. Nor, it seems to me, can you use something like this as evidence for your argument:
Quoting Outlander
If this could be shown to be true, it still wouldnt answer the (traditional) ethical question of what is the right thing to do. Were supposed to combine this new understanding story with the idea that, obviously, any human being should want to build and sustain societies that last. But this isnt true now, and it wasnt true in classical Greece. Its never been true. Why should you or I or anyone else value sustaining society more than our own comfort or advantage? That, to me, is a genuine ethical question that cant even be posed until, as @Banno points out, we stop thinking that some naturalistic fact about human beings or evolution is going to contain the answer.
We need to take the long view of our evolution, going far back beyond civilization.
Im going to return to my earlier point that notions of good and bad only evolved through social interactions. The universe is neutral. To determine if something is good or bad requires human judgement, and what is being judged is ones behavior towards another. Does it serve the interests of the group? This is what we are hard-wired for.
Consider the universal virtues of honesty, justice, loyalty or humanity they can only come to light in relationships between people, or groups. Even creativity requires the artist and the receiver of the art.
There is no such thing as solitary goodness, or badness. Goodness is manifested in co-operation and strengthened relationships, and badness in harm to others.
Now, the question "Why should we?" might be answered by: Because we want to belong to the group. Because we want to live in peace. Because we want safety and security.
And "we" don't care if all these peace, safety, and security come at the expense of the other group.
We "need to"? Why? Why in the world should I care about what happened millions of years in the past, or what will happen thousands of years in the future? Why, in particular, should I care about "sustaining society" more than I care about looking out for Number 1?
(These are meant to be devil's-advocate questions, but they do demand answers.)
Sure, but this seems in the same vein as: "if the individual is the sole arbiter of truth, then who's to say that anything is or isn't true?"
Yet surely we can be right or wrong about "what is good for us." And indeed, we often realize later that we were in error about what was [I]truly[/I] good for us, and even that others understood what was truly better for us more than did we ourselves.
Supposing reason is like a stool, it seems to me that one cannot chop off the leg of practical reason (reasoning vis-á-vis good and bad) and expect the stool not to tip over. For you might maintain that the "true remains true," and yet it certainly cannot be "better" for all to affirm this, or "better" to hold to the truth over falsity, to prefer "good" reasoning to bad, or "good faith" argumentation to bad faith. People should only prefer truth when they find it preferable. And if the good is just what they prefer, they can never be wrong about it.
As Plato points out re Protagoras' version of this doctrine in the Theatetus, this makes philosophy pointless. Who needs teachers when one is always right.
Right, as Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich discovers, it is one thing to know that "Socrates is mortal," or that "man is mortal," and another to confront one's own death. The same holds true for suffering and deprivation in the abstract, versus taking them on oneself in order to do what one thinks is truly better.
That is, even leaving aside the question of "what is truly best," people are often [I]unable[/I] to bring themselves to do what they truly see as better. Yet this informs the virtues as well, since surely "being good" entails those excellences that make one free to act on their knowledge of what is good, to "actualize the good" as (relatively) self-determining entities.
To do good, one must know what is good, know how to accomplish this good, and be free to do so. Naturalist approaches often get lost in the second of these, spiraling down into the great multiplicity of efficient causes and causal mastery. This focus on particulars lets us know "how to do things," but not what to do. The main problem I see with deontological ethics (and utilitarian consequentialism is just the prioritization of a specific rule in this respect) is that it fails to see how, for a principle to be convincing, it must be found in the Many, in the multitude of concrete particulars. For example, if we can identify "harm" to organisms in analagous biological terms, what is the common principle?
You cannot jump to rules without principles. This sort of moral reasoning sprang from the context where it was assumed that God had clearly revealed the rules in the Bible, and "accessibility to all rational agents," is a poor substitute for divine revelation it seems.
I do have some hopes here. The sea change brought on by the ability of information theoretic approaches and complexity studies' ability to unify disparate fields (including across the "natural" and "social" sciences divide) does seem to be a potent counter to reductionism and the tendency to prioritize the many over any unifying one (e.g. Harris wants to identify the good in neuronal activity, which seems to me like trying to understand flight by looking at primarily at the cells in the wings of flying animals in isolation, rather than for the principle of lift.)
Very interesting observation. In the distant past, survival often depended on fearing "the other." But in a modern society, with all its diversity, that ancient instinct can lead to discrimination, bigotry and racism.
That's when we rely more on our intellect and empathy rather than ancient protective mechanisms.
I see a problem here.
What we have control over is only ourselves and so even if we pursue the virtues because we want them for flourishing it could be that flourishing in one environment differs from another environment -- so I could pursue a kind of harmony with my fellow men, but supposing I've been thrown into prison unjustly, or I'm drafted to war, then what helps me flourish changes dramatically.
Tyler Durden's flourishing fits within his revolutionary cult and is dramatically opposed to Jack's effete office flourishing; the attraction of Tyler Durden is to someone who feels like the modern male is a mutation which should be rebelled against, which in turn requires a plan to destroy the financial infastructure so that modern men can "reset" and go back to a primordial existene of explicit hierarchal domination -- the man of Tyler Durden isn't opposed to the corporate hierarchies due to domination, but rather because it's not the sort of world Tyler Durden can flourish within.
The interesting twist being that Jack embodies both of these masculinities, the modern effete with tastes in apartment furniture and clever jokes, and the masculine ghost within that wants a primate based society (or what I'd call "The bad anarchy")
So the good man is more free, but the ends of flourishing aren't set -- and the problem comes up again. Why ought one do what's good? (And which vision is good?)
Whether you care or not is irrelevant. The fact is that the process of evolution that occurred over those millions of years made us what we are today.
Quoting J
I have already provided some insight into that. The simple fact is that most humans do best in society, and to live in isolation or loneliness leads to its own mental stresses. Sure, this is not true for everyone, but for the majority. We are hard-wired to connect.
I think this is true, but the "why not be selfish?" question goes further. A version of rational egoism says, "I don't believe 'the good of society' or 'the good of future generations' are goods at all. It's not that I'm unable to act with those goals in mind because it's painful or difficult; I deny that they're worth sacrificing anything for. I want my own desires to be satisfied, period, and no, I'm not a selfish monster, because some of those desires include concern for those I love. But they are still mine. Societal progress has absolutely no claim on me."
So if I'm one of the ones it's not true for, then it's OK for me to choose to act selfishly?
Good question. But I think selfishness is another one of those traits that requires a party of two or more to be manifested. if you live your life without any consideration of others, that is selfish, even if it only adds up to an act of omission.
To be honest, this objection seems to beg the question to me. It only makes sense if "flourishing" and "freedom" are relativized such that being the "alpha male" of some apocalyptic band allows for just as much freedom and flourish as say, living in Star Trek's post-scarcity society, where everyone has access to a top tier education, and ample room to pursue their interests. Now, I certainly haven't attempted the long justification for why the latter is superior, but at the same time, I think most people can work this out for themselves.
Ancient hierarchical societies place constraints on their leadership as much as the slaves and plebians. One cannot lift the boot lest one ends up with their throat cut, that another might climb up to the place of honor. Roman Emperors were frequently both ruled over by vice and violently deposedfor long periods [I]most[/I] died screaming, cut down by their underlings as often as their explicit foes. This is St. Augustine's point in "The City of God," when he argues that Rome was never a commonwealth, in terms that foreshadow Hegel's lord-bondsman dialectic a millennia and a half later (and we might also consider de Beauvoir's extension of this, the ways in which man's flourishing is hindered by the degradation of woman.)
Also, we don't just have control over ourselves. We can have relatives degrees of control over others as well, hence freedom and virtue are in some respects social projects.
But the good is either arbitrary, and unjustifiable in terms of reason or it isn't.
Likewise, Tony Montana's contentment is dependent on good fortune, on the Columbians not sending a death squad against him or the Feds not closing in. Boethius' happiness survives imprisonment, torture, and a death sentence.
The second problem with the objection, which is perhaps more relevant, is that it paints a sort of static picture of the virtues where they are simply "whatever leads to success in one's current context." But Jack [I] isn't[/I] flourishing. That's the whole point; the standards are defective, the society sick. Again, relativism is the underlying assumption here if we are going to say that what is virtuous for an SS officer is just those things that gain him status as a committed Hitlerite.
But the virtues are generally not framed in these narrow terms. The proper counterexample would be "rashness or indecisiveness being superior to prudence." Now, in the occasional situation, might the person who acts impulsively fare better than the prudent person, or the person who is paralyzed by decisions? Sure. The person who fails to escape a burning building early because they are paralyzed by doubt might just happen to be in the right place to somehow survive the building's collapse, while the prudent person dies. But will the vices work better on average? Over a lifetime?
We might suppose, "but sometimes it pays to act quickly." And indeed this is true, but prudence includes knowing when this is the case, whereas the brash person acts impulsively in all situations. Even if you're a serial killer rapist, your aims are better served by a certain form of prudence (we might call this cunning instead) then "acting like an idiot."
Courage likewise is the median between rashness and cowardice. Might the extremes sometimes accidentally lead to "better outcomes." It seems possible. Will they tend to? I doubt it. But more importantly, the virtues are what serve us better precisely if we have bad fortune.
Star Fleet, of course, doesn't do this. Why? I feel like to get at this the Timaeus and the reason that God is ultimately beneficent and not indifferent nor hostile is a good starting point. The entity that is hostile to other things is less than fully transcedent, it is defined by what it is not. Love is the identification of the self with the other. God is love because God has no limits, and because God also faces no threats. But Star Fleet might as well be God compared to most races, and surely their beneficence is helped along by knowledge, which gives them this strength.
Likewise, we might not be able to "prove" the superiority of growing up in the Star Trek universe. However, I would imagine that many carpenters might be unable to write a proof for the Pythagorean theorem they use on a regular basis as well. Certainly though, they shouldn't find this too troubling.
Ok. Do you think this is a good position? Is it "as defendable as any other?"
Let me point out a similar problem. While not as popular as "nothing is good, it's all egoistic personal preference," "nothing is true it's all egoistic personal preference," is still a position people take up.
Now how does one argue against such a position? Suppose we give all sorts of reasons for why things might be true in a sense that is not reducible to our personal preferences. Then they reply: "is any of what you said true? I don't think it can be, truth doesn't really exist."
Yet the good is essentially filling the role in practical reason of the true vis-á-vis theoretical reason. To deny it is to deny practical reason tout courtwhat more can be said? Can one justify reason with reasons? Certainly not without circularity.
Well, if you allow an interlocutor a sacrosanct premise that you believe to be false, or likely to be false, it shouldn't be surprising that it's impossible to refute them.
Plato has it that reason is transcedent. Reasons takes us past the given of what we already are. It allows us to move beyond our current opinions, and current desires, in search of what is truly best. But reason is transcedent in another way. We can always ask of any proposition "but what if it isn't true? What if I am mistaken?' And as G.E. Moore points out, we can do this with practical reason as well. We can always ask with coherence, "but is it really good?" or "why is it good?" 'The Logos is without beginning or end,' indeed.
But then if epistemology is better off without foundationalism we might assume this holds for moral/practical epistemology. Because a good degree of moral relativism has currency in our culture (e.g. "bourgeoisie metaphysics," where anything can be true so long as it allows others to be true), "well not everyone agrees, and this varies by culture and historical epoch," is considered a "good argument" against statements of practical reason. But of course, opinions about the shape of the Earth also vary by person and by culture and historical epoch. This would be considered trivial grounds for doubting the shape of the Earth.
The "good" thing is the thing you want to do because that's what it means to be good.
The good thing to do is not necessarily what we want to do. Morality often entails putting our own needs aside for the sake of the group.
In any case, to the OP, this was the OP @Hyper I remember as an undergrad this question of moral motivation was so big that it just permanently turned me off to secular ethics as studying them for years. Yes, we might make the determination that X action is moral, but we also have other types of reasons for behavior outside of that. I couldn't even pin down what the "moral" motivation must be overriding.
No, I do not. I think it completely misses the point of ethical thought. But we have to be able to say why, without invoking doubtful premises like "Everyone ought to do what is good for society" or "Evolution shows us what is good for the species" etc. That was my reason for articulating it in this context.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes. But there's a key difference, which you indirectly alluded to. Using reason to justify reason as a method of arriving at what is true, is self-reflexive. Using reason to justify values as a method of arriving at what is good, is not.
Lots more to be said here, obviously! But I suggest we not worry overmuch about the truth/good parallel -- though you're right, it's interesting-- and instead look at the ways that reason does try to justify values. We need a strong answer to the person who would simply dismiss ethics as "not something I want." We need to be able to show why he or she should want them. But we have to do this without appealing to reasons for changing his/her mind that are also ethically based.
I'll ask the question again. Ought we try to become "the highest level of being human"; or ought we do what is good?
Or are they the same?
The retort "you are virtue signalling" is quite insipid. It is much the same as the child's outraged cry of "You can't tell me what to do!"
Quoting Questioner
Well, no. There are examples of folk who have turned their back on society and walked away. Check out the biography of Mark May. Perhaps we ought fight the "hard wiring"...
The point being that whatever you offer as the way things are, it is open to us to ask if they ought be that way.
This is the Open Question, in a more general form. What we ought do and how things are, are two very different questions.
Evolution does not show, it produces. And what is good for the individual cannot be divorced from what is good for the species. We are a social animal. There is no way around that.
What we ought to do depends on the goal. Ought doesnt exist by itself, it is incoherent to posit what we ought to do without also positing a goal.
So to your question, if being good is your goal then you ought to do good things. If being good is not your goal, then naturally you will ignore what you ought to be doing in order to be good.
Is the goal an orderly society? The maximum well being for the most amount of people? The ought to be good is justified by its usefulness or necessitation to the goal.
We do not necessarily have to remain connected. We must first connect though. That is the way things are. Asking if it ought be that way is out of place.
:wink:
*sigh*
Oh, the irony. Now who's here for not having his views challenged.
I'm saying that when discussing metaethics, it's normal that people have concerns over how they present themselves and how they are perceived by others in such discussions. I argue that a number of classical problems in ethics (such as the one in the OP) are actually at least partly due to a failure to acknowledge this, and instead taking everything at face value, naively.
To properly discuss problems of ethics, we'd need to clearly distinguish between the actual ethical problem at hand and the virtue signalling that may accompany some people's approaches to discussing it.
Take capital punishment, for example. Killing some people might be good for society, or the species, but how is it good for the individuals who are killed?
"You will be killed for your own good, so now be happy with it" ...??
Or how about the state and medical professionals offering euthanasia as a "treatment option" ??
A couple things come to mind. First, I am having trouble with this word "ought." That implies external judgement, and I am not sure where this comes from.
Second - whether attaining the highest level of being human is the same thing as doing good?
I'd like to first preface my thoughts by saying that I believe "good" is an adjective, not a noun. There is no separate entity or force that we can call the "good." We can only use "good" as a judgement on behavior.
When are we most human? When we are good?
Now, I have already defined what "good behavior" is. It's all those behaviors which contribute to the group, and keep your place in it secure. I am just not sure that this is related to the "level" of humanity you occupy.
We're all human. A great spectrum of behaviors.
They are anomalies. There are always outliers. And we really don't know what made them walk away, what kind of hurt? All studies of mental illness and addiction show that the number one most important contributor to getting well is human support.
The opposite of addiction is connection
Quoting Banno
Why?
I was talking about human nature and instincts in general, and the overall scheme.
Quoting baker
Sorry, I have no idea how this follows from anything I have said.
Quoting baker
This is an entirely different question.
But can this be reversed: What is good for the species must be good for the individual? How would that follow? That's the doubtful premise.
Good question. A species' survival ultimately depends on individual survival, and of course reproduction ... I'm having trouble separating the two.
Quoting creativesoul
Yes to the first, no the the last. It is open to us to ask if we ought remain social.
"Virtue signalling" is not an argument. It is the libertarian's attempt to stop a conversation they find uncomfortable.
Quoting Questioner
Why? As in, what is it about "ought" that "implies external judgement"? See Creative's comment and my reply.
Quoting Questioner
And yet the question "is it good to do those things which contribute to the group, and keep your place in it secure" is meaningful.
Quoting Questioner
But being an outlier does not make them wrong, and terms such as "mental illness" are themseves normative.
Quoting Questioner
Good question. Why not?
Quoting Questioner
Why ought we survive? Consider antinatalism and Voluntary Human Extinction, both touted as ethical positions.
But that's the very point I was putting in question, I'd argue that the good is to practical reason as truth is to theoretical reason (and as beauty is to aesthetic reason). We might claim these are in a sense convertible, as per the Doctrine of Transcendentals, but that's one of the more difficult philosophical doctrines to even frame properly.
So instead, just imagine trying to justify any claims about goodness with someone who denies the concept (or reduces it to current personal preference). Truth appeals don't matter. Imagine trying to convince your child that deciding to start smoking is bad.
You point out that smoking is likely to lead to at least some level of lung disease in the long term, that it will make their teeth unhealthy and ugly, etc. This is a fact claim.
He doesn't deny your claims, but but he denies that it would be good for him not to smoke. He doesn't care about the future, he claims. Good for him is the "live fast, die young," aesthetic. He likes smoking. Why stop?
You point out that when he is older, with poor lung capacity and gum disease he will likely regret smoking.
He doesn't deny this, but says that this will only occur if he becomes an old sad sack and gives up on what is truly better, his current "future he damned mindset." "I'll cry about it if I become a loser. Right now I'm not a loser."
Maybe they keep smoking, and get particularly early lung disease. Maybe they now agree with your earlier judgement, but maybe, through some heroics of cognitive dissonance reduction, they don't. They still say their glad they started smoking. Maybe they have convinced themselves the smoking has nothing to do with their illness (how did you wind up with such a kid!?)
Is it still better for them to have started smoking? Is it better for them to approach these sorts of issues in this way (i.e. to lack prudence in general and prize the rash gratification of appetites as a virtue)?
Is the good reducible to what people currently prefer, or do we perhaps do some economists' technique of weighting how good people are likely to perceive things at various stages across their lifetime? Or do we make an appeal to what "most people would prefer?"
It seems to me that these are at best proxies for what is good, since people can, and often do, prefer things that are bad for them (e.g. slave owners largely preferred to own slaves, but I'd argue it was actually cutting against their own interests). Lots of little kids and plenty of adults would spend all day watching TV if they could. But, could the transition to some other pursuit be choiceworthy? I think so.
Sometimes choiceworthy choices also take time to get habituated to. We do them because we think they are good (continence), but only enjoy them later (e.g. taking up running, or joining a club for an introvert).
But of course, such a position presupposes that there is a truth about what is better or worse for people. Likewise, that it's better to have some desires and not others. These would be truth claims, but truth claims about values, judgements practical good. The good and the true are in some sense convertible, and this is true even with purely theoretical questions because of course we speak in terms of "good evidence," and "correct reasoning" such that "attaining truth is good." But one can coherently ask, "why is reasoning that leads to truth good?"
Interestingly, people often don't deny the judgements of practical good tout court. They will allow that "Tom Brady was a better football player than my grandmother," can be a factual claim, or that some chess moves might really be blunders. I'd argue that these are just simpler questions of values. We could always still ask: "but why is throwing complete passes and not interceptions good? Why is going to the Super Bowl every other year for 20 years good?"
Moral questions are often much harder. They deal with a mix of complex particulars and distant principles (distant from the sensesas Aristotle says, what is "best known to us," concrete particulars, is distal to the principles that are "best known in themselves,"a flying bird and its wings are more apparent than the principles of aerodynamics). Yet, I do not this makes them somehow immune to the same "facts about values," that render Michael Jordan a "better" basketball player than I am.
However, I think such questions become impossible to resolve if "moral good" is made a sui generis sort of good discrete from say, the good of "good health." This castrates the moral good, it is rendered impotent, no longer the principle of fecundity in which all analagous forms of good participate, but a dead letter.
I may not have made myself clear. We are neurologically hard-wired to form bonds. This isn't about deciding to be social or not, this is the inherent need to form relationships. It goes all the way back millions of years ago when the first primate mother loved her newborn. (There's research to show all other forms of connection grew from that.)
To deny the need for human bonding is to deny our very essence.
Quoting Banno
Okay, the opposite to "external judgement" is deciding for myself what I should do, and I'm always going to think that what I do is the thing that I should do.
Quoting Banno
It's reality. This is the biological basis for behavior.
But, sometimes there is an unreasonable person, and we all know that unreasonableness leads to progress.
Quoting Banno
I don't think I have framed my discussion in terms of right and wrong, but just what is.
Quoting Banno
Well, that would require changing who we are as humans.
Quoting Banno
We know no other way.
It's a good argument...
But we can write "p" is true iff p. Nothing works in a similar way for good.
So it looks as if there are differences between truth and good, that cannot be captured by the proposed approach.
And a step further: there are true sentences about what is good. So what is good is included in what is true. But if that is so, then the mooted symmetry between "true" and "good" is broken.
This by way of questioning an implied non-cognitivism.
Sorry, this might be a silly query but . . . which is "the very point" here? And by "put in question," do you mean "call questionable" or "offer it as a discussion point"? I'm asking because I agree with just about everything you go on to say, so I'm trying to understand where my comments about the truth/good parallel represent a spanner (or monkey wrench; not sure of your nationality!) in the works.
And it might well be that our moral duty is to fight against this supposed hard-wiring. We might deconstruct society, or remove ourselves from it for the Good. Whatever you mean by "hard-wired", the choice remains.
Quoting Questioner
I'm happy to deny that people have an essence. It's an outmoded notion.
Quoting Questioner
If you decide for yourself what you should so, then you decide for yourself what you ought do. SO we agree ought need not be external. Good.
Quoting Questioner
And that might be a good thing...
Quoting Questioner
That's not right, as the mere existence of antinatalism and Voluntary Human Extinction as proposed moral doctrine shows.
Again, how things are informs how they ought be, but cannot determine it. Put another way, regardless of how things might actually be, we might desire that they be otherwise, and act accordingly.
Quoting Banno
Consider the likelihood that human males are hard-wired to find girls (and often boys) sexually attractive from puberty on. What would the ethical conclusion be, here? Give in or fight against?
I can see no benefit in this. If our greatest source of pleasure is to spend time with those we love, why would we want to cut that out of our lives?
Quoting Banno
I'm not thinking of any specific philosophical meaning, only that which is at the heart of us.
Quoting Banno
It's not going to happen overnight.
Quoting Banno
This comes down to to what you believe is the biggest determinant of human behavior - and I don't think we can change the species that we are because we will it.
Reproduce, baby.
Becasue it is the right thing to do...
Quoting Questioner
Well, humans have a habit of not doing what is supposedly 'determined".
Here's the point again, lest it be lost: Evolution does not tell us what we ought do.
Lol, no, that's not what I meant. But boys are attracted to girls, and girls are attracted to boys, and it is a story as old as the species. I see no reason to try to change it.
Yes.
Quoting Banno
I really like Jonathan Haidt's metaphor of the elephant and the rider. The elephant is our instinctual, emotional self, and our rationality is the rider. The rider steers, but the elephant provides the power for the journey.
If evolution does not tell us what to do, what does?
Quoting Questioner
...and now you are starting to do ethics...
Can you explain the difference?
Talk about virtue signalling and stopping a conversation!
If you value X, then you ought to promote X in your actions.
If you dont value X, there is no argument that could ever convince you to act for it. Anyone suggesting otherwise is deluded by the idea that their values somehow extend beyond themselves.
You only ought to be good in your own eyes.
Good catch, but an important difference in Phaedrus is vitalism - the existence of the soul - which opens up a whole new category of questions.
The chariot = the soul
The two horses = moral impulses and irrational passions
The charioteer = the intellect
Quoting Banno
But there is nothing else to us, except our evolution.
Well that's just the tip of the iceberg, convertability doesn't entail a perfect symmetry.
Just consider the types of things we call "true" or "false." These will almost always be statements, propositions, beliefs, etc. It does not make sense to call [I]things[/I] true in most contexts. A tree standing outside is not true or false. Things said or believed about it are true or false. The act of running is not true or false. Things said of it might be. Same goes for states of affairs. These obtain or fail to obtain, but are not true or false.
Now, occasionally we might call things true, as in "this is a true Picasso." But here we are just saying that something apt to be an imitation is not. Or we might praise a baseball player by saying he is a "true center fielder," or a man by saying he is a "true gentleman," but by this we mean something more like "good," i.e., truly embodying some standard.
It's quite the opposite with "good." Dogs are good, or the Sun, or blue skies, or a baseball pitch, or a presidential term, etc. It is primarily things or states of affairs that are good or bad. It does not generally make sense to call a proposition or belief "good" unless we are either:
A. Referring to the goodness of what the proposition refers to (e.g. a claim about a state of affairs, it is "good that it is true that it obtains.").
B. Expressing that the rhetorical or grammatical form of the proposition is good.
C. Expressing that a belief is good [I]because[/I] it is true.
This difference is why very many philosophers locate truth primarily in the mind. Not all of course. Some located the bearers of truth in an infinity of abstract objectspropositionsoutside of space and time that are somehow subsistent and intelligible in isolation, and which the mind somehow "grasps." However, the view that "truth is primarily in the mind and secondarily (or only fundamentally) in things," is quite common (it's akin to the idea that time is fundamentally in nature and actually in observers, but more widely embraced).
Today, it's common to hear that the good must be in the mind, on the "subjective" side of the dualistic ledger that splits reality. This is a rather new development. For much of philosophical history it was assumed that goodness must lie primarily in the things that are good. Why?
Well, suppose hungry monkeys tend to find bananas to be good, choiceworthy. Suppose we run an experiment where we lower bananas into their environment periodically. When the monkeys see the bananas they climb up and get them. Without the bananas, they don't bother climbing up. The bananas motivate action in the monkeys without themselves doing much aside from being what they are.
Of course, the bananas don't motivate the same behavior in tigers, things' relations vary, but it's the entities that are apt to find things good (i.e. organisms) that are generally reacting to the good as stimulus, not good things reacting vis-á-vis organisms (aside from the more complex cases involving multiple organisms). A wolf doesn't need to do anything to scare a sheep in the same way, just its ambient scent or appearance is enough.In the simple cases, good things like food and water simply broadcast their desirability through their default interactions with the media around them, e.g. ambient light bouncing off water.
We could go a step further if we identify the good for organisms with, in a general sense, not dying (exceptions apply) and fulfilling key biological functions (e.g. reproducing, even if your a male spider who tends to get eaten doing this). We might suppose that the unity by which any thing is anything at all, by which part/whole relations exist, is related to goodness. And so we might go an extra step in locating goodness in ens reale (things) and not ens rationis (creations of mind). Yet, IMO this is unnecessary for concluding that, if relatively inert things like water motivated complex behavior, the goodness sought by the complex behavior lies primarily in what gets sought, not the seeker. Much good seeking involves actual consumption, the introduction of the good thing into the body/whole of the entity seeking it, and this doesn't make sense if all goodness is already in the organism doing the seeking.
Is there a way to separate out truth from goodness as fulfillment of normative expectations and purposes? Are such norms to be located inside the organism, in the things outside the organism, or in the ways of functioning that take place BETWEEN organism and its world? If it is the latter then one doesnt have to choose between an inside and an outside in order to arrive at the site of truth and goodness.
Agreed, of course, but we are still left with determining what thing to do, sufficiently reflecting that good already decided.
Depends on what you mean by "separate." Medicine is a normative practice. However, consider a child with cancer. It's bad for them to have cancer. It's good to cure it. Suppose the doctors give the child a treatment that is thought to be a good treatment for this sort of cancer. It isn't. It actually causes the cancer to become more aggressive.
We wouldn't want to say that the treatment is a good one when the normative standard is to give the treatment and only becomes a bad one later. Indeed, it would come to be deened a "bad treatment" in the normative framework [I]because[/I] of the truth about its effects.
Let's start with a simple example of relation, such as "larger than." This involves two subjects. Does truth follow this form?
It's hard to see how it would because we can say true things about what does not exist. This is less "x > y" and more "x > ".
But moreover, people can have beliefs or make statements about themselves. Where is between here? Between the person and themselves?
What sort of things are apt to have beliefs or make claims (the sorts of things apt to be true or false)? It seems to me that "nothing in particular," doesn't believe or claim anything, nor does the interval between speakers and the subjects of their speech.
If something is good, it's choice worthy. It doesn't make sense to choose the worse over the better. People do choose the worse over the better, but this will be due to ignorance about what is truly good or weakness of will.
What is choiceworthy will depend on what one's goals are. If one is seeking an aim, it doesn't ever make sense to choose what is worse for that aim, unless you face tradeoffs against other aims. But aims themselves can be more or less choiceworthy, more or less good. And we might suppose that in order to determine which aims are most choiceworthy we should seek to discover what is choiceworthy for its own sake and not for some other good or end. For example, acquiring money might be thought not to be an "end in itself," for money is only useful when one parts with it. It is a means to other goods. To be confused about this is to mistake apparent good, appearances, for reality (unless, perhaps one is Scrooge McDuck and enjoys swimming in gold coins for its own sake).
Even Milton's Satan must proclaim, "evil be thou my good." It would not make sense to pursue evil as evil for oneself, "evil be thou evil [I]for me.[/I]
But:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
So the challenge is to explain how "choiceworthy for its own sake" isn't incoherent. I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm just pointing out the difficulty. You need a way of talking about aims that is significantly different from how we talk about goods. If "it doesn't make sense to choose the worse over the better," this would seem to apply to our aims as well -- we'll choose better aims rather than worse ones. But it's supposed to be those very aims that determine good choices, so how do we get out of the circle? What is the meta-level above aims that results in an aim being intrinsically choiceworthy?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Micro norms can be nested within larger norms. We can change our minds about the benefits of a particular treatment without dislodging the superordinate norms (good vs bad methodology) on the basis of which modifying a specific treatment is intelligible.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I dont happen to view the self as a hermetically sealed
solipsism , but as the derived effect of a system of elements that are neither strictly internal to the organism nor merely interjected from its environment. This system of elements organizes itself into a unitary, autonomous whole producing intentional directionality. But because this autonomy is only that of a certain operational closure rather than that of an internal milieu divided off from an outside, deliberation, intentionality and reflection are not the activities of an inside, but of an organism-world interaction.
Perhaps there is a happy via media between the "self as a hermetically sealed solipsism," and rejecting that it is primarily people (or more broadly organisms) that possess beliefs? Just as we need not declare that organisms are hermetically sealed nor subsistent beings in order to declare that "only things with legs run." And it is of course [i]things[/I]substances*that properly run: horses, men, ants, and now robots, as opposed to the world generally or nothing in particular.
*These would have to be substantial unities because to run requires legs and a body, which is to make up a whole with parts. Something lacking much unity, like a cloud, cannot run, except in some equivocal, metaphorical sense. But to have beliefs is also something determinant, since it is to affirm some things but not others is belief is to have any content.
If something is Good, it's because you have personally understood/decided it is good. You couldn't support that with any extrinsic facts.
The 'right' action is to do with achieving something. That something must be arbitrary, at base. So, i don't get hte question.
Quoting Questioner
And answered
Quoting Questioner
What is your claim here? That there is no variation in out behaviour? Or perhaps that we do not make choices? If either of these were true, then the question of "what ought we do?" is meaningless, because we just do as evolution dictates.
But you are now choosing whether and how to reply to this post. You remain confronted by choice.
What will you do?
You will choose.
In my experience, this (bolded part) is not how ethics is usually taught. Instead, teaching ethics goes something like this:
"You don't know what is good and right and so you need to be told so.
X is good and right.
You should do X."
If anything, the direct answer to "Why ought one do that which is good?" is "Because one is bad" and perhaps with the addition "so that by doing good, one may become good as well."
My claim is that we are the result of our evolution - but it produced wide spectrums of behavior, emotions, aptitudes, perspectives, intellect, abilities, ways of thinking, etc. etc.
My claim (belief) is that there is not a supernatural cause for our behavior.
There are tons of variation in our behavior - but it all represents genetic activity subject to environmental stimuli. That's one big umbrella.
I am not ready to give up on the question, "What ought we do?"
Because clearly, there are things we should do and things we should not do.
And returning to my main point, the need to belong to the group in deciding what we should do cannot be underestimated.
Quoting Banno
I'm sorry if I gave the impression we humans have no choice. Of course we have choice.
I return to the story I told earlier about the sons of an alcoholic.
One son became an alcoholic. When asked why, he replied, "My father was an alcoholic."
The other son never drank. When asked why, he replied, "My father was an alcoholic."
How else to explain the difference than by a differing influence between the two sons' genes?
You claimed, Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I made a precise logical point about the difference between "true" and "good". I pointed out that "p" is true IFF p, but that there is no similar equation for "good". So there is a break in the symmetry you proposed. You don;t appear to have spoken agains this, so I will take it as read.
is unnecessarily long.
Perhaps in your third and fourth paragraphs you are saying something not unlike direction of fit, that some sentences set out how things are, while other sentences set out how we might prefer them to be. But you combine this with what appears to be talk of the objective and subjective.
You also slide from what is good per se to what is good for an organism.
Meh.
That's a relief, becasue you were apparently proposing that evolution take on the role of handing down our commandments. Replacing god with evolution doesn't solve the problem of what to do.
You do not need to appeal to evolution to maintain this. That you are writing using a language shows that you are embedded in a culture, along with all that implies.
So we still have the question, "what to do?"
But freed from the irrelevance of both god and evolution
Question, then: is it not possible that humans are under-determined by evolution? This would mean that, while certainly not denying the facts of evolution, it is legitimate to question the sense in which the human condition might be understood solely through the lens of biological theory.
The main drivers of adaptive behaviour are the ability to compete, and show up in most vertebrate behaviour as the famous 'Four Fs' of behaviour - fighting, feeding, fleeing, and sexual reproduction. It is not difficult to trace the influence of these behaviours on human activities. But how does this dictate or determine ethical behaviours?
[quote="Richard Polt, Anything but Human;https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/anything-but-human/" ] Consider the fact that human action ranges to the extremes. People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species or they can utterly fail to be altruistic, even toward their own children. So whatever tendencies we may have inherited leave ample room for variation; our choices will determine which end of the spectrum we approach. This is where ethical discourse comes in not in explaining how were built, but in deliberating on our own future acts. Should I cheat on this test? Should I give this stranger a ride? Knowing how my selfish and altruistic feelings evolved doesnt help me decide at all. Most, though not all, moral codes advise me to cultivate altruism. But since the human race has evolved to be capable of a wide range of both selfish and altruistic behavior, there is no reason to say that altruism is superior to selfishness in any biological sense.
In fact, the very idea of an ought is foreign to evolutionary theory. It makes no sense for a biologist to say that some particular animal should be more cooperative, much less to claim that an entire species ought to aim for some degree of altruism. If we decide that we should neither dissolve society through extreme selfishness, as (biologist E. O.) Wilson puts it, nor become angelic robots like ants, we are making an ethical judgment, not a biological one. Likewise, from a biological perspective it has no significance to claim that Ishould be more generous than I usually am, or that a tyrant ought to be deposed and tried. In short, a purely evolutionary ethics makes ethical discourse meaningless.[/quote]
Quoting Richard Polt, Anything but Human
You would think a Heidegger scholar would be able to do better than that. If we stick with the oldy-moldy neo-Darwinism that ignores the side of the equation where the environment is reciprocally shaped by the normative goals of the organism rather than unilaterally imposing itself on the organism, then the biological is has no connection. to the ethical ought. But when we see the aims of the organism not simply in terms of static survival of a body, a strand of dna or a species, but in terms of the preservation of a certain normative pattern of functioning, then the functional organization and behavioral direction of the organism is all about normative oughts.
Quoting Questioner
Plato had something similar to that, albeit a charioteer rather than an elephant. But it's a venerable metaphor.
Quoting Wayfarer
I recommend Joseph Rouses work on evolutionary naturalism. He ties together biological and cultural
normativity. Heres a place to start:
That's right. We ought to do what is good. But determining what is good is not always easy.
Quoting Wayfarer
When it comes to normativity it is not merely the survival (and flourishing) of individuals that counts, but the survival (and flourishing) of communities. Now we find ourselves in a dire situation where it is not merely the survival of individuals and communities which is at stake, but the survival and flourishing of the race itself.
We should do what is good, granted. Why? Because it is fair, just, correct (good). That says virtually nothing about what goodness is.
We can point to specific acts of doing good things, but it's always been very obscure to me. Kind of like we lack the capacity to scrutinize what goodness is, other than pointing out instances of it.
I feel there is much more to this, but we can't say much about it.
Quoting Wayfarer
Right. As Rouse puts it, scientific accounts of evolution have been treated as though they offered a sovereign grounding for human social and ethical processes. As you say, religious accounts ( as well as many philosophical ones) attempt to usurp this authority by placing it within the idealist subject rather than in empirical realism. What Rouse is trying to do is get beyond both the sovereignty of realism and the authority of idealism by positing a nature-culture intertwining that produces a context-dependent social normativity all the way down.
For the link I sent you:
Our need to belong to a group goes way further back than the dawn of culture and language.
Quoting Banno
We can never be free of our evolution. it's like taking the cream out of ice cream.
But, to address your question:
Are we talking about limits on behavior? Then, how to define the limits? By what is immoral? then how do we define moral? Or do we define good behavior by what is not disgusting? then, how to define disgust? So, not only do we need parameters, we need to define those parameters.
Not just genetics, as the environment definitely plays a role. We are a responsive creature. Even our brains grow in response to the stimuli they receive, especially in the first years of life. (But of course this is biology.)
Quoting Wayfarer
Not necessarily. There's a whole theory about inclusive fitness, which posits that an organisms genetic success is derived from cooperation and altruistic behavior. Genes that are related to you then have better fitness.
Quoting Richard Polt, Anything but Human
I'm not sure we have to put them in an hierarchy. They both played a role in our evolution.
Quoting Richard Polt, Anything but Human
Maybe that's why I had trouble with the word. Natural selection has no goals.
Quoting Questioner
Right. That's the salient point when it comes to invoking evolutionary biology as a rationale for ethical normativity.
Arguably, the two are explicitly linked. Unless you can drop someone, right now, in the middle of a desert or jungle with nothing but say a knife and a spool of thread and they can live to their fullest comfort and advantage as their desire dictates, that person, including their comfort or advantage, is contingent on that particular society's sustainability. Perhaps not to a perfectly symbiotic degree, no. Perhaps the person is unusually well off, walled off behind a castle with its own self-contained agricultural and social microcosm and would remain unaffected if society were to disappear. That's not most people, however. While I understand the emphasized point in your inquiry to be "why should one value sustaining society more than one's self", as in possibly neglecting one's own well being for that of a neighbor's, I still think that for most people "no man is an island" rings true, particularly in one's darkest hour. Meaning, for the average person, if society suffers, so will they; ergo, in the most selfish flavor of logic, while it may not mean doing squat for anyone at all, to at least not hinder or hamper such well-being serves one's own self interest as well. In which case, helping others can in fact indirectly help oneself, which advances comfort and provides advantage (arguably). As to what degree, it certainly depends. Some people who don't have kids or don't care for the future well-being of their own (the "here for a good time not a long time" or "just looking out for number one" type) being notable and common exceptions.
Still, the sentiment and implications of your inquiry as I understand them ring true. There may not be a strictly logistically rational (directly beneficial) reason to value the well being of society more than one's own, however the average person who is dependent on society more than they would like to give credit for (infrastructure, utilities, grocery stores, relatively-safe streets free of war) would be wise to do what is in their power to ensure the longevity of said society, if not just for the time they or anyone they consider "in their self interest" is alive.The shortsighted aside, most people today consider the things society and society alone offers (power, roads, public services) as "bare necessities" and would either not survive or be comfortable and have advantage without.
Quoting J
I'd have to argue that the nature of a subject is not only highly relevant but paramount to any sort of matter related to said subject.
I don't see any argument as to it being an unreasonable place to begin, at least. Are our desires and as a result, will -- and to an extent, identity -- not based on, or at least in constant entwinement with, our own nature? Sure, a functional and civilized modern-day adult is miles above his deep primal nature in virtually all his affairs and doings, but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel the same emotions and desire to act on such inclinations as one who is the opposite, at least on more than nominal an occasion. I agree there's better places to look and any "solution" derived solely from the aforementioned is shortsighted and above all likely to be ineffectual or otherwise just "not true" ie. superficial.
I'm trying to suggest it's more of a "this is what works because we have reached the (perhaps not THE ultimate, but a penultimate of sorts) pinnacle of mastery of understanding of the world and sociology with the work of every great mind and result of every study basically at our fingertips" kind of point in humanity, as opposed to simply "we evolved as social beings, so social engineering and preservation of such will either make or break us". With this new dynamic, a dramatic paradigm shift in understanding of the human experience and "condition" has been made that goes beyond "how our bodies and resulting natural inclinations work and why" unto an almost metaphysical "understanding of the soul", in a manner of speaking.
It just seems to me if your goal is to facilitate the well-being, comfort, or advantage of say, a habitat of polar bears, one would not go wrong with hiring a polar bear expert with a library of books about polar bears, than say a botanist with a litany of botanical literature, is all. Having extensive background knowledge of a subject would seem to produce a greater likelihood of reaching beneficial determinations than operating without one or refusing to check highly-relevant and applicable information as if its just needless rubbish of no value. Ethics is dishonored by suggesting it's "linked to evolution" or a simple matter of "what always was" or "what everyone thinks", I agree. I just feel many topics and subject matter that might seem vastly different to one another actually have many common threads that can lead to greater understanding.
Basically, I didn't quite mean to suggest "ethics is based solely on human nature/evolution", it just seems to be incredibly relevant, to me at least. Why do we pay a masseuse top dollar to perform an action that would otherwise be assault and battery as well as pay even higher dollar for someone to prosecute someone who actually assaults and batters us? Because we are vulnerable beings who can feel pain and can be injured or killed by certain actions, which I do believe would have to be considered facts of evolutionary nature. It has its relevance. Do you see where I'm coming from with that?
(Apologies if this is backtracking or the discussion has advanced, I'm rather interested in this line of thought. I also take it there are three definitions or usages of "good" floating around in this discussion: "wise", "pleasing", and the one I was focused on, "moral"/"ethical".)
Sure, and I understand (roughly) how Ethics is taught. But this literally foregoes any meaningful answer to the question, and returns to circularity. I'm not particularly intending to further some philosophical position but to address why I think the question itself is a bit moot. "X is good" requires my bolded to be sorted through. "You should do X" requires the previous sentence to be adequately addressed. So, I think this is prima facie a pretty unhelpful way to think about what to do in life.
Ignoring that "good" and "right" can come apart readily, I can't see how this conceptualisation is anything more than paternalism, rather than learning how to think and assess claims. Have I maybe missed something in what you've presented? It's likely.
I do, and it makes sense to me. Many scientific stories, including evolution, can give us information about our species and help us decide what would aid human flourishing. But ethics is asking different questions. Can evolution instruct me in whether it's better for me to feel pain or to let my mother do so? How about a stranger? The idea is that no amount of info about us as a species can provide the answer to questions about right and wrong, except in a hopelessly broad sense.
Quoting Outlander
That would be a very mild version. I had in mind the ordinary me-first situation where a person says to themselves, "Sure, it's better for society and all that if people don't cheat and steal, but I need money and I can get away with some cheating and stealing, so I'm going to do it." Would we say to such a person, "But in the long run, society can't function that way, if everyone took your attitude?" They would presumably reply, "And? First, what do I care about 'the long run'? Second, everyone doesn't take that attitude. I'm making an exception for myself."
As for the general point about a flourishing society leading to one's individual comfort or advantage, I see too many quite common cases where it simply isn't true. (Unless you're defining a flourishing society as a perfect utopia with no injustice or immorality.) I'm not saying it might not work out that way for some people, but the connection seems weak and unreliable. This is still trying to link ethics with "my own good," and I was arguing that we haven't even reached ethics as long as we're thinking that way.
I'm not sure this correctly represents my view, or if that is what it seems, I did not intend that.
"Rationale" suggests justification, or excuses bad behavior, and I did not mean to suggest that we give in to our basest instincts. But we need to be aware of them to override them.
I did not mean to comment of "ethical normativity" - whatever that is - but rather to comment on what we have to work with.
The connection between goodness and rightness is as follows: if X is good, then one ought to behave in such a manner so that X is the case.
The problem, I think, in your OP is that you fail to recognize three things about ethical contemplation: (1) goodness is not necessarily about behavior, (2) goodness is largely contextual, and (3) rightness can be pragmatic.
Viz.,:
1) Goodness is just about what ought to benot what one ought to do. E.g., it is good not to get cancer, independently of what is the right thing for a person to be doing. Your OP presupposes that goodness is just connected to rightness.
2) Goodness is contextual, even if one believes in some sort of absolutism (e.g., platonism, divine law, etc.): what is good, i.e., in X ceteris paribus may not be good given more factors.
3) What is right, which is about good behavior (and not what is good simpliciter), has an ideal and pragmatic element to it. Viz., just because I should do X in a perfect world does not entail that I should do it in the real world right now. E.g., in a perfect world, I shouldnt eat other animals, but that doesnt mean that it is impermissible to eat them given the circumstances that I need to them to survive and the fact that they are not persons.
I dont believe that most ethicists would agree with this; because it entails that is good to be purely selfless, which disrespectful to oneself. Why would it be good to give someone all your food, and then starve to death?
They certainly would agree that one should donate their excess of goods to charity, all else being equal, or that duty may require a person to be purely selfless (like a soldier sacrificing their life for another); but not that it is good to just donate everything, all else being equal, to charity.
However, if it were good to donate everything to charity, then it plainly follows that one should be doing it; but this is all else being equal: it may be the case that it is good ceteris paribus but not good given < > .e.g., if you need to feed your family, then it is not good to donate your food to charity, but if we are analyzing the mere donation to charity all else being then it is a good act. Your OP has conflated all the possible contexts into one.
Rightness and wrongness are the primitive properties of moral (i.e., behavioral) discourse; and are not to be conflated with obligatoriness. Permissibility (and its negation), ommissibility (and its negation), and obligatoriness (and its negation) are complex properties built off of the former properties.
Just because it is good to do X, which does entail that one should be doing X ceteris paribus, it does not follow that one is obligated to do X. That is, just because, e.g., I should do X it does not follow that I am required to do X.
Yet the two aren't unrelated, even if they aren't identical. Just as beliefs and statements are the sort of things that can be true or false, and these are only made or possessed by entities with minds, so too it doesn't make sense to speak of "goodness" in the absence of any experiencing thing. Nothing is good or bad for a rock or a comet, except perhaps in some very loosely analogous sense (e.g. warm air is "good" for hurricanes to the extent that it sustains them).
This is the difficulty of defining a notion of goodness (or beauty and truth) in per se terms in a metaphysics that has eliminated the transcendent. You have a multiplicity of goods, what is going to unify them?
In a lot of ethical thought, it is "good for you" to be good. I would imagine most ethics courses start with these because they tend to dominate the earlier epochs. The pursuit of the good is also the pursuit of freedom and happiness. Hence, acting unethically is simply hurting yourself.
To be sure, you might be able to attain some goods by acting unethically. An unethical businessman might cheat and manipulate his way into having wealth and status, the ability to procure all sorts of goods for himself.
Here is the analogy Boethius draws in the later parts of the Consolation for this situation. Flourishing is like trying to climb a mountain. At the top is the highest good, which is good per se, but alsogood for us. You'll be happiest if you make it to the top, but you'll also be happier if you make it higher up the mountain.
The virtuous person is like someone who learns how to properly climb. They walk up the mountain, or scale the difficult parts. The wicked person can make it up the mountain, but they are like a person who has learned to walk on their hands. Their means are inefficient, and ultimately they will never make it to the summit that way. When a storm comes, bad fortune, the virtuous person can hang on, or if they fall, they can quickly climb back up. The vice addled person unstably walking on their hands topples over and plummets down the mountain (e.g. our wicked business cheat might lose his wealth and status through bad luck, and then where will he be? Meanwhile, Socrates gets sentenced to death and quips that "nothing bad can happen to a good man;" he is unperturbed).
That's OK, I'm not accusing you of anything! But 'ethical normativity' is precisely the nub of the question posed by the OP - why ought we do good.
My comment and the quote I provided was about the general assumption that evolution provides the basis or ground for judgements about such matters. That is what I'm questioning. I hasten to add I'm not promoting any kind of 'Intelligent Design' agenda. I'm overall pretty familiar with the evolution of h.sapiens, and evolution generally, which I've studied since I was a child (I grew up on the excellent Time-Life series of books.) But I think our culture leans too heavily on evolutionary theory for a sense of identity. It is a biological theory about the origin of species. Due to the historical circumstances of its discovery it has assumed a role for which I don't think it's suitable. See Is Evolution a Secular Religion? Michael Ruse.
You wanted to draw a symmetry between "true" and "good". If there were such a symmetry, then there would be a schema for "good" that is equivalent to Tarski's schema for "true". There isn't. Hence the supposed symmetry isn't there.
Being true is about sentences while being good is about attitude. They are quite distinct.
:chin:
Well no, I explained the symmetry that I think exists. You have invented your own positions to argue with that no one has presented.
An eyebrow raiser to be sure.
It's sentences that are true or false.
So what ought we to say to the unethical businessman? Should we say, "You're being inefficient and improvident. You're not getting as many goods as you'd get if you behaved ethically, and furthermore when the hard winds blow, you won't do as well as the ethical person"?
That doesn't strike me as ethical discourse at all, and I'm fairly sure you wouldn't endorse it. The problem here is that you're still allowing "It's good for you to be good" to represent a coherent statement within ethics. But either each instance of "good" means the same thing, in which case the statement provides no information, or else "good" is equivocal, with each "good" meaning something different, in which case you could get a variety of interpretations, such as "You'll receive things you desire (= good1) if you are virtuous (= good2)" or "You'll flourish (= good1) if you are virtuous (= good2)" or "Being virtuous (= good2) will be pleasurable for you (= good 1)." But what you can't derive is a statement that says either "It is not virtuous (= good 2) to achieve good1" or "Good 2 does not refer to the things named as good1". Both of those require ethical argument of a particular sort -- an argument that shows why the goods of personal life (pleasure, success, honor, love, etc.) are distinct from right action. An appeal to any of those goods as a reason for right action takes us once more out of ethics and into . . . well, psychology, or power dynamics, or something.
Yeah, OK, I'm impressed by Kant's ethics, so sue me! :wink:
Did you? Perhaps your erudite post made the explanation recondite.
So what was it, again?
But it's more than that.
There's nothing to prevent that wealthy businessman from not having a rewarding and happy life. Access to significantly better food, superior health care, services and accommodation. To be able to provide these for friends, cronies and family as needed. To have sick children obtain preferential treatment. To access the best art, travel, education and advice. To live longer, healthier and safer and to have everyone they care about provided with the best things available in the culture. These are non-trivial matters and while the saying 'money can't buy you happiness' is often provided rather wanly when talking about such folk, sometimes it's the case that precisely the opposite is true.
Quoting Banno
This seems right to me.
It's not all we could say, but it's part of what we could say.
Well see, perhaps MacIntyre does have a point, because in ancient and medieval ethics the idea that it is "good (for you) to be good" and never "bad to be good" is a very strong thread. Socrates' lines after being sentenced to die: "Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death," and: "When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothingthen reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, both I and my sons will have received justice at your hands," are not throw-away lines.
Only supposing that our only options are total equivocity, "good" means something entirely different when it is "good for you," and total univocity. I don't think these are our only options. The relation here is analogous; pros hen predication is open to us.
The history leading up to Kant is probably relevant here in that it is the denial of analogy, the drive towards the univocity of being, and the voluntarism of Reformation theology that serves as the backdrop for the emergence of the Enlightenment. The relationship between metaphysics and ethics is subtle here, but I think there is a real relevance because you can see something very similar at work in Islamic thought, with the univocity of Fakhr al-D?n, versus the preference for analogy in other commentators on Avicenna. Univocity leads towards voluntarist theology because God cannot be absolutely sovereign if God's freedom is subject to some sort of outside Good. This elevates the Good above God, such that the Good is really what dictates what God does. This is exactly what Plotinus is trying to avoid in the tractate on divine freedom.
Thinkers make this same sort of argument in atheistic contexts today. "We cannot be free if we are bound to some Good, we can only be free if we decide what the Good is." That's one problem with univocity.
If we're stuck with a univocal good, we can still talk about tradeoffs between different goods or the distinction between apparent goods and real goods (reality versus appearances). Yet, I think we'll still find things quite difficult because we will be trying to explain goodness in a framework where appearances seem to be arbitrarily related to reality. For instance, sex and drinking can be goods in the good life (partaking in the univocal good), but then what does what is sought by the sex addict and the alcoholic lack this good? Or perhaps there is some precise level of each that should be sought? It seems to me though that the Good must be sought as a principle that is manifest in a vast multiplicity of things, which is going to make it extremely challenging to explain univocally. When the lion catches its prey, it seems "good for the lion" and "bad for the prey" by nature for instance.
One solution here is to simply split of "moral good" from any other notion of goodness, and I think this simply leaves the good impotent. People ask "why be good?" and we have no answer for them. People ask "why is x good?" and we find ourselves explaining that "goodness is a non-natural property..."
Edit: BTW, we need not look to MacIntyre's Aristotelian tradition here to find this thread. It's in the work of the Stoic philosopher-slave Epictetus or Laozi and other Eastern philosophers.
After all, wasn't the reason for trying to work out what was good, precisely to enable us to decide what we ought do?
This depends on how you want to define "happiness" I suppose. In Boethius' sense, this is eudaimonia, "flourishing." No one in this tradition argues that money cannot be useful vis-a-vis the attainment of eudaimonia, just that money does not accomplish this of itself.
You could certainly call what you describe a "pleasurable" life. But let's take this example to the extreme in order to see if pleasure and flourishing are equivalent:
Suppose we have given a power AGI instructions to maximize human pleasure. They go about raising children, tending to their every need, and keeping them awash in pleasurable sensations. The children grow into adults, but never develop much beyond the cognitive equivalent of infants. However, they are experiencing a great deal of pleasure. Is this a "good life? " Is it "human flourishing?"
Or, less extreme, we could consider the Gammas of "A Brave New World," conditioned to enjoy their jobs and fear novelty, enjoying a steady stream of mass media to consume and soma to binge on (a sort of side effect free version of MDMA).
One thing to note is that in all three examples the state of general pleasure felt is not particularly self-determining. If the AI malfunctions the humans are doomed. Likewise, the Gammas turn to enraged rioting when their soma is kept from them. The business cheat is unlikely to remain happy if he is exposed and loses his status and wealth, and is sent to prison. Socrates, St. Paul, St. Ignatius, Boethius, etc. all seem pretty sublime in prison, awaiting execution.
So there is the question of stability, but also of freedom. Is being more free part of flourishing? I would say yes. But someone who would be miserable without all sorts of apparent goods is in a sense less free. Consider the business cheat. Suppose he wants to stop cheating but knows he will be miserable without his wealth and all it buys. Well, without great strength of will he will be unfree to stop cheating, and even if he is continent and he does stop cheating, he will be (at least temporarily) unfree to live a life he finds pleasant.
Pleasure is not a reflex mechanism, or the release of chemicals. It is an enormously complex phenomenon inseparably linked to overarching goals and interpretive values. Being awash in pleasurable sensations amounts to
achievements in sense-making of a norm-driven organism.
Yes, as Socrates says in the Republic, we would prefer to always have what is truly best, not what merely [I]seems[/I] best at the moment, or what others say is best. The difficulty is that experience teaches us that what we desire most is not always what is truly best. We do things we regret. So, "what we ought to do" is obviously not always "what we want to do" (i.e. what appears to be good to us). Presumably, this is truly what we ought to want, since reason tells us that it makes no sense to prefer that we should possess or achieve what is truly worse, and not what is truly better.
For instance, if someone were to show 's "unscrupulous businessman who lives a very pleasant life" that another life would truly be better, presumably he would want [I]that[/I] better life and not his current one, even if he lacked the will or means to achieve it. No one says: "I want to be fundamentally deluded about how to live the best life possible, and live a worse life instead."
Yet, if we want to possess or achieve what is truly best, I am not sure how this is accomplished without knowing what is truly best. Thus, we are back to knowing what is truly better or truly worse.
But I don't think making progress on this knowledge is impossible. Plato gives us a decent start with some things that will be key regardless of what the Good turns out to be, As he points out, certain epistemic virtues are a prerequisite for conducting successful inquiry, while one also needs the reflexive freed/will power to act on what one knows if knowledge of the Good is to be useful. So, clearly, the prerequisites for discovering what is "truly best" must themselves be good.
Sure. Is this an objection to the example? Do you think it's impossible? What about the A Brave New World example? I only mention these as limit examples. The more general point is that it seems quite possible to have many pleasurable experiences and a "pleasant life," while avoiding the development of faculties and aptitudes that we tend to think are important for human flourishing.
I dont think so. Pleasure and what you are thinking of in ethical terms as human flourishing are not independent entities. And given that all goals and purposes, including minor pleasures, are integrated holistically at a superordinate level, the depth of satisfaction of a pleasant life will be directly correlated with human flourishing. Of course, the others criterion of flourishing may not meet your standards, in which case youre likely to split off their life of pleasures against what you consider robust flourishing, rather than adjusting your construal of their way of life such as to gain a more effective understanding of how they actually see things. Thats more difficult than carrying around a priori concepts of flourishing in your wallet.
Exactly. "Good", as a subjective descriptor is a functional label (when applied to actions and outcomes) for what an individual finds to be moral, which is what that individual ought to do. Of course a different individual will have a somewhat different set of what they find to subjectively be "good", and thus will have a somewhat different set of what is moral and thus what they ought to do.
Quoting Joshs
Nicely expressed.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'd say someone we might regard as evil is probably as capable of leading a full and rewarding life as anyone else. The point I made about the aforementioned wealthy swindler is that their easy access to life-enhancing, qualitative aspectslike healthcare, services, education, and cultureallows them to enrich their flourishing further. Its not merely about Fabergé eggs and flashy red cars.
I guess the crux of this matter is the question - are some forms of flourishing more virtuous than others? I think this comes down to the values of the person making that judgement. If you are influenced by Aristotle or Christianity you will say yes.
Because it's good, an end in itself. However, to exploit goodness as a means for other ends is not so good. Lots of people want to be good, or appear good, as a means to hide or compensate for whatever bad that they have done.
Quoting Hyper
If it's in your power to prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, then you're morally obliged to do so (e.g. Peter Singer).
Are the examples impossible or do you just not want to call this "pleasure?"
Something like the Gammas in "A Brave New World," doesn't seem impossible to me. Are they flourishing though?
Well, this is another false dichotomy. They don't need to be "independent" to not be the "the same thing." I would agree that anhedonia is not conducive to human flourishing, but that doesn't make "pleasure" and "flourishing" synonyms, or terms that cannot be usefully differentiated such that one can be present in the relative absence of another.
Human pleasure is very complex because humans are very complex. But causing pleasure can be fairly simple. Sticking an electrode into the appropriate part of the human brain and applying electrical current will result in sensations described as "intensely pleasurable." Monkeys will likewise show signs of pleasure upon similar stimulation and will self-stimulate in this way if given the option, even if it means undergoing demanding tasks or ignoring other goods.
To make the two inseparable is simply to ignore what most people mean by the word "pleasure." Short experiences like watching a movie, sex, eating, etc. can be "pleasant" and "pleasurable," on normal understandings of these terms. Animals are said to respond to "pleasurable stimuli " in research, etc.
But on no conventional usage of "flourishing" or "living a/the good life," does eating a good meal, watching a fun movie, or having an electrode in one's head stimulated, etc. constitute the achievement of those latter terms.
So, while I agree that one is "situated in the other," this does not make "pleasure" a synonym for, or inseparable from "flourishing." This is to use the words in a very different way from how it is employed in psychology/neuroscience and regular usage.
This seems like using an uncoventional definition of "pleasure" to equivocate on as a means of supporting relativism without actually making a clear argument for it, i.e the latter part here where "separating pleasure from flourishing is simply choosing the 'easier' and simplistic analysis."
But of course, it isn't obvious why thinking that "people can be wrong about what is good for them," necessitates an inability to be more or less able to "see things as other people see them." Indeed, people often differentiate between pleasure and flourishing in terms of how they see their own flourishing. Watch any documentary on serious drug addicts and your likely to see claims like: "these drugs ruined my whole fucking life," presented with a direct contrast to how pleasurable they are. To refuse to differentiate between pleasure and flourishing here is itself to refuse to "gain a more effective understanding of how they actually see things."
I won't even touch the "a priori" part, except to say this is akin to leaping to "the self as hermetically sealed solipsism," i.e. another extreme false dichotomy/strawman.
Well, the difficulty here is that "virtuous" has come to mean something very different in modern ethics. The term can mean simply, "being more in line with a sui generis 'moral good' that is unrelated to other goods."
For Aristotle, the virtues (excellences) are exactly those traits that allow one to achieve happiness. Eudaimonia is a virtuous life. There aren't multiple forms of flourishing, even if there are very many different ways to flourish, which might vary by culture, epoch, and individual.
In particular, for Aristotle in Book X of the Ethics, as for many other thinkers, the life of contemplation is highest. The highest human achievement is to "become like God." As St. Athanasius puts: "God became man that man might become God." But you can also think of the God of the philosophers as simply a transcendental limit case. God is threatened by no one and so hates and fears nothing. God is completely self-determining, impassible, and so God's happiness and beneficence is never threatened.
It seems impossible for the unscrupulous cheat to ever attain to this mode of life, thus the lack of the appropriate virtues harms them.
We could ask, "who led the better life?" and "who would you prefer to be?"
Martin Luther King (imprisoned and assassinated, arguably for doing the right thing);
Mahatma Gandhi (imprisoned and assassinated, arguably for doing the right thing);
Boethius (imprisoned and executed, arguably for doing the right thing), or;
Saint Francis (homeless and subject to extreme privationalthough reading his poetry we can note that this in no ways dulled his sensitivity to the sensual, indeed it seems to have heightened it into ecstacy)
...as opposed to say, some example of an unscrupulous, very lucky person who seems happy with their lot (perhaps President Trump is a good example here, although some people see him as mighty virtuous, so perhaps we could imagine Jeffery Epstein if he never got exposed and punished.)? Of course, Jeffery Epstein became suicidal when exposed and punished, and so this makes the point about the stability and freedom associated with true flourishing. No doubt, bad people can have "good luck," but no one can ensure that they have perpetual "good luck" (and is such luck really "good" if it precludes developing the virtues?)
I'd say it's better for us to live a life akin to the former group. If we say that the two are equally worthwhile, then we seem likely to be committed to some sort of relativism. But I think the evidence and arguments for the idea that things can be actually good or bad for people is quite strong.
A lot more can be said here. The lucky Jeffrey Epstein who isn't caught seems incapable of achieving many important goods, and is in a certain sense is less free. Laozi, the Buddha, and St. Francis can flourish out in the wilderness.
Well, we could start with Plato and my post above:
Now, it seems we agree that it's better for people to live in a society that provisions for the common good and where people [I]want[/I] to contribute to the common good, rather than living under constant coercion. It is better to live in a society with low levels of violence, where everyone gets a good education, where people do not go hungry, etc. The "Star Trek" post scarcity society.
Your concern seems to touch on the "free rider" problem. Why should I, the individual, not cheat? It seems I can benefit from the common good without bearing the sacrifices of contributing towards it.
For Aristotle this makes no sense, because the ability to actually participate in the common good, such that you prefer what is best for a society that will outlive you is part of living a good life. It is a good "for you" to participate in friendships and institutions where you actually preference the other, rather than only grudgingly entering into these in order to attain some [I]other[/I] good. (Aristotle's "levels" of friendship is instructive here.)
I think an example from marriage helps. Most people don't want their spouses to sleep with other people. We can ignore the edge cases here.
Obviously, we can imagine someone who "cheats" in this scenario. However, we might ask, "is the person who is willing to deceive their spouse, or to coerce them into consenting to their affairs, really likely to be enjoying the same good from their marriage as someone who truly wants what is best for their spouse and who, on account of this, doesn't even want to cheat?" Recall, pace Kant, that for Aristotle being virtuous (as opposed to merely continent) involves enjoying doing what is good.
The case where one actually benefits from cheating likewise makes no sense in Plato's description of love in the Symposium, nor in Hegel's conceptualization of how we benefit from identifying with institutions (e.g. the family, the state, etc.).
So, this gets to the Boethius analogy I mentioned above, about climbing a mountain. A person might gain some goods by cheating, by being a free rider, etc., but ultimately being willing to do these means one has missed out on even greater goods. Part of living a good life is the ability to truly enter into a common good. Cheating is like trying to climb a mountain while walking on one's hands. You might make some temporary progress, especially with some help from fortune, but it's
not a stable way to reach the summit.
Jeffery Epstein attains some goods. He has bad fortune, gets exposed and punished and is suicidal. He was dependant on good luck. Boethius in prison, or Laozi out in the wilderness have nothing, and they still flourish.
There is a much deeper metaphysical connection here in the tradition as well, the way in which goodness ties into the unity and intelligibility by which anything is any thing at all, and by which we can even say true things about thingsthe Doctrine of Transcendentals, and that does make the whole approach more convincing, but it is pretty far afield. Evil, badness, on this view is a privation, a view articulated by Aristotle but which is more fully developed in St. Augustine.
At the same time, the theory of evolution allows for a wide degree of variation with the species. It recognizes spectrums of traits and characteristics (even gender), and in that way may assist us in accepting those who don't fit our particular paradigm.
You were earlier defending logical monism, weren't you? Do I recall correctly?
So is there a pattern here of seeking the Grand Narrative? One Explanation To Rule Them All?
Hubris, No?
What would it be like, to have an ethical calculus that will tell us What To Do in every case?
In particular, how would we tell that we had the calculus right? To know we had it right would require that we had a way to evaluate it's results that was independent of the calculus.
But if we had such an independent way to evaluate the calculus, why not use that instead of the calculus?
Yes, I think that's my main observation on this subject which is hardly original or revelatory. But I do think the quality of such people's lives can be much better than their nefarious activities might suggest. We don't want to think that such folk can get away with it and be happy.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
An influencial framework. Do you personally accept it?
I guess I don't understand why you think this is a problem. Health is also predicated analogously. What is healthy for a person or a society is not what is healthy for a tree or an ant. But all can be more or less healthy. And what is healthy for one person is not always healthy for another. We might say that "peanuts" and "running" are both healthy vis-á-vis men, but peanuts are not healthy for the person with a peanut allergy, nor is running healthy for the person with a broken ankle. In the latter case, what is healthy changes over a relatively short period of time; running will be healthy for the individual when the ankle is healed.
When we speak of what health is for organisms generally and what health is"for you," why it is "healthy (for you) to be healthy," we are not speaking of two totally equivocal concepts, nor do I see how this analagous relationship would render "health" conceptually vacuous. Health is a general principle realized unequally in a multiplicity of particulars.
The Good is the same way, except that it is more general (indeed for Plato and most of the classical tradition, the most general unifying principle).
No, he says this in part because misfortune cannot rob the man who has attained what is truly best of what he has gained. St. Augustine makes this point more clearly in On The Free Choice of the Will, when he claims that what we should value most is what cannot be taken from us. St. Polycarp lives it out when, upon being threatened with various brutal execution methods if he does not abandon God, he pronounces that it would not make sense to "transform into something worse once we have become something better."
I think to understand entirely how this works requires understanding why Socrates makes the Good analagous to the Sun vis-á-vis the forms. When I first read Plato I thought this was simply because the Good is "best" and so has to be "highest." I also fell into the trap of thinking he picked the Good because he is a moralist simply trying to spin a story to make people act well. Or perhaps it's the old "cope" whereby people make God good because it feels good to have a beneficent all power entity watching out for you.
But Plato has very good reasons for thinking it is the Good by which the forms are knowable and intelligible. And this relates to Plato's psychology, since it's the attempt to attain to what is "truly good," not just what appears to be good, or is said to be good by others, that allows the rational part of the soul to transcend the given of what we already arecurrent desire and opinionfor what is truly most desirable and what is really true.
This is what allows the rule of reason to make a person more unified, a whole, rather than a collection of competing drives and desires. Pace Nietzsche, this isn't the tyranny of reason, with the appetites and passions being beaten down, but rather what allows for both the appetites and passions to be most fulfilled (rather than competing in a chaotic "civil war within the soul."_
But there is a parallel between the way the Good is what allows people to become self-determining and more fully unified (and so more fully themselves) and the way in which it is the Good that allows anything to be any thing at all. I really like Robert M Wallace's "Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present" for bringing this out, and his book on Hegel brings out the way in which the Logic expands on this (and the way in which Kant still manages to capture a much deflated version of the classical notion). Aristotle picks up from Plato and develops this relationship more, and it develops through the Patristics and Islamic thinkers before making it into the nature "Doctrine of Transcendentals," in St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas, Meister Eckhart, etc. I haven't found good secondary sources for these unfortunately.
Conceptually empty? There are criticisms of this tradition, but I don't think this is going to be one of them.
You recall incorrectly. I attempted to explain how pluralists and monists actually justify their arguments because the versions of the debate being presented made the debate completely trivial, and made the majority position appear ridiculousrefuted by the mere existence of non-classical logics.
How is it any more hubristic than:
A. Claiming that nothing is good or bad? Or;
B. Claiming that such knowledge is impossible?
Both of these involve claims that the overwhelming majority of people, both today and throughout history, and the overwhelming majority of philosophers have rejected. Oh well, sometimes the majority is simply wrong, and we have good reasons to reject their opinions. I don't think this necessarily requires "hubris."
However, I'll trade a caricature for a caricature. Certainly common formulations of A (including those regularly repeated on this site) often do have a strong flavor of hubris. Why has everyone been so wrongwrong about a fundemental aspect of human life and the world? Common explanations often involve "almost everyone" being involved in massive, infantile coping projects. Religion, or sometimes "any notion of morality" as opiates for the weak minded, unready to take responsibility in a world beyond good and evil. Or else morality is simply a form of social control which the sheeple are unable to see through.
Is Nietzsche not hubristic? Or Marx, or Foucault?
Proponents of B are in the position of claiming that both proponents of moral realism and the folks in A cannot know what they think they know. But I think this sort of skepticism is every bit as radical as other forms of radical skepticism. For, to claim that we cannot know if being born addicted to heroin, or having your water filled with lead, is bad for one, or that "helping kids learn to read is better than molesting them," is a statement forever bereft of epistemic warrant, seems to go about as far a denying "I have hands," or "other people exist." Doesn't the embrace of these positions require a sort of hubris? Parmenides needs to tell virtually everyone else that they are delusional for thinking motion exists. The deflationist needs to claim that the truth claims of the sciences and most other philosophy are bunk and that people don't really know what is meant by terms like "true" and "real," which, pace their understanding, are tokens in games.
Of course, one can embrace A, B, or moral realism with relative gradations of enthusiasm or certainty. Perhaps those who are less certain or less committed are less hubristic? But I wouldn't want to fall into the trap of "bourgeoisie metaphysics" where anything is only allowed to be true if it allows everything else to be. My thoughts are that you should be about as certain or committed as you have good reason to be.
A "moral calculus" strikes me as an analytic fever dream to be honest. Could we also have an epistemic calculus that always leads to true judgements? Wouldn't this epistemic calculus cover our moral cases too?
But if it doesn't seem possible to have such an "epistemic calculus," it hardly seems to me that we should conclude that nothing is true or false, or that nothing is knowable as such.
It doesn't render "health" vacuous, it renders the statement vacuous.
This is a good example, and helps me clarify why the use of "good" is different. Try to imagine a circumstance under which someone would actually say "It's healthy for you to be healthy." What sort of response would be appropriate? I could say, "Well, duh!" Or scratch my head and say, "So you're saying that it's a healthy thing for me to be healthy?" or . . . I'm not sure what else. The point is that we don't say such a thing -- it doesn't mean anything in our normal discourse. It just expresses some kind of redundancy. (Perhaps a person might be trying to say, "You'll feel good if you're healthy," but that's an entirely different assertion.)
Now compare to "It's good for you to be good." This is often said, especially in ethical contexts. Why does it have such a common use? I contend that it's because here, the first "good" has a different meaning from the second "good." We would paraphrase the statement, and commonly understand it, as saying, "It will turn out to be a good thing for you if you do good things." The difference in meaning that's being employed is: "good" as a personal experience of some sort, versus "good" as a quality of actions you perform. (Importantly, this personal experience needn't be selfish in the pejorative sense. It just needs to be about you. "Experiencing your telos through flourishing" is a good of the first, personal kind.) Understood this way, not only is the statement not vacuous in the way that "It's healthy for you to be healthy" is vacuous, but it raises profound and difficult questions about the relation of personal goods like pleasure, flourishing, esteem, etc. with ethical conduct toward others. Would it be handier if English had a more precise vocabulary for expressing this distinction? Sure, but we don't.
So, on this analysis, you're absolutely right to defend the tradition of the Good as not being conceptually empty. But that's because it really does use "good" in two different ways, while searching for a metaphysical way to unite them. It's perhaps the most important question in ethics -- whether this union of the personal and the universalizable is possible, and how -- and I believe it was Kant who showed this most carefully, though I don't accept his solution in its entirety. But let me stop here and see whether this makes sense to you.
A few days ago Peter Singer did an informal interview where he defends moral realism, which is helpful given his atheism:
And you could paraphrase the health statement as, "Your health will improve* if you engage in healthy activities." I don't see any difference.
Quoting J
Rather, the point is that we do. Trying to convince someone to engage in healthy behavior is just an extrapolation of that basic claim, and we do that sort of thing constantly.
If there were no akrasia and we were purely intellectual creatures then perhaps such statements would be useless, but as it happens we are not. As it happens we engage in unhealthy behaviors even though we desire health.
* Or else, "Your health will be robust/optimal if..."
Or if we're just meaninglessly falling through a void, does it matter? It would help if we gave an example.
For instance, it's a moral good to treat people with respect. Do you do it? If so, why? Or why not?
It's possible my explanation is bad. I don't think these are two different uses at all, and I don't think Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, St. Augustine, Boethius, etc. intend them as such.
When people say, "it will be good for you to study philosophy," "it will be good for you to start exercising," or "it's good for you to learn to appreciate Homer, Hesiod, and Horace," they certainly don't mean "you will enjoy those things." People often tell people that "x will be good for them," precisely as motivation for them to do things they do not want to do, even when the primary proximate beneficiary of these acts is the person doing them (although it isn't only for the good of the person undertaking these challenges; the champions of the liberal arts tend to argue that all of society benefits from the student's efforts).
Perhaps pornography is a good example here. When people say, "you shouldn't consume pornography, it will mess with your ability to have healthy relationships," they are generally speaking about both one's ability to to enjoy a healthy relationship, but often even moreso one's ability to be a good partner [I]for someone else[/I]. Yet what is good for the whole is good for the person who is part of the whole, and someone's inability to be a good "part" is "bad for them" for the same reasons that it is bad "for everyone else." For Aristotle, this analysis tends to stop at the limits of the polis (although not exclusively), whereas for someone like St. Augustine it extends to the entire world, but it's the same idea.
Second, consider Book X of the Ethics where Aristotle identifies the life of contemplation as the highest good, the most divine. Plenty of thinkers agree with Aristotle here (even seemingly some in Eastern traditions). Suppose he is right. Well, in this case, what is most "good for you," is to have your wonder (the first principle of philosophy and science) satisfied. Yet, on the classical view, this is simply impossible for the person who lacks virtue. Indeed, for Plato it seems that it is impossible to truly know the Good and to act wickedly (e.g. the Parmenides). Likewise, the beatific vision, St. Augustine's ascent with St. Monica in Book IX of the Confessions, or St. Bonaventure's ascent in The Mind's Journey to God cannot be accomplished by the wicked. One cannot fully achieve these while giving in to lusts (or perhaps even still being tempted by them), coveting, etc.
It's a contradiction in terms to say that one could "do wrong" while having the best for oneself. Consider St. Augustine's argument that the soul in Heaven, having been perfected, has become so free that it is incapable of sin (for the same reason that the person most free to run never trips and falls over). This isn't just a Christian idea though, Porphyry's Pythagoras and Philostratus' Apollonius of Tyana are both saints, and we might add Plato's Socrates here.* They have what is "best for them," and in having this they are going to be doing "the right thing." Likewise, St. Athanasius' St. Anthony has what is truly "best for him," Christ, and it is by/through his possession of this that he also does what is "right." They're the same thing at the limit.
So, perhaps I am explaining it poorly, or perhaps it is just hard to not read the equivocal division of modern ethics [I]back into[/I] the earlier ethics (MacIntyre's point).
The reason I find MacIntyre's thesis plausible is because [I]I[/I] certainly had this difficulty with ancient thought early on. But, perhaps my own problem was approaching it too hubristically, because, honestly, my original thoughts were that Hume's guillotine, the old "is-ought" chasm simply hadn't occured to prior thinkers precisely because religion and tradition were blinding them to it. I don't think that now though, I think Hume's guillotine simply makes no sense with how Plato and Aristotle see the Good or virtue.
I think history had to pull apart the concepts of "doing right," and this being "what is best to do 'for you.'" And ultimately, I think this goes back into the birth of nominalism, the univocity of being, and the way in which "human virtue," as classically conceived, is often (perhaps not always) problematic for a theology of "faith alone" or "total depravity." You need some changes before Luther can tell Erasmus:
"If it is difficult to believe in Gods mercy and goodness when He damns those who do not deserve it, we must recall that if Gods justice could be recognized as just by human comprehension, it would not be divine."
Here is a great example of the equivocity that separates the unknowable right, "God's Good," from what is or seems "good for us," human good. And of course I mention Calvin and Luther because they are the big names, but this is certainly a shift in Catholic theology too (it starts there in late-medieval nominalism)some "Baroque Thomism" might be called "more Calvinist than Calvin."
* I really don't think we're supposed to pity Socrates as "receiving something that is 'bad for him.'" He explicitly tells us not to think this way. It's more like Sydney Carton's execution at the end of "A Tale of Two Cities:" "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known." I don't think Carton would think it is better "for him" to have not gone through with his plan to die in Darnay's stead.
But Plato talks about the desire to "couple" with the Good, which is apparently every bit as erotic as in the original Greek. We get this vision in the Symposium:
Or St. Augustine in the Confessions:
I really feel fortunate to have someone like you describe the connections among these earlier philosophical views. Youre able to produce a world view that I understand and admire. Im not sure whether this is a point in favor, or against, MacIntyre! Certainly what youre doing is an act of translation, in part, but I dont think Id be reacting so favorably to it if there really was a deep incoherence between ancients and moderns.
So no, you are not explaining it poorly at all, quite the opposite.
Now perhaps its I who need to explain better. For you say,
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I thought I had made clear that enjoying things is only one and certainly not the most interesting way of interpreting what I was calling personal goods. You can interpret good for you in the most ethically high-minded way possible (which some might criticize as sensuously sterile but shouldnt; it merely takes a broader view of what one experiences as good). I only ask that you acknowledge the for you in It will be good for you to study philosophy. And it is a sensible and coherent thing to say. But again, consider It will be good for you to [be good / do good things / live a good life Im not sure which way of filling this out you prefer]. What is being said here? That the good you do will also be good for you? But if, per Aristotle, the highest good is contemplation, then being tortured to death as a result of the good you do wouldnt seem to qualify. The only way I can think of for the good you do will also be good for you to make sense with a single meaning for good is simply to stipulate an arbitrary meaning for good that excludes all our normal personal uses, and insist that, even though we dont realize it, the virtuous person always experiences everything as good for him. I find this far-fetched and ad hoc.
I definitely see that your viewpoint is an attempt to create what I called a metaphysical unity between personal and universalizable goods. I also want to do that, I just dont think this road is very promising.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Really? I find this dichotomy occurring constantly in the Platonic dialogues. If these two concepts were so inseparable, why do so many of Socrates interlocutors dispute it? It reads to me like the debate was hot and heavy then, as it is now.
Heres a different way to talk about this that might help. The ends of virtue ethics and Kantian ethics are the same good action that gets good results, and in turns bounces back, so to speak, on the doer, improving them as well. The difference is direction of motivation. This is a broad-brush picture, but: The virtue ethicist wants to achieve eudaemonia, and she realizes that she cant do that unless she acts virtuously, which (lets say; it isnt always so clear in Greek philosophy) means acting with justice, compassion, and honesty towards others. The Kantian wants to act with justice, compassion, and honesty toward others, and realizes that in doing so he will necessarily also improve his moral character and live a flourishing life, but thats not the point.
Do we see the difference? Its direction of motivation. Even though both persons actions have exactly the same consequences, one proceeds toward eudaemonia, the other proceeds toward right action. Kant thought this made all the ethical difference. I dont completely agree, but laying it out in these terms is helpful, I hope.
Have you noticed that you haven't produced an actual argument for your claim that the sentence is vacuous? You just keep asserting that it is so, without argument.* Timothy follows Aristotle and Aquinas in speaking about health:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
"Doing healthy things makes you healthy."
From memory, Aristotle will talk about at least three senses of health:
Given that these are three different but interrelated senses, a claim like, "Healthy food will make you healthy," need not be vacuous. Do you have an argument for why you think any of the claims in question are vacuous?
If "healthy" is the same in both instances then the claim is vacuous; if "healthy" is different then the claim is equivocal. That is the argument that seems to underlie your thinking. And the answer is analogical predication: the two terms are neither univocal nor equivocal.
(Note that health is one kind of goodness.)
* Edit: I now see that you did give a Kantian argument here: .
Well, on the classical view, studying philosophy is "good for you" because it makes you a good person who loves justice and acts justly. In the Republic, each of Plato's interlocutors are a stand-in for one of Plato's "types of men" (e.g. 'tyrannical man," "timocratic man," etc.). Through their interactions with Socrates, each one "moves up a step" by the end of the dialogue (Sugrue's lectures on Plato are great for capturing all these subtle dramatic elements). In the conversation with Glaucon, Plato distinguishes between those things that are good in virtue of something else, those that are sought for their own sake, and those that are both. It seems that you are afraid that anything in the "both" category is at risk of becoming either vacuous or else must actually be composed of two equivocal notions, but I don't totally understand why this is.
But yes, doing the right thing is "good for you," this is precisely Boethius point in the Consolation. It's easy to misread his "all fortune is good fortune" as the sort of metaphysical optimism that Voltaire skewers with Candide's Dr. Pangloss. It isn't though. All fortune is good fortune for the one who is beyond fortune.
To be honest, I am not really sure why you think "good" must become arbitrary here. Do you think it would be "truly better" for Socrates to escape his execution by fleeing or by apologetically recanting at his trial? Would it be better for Carton not to save Darnay?
The point isn't necessarily that "getting executed is good for Socrates," although Boethius will make something like this argument, because it is indeed Socrates' execution that makes his message ring so clear, and which inspires his student Plato. If it was "good for Socrates to have people take his message seriously," then it was "good for him to be executed."
But the more general point would be that it is better not to flee, or more importantly, better to be the sort of person who will not flee. No man is totally self-determining.The world has challenges. Yet it is better to seek after what is truly good and not just what appears good or what others say is good. This is the only way in which one becomes united and self-determining. This is why Socrates says that if his sons fail to love justice they will "think themselves something when they are truly nothing." They will be more "bundles of external causes," less self-determining.
Perhaps here is where part of the disconnect is. Modern philosophy has a strong tendency to atomize in its analysis. So, when we talk of freedom or goodness, we often speak of "free or good acts." Both rules-based ethical reasoning and consequentialism prioritize the act.
This allows for seemingly paradoxical scenarios. For example, suppose we have a relatively unvirtuous Frenchman, a young guy who is a boaster, a drunk, an adulterer, lazy, gets into fights, and is a bad father. But, due to a pang of conscience, he hides a Jewish neighbor from the Nazis. He does the right thing here. As a result, he gets caught and sent to a concentration camp. He has a terrible time and develops bad PTSD. His wife, thinking him dead, leaves him. He becomes a full time drunk, lives a miserable life, and dies in a Marseilles gutter at 45.
Now suppose that he was young during the war and had a rough childhood but, had he not hidden his neighbor, he would have grown out of some of his bad habits. Maybe he even would have found God and reformed in a major way, becoming deeply spiritual. He would have become virtuous, had a life of contemplation, better fortune, etc. all due to doing the wrong thing. Well clearly, it cannot always be good for us to do the right thing!
But this is the problem of focusing on acts and unknowable contingencies. Aristotle claims being is "primarily said of substances," things, most appropriately beings (i.e. chiefly organisms which possess a principle of self-organization and self-determination). The case for this is that acts don't occur without things. We do not have "running" in the absence of something that runs for instance. So, while we might usefully speak of free or good acts, it is primarily people (and perhaps organizations) that are good or free. And this particularly makes sense if we think of virtue as a habit, and happiness as being defined as a "good life" not a "good state" (Aristotle, Solon, Athens' great lawgiver, and the Wisdom of Solomon all note that we shouldn't consider a man's life happy until he is dead).
So the question is not primarily: "depending on the vicissitudes of fortune, will it always be better to commit to isolated 'good acts?'" The question, at least on the classical view, is: "will it always be better for a person to be more virtuous, to be a better person, to be the sort of person who enjoys doing good?"
In our example, we might say that our Frenchman's problem is not, in the end, that he "did the right thing and suffered for it," but rather that he lacked the virtues necessary to do the right thing and flourish despite the consequences. After all, Aristotle allows that we can be merely continent, forcing ourselves to do the right thing but hating it. The real question I think though is "would we rather be a person like Gandhi, Socrates, or Boethius, and do the right thing and be happy in this choice?" That is, would we prefer:
A. Not to want to do the right thing at all (vice).
B. To want to do the right thing, but to chicken out because of the consequences (incontinence)
C. Do the right thing, but end up hating it, or having it ruin you, like our example (continence)?
D. Do the right thing and be happy about it, and have it strengthen you? (virtue)
It seems to me we want to be D and are better off if we are D, particularly if we think of these as patterns of behavior, not in terms of isolated acts. And this doesn't require the absurdity that someone like Origen or St. Maximus enjoys being maimed and tortured. Rather, the point is that even this, the height of bad fortune, doesn't rob them of their flourishing.
So, we could ask things like: "well didn't Saint Augustine need his wealth, good education, and soaring career at the imperial court to get to the place where he could give up all his wealth, his status, sex, etc.?" Probably. Nowhere does the classical tradition suggest that good things like education, a stable childhood environment, etc. aren't conducive to virtue. The whole idea of the classical education, so well defended in C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man, is that virtue can be taught. The point is rather that these are simply means to what is sought for its own sake.
To sum up: it's better to be the sort of person who loves justice. Continence, doing the right thing when we don't want to, is good because it leads to being a virtuous person, not because every individual continent act situated in the contingency of the world results in long term benefit (how would one even confirm or deny such a thing?)
But the achievement of ataraxia is what's truly eudemon, no?
I think that the virtuous approach can define itself with respect to modern moral philosophy, taking up a stance like Anscombe's Modern Moral Philosophy.
But I don't think that by offering a coherent account of goodness synthesized with a whole philosophy that it escapes choice. It's just another framing device that then falls into similar conflicts.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is what I'm skeptical of. Not in principle, but certainly in practice. We need look no further than the success of the Catholic church to realize that the program doesn't teach us to be virtuous -- else the society would have no need for rituals of cleansing.
But as it is it's basically set up with the belief that no one can achieve the good. What good is that good?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Its a question of immediate vs delayed gratification. Addictions are so hard to overcome because the reward is immediate and the negative consequences occur over a longer period of time. The challenge, then, is to frontload those delayed painful consequences so that they are not only experienced alongside the immediate gratification but overpower them. One thing is certain. No one will
be motivated to do anything, whether for themselves or the greater good, if it doesnt present it self to them within the context of an immediate, personal reward.
Maybe for many of the Stoics, and arguably for Aristotle, but I think what ataraxia normally describes is just the lower stages of the "beatific vision." We want to ascend beyond that! To henosis and hesychasm, and beyond even that, to the ultimate goal of theosis and deification.
That's the ultimate telos of man in the Christian development of the tradition at least(and from what I understand Sufism is quite similar). As St. Athanasius' says in On the Incarnation "God became man that man might become God." Or St. Paul: "Christ is the firstborn of [I]many[/I] brethren," partaking in the "incomparable glory."
For Boethius, the "Stoic medicine" is a numbing agent to help him get back on track for the ascent after the whole death sentence thing. Lady Philosophy likens it to bending a bent stick too far in the other direction in order to straighten it.
I feel like there is a wealth of evidence from the psychology literature to support the notion that virtue (or some instrumental approximation of it) can be taught, or that education is conducive to virtue. But, since virtue is self-determining, no education ensures virtue. Alcibiades has Socrates as a teacher and it doesn't save him from vice.
Overall though, I think the effects of mass education, as poorly as it might be implemented, are still a huge net positive. For one, it makes societies more self-determining, more able to reach collective goals. Certain desirable social systems are unworkable without most citizens having some sort of education.
I'm not sure if I get what you mean here.
BTW, this is absolutely true, but Plato is essentially the origin point of the classical metaphysical tradition. He is staking out the ground for what would become the philosophical "tradition." The other thing is that Plato is using the dialogues to contrast bad (and poorly informed) opinions with better ones, and apparent good with what is truly good. The "agreement" MacIntyre references respects what the philosophically/theologically adept generally thought vis-a-vis what constituted the "better opinions" and "real good," not what "everyone thought was good," or what the "learned" actually managed to pursue. Italian mercenaries probably weren't reading too much of Boethius for instance, even if he was the best seller of the middle ages.
Second, I don't think anyone wants to claim that "most people" had bought into the ethics that flow from "classical metaphysics," even when it was dominant. Due to the technological, political, and economic realities of the time "most people" were illiterate serfs. So, the claim of (relative) consensus is much more about the people serving as tutors for the nobility, those in the university system, the learned, etc.
Also, contemporary scholars might balk at my mixing Plato, Boethius, Aquinas, etc. into unified position. The common thing to do in contemporary analyses of this tradition is to break up the thinkers and show how they differ. But, per this tradition itself, this would be to fall victim to the "slide into multiplicity," to focus on "the Many" rather than the unifying "One," i.e., the unifying principles that run through the whole tradition from Plato up into St. Bonaventure and Meister Eckhart. Part of the reason medievals are comfortable throwing together Plato with Pseudo-Dionysus, right next to Muslim and Jewish scholars, is because of their conviction that the core of everyone's project is the same unifying principles. As St. Augustine says "all truth is God's truth." This is the "Logos universalism" that Tilich speaks about.
That makes sense -- but do you read MacIntyre as saying that, as a result of the classical metaphysical tradition taking sway, it was no longer a "thinkable thought" that perhaps the good was not the same as what was good for me? Even limiting ourselves to the elite thinkers, or the "philosophically adept," or the ones with "better opinions," I find this a bit hard to believe. They could actually no longer put that forward as a position? But then, as you know, I take issue with MacIntyre's whole idea that there is a huge gap in ethical thinking between ancients and moderns. Considerable disagreement, yes, but not radical incommensurability of concepts. I could be wrong, but I think Socrates would have been able to follow our discussion here without difficulty. I think he might even have wanted to get into it!
I'd say the most notable exception is Epicurus, who would argue that the "later stages" are fine for contemplatives who want to live the life of the mind, but his task is to teach ataraxia because he has found it beneficial to himself.
And by that metric, at least...
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I mean that not many people achieve ataraxia in the Christian way of life. Some do, but I don't see it as any more or less than any other way of life. From what I see Christians are about as anxious as the rest of humanity, which leads me to believe that they do not have a special knowledge about what is good according to the Epicurean way of life.
This all by way of making the point that we can follow others in valuing virtue-theoretic approaches, but I don't see the virtue theorist as escaping any of the problems which deontologists or consequentialists or specifications therein deal with -- that this is something of an overpromise. The ancients are interesting because they give us a point to reflect from but they don't overcome the problem of choice -- which is to say, should I follow Christ, or should I follow Epicurus?
If all is atoms and void and there is no afterlife and God doesn't care how I live my life then surely the highest good is to be content with the unfolding of being no matter which way it goes because we have very little control. Or, at least, I'd put it to you that this is a different good from the Christian good, which relies upon the promise of everlasting life (be it tomorrow or now): The Epicurean cautions against such thoughts because they aren't knowable in the first place, and since the Gods care nothing for us it's clear that Christ couldn't have walked on this Earth -- there never was a God that became man. The Gods are already perfect unto themselves and do not concern themselves with our life. This is just another case of human beings wanting to be more than what they are, which puts them into a state of anxiety for not achieving what they cannot be.
Basically I think the reason the Stoics are read more now is because it got along with Christianity in its hatred of the body, while Epicurus wrote a material and bodily philosophy that has little patience for desires which lead one to be anxious.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I have no doubt that we can look at where our students are at now -- A -- and devise ways to help them grow and learn -- to become B.
I think education a good, but I'd separate it out from the topic at hand.
My point is more that we have to decide what B is.
So if we have a cohort of young people who have only known growing up and we need to turn them into soldiers then there are a set of steps we can take which will produce measurable outcomes whereby we can assert whether or not pupil 1 has or how they have become B.
We are all connected to one another, so I do not doubt that education can influence people.
But I think of this as a vertical point of view, whereas I'd emphasize a horizontal point of view -- there are some people for whom the life of the mind catches on and they are quite happy with it.
But can everyone do that?
I don't think so.
And how is everyone doing that isn't living up to this ubermensch, or doesn't even acknowledge the value of the path towards something greater?
Because it's the herd that I'm most concerned with. And I think that's where the good truly begins anyways.
I think the key here is that in Plato's time a selfish doctrine was generally recognized as being unvirtuous and immoral. With Machiavelli we begin to see a societal shift towards embracing doctrines of selfishness.* So @J is right that the doctrine is represented in Plato, but the context surrounding that doctrine was quite different. Homer and Machiavelli represent different epochs. Ancient Athenians respected the individual, but they were not individualists.
Quoting J
This is a consequentialist reading of virtue ethics which is not at all in accord with actual, historical virtue ethics. It reads virtue as a means to happiness. It is the modern attempt at recovering virtue ethics that never actually overcame consequentialism.
* See Simpson's, "Autonomous Morality and the Idea of the Noble."
Surely you can see the circularity? No further seems to clarify this. It seems to me, the biggest reason ethical thinking is so muddled and hard to reconcile as between differing views. It is always recourse to a subjective "good" which is, in turn, supported by the notion that its "good to be good". ?????? LOL.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is relatively incoherent. I like the Consolation, and I think Boethius is undoubtedly one of the better medieval writers (particularly the lack of inherent divinity despite his obvious leanings). It is quite easy to read the above conceptualisation as nonsense. It's a nice metaphor, if you already know what "good" means, but here we don't. There's no reason to be climbing, other than accepting an assertion.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Quite different to 'non-good' or somehow 'bad'.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Which appears, on it's face, ridiculous. There's no reason to think Socrates was good, other than his assertion.
I appreciate this response, but I do not think it has addressed any of the issue. The question remains moot, in the absence of a non-circular, or at least non-self-referential concept of 'good'. The above amounts to "good is conceptualised as that which it is good to do".
Is one able to predict with some level of accuracy what others will deem good? If so, how could the good be arbitrary or disconnected from "extrinsic facts"?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, no question. In the circumstances in which Socrates finds himself, hes made the right choice. But I believe were all familiar with the expression the lesser of two evils? This, to me, is a much more accurate description of what is happening to Socrates, than to say he has chosen something that is good for him. This should not be read as denying or downplaying how admirable Socrates -- or Cartons, or any martyrs decision is. What he does requires enormous bravery and integrity. These are virtues of the highest order. But no, it hasnt been good for him. He has done good, which Im trying to argue is quite different.
Im essentially making a point about language, about how people use words and the meanings they hold for us not so much about deep ethical questions. Im trying to persuade you that using good for him in the context of what happens to Socrates is stretching words past the breaking point.
Its the same (though for different reasons) with Its healthy for you to be healthy. This is simply not something we have occasion to say, so its hard to know what it would mean. Intelligent people are disagreeing about this here, so before writing this, I sat down, cleared my mind, and tried to imagine a circumstance in which the statement Its healthy for you to be healthy might occur. I imagined person A saying something, to which B replies with the statement in question, and then A responds. I could not find any dialogue that didnt involve some kind of discrimination among meanings or connotations of healthy. Sample: A: I dont see what good will come out of exercising and eating a balanced diet. B: No, its healthy for you to be healthy. A: Oh, I see. Exercising and good nutrition will make me healthy, and being healthy is desirable and good for me. Im sure you can analyze this for yourself and see why it involves different uses of healthy to avoid vacuity. In contrast, when I imagine the statement being simply asserted, say to a 10-year-old child, if the child is bright then I imagine their response to be: But that doesnt say anything. Thats like ?Its fun for me to have fun.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Good, thats a concise way of showing the problem. Let me see if I can clarify my position. You are arguing, if Im understanding you, that ethical good is an example of the third way -- a good that is sought because it is made good by something else, and is also good for its own sake. I dont think theres anything vacuous about thinking this way. Its an instance of what I called a metaphysical union of goods, and highly to be valued, if we can make a strong case for it. What Im arguing is that the word good is necessarily doing double duty here; it has to be, otherwise there would be no issue of union at all.
Now you might accept this idea of some sort of union being proposed, but reply, Its not a union of two kinds of ?goods, but of particulars and generals. Im saying that when an individual does good things for their own sake, they are made good as a result. And the way in which they are now good is exactly the same as the way in which those good things are good. The concept of ?good has remained the same; its the individual who has united themselves with the Good.
And now we return to the question of the good of Socrates execution. If what youre saying is that Socrates has become a better person by accepting his death, we have no argument. If youre saying that Socrates has united himself, as an individual, with something we can broadly capitalize as the Good, again we agree. My contention is now twofold: 1) We have to resort to something like capitalizing Good because we want to show clearly that we mean a special use of good, an ethical use which is of enormous worth; and 2) When we talk about something being good for you, this is not the sort of good were talking about. If it were, then we would be forced into maintaining that being executed is good for you. And this offends common sense.
Laying all this out, Im aware that its partially an appeal to something I find self-evident among English language-users, and I hardly know what more to say to justify that. I dont mean I couldnt be wrong, and what Id actually like would be for you to show me some usages of good that contradict this in a relevant way. And mind you, I dont mean good as in better than in the lesser of two evils" sense. I mean an actual, positive "good for me." Maybe theres some way we speak of "good for you" that Im overlooking or failing to see clearly. But I hope this gives you a better sense of why I think the two equivocal notions idea is important.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I guess this is also a good illustration of the point in dispute. I cannot conceive of being maimed and tortured as not robbing someone of their flourishing unless you arbitrarily make flourishing torture-proof, thanks to previous "patterns of behavior." It seems the very epitome of such a robbery to me. Does it make them a bad person? Of course not. Was it the lesser of two evils? Yes, but . . . and here the argument begins all over again.
There are actually several more points you made that I wouldn't mind taking up, but no doubt this is enough for one post!
PS -- I like the story of the unvirtuous Frenchman. Is that from Sartre? :wink:
Do any devil's advocate questions demand answers?
On a philosophy forum the question of the OP should probably be phrased, "Why ought one do anything at all?" Or, "Why ought one do any one thing rather than any other thing?"
At that point we can whittle the contributors down to two groups: those who recognize that some things ought to be done, and those who won't. I'd say that only the first group is worth hearing. (And we could have another thread for the second group, which shows that anyone who does things believes that things should be done.)
At that point everyone in the first group can contribute to a productive conversation given the common premise that some things ought be done.
The terms here aren't completely equivocal either though. They have an analogous relation.
But the good by which someone is a "good leader" or a "good basketball player," is not univocally the same good as that of a "good pen" or a "good knife." Just as "lentils are a healthy food" a way different from "J is healthy."
Right, but this is the whole point. As respects the human good, good is primarily said of persons. A "good life" is not atomistically divisible into a collection of "good acts" or "good moments," such that we tally up the score at the end via some sort of calculus. François Mauriac's The Viper's Tangle is an excellent example of someone becoming a "good person" only at the end of a "bad life."The relation is to the whole. Socrates is a good person who lives a good life; his death doesn't change this. We could consider Socrates claim in the Phaedo that philosophy teaches us how to die, because it teaches us not to become entrapped by goods that will inevitably be lost.
You are pivoting from "'it is good to be good' is vacuous," to "executions and maiming are good." But no one claims this. Indeed, Socrates claims that it will be evil for the citizens of Athens to execute him. The reason it is not primarily bad for Socrates is because it will not rob him of being a "good person" or having lived a "good life," nor of his virtue, nor his grasp on what is truly best.
Again, the focus on the isolated act is probably unhelpful for understanding where the ancients are coming from. Consequentialism is full of strange paradoxes. Is it good to be maimed? On average, no. In some cases, it might be the best thing that ever happened to someone. We can suppose a story about a poor Persian street child, who has been neglected and is driven around by their appetites and passions to survive on the streets of Persepolis. They get caught stealing a loaf of bread and have the offending hand lopped off.
Yet we could well imagine a case where this causes some benefactor to take pity on the child, to take them in and raise them, and this results in the child living a fulfilling and successful life, becoming a virtuous person, etc.
Likewise, it's normally good to send someone to a high end school. Yet we can easily imagine a case where an otherwise successful and virtuous student has trouble adjusting to a wealthy private school, falls in with the wrong crowd, and spirals into vice and ruin.
Yet ethics is primarily about what we can choose, and what we can choose in terms of our own capacity for self-determination often relates to how we respond to fortune, or the acts of the wicked.
When people say "it is good for you to be good," in the overwhelming number of cases they are attempting to draw a contrast between apparent or lesser goods, and true and greater goods. That is, it is "better for you to be virtuous, to enjoy charity, to love, to be prudent." You could probably almost always rephrase it better as "it is better for you to be a good person then to pursue these apparent or lesser goods."
Again, this seems to be trying to make the case that it isn't evil to torture or maim people. Who is going to claim that?
The point is, as you allow, these things do not rob Origen or Maximus of their virtue, or of their having lived a good life, just as Martin Luther King's being shot did not make his life a bad one. Would it be better for MLK to have not been shot? Sure, but "getting shot" is not an ethical choice he made, it was an evil choice made by James Earl Ray.
Socrates is not saying that good men never stub their toes, or get the flu. He is focusing on what goodness is primarily said of.
I'm not particularly sure what you're expecting, someone to decide for you? People refuse to accept that the Earth is round, they deny the germ theory of infectious disease, they think floride in their water is a mind control technique, they disagree about what the value of 1/0 should be, or if something can simultaneously both be and not-be in an unqualified sense. Rarely, if ever, do demonstrations in any sense "force" people to see the correctness of some view.
Is the idea that anyone who affirms a certain ethics or metaphysics shall become perfected by it if it is "the right one?" But this runs counter to the philosophy underpinning many systems of ethics. Epictetus claims most "free men" are, in truth, slaves. Plato doesn't have everyone being easily sprung from the cave. Christ says at Matthew 7:22-23:
"Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!"
Ah, a light has dawned for me. I think whats gotten confused in our discussion is the grammatical impact of for you. Ive been reading It is good for you to be good as meaning If you are good, it will be good for you, you will experience something that you perceive as good. And youve been reading it as It is morally more desirable for you to be a good person. The difference shows up even more clearly in an example like It is good for you to tell the truth no matter what, which can be understood either as If you tell the truth, it will be good for you, youll derive a benefit, or as It is a good thing, a morally correct thing, to tell the truth. What seems key here is that the second version can be true even if the first version is not. It could be the case that telling the truth in a particular case will do you no good whatsoever it is not a good for you -- but truthtelling is still important to our community, so we recommend it nevertheless.
I call this a grammatical question because you can analyze the for you as appending to good, (Itll be good for you!) or as requiring the verb that follows it: Its a good thing for you to . . . [do X Y Z] Both these usages are very common, and Im not surprised we got muddled. Moreover, what we really want is for there not to be a difference, somehow, in these usages -- the metaphysical union of goods, again.
So if this indeed clears something up, I can now say that on your reading of It is good for you to be good, I agree completely. It is always better to be a good person than to pursue apparent or lesser goods. I wonder whether, in turn, you can now agree that on my reading, It is good for you to be good is often, sadly, not the case. I suspect you may not agree, because I think you want to say that the tortured victim is deriving a benefit of some sort, but this remains obscure to me. Is it supposed to be good for his soul even while disastrous for his body? Or is the benefit he derives merely that he has not done evil, he has stayed true to his principles? But perhaps Im wrong.
The next step would be to consider which of these two readings is the one that various ethical traditions intend.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, the equivocation is a matter of degree. But if they meant exactly the same thing, the statement would be vacuous.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No, sorry if Im not being clear. I say that not only is torturing and maiming evil, but it is also an evil to be tortured and maimed, so much so that a concept of flourishing as a person that could include being tortured to death must be wrong.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
But then theres Aristotle. Surely hes right when he says that a good life consists of all the many good things he names, with the highest being contemplation. Arent these things that goodness is primarily said of too?
Edit: Just thought of another way to paraphrase the 2nd version of "It's good for you to be good" -- "It's good that you be good." That eliminates the confusing "for you" entirely.
Oh no, nothing like that. I'm laying out how there's a choice at all -- so the move from modern ethics to ancient ethics doesn't get around the various trappings of modern ethics because we can still isolate different ways of thinking, even in the ancient world, and so the subject must make a choice. The question "Why ought one do what is Good?" is still meaningful even with a richer philosophy to draw from in answering questions -- it's not some failing of modern ethics to point out that this is so.
Basically Hume's guillotine still chops.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The idea is that virtue cannot be taught, and therefore is not a knowledge. When the ethical philosophers throw up there hands at the masses and declare themselves the truly free ones and the rest of the world deluded by vice I tend to believe we've stumbled upon an ethical transcendental argument -- the only possible way we can be good is....
But if there is more than one virtuous life -- aside from the contemplative life, or the life of the politician, or the life of the family -- then the lawlessness of the Other is the Other's true freedom. They are free from the ethicists desires and following their own.
Attempting a summary -- the ancients are good to read but don't provide all the answers to what goodness is. And even if we study the philosophers that doesn't mean we know more about goodness than someone who has not studied. It could be the reason we're so interested in ethics is because we're terrible at it, and the person who is good at it has no need to study.
Lets grant the proposition.
How would that connect with any extrinsic facts? That people have opinions has nothing to do with fact-finding, or defining Good. This simply isn't relevant to the question. It is arbitrary - it might just be shared by groups of affinity. Nothing interesting going on there in my view.
So as a first step we should be able to say that it is not arbitrary, as you have claimed.
Quoting Moliere
I don't think Hume's guillotine ever chopped, and it certainly doesn't chop for the herd. If you place food in front of a poor starving person, they will eat it. If you try to argue that 'is' does not imply 'ought' before allowing them to eat it, they will still eat it, but will also think you are crazy. :smile:
Actually, from the Epicurean point of view, it could be argued that the herd's ethical reasoning is too subtle -- what plagues people are these ideas which cause anxiety, and so the ideas must be removed so that the person can attend to the simple and obvious pleasures of life rather than fretting over what they have no control over.
I don't quite grant your premise, anyway. The differences across cultures and times make it quite obvious that 'the Good' in the terms you're using is just a group agreement to some moral boundaries. This is not particularly predictable as between groups, or across time. Your syllogism (as such) simply isn't giving what you want it to.
Quoting Leontiskos
Which people? Predictable by whom, to what degree, and under what circumstances? Is this simpyl a statistical reading of past attitudes? None of this helps... "what people deem to be good" is insufficiently specific, anyway. This is a hodge-podge at best, giving nothing reasonably helpful.
Those boundaries are arbitrary. The collective agreement to them doesn't touch that. To be non-arbitrary you need to be pointing to something which has informed them, which is universally recognized. I see nothing of the kind, until we move into religion. But then, non-arbitrariness is baked in there exactly to get around this problem. Both issues seem to support my contention.
To place bread in front of someone who is hungry does not involve me in any "oughts", just "is's," and yet we know exactly what the person will do. The common person knows why: you ought to eat when you are hungry.
So are you saying that you do not grant the first premise? You think the argument is valid but the first premise is false?
Better to give a precise critique than to attempt to throw the kitchen sink at my short post.
The real world is not so simple.
There's a reason for the saying, No good deed remains unpunished. So often, doing "good" ends badly somehow. Just look at the hunger relief attempts in Africa. They have failed in so many ways, and created numerous new problems.
And secondly, once a person's trust has been betrayed enough times, they don't behave in the neat predictable way that you assume in your bread giving example (which is more about social trust than anything else).
In fact, "growing up", "maturing" is about overcoming a childish, naive belief in goodness and honesty.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is a truism. Yes, ideally, it is true, but it is often useless in real-world application.
Real-world situations are usually so complex that more than simple truisms are needed in order to navigate those situations without damage to oneself or others.
Too bad, that's the definition of good. What you're really asking is, "How do I know if I ought to do this?" In which you can discuss and debate trying to find some objective solution, descend into the idiocy that is subjective morality, or give up because its too hard but you can't admit that and say, 'There is no morality.'
I would tend to disagree with both. It is not always good for us to have what we "perceive as good." We can be wrong about what is truly good or truly best. I wouldn't necessarily disagree with the bolded part, yet I fear this framing might lead towards the another "slide into multiplicity" whereby we have many sui generis "Goods" with "moral good" constituting just one good among a plurality.
The point of a principle and measure is that it unifies a disparate multitude, resolving the problem of the "One and the Many." We can know the vast plurality of being because, even if there are infinite causes, there are a finite number of principles each realized in many times and places (Aristotle's critique of Anaxagoras at the outset of the Physics).
And I fear your following sentences confirm this suspicion. My point though is that "being good" (i.e. being truly better people, living truly better lives) is "good for us," that is, "it is actually better and more truly desirable," to be "morally good," although I would prefer to say "virtuous," instead of "morally good." Moral good is not its own sort of good here, distinct from the good of a "good car" or "good food." All related to flourishing. Rather, moral good is a more perfect manifestation of a principle analogously realized across a multitude.
That does not mean that we currently desire to be virtuous or morally good, or to act in ways that are virtuous or morally good. In the states of vice, incontinence, and continence we don't desire what is good. Rather, the point is that "if we knew the truth about what is better, we would prefer to act virtuously and to be virtuous," and "if we did not suffer from ignorance or weakness of will, we shall always choose the better over the worse." Again, Milton's Satan does not say "evil be thou evil for me."
Since you agree that it is better to be Socrates, rather than a cowardly version of Socrates, then it should make sense why it is good for Socrates to be virtuous. Socrates is free to "do the right thing," in a way the cowardly Socrates is not.
It seems plausible that telling the truth sometimes does no one much good. This is why I prefer the term "virtuous" to "morally good" and to focus on people and not individual acts. In The Dark Knight was Batman right to hide (to lie about) the fact that Harvey Dent degenerated into the monstrous Two Face? That seems to be what the film would lead us to believe. But rather than quibble over whether any individual deception is morally good or bad, given the vast contingencies involved, I think it's easier to say that it is better to be "prudent, loving, and charitable, etc." such that one is virtuous in how one goes about any such decisions.
"Know thyself" is, in part, an ethical command. This is why analyzing acts in abstraction is often unhelpful. Would it be better to stick up for someone who is being unfairly punished and to take the blame oneself (particularly if you are the person truly responsible)? Probably. But if you know yourself well, and you know that you're very likely to buckle under pressure and then shift the blame back onto the person who was going be unjustly punished, and you know that this in turn will make their punishment far worse, then perhaps you shouldn't do that.
More realistically, it isn't always good to over-promise, even if your promises involve doing good, if you know you won't be able to keep those promises.
Are the theorems of geometry vacuous because they are already contained in Euclid's postulates? Are syllogisms vacuous because all conclusions are contained in the premises? Is deterministic computation vacuous because its results always follow from the inputs with a probability of 100%?
We might think "2+2" is just another way to say "4," and "1 ÷ 3" just another way to say "1/3," but "179 ÷ 3 " is "59 and 2/3rds" seems genuinely informative unless you're an arithmetic prodigy.
Plus, not all circles are viscous circles. I would say "it's good (truly better) for you to be goodto be a good person and live a good life," is circular in a sense, but the way an ascending spiral is circular. It loops back around on itself at higher levels, with greater depths beneath it, in a sort of fractal recurrence.
The point of a truly transcedent Good, Hegel's "true infinite " as set against the "bad infinite," (the latter being defined in terms of the finite, the former being truly "without limit") is that it is never fully "contained." As St. Gregory of Nyssa has it, the beatific vision is an infinite asymptotic approach to the One who is the Good.
Since I tend to agree with Hegel's case for a circular, fallibalist epistemology, I see no great difficulty in the lack of a "foundation." One cannot find such a foundation for any facts, not "I have hands," nor "the principle of non-contradiction holds." Reason, being transcedent, can always question such foundations"the Logos is without beginning or end" because it is the ground for "beginning" and "end," "before" and "after."
As to the idea that "all fortune is good fortune," I feel like that is a separable proposition and it only makes sense in framed in the rather complex philosophy of history and Providence that comes up through Eusebius, St. Jerome, Boethius, St. Maximus, etc. and perhaps recovered to some degree by Hegel (a theology student who encountered the Patristics). It requires a corporate view of man and of man's freedom, e.g., St. Gregory of Nyssa's view of Adam as containing all men, the idea that particulars are "in" their principles (Diophantus), like the idea that [I]all Jews [/I], even those alive today, were present at the presentation of the Torah (Deut 29:9-14).
The point is that the identity of Lady Fortuna, properly understood, is Providence.
:up:
Right, it's worth noting that Hume's division on comes up in a particular context where renewed Euthyphro Dilemmas are leading to ideas like Divine Command Theory where "what is good," is ultimately tied to some sort of inscrutable act of will. The question, "is God's freedom limited by the fact that God can only do what is good," is incoherent on the understanding that God is Goodness itself.
I know of no similar move in the Eastern tradition or among the Islamic scholars, and the ancient Western ideas that get somewhat close are still quite different. This is where Taylor's "subtraction narratives" of secularism, where secularism is just "rational thought with superstition removed," are dangerous, because it obscures the setting in which Hume's point is makes any sense at all.
I think that, like so much of Hume's thought, the Guillotine relies on question begging. Hume is a diagnostician, seeing what follows from the assumptions and prejudices of his era. But ask most people "why is it bad for you if I burn out your eyes, or if I burn out your sons eyes," and the responses will be something like:
"If you burn out my eyes it would be incredibly painful and then I would be blind, so of course it wouldn't be good."
The response: "ah ha! Look, you're tried to justify a value statement about goodness with facts!" and the idea that what is "good" doesn't relate to these facts is prima facie ridiculous here. As JS Mill says, "one has to make some significant advances in philosophy to believe it." You only get to a position where it possible for it to be "choiceworthy" to prefer "what is truly worse," is if you have already assumed that what is "truly worse" is in some way arbitrary or inscrutable in the first place.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The choice I laid out was between Christ and Epicurus as an obvious counter-example from the ancient world of two ethical doctrines of thought which conflict. Both of them rely upon is-statements.
What this is meant to highlight is that just because you have some is-statements -- a "What is it for this kind of creature to be good?" -- that doesn't remove the conflict found in modern philosophy, from here:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Even if we switch from rules or consequences to the development of character due to the kind of creature we are there is still the question --
Quoting Moliere
"Because it's good for you", sure -- but which one?
It's easy to say that I'm an Epicurean because Epicurus is attractive to me. But it's much harder to generalize that to some general person.
I was listening to Edward Feser recently, and he argued that the modern abandonment of teleology left morality in a lurch. Severed from its teleological foundation, morality became inscrutable, as it is in both Hume and Kant.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
And yet the sequel takes that in a different direction, where the lie about justice erupts into full scale anarchy.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, good points. It is curious how little folks around here understand logic, argument, and how knowledge is created. In the air is the vaguely Wittengenstenian idea that a good argument is nothing more than a tautology.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Perhaps not in the East, but Islam provides an antecedent for Hume in its late-Medieval forms of Voluntarism and Occasionalism. I believe Alfred Freddoso has written on this.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yep. :lol:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
And as far as I can tell the people who go around spouting Hume's arguments are usually lying, saying things they don't believe to be true. Hume himself was more interesting insofar as he recognized that he could not uphold strong skepticism while keeping a straight face:
"What does it mean to be good/virtuous" is not a question that begins (exists?) with the moderns. This is a wholly different issue than Hume's characteristically modern preoccupation with inscrutable oughtness.
I am unsure what wasn't 'precise' in this? You can statistically predict anything, even if it's arbitrary. I think what you're trying to get into the discussion is that, given certain aims we can predict what people will say is good. For Muslims, there's predictive power, for Christians there's predictive power - but overall its extremely hard to predict what people will think is 'good', partiicularly if you're going to be anymore fine-grained than calling it 'relative'. Which, i'll say, is totally acceptable, but stepping back from any particularly group which has (from any third party's perspective) arbitrary moral rules based on arbitrarily up-held traditions (arguable, just clarifying my point) it is not possible to predict with any accuracy. Groups agreement to moral boundaries aren't ipso facto reasonable. They can be arbitrary.
So, I don't grant hte premise. If it were true, I still reject the conclusion. That was my point with the first reply. My assent to P1 is irrelevant to the failure of the point, imo.
Quoting Philosophim
Nah my guy. The definitions of good vary between 'that which is desired', 'that which is required' and ; 'that which is morally right'. Circular, unless restrictive. Which is why it's such a problem, and why threads like this exist. Addressed briefly above, this is the exact cause of the vagueness of 'Good'. It is entirely relative.
You're using a shotgun approach and hoping you hit something. I want a single criticism, not four.
Quoting AmadeusD
No, I don't see that one can statistically predict arbitrary outcomes.
Quoting AmadeusD
No, I think we can predict what people will say is good regardless of their religion. People will say that food is good, for instance, whether they are Muslim or Christian. If we can predict that most all people will say that food is good, then we have no reason to believe that people's identification of food as good is arbitrary.
Fair enough. So my suggestion for Version 1 should have read, If you are good, it will be good for you, in the sense that either you or someone else is able to identify it as such by experiencing or observing some particular thing about you. This is starting to sound a little lawyerly but Im working hard to avoid saying something that cant be falsified. For after all, if I said, . . . it will be good for you but no one can tell, we just know it must be true, wed be back at square one, with a merely asserted union.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, this is the sort of thing we want to be true, and its very poetically expressed. But at this point one really has to stop and say, But what do you mean? If you cant explain what it means without images of spirals and fractals, arent I entitled to wonder if its actually (rationally) explicable at all? For, when alls said and done, Im still left with what appear to be two quite different usages of good, and the desire, but not the means, to unite them. Simply asserting their union wont do.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Now here is a Kantian question! As Im sure you know, Kant believed that mathematical truths were synthetic, and not contained in any premises. Dodging any deep debates on math here, lets just say that if Kant was wrong, and arithmetic, geometry, and logic are indeed all analytic, I dont think anyone has ever suggested that analytic truths are vacuous. But thats just the problem here -- Its good for you to be good is not being put forward as an analytic truth. Its meant to inform us of something we didnt know, or so I assume. Or perhaps you do mean it analytically? -- something like To understand what ?the good means is also to know that it is good for you to be good?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This, to me, is an important insight into the whole question. What I find interesting is that both you and I believe in the desirability of avoiding a multiplicity of goods. I very much want the Good to be univocal, and all the uses of good to be instances of the same thing, so that moral good would not be sui generis in a worrisome sense, any more than aesthetic good would be. But . . . the problem is that, IMO, you havent yet shown how it can be the case. Perhaps no one can, but we have to do more than assert what Ive been calling a metaphysical union of goods but not explain how it works in a way that defeats the objections Ive raised so far. How in the world can execution be good for Socrates? Better than the alternatives, sure, but good? You cant just fold the two meanings of good together by fiat, and say that because Socrates has made a good choice, has done a virtuous thing, it therefore automatically becomes good for him. That is what we want for a conclusion, but we lack the argument.
Also, I do think that to stop the discussion before modern philosophy is to greatly decrease our chances of a solution to this problem. I mean no offense, but have you given a lot of thought to Kants ethics? This problem of avoiding a multiplicity of goods is central to his project. His solutions are very different from Platos or Aristotles or Aquinass, and offer perspectives that I believe are central. Moreover, he was a firm Christian believer and insisted that the truths of morality be consistent with the truths of revelation, so, again, I just cant see this as some huge gap with the ancients at least not the ancient Christians.
Im sure TPF has done a thread on the Groundwork at some point in the past maybe revisit?
No moral good is ever about what people simply want. If I desire to murder a person, no one sane would call that 'good'. "Desire" in this case is, "What should be." That which is required is "What should be." And "That which is morally right" is "What should be." If you have a definition of good that doesn't include "What should be", then you're not talking about a moral good.
To be clear, this doesn't define "where, what, why, how, or who determines" what should be. Its just that the common kernel of every viable definition of moral good entails, "What should be".
Well, for this you need metaphysics to explain why the Good is a [I]principle[/I] and why we should think it is a unified principle.
Do Stoicism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Christianity, Taoism, Confucianism, and Epicureanism all have totally different views of what is good? It doesn't seem to me that they do; there is a lot of overlap. So, we might assume some unity there.
Certainly, the Patristics didn't seem to think "the philosophers," had a totally different idea of goodness from that of Christianity. "All truth is God's truth," after all. Sometimes Pope Francis's: "All religions are paths to God. I will use an analogy, they are like different languages that express the divine." is taken to be an arch post-modern hersey, but it's simply the same Logos universalism that has been around since the Church Fathers, and which is enshrined in the Catechism (also, better apologetics than calling people infidels or pagans).
Presumably, there is some way to decide between "is statements," else knowledge is impossible. And there are also arguments that we might say warrant more of less credence, while being far from certain.
The issue of "choice" to me is simply embarking seriously on [I]any[/I] ethical life and the life of philosophy itself. As St. Augustine and St. Anselm say, we must "have faith that we might understand," since no practical theory of the ethical life will be fully apparent to us at first glance.
Also, I feel I should note that no one in the classical tradition says that everyone should be contemplatives. St. Thomas and the anonymous "Cloud of Unknowing" say specifically that this is not so. Only a few people have the temperament and aptitude for this path, and not all can follow it even if they do due to other demands and responsibilities. St. Augustine turns away a potential monastic because he is a high ranking Roman military official and is needed there.
The other thing is that the heights of contemplation are not attained through discursive reason. This ties in to classical theories of knowledge. In the Ad Thelassium, St. Maximus goes into depth about how direct experience is superior to discursive reasoning (using I Corinthians to justify this). St. Thomas even has a chapter in the Summa Contra Gentiles that is titled something like: "Why the Happiness of Man is Not Knowledge of God had by Demonstration." By contemplation is meant something like "mystical illumination," and this was often had by people in the "active life" (e.g. St. Francis's vision of the seraphim).
The life of philosophy is adjacent to and supports the life of contemplation, but contemplation is something the laity can engage in. On some views, the entire point of the liturgy is contemplation (e.g. the modern Catholic "liturgical movement.)
On a related note, St. Palladius's "Saying of the Desert Fathers," opens with a story like this. Three saints are together and leave to go do good in the world. One is given the gift of healing and heals. One is given the gift of teaching and teaches. They do this for many years. Yet both eventually grow discouraged because death and dishonesty still abound in the fallen world.
The last saint went out to the desert to pray for the world in solitude. Years later, the other two come to join him, both beaten down by the world. He tells them to stir the well he has dug and look inside. They do, and all they can see is the clouds of dirt, a sea of small granules obscuring everything.
He tells them to wait, and an hour later asks them to look again. This time they can see clear to the bottom, and the light of the Sun is clearly reflected, allowing them to see themselves.
"So it is with the spirit is the moral." To see both the light of God and the inner self requires stillness, hesychasm. But the other moral is that even the hermit ends up helping people, and it's the same way in St. Athanasius' St. Anthony the Great and other hermit stories. There is no fully contemplative life, it's always active as well, because eros leads up and agape pours down.
Two things:
First, it seems like you keep ignoring the option of analagous predication here, but have you given an argument for why it is implausible?
Second, it possible that the demand that everything be reduced to univocal predication part of the problem? Univocal predication is proper to logic. Starting with Descartes, there is an increasing attempt to reduce philosophy to logic and mathematics. This doesn't work. For example, when Sam Harris tries to lay out an ethics that is, in some key respects, quite close to Aristotle and St. Thomas, the project founders on the problem of univocity.
Harris has to wonder about "moral paradoxes" that arise from trying to maximize either average well-being or total well-being. They are interesting, but do we really think human flourishing and goodness are the types of things that can be summed up? To sum something or to take a mean of it is to have already made it a [I]multitude[/I]. This is why Harris is able to offer little more than the conviction that we can muddle through such paradoxes, and fairly unconvincing attempts to solve collective action problems, prisoner's dilemmas, etc. using appeals to the observation that "fairness activates reward centers in the brain" in some highly controlled, large sample studies.
This gets back to Banno's idea of a "moral calculus," by which we sum things up and get, I would assume, a numerical value of how good they are. And the idea of some sort of database of rules all rational agents should agree too seems if anything more of a stretch because it seems to ignore the social and historical contextuality of the Good in human life, particularly as expressed in the common good.
But if the good is what "all aims seek," and aims are what allow us (and all things) to become more truly unified, more truly "one," then the good always relates to the whole, and it cannot be anything but an analagous principle because the Good is an extremely general principle (the most general for Aristotle). This is for the same reason that there cannot be one univocal measure of life for all organisms, and yet there are not multiple sui generis lifes (plural) either.
But this is precisely what the Physics and Metaphysics (and St. Thomas' respective commentaries on them) [I]argues to[/I] (building off the general argument of how the Good is involved in self-determination across the Platonic corpus). It isn't just asserted. If one takes a developmental view of the Aristotlean corpus, this isn't where he started, it's where he ended up.
It just happens that the explanation is also what grounds the sciences and explains discursive reasoning.
First, you're returning back to "all fortune is good fortune." We need not affirm this to affirm the classical view of the good (Aristotle doesn't ), so we need not affirm that being executed or tortured is "good for you."
Although if something is the "best of all options," then it also has something good about it, no? Do we need to say that something is "the best possible" for it to be good at all?
Second, "being good" is most properly said of beings, not things beings do, and certainly not things they do rarely. Goodness relates to the whole. The measure of a good life is a life, not a sum of moments. Recall Solon and ben Sirach: "count no man happy until he is dead."
You keep pivoting from the whole to the part. This is a different sort of "slide into multiplicity." At the very least, this is unhelpful for understanding the ancients.
I'd argue that it's unhelpful for ethics as well. Trying to generate rules for isolated acts, or calculate the good derived from the consequences of different isolated moments is unhelpful. We can consider the example of the Persian street urchin for whom being unjustly maimed was the "best thing that ever happened to him," or the Frenchman whose rare just act "ruined his whole life."
Plus, if we look at isolated acts, being executed sometimes is good for someone. It might be better to be executed than live in a state of terrible suffering. Just assume that if Socrates had been found innocent he'd catch a disease a week after he would have been executed and would then die a particularly excruciating and drawn out death.
If we say "but surely it is better to live and not be subject to immense suffering," then why not say "it's always better to have what is truly best?" But what is truly best for an individual is going to involve what is truly best for the whole world, and so the focus on isolated acts with break down here anyhow.
To be sure, we can usefully speak of good and bad acts. It is probably most useful to speak of these in terms of what generally follows from them though, the unifying principles at work in them. Otherwise we will be stuck tracing down an endless line of causes tied to some specific act, a butterfly effect by which our decision to cheat on our wife today prevents a genocide 180 years from now.
Rules have the same problem if they are rigidly applied. We either have rules that sometimes seem to force us to do obviously bad things, like turning people over to the SS because we "should never lie," or we end up caveating them so much to avoid preverse outcomes that we might as well just make them general advice, with the true rule being "strive to be the best you can be."
Yes, and even in logic univocity founders. @J's thread on Kimhi, where the univocity of p in the first two premises of a modus ponens is questioned, is a perfect example of the way that strict univocity doesn't even work in logic. There have actually been a number of threads in the past months demonstrating in effect that univocal logical formalisms cannot even stand up to their own scrutiny.
There are so many launching points in this OP that it's hard to choose a start. But, time is a wasting, so, ...
All weakness, finally, is immoral. That is to say, to weaken the position of the most morally intended choosers is NOT WISE and therefore 'selling all you own' in a Capitalist economy is DUMB, and weak, therefore immoral, not moral. Misunderstanding morality DOES NOT HELP.
Flip the script. If that same chooser is in a situation of Communism, it becomes meaningless to say 'sell', in most senses. Real Communism would be defined by forced balance of per capita wealth per person. That would mean there would be no real 'buying' and 'selling' as we commonly colloquially speak of these actions.
Also, the mere existence of and labelling of a financial or distributional entity as a charity is no even near certainty of moral aims. That presumption would not bare up under any meaningful examination in modern times in the West, let alone just in general. #SupportMyDrinkingHabit(Charity)
The word 'obligation' to me has a too orderly stance to me at least. Moral duty is NOT best expressed using that term. Moral duty is more of a 'should', not a 'must' and more of a 'proper aim' than an obligation, if you follow. Likewise, it can be confusing to speak of the 'burden' of choice, rather than the privilege of 'free will'.
But, let's go back to the core question ...
The core question is really 'why should one do that which is GOOD?' Another point there is that the word 'good' colloquial is entirely insufficient as stated. One ... SHOULD ... clarify that term by mentioning perfection. The singleton of GOOD is the single point of objective moral perfection. And now the subjectivists can start their horridly immoral banter and set of objections to objectivity. So, ANYWAY, by GOOD I mean THE GOOD, that impossible perfect intent.
The implausibility of the perfect GOOD is what makes Pragmatists sinners par none. They improperly (immorally) believe that because perfection is unlikely in the extreme (the limit as intent approaches impossible) that in fact it is right NOT TO TRY. I call this cowardice 'intending to fail'. Really it is one of the clear nadirs of all philosophy, BUT, I digress.
The core question again RE-STATED is JUST the one word, 'WHY?' All wisdom comes from deontological intent, so WHY is the only real question. Again, there is NO OTHER question in the universe, finally.
---
So at long last we have laid the framework in which we can attempt to answer the question with a currently responsible level of clarity. If we do not frame it BETTER 10 years from now, there has been a rather unfortunate failure somewhere. Progress SHOULD be made.
Why bother with GOOD? What SHOULD is there really?
It's alarmingly simple and yet infinite in complexity at the same time, like all meaningful questions and as mentioned, 'why' is really the only one.
There is only ONE consequence in the universe from aligning oneself or approaching or intending (all synonymous in some ways) the GOOD. That is GENUINE happiness. One MUST say genuine amid this explanation or the real effect is lost, presumed, perverted; every error that can be made will be.
Morality is THE single hardest thing that there is. Free will is really the only thing in existence and its goal is moral choice via THAT agency, the agency of free will. The ONLY guiding force in the universe is the consequences of choice(s). So, happiness and unhappiness ARE NOT 'feelings'. They are more core than that as in they are a receding percentage of consequences to all choice, at first effectively somehow 50% in general likelihood, or, let's say we can imagine that split as easy to discuss.
Since more and more moral choices are harder and harder to make, the consequence MUST BE in truth, more and more alluring. I assert that it is. The issue is that more and more moral choices require more and more effort within each virtue. Only a virtue can balance out another virtue. An overexpressed virtue becomes a vice. And this is the EXPLANATION for disingenuous happiness, a COMMON thing. The systemic consequence for a choice CONTINUES on its maximal trajectory, infinitely. But, GENUINE happiness is bent back towards the singleton of perfect GOOD by the OTHER virtues. As such mere choosers everywhere are easily confused (deluded) into following those infinite hyperbolas AWAY from objective GOOD. Imagine how hard it is to 'do better than you have ever done before', at a certain point. And yet this is the only choice SET that will lead you to the experience of greater GENUINE happiness. So, therein is revealed quite basically the central trouble of moral choice.
WHY? Because perfection! That is why!
Perfection is the cause of desire. The fact that collapsed time CONTAINS a single point of perfection CAUSES desire to exist. Yet and still, the realization of desire is often a cause of rot and ruin, a disintegration of everything. That is because the single linear path to the singleton of perfection CHANGES based on one's current moral state. So, this is the proof for SUBJECTIVE experience amid a universe with OBJECTIVE moral truth. Choosing to remain deluded (subjective) is indeed a type of failure (and always will be).
The perfect CANNOT be the enemy of the GOOD. The perfect IS the GOOD. The perfect is not the enemy of anything except immorality, imperfection, weakness. And to those even still it is NOT really an enemy. In loving perfection, they are included and forgiven. Figure it out!
We might, and it would look plausible -- but that is kind of the point I'm disputing here :D.
Which isn't to say that synthetic accounts are wrong -- I'm fine with synthetic accounts and attempts to reconcile positions. They're just as interesting as why someone may want to divide from a position.
The sense I get is that good is as commonsensical as eating bread when hungry, at least if we go back to the ancient world prior to modern philosophical inventions that cause confusion.
That seems too rosey to me -- and looks like MacIntyre's thoughts in After Virtue, at least by my memory, which is why I've been saying I think this is an overpromise. His book is great for highlighting the importance of virtue-theoretic approaches, but I don't think that the ancient mind is so different from the modern mind that modern philosophy cut out some inner wisdom that the ancients possessed. I think they're scrambling in the dark just as much as any of us are.
And my evidence is that they didn't agree. Conceptually Christianity and Epicureanism is easier to divide, though there's the funny bit of timelines -- but historically even the Stoics and Epicureans disagreed and competed over students, and they were contemporaries in the ancient world with the concerns of the ancient world and a fuller philosophy behind their thoughts to "ground" the ethical answers.
It's all really good stuff. I just don't think the moderns tripped across a problem of their own invention, but rather that the problem was alive and well in ancient times -- it just didn't have the clarification yet. The ancient mind distinguished between facts and values, in which case the conceptual resources are there to construct the naturalistic fallacy, the open question argument, and all the stuff Moore brought up about the meaning of good.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I remember seeing Pope Francis calling communists Christians, and I couldn't help but laugh.
We are Christians when not in power, and just as good as Satanists when the fascists are in power, deserving of death.
Good apologetics, as you note -- but I don't think it's true.
We can make good political allies, depending upon the circumstances, but I don't think good is that all-encompassing.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
For the Epicurean there are two ways -- the evidence of the senses, and the lowering of anxiety. Knowledge is a tool for human beings.
One of the parts of the four-part cure says something like "The Gods do not care about your actions/There are no magic powers in the world" -- it applied equally to people who tried to live their life to appease gods as well as to people who would sacrifice animals, etc., to gods. These are viewed as superstitions which do nothing but cause anxiety, and we need look no further than our senses to see this is so.
But, really, I think the "is-statements" of the ontology are selected on the basis of how well they fit into the ethical frame. Similar so for Stoicism, and all the ancients: the metaphysical structure is a painting of the ethical core that justifies the ethical core as if it were an object of knowledge.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think what it shows is that facts and values are different. Even with the interplay between what a creature is and values -- it's not a philosophical mistake to note that people choose different things in similar circumstances. The facts being the same, they choose differently. So we cannot just point to the facts -- there is bread -- and pretend we've also said "If you are hungry then you ought to eat bread" because we said it in a conversation with a hungry person. Some people, even when hungry, don't eat. It could be a hunger strike, or a neurological disconnect which prevents the person from acting on the physiological signals of hunger, or a fast -- and when you place the bread in front of them they will not eat because they do not believe "If you are hungry then you ought to eat bread"
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is why I said I thought you are taking a vertical perspective -- you're looking up the ladder to climb to higher heights. Which is also why I brought up the ubermensch -- it's very much in that vein if I want to bring up a horizontal perspective, one which is towards the horizon and amongst the herd that we are all a part of.
If the contemplative life is what is best, and the contemplative life is not for everyone, then not everyone will have what is best.
That's fine for a cadre of masters passing on wisdom.
But I'm looking outwards, and also I have no pretense to being a part of such a monastic life -- I see the tower from the outside.
Which, obviously, I like the products of the tower and am in their debt. So that life is not my target.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
And I'd say that contemplatives are good -- insofar that the contemplative is enjoying that life, ie., is not filled with anxiety in the pursuit. The part Epicurus would point out about the ecstasies of spiritual life is that these are the "middle ground" pleasures -- not necessary but a natural pleasure (sex is another pleasure that falls into this category). So insofar that one's pursuit of these goods doesn't incur anxiety they are fine, but if you're anxious because you're not having enough sex then your attachment to sex is the cause of your pain and you ought to attend to that desire, lower it, so that you can remain calm.
The bit I'm targeting is that it's the best life -- it's the best life for contemplatives, but not for not-contemplatives. For Epicurus he was something like a doctor of the community; and just like the dentist is important he was important, but a little more influential given that he worked on the souls of people rather than their teeth.
But, once the job is done, Epicurus is no more a master than the student. They are on equal terms. If they want to pick up the trade then they can study, but that doesn't make them a better person -- the lack of anxiety is the highest good, not the ability to cure people.
I think you and @Moliere are doing little more than trading in ambiguities. If you are not, then be straightforward about you claims. "Ancient and modern ethics are continuous/similar because they both ________."
Moliere seems to be committing a straightforward non sequitur, "There are certain similarities between ancient and modern ethics, therefore Hume's 'guillotine' is not distinctively modern."
I have! And I agree.
I think the idea is something like modern thinking broke us off from ancient thinking to such a point that modern thought has lost the fundamental truth of philosophy -- wisdom -- in place of whatever it is pursuing right now (the idea here being that the ancients have a kind of "time tested" wisdom)
It's been entirely too long since i've read to remember the specifics of his account. I remember it turned me onto naturalistic virtue-theoretic moral realism, and a lot of my arguments in this thread are a result of reading up on that.
...ask, "What's good?"
Right:
Quoting Moliere
Quoting Leontiskos
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There are two ways to go here. On the one hand we could say that ancients and moderns both ask what is good, but the moderns also do something that the ancients did not do (and that this breaks the supposed discontinuity between them). On the other hand we could observe that for very many moderns, asking what is good is a pointless and otiose question (Michael and Amadeus are two clear examples of this).
Even @J's approach seems to challenge this continuity, for he thinks that Kant's view is uniquely correct. If Kant's view is uniquely correct and is not a continuation of earlier moral philosophy, then how could Kant be continuous with earlier moral philosophy?
On it's face, this idea that there is strong continuity between ancient and modern ethics is false. I think you may be conflating it with a different contention, namely the claim that ancient remedies cannot solve modern problems.
I wish I knew what "modern thinking" consisted of, that supposedly made it either so unique or so pernicious. Anscombe doesn't persuade me. When I read Plato, I feel as if all those arguments might be occurring among my neighbors, they are so vivid and contemporary. (Well, if my neighbors were a little more philosophical!) The things that concerned Plato and Aristotle are right at the top of my list too -- to say nothing of Christian thought. As for wisdom, it's true that Aristotle often sounds to me as if he believes he's achieved complete wisdom in all matters -- but not Plato. So this is perhaps another instance of how there was important disagreement between ancient and ancient. And I bet I'm oversimplifying Aristotle's complacency as well.
The problem with "time-tested wisdom," of course, is that we are still in time, and the wisdom continues to be tested, and you could hardly maintain that no one has raised any important questions about Greek philosophy, or about ethics in general, since. I suppose there is an illusion of "time-tested-ness" because it started earlier, and for so many centuries had no serious challengers in Western culture. But I am not a historian of philosophy, so I'm guessing. I also think, as I wrote somewhere recently, that the "loss of fundamental truths" picture is meant to go hand in hand with a picture of actual moral decline, such that Western society is now supposed to be much worse, ethically, than it used to be.
I choose path one.
What then?
I'm not sure there are ancients who are as explicit as Hume -- so I'm saying he's making an advance in ethical thinking in pointing out how is/ought frequently get conflated as if they have the same import.
The important thing to note that I think might be misunderstood is that this doesn't mean we can't be moral beings -- one interpretation of Hume's ethical theory is that morality is real, and justified by the passions.
So he's attacking a sacred cow of the philosophers, but he's not jumping in to declare a fallacy or something like that.
Quoting Leontiskos
I think I am, though I have some theories in the background -- that are mostly feels at the moment -- which ought be set aside. I think I can still defend my position, though. Hume's clarification is an advance in thinking because it was a point of confusion which could hide arguments prior to him. Also, the fallacy is only to list a fact as a value -- Hume links values to facts through passions.
It's because it's through the passions that his theory is controversial -- but it can be argued to be a (kind of) realism.
Quoting Leontiskos
I've been reading along but not that closely.
What say you to this @J ?
Nonsense. I've been at pains to say that I do not agree with all of Kant's solutions to ethical problems. Just for starters, I don't think the categorical imperative can be stated in such a way as to do the ethical job Kant wanted it to do. I said that he "offers perspectives that I believe are central." They certainly are. He is for me the most important and impressive "modern" moral philosopher because he framed the problems with enormous originality and insight, raising questions that have been impossible to ignore ever since -- not because he always gets it right. This idea of philosophers being "uniquely correct" is a fantasy.
As for the continuity question, I see nothing in Kant's ethics -- apart from the Christian aspects -- that Socrates would not have both understood and been eager to debate.
Do you know of ancients who say that you cannot get an ought from an is? Is Hume progressing something that already existed, or is he doing something new?
Quoting Moliere
Hume doesn't develop his is/ought thought at all. It is later thinkers who follow through, taking it to its logical conclusion (and this is where the cited examples of Michael or Amadeus come in).
Quoting Moliere
I mean, if everyone prior to Hume thought that one could get from 'is' to 'ought', and Hume showed that that is impossible, then that would be an enormous change with the modern period.
Compare:
Quoting J
So Kant was enormously original and insightful, raising questions that have been impossible to ignore, and there is nothing new in Kant - nothing that Socrates would not have already had. This is a contradiction.
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Quoting J
Quoting J
Quoting J
Quoting J
Quoting J
This is a lot of soapboxing and witch hunting. I'd prefer philosophy rather than signaling our virtue about how inclusive, open-minded, and non-deplorable we are.
I'd say it's question begging sophistry (in precisely the way Plato frames sophistry). To make the distinction is to have already presupposed that there are not facts about what is good. Now, thanks to the theological issues I mentioned earlier in this thread, such a position was already common by Hume's time. It went along with fideism and a sort of anti-rationalism and general backlash against the involvement of philosophy in faith (and so in questions of value), all a century before Hume.
Hume argues to this position by setting up a false dichotomy. Either passions (and we should suppose the appetites) are involved in morality or reason, but not both. Yet I certainly don't think he ever gives a proper explanation of why it can't be both (univocity is a culprit here of course). For most of the history of philosophy, the answer was always both (granted, Hume seems somewhat unaware of much past philosophy, and his successor Nietzsche seems to get his entire view of it from a particularly bad reading of the Phaedo and not much else from Plato).
It's sophistry because it turns philosophy into power relations and dominance. Hume admits as much. "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions (T 2.3. 3.4)." This is Socrates fighting with Thacymachus, Protagoras, and that one guy who suggests that "justice" is "whatever we currently prefer" in the Republic (his name escapes me because he has just one line and everyone ignores him, since, were he right, even the sophists would lose, since there is no need for their services when being wrong is impossible). The only difference is that now the struggle is internalized. This certainly goes along with Hume (and Nietzsche's) view of the self as a "bundle of sensations" (or "congress of souls"). Yet, Plato's reply is that this is simply what the soul is like when it is sick, morbid.
Just from the point of view of the philosophy of language it seems pretty far-fetched. Imagine someone yelling:
"Your hair is on fire."
"You are going to be late for work."
"You're hurting her."
"Keep doing that and you'll break the car."
"You forgot to carry the remainder in that calculation."
"You are lying."
"You didn't do what I asked you to."
"That's illegal."
"You're going to hurt yourself doing that."
"There is a typoo in this sentence."
...or any other such statements. There are all fact claims. They are all normally fact claims people make in order to spur some sort of action, and this is precisely because the facts (generally) imply oughts. "Your hair is on fire," implies "put the fire on your head out." And such an ought is justifiable by the appetites (desire to avoid pain), passions (desire to avoid the opinions of others related to be disfigured or seen to be stupid), and reason (the desire to fullfil rationally held goals, which burning alive is rarely conducive to).
At least on the classical view, the division is incoherent. There are facts about what are good or bad for us. To say "x is better than what I have/am, but why ought I seek it?" is incoherent. What is "truly good" is truly good precisely because it is desirable, choice-worthy, what "ought to be chosen" (of course, things can merely appear choice-worthy, just as they can merely appear true). Why should we choose the most truly choice-worthy? We might as well ask why we should prefer truth to falsity, or beauty to ugliness or why 1 is greater than 0.
Short answer: just as the measure of a "good car" differs from the measure of a "good nurse" (the same things do not make them good) the measure of a "good act" or "good event" will differ from that of a "good human being" (and in this case the former are not even things, not discrete unities at all, which is precisely why focusing on them leads to things like analyzing an unending chain of consequences).
I can share a long (but still cursory) explanation when I get to my PC, but the basic idea is that "good" is said many ways. The "good" of a "good car," a "good student," and a/the "good life" are not the same thing. Yet a good car certainly relates to human well-being, as any
More specifically, to make these sorts of comparisons/predications requires a measure. This is in Book 10 and 14 of the Metaphysics I think (and Thomas' commentaries are always helpful). Easiest way to see what a measure is it to see that to speak of a "half meter" or "quarter note" requires some whole by which the reference to multitude is intelligible. Likewise, for "three ducks" to be intelligible one must have a whole duck as the unit measure.
For anything to be any thing is must have some measure of unity. We cannot even tell what the dimensive quantities related to some abstract body are unless that body is somehow set off from "everything else" (i.e., one cannot measure a white triangle on a white backgroundthere are a lot of interesting parallels to information theory in St. Thomas).
I think I already explained Plato's thing about how the "rule of reason" makes us more unified and self-determining (self-determining because we are oriented beyond what already are and have, beyond current beliefs and desires). Next, consider that organisms are proper beings because they have a nature, because they are the source of their own production and movement (not absolutely of course, they are not subsistent). Some non-living systems are self-organizing to some degree (and stars, hurricanes, etc. have "life cycles").The scientific literature on complexity and dissipative, self-organizing systems is decent at picking up on Aristotle here, but largely ignores later Patristic, Islamic, and medieval extensions.
Yet non-living things lack the same unity because they don't have aims (goal-directedness, teleonomy) unifying their parts (human institutions do).
The goodness for organisms is tightly related to their unity. In general, it is not good for an organism to lose its unity and die. "Ok, but sometimes they do this on purpose, bees sting and stinging kills them."
Exactly! Because what ultimately drives an organism is its goals. Brutes can't ask what is "truly good" but they can pursue ends that lie beyond them. And note, bees sacrifice themselves because they are oriented towards the whole, just as Boethius and Socrates do. This is because goodness always relates to the whole (because of this tight relationship with unity).
So to return to how goodness is said in many ways, goodness is said as respect to a measure. The measure of a "good house" is a house fulfilling it ends (artifacts are a little tricky though since they lack intrinsic aims and essences; people want different things in a house). The measure of the "good duck" is the paradigmatic flourishing duck (no need to posit independent forms existing apart from particulars here BTW).
Because equivocity is so rampant in our day, essentially the norm, let's not use "good person." Let's use "excellent person." The excellent person has perfected all the human excellences, the virtues. "It is good for you to be excellent." Or "it is excellent for you to be good." In either case the measure for "you," as a human, is human excellence, flourishing.
But because reason is transcedent, we can aim at "the best thing possible," which is to be like God. God wants nothing, lacks nothing, and fears nothing. Yet God is not indifferent to creatures, for a few reasons but the most obvious is that the "best" lack no good, and love is one of these.
God can also just be the rational limit case of perfection, having the best life conceivable. We might miss much in this deflation, but it still works.
We want to be the best person and live the best life possible. At the same time, goodness always relates to the whole, to unity. No doubt, we can usefully predicate "good" of events, but this goodness is parasitic on things. There is no good or bad in a godless world without any organisms (anything directed by aims). You can't have goodness without wholes with aims.
The predication vis-á-vis some good event has to be analagous because nothing can be "good for an event." The event is good or bad for some thing, according to its measure.
In the 19th century there were many competing theories of heat and electromagnetism. There was phlogiston, caloric, aether, etc. Are we best of returning to the specific, isolated theories, or looking at how what is good in each can be unified?
You might say "but the natural sciences are different, they make progress." And I would agree. It's easier to make progress when one studies less general principles. Yet they don't always make progress. Recall the Nazi's "Aryan physics" or Stalin's "communist genetics." The natural sciences can backslide into bad ideas and blind allies. It is easier for philosophy to do so.
This supposed conflation IS NOT a conflation at all. It is trivial to understand this IF the base model of reality is correct. That is there is ... passion (desire), reason (fear), AND ... BEING (anger). Being is the IS and each emotion contains a third of ought. That is to say ought is NOT merely desire. It is most associated with desire ONLY because we experience and communicate naturally AS IF time were unidirectional. Desire is the pull of perfection upon us, upon being, coming from the past accessible via only memory (and memory includes the current state of being from which the past may also be researched). But that limited association is WRONG.
Ought is included in all three emotions. There is an ought to reason. Some reason is done properly. There is an ought to being. You SHOULD be a better ... whatever. There is an ought of course to desire, as desire shows us the general direction of all oughts, towards perfection. But, as my previous post mentioned, hyperbolae is everywhere. Desire unbent PROPERLY by reason(fear) and being (anger) can miss the mark of perfection. Then it is immoral desire and causes rot and ruin and a presumed ought fails us. That shows that desire has oughts. There is an OBJECTIVE moral truth. And that destination, perfection, is the only CORRECT desire, the ought of desire. Again, BECAUSE of the differing current states of being, the linear path to perfection is different per chooser, giving rise to the confusion of morality being subjective.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That presupposition is a dangerous immorality. There are facts about what is good. It is very hard to state them because our state is not perfection and we are trying to speak on perfection.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
If I follow your tack here, you are suggesting that the assertion that 'there are NOT facts about what is good' was THE position that was already common by Hume's time. That means to me that the foolish and immoral confusion of subjective morality had become tempting to reason (fear) at least by Hume's time. In truth, immorality is (being) always tempting in exactly the three ways, cowardice(fear), self-indulgence(desire), and laziness(anger). If I am misunderstanding you, please let me know.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, well, historically 'faith' has been an exercise in rampant idealism/desire and rampant fear. Left out often enough is wisdom itself. You can certainly understand why philosophy would represent a clear and present danger to religious pundits (being in essence). Clearly stating or trying to clearly state wisdom removes power from the pundits who prefer an impenetrable mystery behind which to hide (their immorality). The denigration of anger, of being, of WHAT IS, is typical of most aims at so called ideals. The tacit presumption is that there is something BASE about WHAT IS. As such, the immoral implication is that some form of desire (idealism) can get us to the right place, AWAY from this being thing. Likewise, the other large camp favors fear (pragmatism) and their cowardice presumes that near impossible seeming aspirations should be shunned, limiting what is possible to what is currently understood, rather than the infinity of truth that ACTUALLY IS, amid free will.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Your meaning here is unclear as the sentence structure is confusing. This is especially true for a reader that includes reason within morality, like me. So, I am forced to pick the idea apart in parts.
Either passions OR WHAT are involved in morality or reason?
To me passion is desire renamed. To me reason is only fear, always fear. And both are each 1/3 of moral force. Anger and being is the other third.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Both passion and WHAT? Reason I suppose is the other side. Correct me if I am wrong. But the trouble in the math and the model is the missing third part, anger and BEING. The correct model is a trichotomy, not a dichotomy. And that tripartite system collapses into monism quite nicely, with love, the entire system, being the monad. Again, it cannot be reiterated enough that truth, God, ALL, etc are just synonyms for love. Consciousness is just another synonym.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Although I have read much of each of these, I confess that I take reading for what they invoke in me as ... ENOUGH ... and that I shy away from saying I understood the other. My assertions then are only a confident stand on current belief. I offer that other takes on this are just more delusion. We only ever have our current stand to assert. Even if we take the supposed position of another philosopher to stand on that is our current state, performing an AS IF with no certainty of being right.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Although I have had this very thought concerning reason, it is only tempting, a sure sign of immoral desire. So, this slavery thing, sort-of IN GENERAL has been shown to be immoral, yes? Do we believe that? If so, then enslaving fear seems immoral and I would assert that it is. Yes, I realize I am working with my model, and not maybe others' meanings.
Idealists show us the GENERAL path towards perfection. They are sensing the perfection with its being in essence, desire. But, fear, to me the eternal juxtaposition of desire, uses its tool reason, structure, ... really ORDER is the best term, to focus and refine desire. This is specificity. This is identity. This is distinction. From this limiting and refining force comes the truth of direction itself, of accuracy. Order restrains chaos and that can be done appropriately or inappropriately. But the general and the specific are ubiquitous, omnipresent. Like truth they are rather dull, and yet perfect, by themselves. The specific that unveils the challenge of free will is BEING, the middle ground where these pesky CHOICES play out.
So, again, the anger of being is required to assist us in this puzzle. This anger is responsible for the STATE of things currently. It is responsible for the eternal moment we refer to as NOW, and thus it SEEMS so vastly different and smaller in a way than the gulf of the past (fear) and the infinity of all possible futures (desire). But that middle path of now is where everything actually IS.
Not fear, not anger, not desire, none of them, are slaves to the other. They are equal forces, perfectly and precisely equal.
The temptation to make reason a slave is a misunderstanding of fear and a rejection of its sin, cowardice. Self-indulgence is thus immorally handed the reigns.
But anger knows. The middle way understands. Anger demands that fears and cowardice recede. Anger demands that desire and self-indulgence are not the way. Anger stands and IS amid courage. Anger demands that in some way, there is already a connection to the divine, self-sufficiency. This demand is the recognition that any current state is not a prison AND that any dream is possible and really already available (perfection, objective moral truth, does exist). You can tell that although anger is only an equal force to the other emotional forces, it is somehow closer to truth or unique in its presentation, the uniqueness of state, of being, in any case, in every case. Notice that the eternal NOW is still infinite though.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It only seems like some points of view are invalid. They are part of all only so that they may suffer examination and amid being, change by reason of unhappiness/suffering as a consequence of not BEING at/with/for perfection (THE GOOD).
Justice cannot be random desire. Instead, there is only one right desire, objective, the GOOD, perfection. The act and process of wisdom is to determine what the GOOD is and become it.
I detest the colloquial definition for sophistry. The 'art of wisdom' is a part of wisdom and NOT JUST charlatanry. So, the word (sophistry) is poisoned by foolish Pragmatists, that eschew desire (expressed via art) by way of reason as they APPLY a false definition to a RELATIVELY innocent term. Once they get you in their books, they 'know' (another delusional term) that others will believe their immoral definition. The art of wisdom can be beautiful and NOT charlatanry. That possibility must be respected and honored. It exists. What then is generally, or specifically GOOD wise art called? Is it then JUST wisdom? It is hard then to speak of wisdom in terms of anything but itself, or perfection. We then tend to lose track of the relative value of some wisdom to other wisdom. This then is an Idealist immoral tendency. This is all or nothing thinking. It is not perfect, so poo poo it. No! Relativity is real. The current STATE of being of things is one thing. Any given choice may in fact BETTER that state and thus be clearly MORE ... GOOD ... than not. I am speaking here of OVERALL state, not state with respect to any given or just a few virtues.
It is hard in life amid being (imperfect) to practice wisdom (the aim at perfection). Interestingly, it is worth noting that whereas some skill are indeed hard to practice, the skill of wisdom is THE SINGLE HARDEST skill that there is. That is because it is THE skill OF perfection (in every way, including being).
Note the sin of anger. Laziness in not challenging fear and desire is the core sin of being. That is not BEING enough to have the courage to stave off fears and desire, cowardice and self-indulgence.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Plato, again, for the win.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This explanation is VASTLY insufficient. The relative value of any ought is many-fold. That is to say each virtue has to weigh in on that choice. And EVERY virtue SHOULD weigh in on EVERY choice. leave even one out and you fail in that degree.
Consider:
"There are times when hair should be on fire"
"Being late to work can be acceptable"
"Hurting her is relative to truth as some suffering (hurt) is wise."
"Breaking the car may be morally necessary from this state to get to a better state even if there was also a way to improve without breaking the car."
"Forgetting as an act is the means by which we suffer and earn the wisdom showing the need for accurate memory."
"Deception is sometimes a path to better outcomes, even though it is a shame that should be used only sparingly; but deceiving a deceiver is a service to them, allowing them the suffering opportunity (seeing themselves in other choosers) to earn wisdom and revealing that intent is the proper thing to judge amid choice, not the consequences."
"I understand what you did not do what I asked you to." or "This is WHY is asked you to do it (followed by the actual reason)."
"Although that is illegal, order (fear) is NOT the only source for moral choice aimed at the GOOD."
"There may be a moral reason to hurt yourself, and you seem to be trying to hurt yourself."
"A typoo is actually an alien from the planet Yiaghall. If you refer to them in any way, they bless you with their 5th dimensional aid." And "OK smarty, you KNEW what that word was supposed to be, and you KNEW that upon review I would agree, so, why the intentional misunderstanding?"
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I disagree. To invoke a lack of desire, to point it out, is an attempt, which could indeed be wrong, to express the fact that what IS currently is only a state and not perfect. There is then a tacit implication of a perfect state, a non-moving goalpost, to which one may aspire. Laying out this challenge is always wise unless the assertion is that perfection is already present and represented by this state of being.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Acting in 'good faith' is a sword of Damocles proposition. This is again why Deontological morality is valid and Utilitarianism is a dangerous and immoral lie. If one acts with the strength of one's convictions TOWARDS or INTENDING the GOOD, that is generally good. This is the general OUGHT. It implies a destination. I name that destination perfection, and suggest it is best to consider that an objective state.
The state of perfection may be the most impossible state of being that there is. It sure follows reasonably that this is true. And then how to appeal to reason itself in approaching that state? After all, if we use reason and we admit that reason is making the more probable choices, then reason points AWAY from perfection. Is that really reasonable? So, reason is again seen to contain its primary sin, COWARDICE. The reasonable goal is always perfection, and it is the ONLY reasonable goal. It is also the least likely goal, and therein lies the challenge that anger understands, and reason often flees from.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is INCORRECT reasoning.
Truth does not change. Perfection does not change. It is objective.
If you cannot communicate why being a good car and a good nurse are defined in the same way that is only because you do not understand the GOOD. You have denied blame for your own imperfection in that understanding by pretending that the GOOD can change. You are WRONG.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
If the GOOD is properly understood, then it will be the same GOOD in every way at the same time to everything in the universe, unchanging and omnipresent.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Agreed that at least an understanding is required, which is what measurement implies. Measure infinity! That challenge seems hard, yet we dabble in the concept.
It is the nature of perfection to remain elusive to understanding. This is why COURAGE to be (anger) is required. As our state approaches perfection, the strength of that elusiveness increases. Each step on the moral ladder is harder and harder. The cowards will be tempted to skew off in any direction. Notice then how fear becomes chaotic like desire when it is immoral, even though it is the general source or force of order.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Indeed and this immoral act of separation is useful only amid the DENIAL of a final whole (objective). We cannot be objective. We can only TRY to be objective. Writing it that way EVERY TIME is required to be honestly trying. Be careful with assertions regarding subjectivity. "You are going to hurt yourself doing that." (ha ha)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
If it is a fundamental truth that anything is a part of everything and that there is no real live between them, then anything IS everything at some level of awareness. Unity was always true. This is the source of compassion and that is a result of the force of anger. This relationship seems counterintuitive, but it is not finally.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
And these observations offer a staggering assertion. All fear, all separation, is delusional. This is a tautology, if the observer is wise enough. The difficulty of wisdom is thus again shown. How do we leverage this wisdom in our choices to generally increase the GOOD?
We can realize that the need to measure is cowardice in part. It IS delusional. We cannot be separated from ALL. The only right measurement is ALL. But, to increase the comfort or at homeness within each deluded part (us), what force is needed? I ask with reasonable humility, could it be anger (confidence and courage)? Could it be also a desire that truth be truth and believed as such? Is that belief then in that way some OBJECTIVE thing, a single hardest right way to want, to fear, and be at home with in balance?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Ah yes, the delusion of self-determination, reinforcing the delusional identity of the self. The self-made man is another hilarious immoral non-sequitur. We could go on and on. But the unity principle is that "you are me and I am you" The unity principle is that 'you are ALL and cannot be made to un-belong". You are a white triangle on a white background. And you may 'for the moment' consider the triangle or the background, but there is always finally only the whole.
The struggle to find for any distinction is the delusion that will cause the suffering to allow for that distinction to earn wisdom and reunite with all. The whole flux of this, the process of it, is guided along a single objective path, towards perfection, the GOOD.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That which contains the seed of life is itself alive, obviously.
These distinctive delusions will hurt you (cause suffering) to (anyone that chooses to believe in them).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is an immoral lack of awareness. Clearly, that which contains the seed of life, is itself alive.
Animism was always far more correct than religion ever has been.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
You show the contradiction and continue as if that is ok. Is that reasonable?
The white triangle is still there. But it behooves it to accept belonging amid belief. The delusional assertion of a sub-unity is finally unwise unless belonging is also equally accepted and there then is less stress on the separation, the sub-unity, as 'put upon'. Yes, the burden of choice faces each sub-unity. That is because it is alive. Any sub-unity, like the whole, is alive BEYOND even what humans currently imagine.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Your self-contradiction without synthesis is STUNNING to behold.
Indeed they (all things) pursue ends that lie as just another part of all, more moral agency. That is what evolution is and it proceeds from the dawn of time until time's end and the source of that evolution as a drive is objective perfection, the GOOD. Thus, all organisms, and even all rocks, because they are organisms of a kind, DO IN FACT ask 'what is truly GOOD'? because that is the only real question in existence. That question CAUSES existence.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Agreed. Why is this not included though in the realization of all parts being the whole (for you, seemingly)?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is a delusional nod back to separation and identity, itself a delusion. The only GOOD identity is ALL. You are separate from ALL only by immoral choice. The act of being and even dying is your participation in the effort to overcome all of your delusions and admit to being all in the first place by re-becoming it. What part of all will you deny is you, is to be properly included in the final all?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Renaming something DOES NOT change it in truth. Sophistry is still the 'art of wisdom' and that is despite the colloquial accepted definition, possibly a GOOD thing and not charlatanry.
Likewise, the GOOD must be realized and admitted as objective. Failing this, excellent can become 'good enough', a deeply immoral state. The only fair stopping point is perfection. This DOES NOT deny the good of resting.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Reason is UNLIKELY to aim at perfection. It limits us via cowardice, its typical sin. If you are a proponent of reason OVER desire or anger, you ARE being cowardly as a guarantee. If you instead DO NOT ENSLAVE reason to passion (desire), and yet admit its grounding in BEING (anger, a current state), you can begin to realize and accept the profoundly equal forces of fear, anger, and desire; the ONLY three forces that are love when combined in all permutations. This love is God and truth and ALL. They are again, synonymous terms.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Nothing is missing if it is perfection.
It is a question to me still: "Can we really experience perfection?" Are there moment of it all the way? I say or assert NO. We are always only able to experience a less than perfect state. So, perfection as experience is an immoral error MOSTLY. I do not want to discourage it, the pursuit. So I caution only that perceived perfection is just BETTER than where we were as a state and that BETTER can seem like the best, even when it is clearly not ALL (the real perfection).
this quandary leaves us wondering what grand entity of moral agency will populate the end of the universe. Must they all, even amid their amazing levels of near perfection, submit to loss of delusional identity and merge to become perfect? How hard must that act be? Why is the separation 'bad'? Once reunified, does this longing for more and the need to have distinction CAUSE the next 'Big Bang' or other analogy/meme for the dawn of time? Restart!
{Humorously I hit the length limit on a post (lol). So this reply will be continued in the next post as a restart underscoring this point. The IMMORAL arbitary limit here is sad. It wasn't even as large a length of symbols as I can type in in one day. How terrible!}
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
And these realizations are meaningless because no such world exists. This one is alive in every way. All parts of it start with and cannot escape free will. They are all possessed of aims linking to all aims, towards the ultimate aim, perfection. It is only our lack of perfection that in every way suggests otherwise, encourages delusions like identity and 'alive'.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is fairly nonsensical.
The good or bad of anything is related only to the sub-whole intent. Obviously, the intent of ALL is perfection. This causes evolution and desire itself. So, intents of sub-wholes (delusional) are immoral in part ALWAYS until perfection, the objective GOOD, the hardest intent in the universe, is chosen. It really seems that that choice WILL END this universe. I kind of hope that I am wrong in that supposition in the sense that instead of IT ending, that is the growth step transfering what choice is in this sub-dimension to the next dimension, and ... on we go (the real afterlife). That whole (ALL) is fully subsumed by the next dimension, so all death is the same death in this one. Most delusions still work. As in 'we will be together in heaven' is just DUMB code for (this) ALL has been perfected, ... (on to the) Next! (ALL)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The obvious answer is yes. That is to say, all (or both in this limited case).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Progress that is not moral is delusional (not really progress).
Luckily there is no nothing. That is to say all something, even immoral choices, are still partly GOOD. So, the connection to GOOD is found in ALL. Fear is again seen as delusional. Desire is again seen as delusional. But there is a sliver of fear (order) and desire (chaos) that is a single line pointing to a single destination, the infinite now (balance, being).
How much faith is found amid SOMETHING, amid being?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, the delusions of specifics pretend to allow progress, and can, if and only if that progress is LATER related to other progress which readdress ALL. 'Filling out the space' of immorality seems to be required to accept morality (as objective).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Well, naming the study of the highest skill within reality is a GOOD idea, but naming it will not change it, because it is objective (truth).
We understand all the time that we named things as truths that were only states. If a thing can change, it is not truth, it is only a state. Truth NEVER changes. That is why what is GOOD for one thing or person is ALWAYS also GOOD for all others. This is a tautology and (thankfully) it cannot be changed.
*Unless, once again, we just have to accept that being virtuous is the most beneficial thing for me. I still think this is being set out as a conclusion without an argument, and that one is entitled to ask how it can be that death by torture benefits me.
Quoting J
It sounds like you believe that the part of Kants ethics that exclude the Christian aspects comprises the core of his ethical thinking. If thats the case, then am I right to assume you believe that Socrates would have understood the core of Kantian ethics? Am I right to further presume that, given that Socrates was capable of-comprehending Kants ethics, he could conceivably have though up something similar himself, in spite of the fact that he lived two thousand years before Kant?
To the second, I'm not entirely sure what it would mean to "think up something similar." Socrates was more of a dialectician than an armchair thinker, so let's switch it from Socrates to Aristotle. Could Aristotle have come up with the idea that an act is only virtuous if it can be recommended as a universal maxim? I suppose so. I'm not sure the question would have interested him very much, but that's not the same thing as saying it would be opaque to him. He might not have cared whether the virtues were applicable to all people in all (similar) circumstances. His emphasis seems to be on how I may live a good life, not so much on whether living that good life involves defeating selfish motives and willing a universal "kingdom of ends." I'm not really entitled to an opinion here, as Aristotle isn't my forte. If someone can point me to something like "A Kantian interprets Aristotle," I'd love to read it.
I do want to affirm something you don't come right out and say, but that I think is implied in your questions. Creativity is socially constrained; it has a history and a context; and to ask "Would X have understood A?" is not the same as asking "Could X have created A?" In one of my fields, music, we often kick around stuff like "What would Bach make of Stravinsky?" Well, given enough time and examples to acclimate himself to Modernism, Bach might well have loved Igor. But there is absolutely zero chance he could have written Rite of Spring in 1725. So I read you here as pointing out, rightly, that we mustn't engage in some sort of "leveling of history" and imagine that Socrates, Aquinas, and Kant all spoke essentially the same creative language. They did not. And I suppose, if that is all MacIntyre's thesis amounts to, then I don't really disagree. I'm just troubled by this idea of incommensurability and decline, which seems too strong.
Well said.
Shoulders of giants all the way down.
A priori or a posteriori? Because when someone who offers very few arguments and has a self-admittedly thin exposure to philosophical history opposes theories of decline (or also unique excellence), it seems that they have some a priori bias.
This proposition can be supported with arguments and evidence, or else it can be supported by a priori prejudice (which in this case looks something like egalitarian "tolerance").*
It looks to me that the modus operandi of Pyrrhonian skepticism is utilized by a number of people on this forum, often for different reasons. That approach is skepticism via infinite questioning and doubting, combined with the move of always placing the burden of proof on the other guy. When attempts to offer a positive reason for his own position, he moves into a more reasonable space, a space of transparent arguments and motivations.
With that said, I do think that incommensurability tout court is too strong. And if there is decline from A to B then A and B are simply not incommensurable, which is a problem for MacIntyre.
* Of course, it can also be "supported" by nescience, but axe-grinding over time precludes this option.
What do we think the Gadfly would say after he hears Kant speak on morality?
Yes, and I would go beyond that and argue that intelligibility is socially constrained. This point is fundamental for any theory of ethics, and for addressing the question the OP asks. You see, I believe that the musical sensibilities of era are inextricably linked to the way that the sciences are approached in that era , and the framework of understanding that undergirds the sciences is closely tied to that of philosophy , and the epistemic presuppositions grounding philosophy are related to that of poetry and literature. Im not trying to suggest that a single monolithic episteme underlies all forms of cultural creativity in a given era for a given community, but I am saying that these systems are interlocked, such that it makes sense to talk about Romantic painting, literature, music philosophy and science and mean more than just that these domains all belong to the same chronological period.
More importantly, when we move from one era to the next
a certain discontinuity and incommensurability is involved. Not so much for those looking back to previous eras of thought and reinterpreting them from the present vantage, but for those who remain wedded to the old ways in the face of paradigm shifts and are not able to fathom what is in the process of replacing their system of thought. An entire metaphysics of ethics is dependent on flattening and ignoring these discontinuities in intelligibility. As a result, ethical values (the ought)) are spilt off from matters of fact (the is), as one assumes that it is a simple matter of introducing the new ways of thinking to any reasonably intelligent person and understanding is all but guaranteed. Why shouldnt Socrates be able to understand Kant, the thinking goes, given a sufficiently thorough period of study? Why shouldnt the Qanon -touting Trump voter sitting next to you be able to absorb the raw facts when conferences directly with them? According to this dualism of ethical value and matters of fact, the ethical disagreement between a neoliberal and a progressive socialist is based on considerations entirely different from those having to do with matters of fact. This flattening of discontinuities in intelligibility between eras, and between individuals, provides justification for the idea that there is such a thing a a universally shared notion of the ethical good that comprises not just the desire to be moral, but a shared conceptual content that is as transparent as matters of fact.
But if matters of fact depend for their understanding on systems of intelligibility which are contingently culture-bound, why should notions of the ethical good be any different? We live in a society carved up into myriad communities united by their own systems of intelligibility. The fact that we are all able to share the roads together and communicate in public spaces on the basis of general and superficially shared understandings masks the extent to which our worlds only partially link up. When we fail to see this we force the ethical into the position of subjective will. The other falls short of our ethical standards due to a failing of integrity, a character flaw , dishonesty, evil intent , selfishness, etc. In doing so, we erase the difference between their world and ours, and turn our failure to fathom into their moral failure.
I find this particularly interesting. Does it follow from this frame that no one is ever knowingly dishonest or has evil intent and that the matter can always be understood as arising from incommensurate perspectives?
We need, in a word, hermeneutics.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, with a heavy emphasis on your warning about simplistic "single monolithic episteme" talk. The interlocking is complicated, and the parallels are stronger or weaker from era to era. Also, the role of science here is, to my mind, by far the most problematic. "Romantic" science? I'd need to hear more about what that might be. We all remember the Sokal hoax . . .
Quoting Joshs
Put this carefully, I think you're right. . . .
Quoting Joshs
. . . but this is very sweeping, and needs arguing for. Rather than simply assume these "discontinuities in intelligibility," why not put them in question? Again, a hermeneutical approach can help us understand the limits -- but also the strengths -- of interpretation across cultures. We need, at the least, a sophisticated understanding of the concept of intelligibility.
Quoting Joshs
I think this is indeed the conclusion we'd be forced to draw, and I think it's the wrong one. So I'd want to go back to look more closely at the fact/system/intelligibility relationship. How much of this is cultural? Do all matters of fact really depend on such radically contingent systems? Is there no value in the distinction between the natural sciences and human sciences?
I think that Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Habermas have a lot to teach us here.
Quoting Joshs
The pairing of these two questions is a bit alarming! I think Socrates probably could understand Kant, if we could imagine the impossible situation of someone being magically transported back to Athens to explain it to him using the language of Greek thought. But the Qanoner is not in the business of trying to understand anything. Giving them "raw facts" (presumably about the lack of sinister conspiracies?) is not the same as introducing Socrates to the idea of the kingdom of ends.
Quoting Joshs
I've lost you here. I thought you were arguing the opposite -- that the problem is a lack of shared, mutually intelligible facts. Could you say more?
Quoting Joshs
This is interesting. The implication is that "the desire to be moral" can exist without some particular "conceptual content" -- that the desire can be present from era to era, but with a differing notion of the ethical good. Are you sure that's possible? What is this common denominator of desire? I'm not saying that there is no such common denominator, of course; I'm arguing, in the opposite direction, that in addition to such a common desire there is also ethical conceptual content that is translatable from era to era and individual to individual.
Quoting Joshs
To me, this describes the process of "othering," in which opponents or adversaries are assumed to be in disagreement with us due to certain traits they possess, rather than because there is genuine, potentially resolvable disagreement. Oddly, I see this as erasing the similarities between their world and ours, not the difference. But I think we may be getting at the same idea. Your point, perhaps, is that reducing ethical dispute to some sort of character failure makes the assumption not only that the other is wrong in ethical terms, but also that those terms are already quite clear to all concerned. And what would my ethical duty be, in such a case? Just as you say -- try harder, keep trying to stay in "communicative action" (Habermas), don't simply give up and start "othering."
The above, rather rosy description, has an important caveat: Some people really are hateful and cruel. There is such a thing as moral failure. An entire society can even approach such a dreadful state. But to begin from such a premise, when in disagreement, is foolish and unjust.
Quoting J
Im thinking here of Foucaults historical analysis of scientific epistemes. He grouped the period from around 1400 till today into three epistemes, the Renaissance, the Classical period (roughly 1600 to 1780) and the Modern episteme (1780 to today), and showed how theories of language , life and economics within each episteme shared many common features. Relevant to your question concerning Romantic science, he argued that the science of biology could not exist until the modern period because the classical epistemes notion of natural history lacked a concept of holistic organization and history as self-reflexive change. These notions are central to Romanticism as a whole. He cites Romantic philosophers such as Kant , Schelling and Hegel as contributing to this new organicist
thinking in linguistics, economics ( Marx) and biology (Darwin).
Quoting J
Dilthey made a sharp distinction between the methods of the natural and human sciences, believing that hermeneutic method only applies to the latter. Gadamer, by contrast, and like Kuhn, applied hermeneutics to both the hard sciences and the human sciences. Gadamer, like Kuhn and Rorty thought that one could talk about a progress in the sciences, but this is not to be interpreted as a securing of matters of fact independent of schemes of intelligibility. Rather, the sciences, as part of the continuing conversation of man, can benefit humanity in increasingly useful ways in spite of the discontinuous nature of successive schemes of empirical factuality.
Quoting J
I would say that the common denominator of desire is the normative aims of anticipatory sense-making. Ethical striving toward empathy, love and compassion are derivative modes of sense-making. The ethical conceptual content you refer to , such as the Golden Rule, is what happens when sense-making breaks down and leads to blame and a concomitant collection of oughts , which all come down to variations on the theme of Thou shalt not act in ways that exceed my sense-making capabilities.
Quoting J
The essence of the concept of Othering is not simply seeing
someone else's views, behaviors or traits as alien with respect to oneself and ones own community, but judging these as unethical in their failure to conform to some universal. Levinass philosophical approach putting ethics before ontology captures the move made by a variety of approaches in contemporary philosophy. According to Levinas, the face-to-face relation primarily registers in an ethical order: the other, in her alterity, is such that she makes an ethical demand on me, to which I am obligated to respond Levinas describes a direct embodied encounter
with the other. the failure to enact that transcendence [recognizing the alterity of the other], as when we simply objectify or reify the other person, is also a possibility of relational contingency.(Shaun Gallagher)
It doesn't follow.
A person can be dishonest, act with evil intent. The point of contention is that it's not up to the other person to decide that.
Usually, people are eager to ascribe motivations to others, to project into them. They consider it their right, a matter of their self-confidence. But what they are basically saying is:
"You feel whatever I say that you feel.
You think whatever I say that you think.
Your intentions are whatever I say that your intentions are.
I am the boss of you.
If you in any way disagree, you are bad, evil, deserving punishment."
For the most part, ethics and the discussion of ethics are about controlling people, about getting them to do what one stakeholder wants them to do. But in order to avoid the controlling from becoming too obvious and too easy to rebel against, the discourse of ethics is often formulated in objective terms, as if indepedent from the people who promote it. "It's not I who wants you to do that, it's God." "It's not I who wants you to do that, it's simply how things really are."
This is one of the reasons why the discourse of ethics so often goes nowhere and why it logically doesn't add up.
Sorry, this is opaque to me. Could you expand? And, no offense, but in your own words if possible? I'm less interested in what other philosophers have said about this than I am in what you think.
People are often prone to give socially desirable answers.
What this means for discussing ethics, among other things, is that in discussions of ethics, people can present and defend socially desirable views in order to appear ethical to others (ie., they signal their virtue), when in fact they don't actually hold those views, or at least not as strongly or as consistently as they claim.
This then leads to those strange situations where, for example, someone talks about the importance of empathy or the importance of interacting with others in good faith, but their own behavior (even in those very discussions) indicates that they don't actually believe in those things. So one has to wonder what is really going on.
I think that at least some (if not many) traditional problems of ethics are born precisely out of this virtue signaling, creating artificial ethical problems that nobody actually has or cares about, but they just want to make themselves look good.
A naive and goodwilled person can waste a lot of time and energy on those problems, failing to realize they are artificial and merely there for the purpose of keeping up appearances.
How do you explain that religions/spiritualities that focus heavily on love and compassion also "balance" this out with extreme violence, such as Christianity and Mahayana Buddhism (the Secondary Bodhisattva vows, where a person basically vows to kill, rape, and pillage in the name of compassion -- for the killed, raped, and pillaged person!!)?
While waiting for @Joshs --
The way I understand it is that empathy, love, and compassion as fundamental attitudes will inform how we make sense of other people's words and actions.
So that, for example, instead of interpreting a particular child's action as "evil" (and feeling justified and obligated to punish the child), one interprets it perhaps as a cry for help, or a consequence of parental neglect, or something else altogether.
It's important to note that often when people claim to exhibit empathy, love and compassion, they are actually practicing contempt, or at best, pity. They tell you they love you, but they still believe you're bad, wrong, and deserving punishment. In their mind, it's love, or compassion, if they don't criticize you or punish you when they believe they should do so.
Quoting J
The question of how to be compassionate toward others and to be alive to each being's suffering, assumes a need to resist the unjust desire or intention not to be alive to the suffering of others, that is, the unethical impetus to inter-affect with others by excluding their experience. But the suffering other can only be acknowledged if they can first be made sense of as a suffering other. What matters to us, what we care about, whose suffering we empathize with, is dependent in the first place on what is intelligible to us from our situated vantage of participation within multiple practices. We can only intend to recognize and welcome the Other who saves us from sense-making chaos; we intend to reject the Other who offers the oppression of incommensurability.
Freedom from incoherence strengthens ties of relevant social relationality , freedom from the order of intelligibility fragments the integrity of social bonds. What is repressive to us is what we cannot establish harmonious relation with. To choose to embrace the other is to discover and construct that aspect of the other which is knowable and relatable, which offers us the hope of avoidance of the abyss of senselessness and incoherence. We cannot get beyond this link between the lovable and the recognizable without losing the basis of any ethics, which is the ability to distinguish between, even if without yet defining, what is preferred and what is not.
Quoting baker
The fact that love and compassion arent functions of successful sense-making for these religions, but must be attained by an act of will, demands that those who fail to desire correctly be dealt with in a punitive manner.
I liked what you said about the important connections between recognition and empathy. I might have put it a bit more directly -- it's hard to love, and stand up for, someone you can't even recognize as suffering.
But the quoted passage above seems out of phase with this. If the basis of ethics is only about distinguishing what's preferred, how does that create any impetus to change preferences? I would have said that that -- the desire to prefer what, to the best of our knowing, is truly empathetic, or just, or compassionate -- is central to ethics, not so much the act of preferring itself.
Is your contention that it isn't beneficial for us to be virtuous? So being prudent, courageous (as opposed to brash or cowardly), scientifically minded, loving (as opposed to hateful or indifferent), temperate (as opposed to glutinous/licentious or anhedonic), etc. isn't better?
It seems to me that you are committed to something like: "being virtuous might tend to be better, but only because, on average, the virtues tend to lead to avoiding unpleasant states and experiences and achieving pleasant ones. If they don't, if being virtuous leads to unpleasant things like having negative experiences (e.g. hunger, sorrow, pain, being executed, etc.) or to missing out on positive experiences, then being virtuous simply isn't better for us and isn't good. It has led to bad things that are bad for us and it would be better to be less virtuous and avoid them.
I've made the argument. It's unclear what you don't accept to me? Since you seem to accept that it is better to be Socrates than cowardly Socrates and that Socrates made the best possible choice for himself vis-á-vis defending his philosophy and refusing to flee.
It seems to me like you are committed to the idea that "good" must refer to egoism in some sense, that Socrates, Boethius, etc. in some way did something foolhardy because flourishing and well-being, a "good life" entails avoiding certain negative stimuli and experiences, particularly an early death (although Socrates, St. Polycarp, etc. were exceptionally long lived for their eras and had lived full lives).
But people talk about dying as "good for" someone all the time. I was at a funeral yesterday where people were making this point; it is better to die with less suffering on one's own terms, etc.
Good and bad are contextual and contrary as opposed to contradictory opposites, so we can think of all sorts of situations where it might make sense to speak of things normally thought of as good as bad or vice versa. This doesn't make the term equivocal for the same reason that "dimly lit" or "bright" might be said of different things with the same luminosity without there being many different sui generis types of light or no clear opposition between total darkness and maximal luminosity.
The peak, what is "truly best" for the individual, I would argue, is what is truly best for the whole and involves man being situated in wholes as a part and participating in a common good. It is to be a citizen in utopia than a fabulously wealthy and powerful dictator on an island.
Quoting J
Preference isnt arbitrary. It is the measure of successful sense-making. All of our construals are interlocked and organized hierarchically with respect to our most superordinate concerns, how we understand ourselves with respect to others, and how we understand others to construe us. Our core sense of self crucially depends on how well we anticipate others behavior relating to us. Empathy and compassion dont need to be taught, since our ability to empathize is only constrained by the limits of intelligibility. We only desire against empathy to the extent that, as I said earlier, we are unable to recognize any basis of relatability between us and them. The experiences which are capable of producing the most profound anguish and suffering are directly tied to failure of social intelligibility. Our preferences are directed by the goals of sense-making; sense-making is directed toward optimal anticipation of events. The actions of others in relation to us are the most important events in our life.
We are motivated to change preferences when we experience a crisis in intelligibility. Our reliable ways of understanding others has broken down and we feel devastated, angry, hurt, betrayed and confused. We are left with only a few options. We can dig in our heels and try and extort validation evidence to justify our crumbling schemes of interpretation. This is the hostile option. Rather than exploring alternative ways of understanding the actions of others, we blame them for our failure to comprehend. Much of traditional ethics is hostile in this way, blaming the intent, character, or will of others when they fail to meet the standards we have set for them based on our criteria. The more effective , but far more difficult, approach is to experiment with fresh ways of interpreting the motives of others.
Part of what philosophy does is seek the truth. I think that in seeking the truth we find out that the myth of the charioteer is a fantasy born of the ancient's preoccupation with invulnerability -- the invulnerable man could guide the horses, the truly great man would be in control of the self, etc.
However I think what we learn from psychology is that people do not control themselves in this manner. There isn't a charioteer that's part of the soul, but rather, this is an image to aspire to that no one achieves.
This is because we are human. It's our finitude.
What this doesn't do is say there are no facts involved in moral decisions. Rather, in order to make an inference with an "ought", one needs a passion to connect the fact to the "ought". There is no "normal situation" which these statements sit within wherein they can be generically evaluated as usually this or that way -- or, rather, we can but all it really says is "This is what I think", or "Where I come from, this means that"
Nor does it turn philosophy into a power struggle. It's an honest appraisal of what makes the philosopher tick: a love for wisdom. The philosopher isn't any less human than anyone else, they just care about reason more than most do. Were it a power struggle then reason wouldn't be the tool being used. Guns are better at that than words.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Heh -- I would not say that the natural sciences make progress in any way which differentiates it from the other disciplines of human beings. Human beings continue to engage in various practices, and they change based upon what those human beings care about and do. Theatre has advanced from a previous period, and yet it has no ultimate teleology towards which it should strive. Likewise for science, and philosophy.
Progress is a measure of how impressed people are with a series of events, rather than a thing which happens.
In that vein it seems to me that going back to Aristotle as if he knew the good is definitely a step back. If someone owned slaves I sort of have to take what they have to say about goodness with a grain of salt -- we clearly have different priorities.
Fair enough. How would this work in practice, in the context of a man who perpetuates domestic abuse? How might such an approach bear useful results? The conventional view might be that the violent perpetrator who assaults his partner, is doing so to exert his power and control of them by using fear and force.
Quoting Tom Storm
Why does the violent perpetrator need to exert his power? Because he feels powerless. What does power mean in
this context? Does it mean the ability to make happen whatever we desire? If so, what determines motive? If, as I am arguing, the power that we seek is fundamentally that of making sense of our world in ways that are harmoniously anticipative, it means the power to achieve the love and affection of others. But why this instead of the power to exploit them for our own selfish purposes? What makes our intent selfish in the first place? Do we start out selfish and have to be acculturated into empathy and altruism? Or is the self that we are trying to remain faithful to a self which only exists as itself by assimilating the world? Dont we settle for the power to exploit others as an inferior alternative to what we are really striving for, which is to connect with them? And isnt our callousness concerning their suffering the result of our assessment that they in some sense deserve this treatment , that we are punishing f them for what we perceive to be their own unjust callousness toward us?
Dont you see in your own practice the handing down from one generation to the next patterns of abusiveness that result from the perpetuation through multiple generations of a failure to make sense of the others perspective?
Quoting Moliere
I love this :100:
Quoting Joshs
Totally agree. I am frequently in trouble for trying to remove blame and judgement from worker discourse.
Socrates, the hero of the Platonic corpus, is executed by a mob though.
Isn't the question rather whether or not people can be more or less unified, more or less free? Plato, and those who follow him don't have many creating himself out of the aether. The polis, the social whole, in particular looms large, and we might suppose that societies themselves can be more or less free to actualize their goals (and to have choice-worthy goals).
This seems like more a counter to a strawman version of Plato to be honest.
And why are people impressed by what they are impressed by? Why are people impressed by flying machines or satellite internet?
Presumably, what impresses people and what we take to be the goals of the sciences, the productive arts, etc. is not arbitrary. If it was arbitrary, then no man should agree with any other about what those goals should be. Yet that isn't the case.
[Quote]
In that vein it seems to me that going back to Aristotle as if he knew the good is definitely a step back. If someone owned slaves I sort of have to take what they have to say about goodness with a grain of salt -- we clearly have different priorities.[/quote]
Right, and you can write off almost anyone before 1960 for supporting Jim Crow or colonialism. And future generations will like as not write us off for eating meat. But you could just as well write off people today because they wear clothes made by impoverished child workers in southeast Asia or use phones and computers packed with rare earth metals mined by slaves, and buy groceries harvested and processed by migrant workers who are often treated on par with ancient agricultural slaves. People have been remarking on the lack of a real difference between slavery and wage slavery since at least Cicero, who was well acquainted with both.*
(And I should note, the idea is not that earning a wage is slavery, but rather that the two can become virtually indistinguishable. For instance, the economic system in late-republican Rome, the growth of the latifundium and massive influx of slave labor, made the material conditions of slaves and many freedmen employed at large estates materially indistinguishable and led to people oscillating between both statuses based on good or ill fortune and an ability to keep up with debts).
Quoting Joshs
You are clearly not trying to present "hostile option" in an ethically neutral way. It is not to be preferred, on your account. We ought not to choose the hostile option. So how is that judgment arrived at, and is it meant to carry ethical weight?
Quite often, that's correct. But more importantly, it doesn't matter whether it benefits us or not. We're supposed to do the virtuous thing regardless of whether it benefits us or not.
And here, in all simplicity, we see the difference between virtue ethics and deontological ethics. Virtue ethics is committed to the position that there simply must be a benefit to the individual from all virtuous action. So, to make this plausible in cases where by any normal use of language there is no benefit whatsoever, the virtue ethicist has to stipulate the definitions of words like "benefit," "good," and "virtue" so as to reveal that we are mistaken about what benefits us. We think being tortured in a good cause is merely the best alternative, the least of many evils? No, that won't do -- it also has to benefit us. This is because what I've been calling the "metaphysical union of goods" is assumed or stipulated by virtue ethics. It's a place to start, rather than a desideratum that needs to be argued for or explained.
Deontology, in contrast, says that what's good for me is neither here nor there. The purpose of the virtues is not to secure any sort of benefit, no matter how implausibly defined. We act virtuously in each case because it is the right thing to do, and this "right thing" can be discovered and described without any reference to what is good for me. It's essentially an other-directed ethics, I would say.
Now I'm not satisfied with that, because I think it's too austere. It ignores some basic facts about human beings and the things that make them flourish. But what I do like about deontological ethics is that it recognizes the supposed union of personal and universal goods as a problem, a very deep and difficult one. It doesn't begin by assuming that good acts must be good for the people who perform them. It is skeptical of all easy equations between the "good" of flourishing, say, and the "good" of standing up against injustice.
If I can lighten the mood for a moment, there was a cartoon from many years ago (National Lampoon?) showing some poor sods writhing in torment in some dreadful hellscape, being poked by devils, etc. One of them is saying, "Ah, but far worse than these torments is the knowledge that I shall never experience the Beatific Vision!" That's the problem, captured in a gag. It is worse, in some important way, to be deprived of the presence of God, but whatever way that is, it can't belong on a comparison scale with being tortured. That's why the caption is funny.
I think much of 20th century ethical thought is devoted to finding a way over the gap, and creating a genuine metaphysical union of goods. Has anyone come close? Perhaps I reveal my admiration for Kant (though not, I insist, my agreement with his conclusions) by saying that John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas seem to have made the most progress. Each is a neo-Kantian of sorts, Rawls explicitly and Habermas by courtesy. And anyway, there are modalities other than philosophy that are far more useful, if you really want to be a decent person. Or so I've found.
Nothing in virtue ethics suggests that we need to claim that being tortured "benefits us." This is a creation of your own invention you keep returning to, moving from "it is good to be virtuous," to "it is good to be tortured" seems a bit much, no?
It benefits us to possess the virtues.
What's weird is, you accept that Socrates or Boethius choose the best possible option available to them. But then, on your view, choosing the best possible option doesn't benefit us. We would benefit more from choosing what is worse (e.g. fleeing and escaping for Socrates, or recanting and obsequiously pleading for mercy) in this case.
But your concern here seems to be how we usually use words, and yet we have a case where "it is better/more to our benefit for us to choose what is worse?" and the "worse is better than the better."
Isn't this contradiction in terms more problematic than the claim that we are often mistaken about what is to our benefit?
People thought chattel slavery was to their benefit. Large numbers of Germans thought it was to their benefit to elect Hitler to be their leader. Rapists think raping is to their benefit. Stalin thought purging his officer corps right before trying to reconquer Finland was to his benefit. Putin thought his invasion of Ukraine was to his and Russia's benefit. Many people who started smoking, doing heroin, etc. thought the good/risks outweighed the downside.
I am not sure exactly how this is supposed to be implausible.
We can explain dogmatic or hostile construing not as the manifestation of arbitrary self-reinforcing drives or passions, but as representing the most promising avenues of constructive movement available to us given the circumstances. A prescriptive ethics ( we SHOULD avoid hostility ) only makes sense in a psychology which requires a separate motivational mechanism pushing or pulling us in ethical or unethical directions . But we don't need to be admonished to choose in favor of sense-making strategies that are optimally anticipatory, since this is already built into our motivational aims. When people stop actively questioning and evaluating their ethical constructs, and fall back on rigid verities, this should not be seen as a sign that the person has simply fallen in love with their doctrine, and thereby found themselves at the mercy of a vicious cycle of self-reinforcing rigidity. Instead, it is likely to signal a crisis in that person's ability to make their world intelligible. The question of why and to what extent a person embraces hostility should be seen as a matter of how much uncertainty that person's system is capable of tolerating without crumbling, rather than a self-reinforcing desire for hostile thinking.
Methodologically, I think a lot of this comes back to this:
Quoting Leontiskos
Which is an example of what I said here:
Quoting Leontiskos
When people on TPF and elsewhere contradict others for pages on end without giving any alternative account of their own, they are engaged in a dubious practice.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Socrates is the embodiment of the myth -- not quite a God, but somehow higher than average or corrupt people.
He chooses to be executed by a mob because reason guides him that way. -- drinking doesn't effect his ability to think, and cold weather didn't effect him. Even when given an escape route to continue to live his life he dies by his own rational choosing; the apology could have been given in a manner which might have eased Socrates' punishment, but he chose to speak the truth to who he knew would execute him all in the service of the Good of the city due to the light of reason.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Probably so -- Plato's a deep thinker and there's always a way to reflect out towards another, more charitable interpretation.
But it seems a popular image, at least -- the Rational Being Controlling Emotion. The Charioteer Guiding. There's a part of the image that I like -- that one is along for the ride -- but the part that I do not like is the idea of a charioteer choosing. Taken literally it's a homuncular fallacy -- we explain the mind by assuming a minded person within the mechanism of the mind.
Plato himself doesn't commit this, I don't believe -- it's a myth, for crying out loud! All of Plato is mythic!
But look to the popularity of the stoics to see how popular the image of the Rational Man Controlling His Emotions is.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Nope, I don't believe science has a teleology. If it did -- towards truth and accuracy, say -- it wouldn't be so hopscotch as it is. It's clear to me that truth and accuracy are important to any field of knowledge because we like it to be so, and furthermore, that it's not just truth and accuracy that guide scientists or wonderers of the world. There's wonder. There's greed. There's pride. Desperation. Usefulness.
Basically a whole host of desires.
That doesn't counter truth and accuracy. But it demonstrates how rational discourse is motivated by very human passions rather than Reason.
Reason is the referee. Passion is why we do it. When their powers combine we get Captain Rational ;)
So an advance in medicine tells us a little tiny bit about the world -- it does not increase the accuracy of our world-picture, or our ontological understanding of the world. Studies about global warming and bee-populations are about global warming and bee-populations, not The World.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The economy -- these are useful for war, agriculture, production, etc.
I don't think that follows --
if it were arbitrary people could agree insofar that they feel the same.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Have I written off Plato and Aristotle in this in saying they are good to read? I'd say this is just part of reading the text -- there's the with the grain reading and the against the grain reading, and you can kind of pick and choose which reading depending upon how the arguments strike you.
They're masters of philosophy, but human for all that.
As for the future generations: I don't mind the idea of a future harsher judge of myself. I'll be dead, and maybe the world will be better. Also I don't have any qualms in pointing out the present day conditions of slavery in the world -- I don't think things have gotten very much better since the days of Plato.
A few things, sure. But in terms of Good? Are human beings really any better today than they were when Plato was writing?
I don't think so.
How can one make sense of this? If one DOES contradict the other, then the alternative account has indeed been made. If there is no contradiction offered and only negation with no reason, then this could be almost right. It still fails because the meaning of the words used is not, in general OR in specific, quite accurate.
Just curious at this point.
This 'mitigation of the ways' (to reflect out) is important. An unambiguous language, seemingly impossible, would help.
But really the idea this centers on is critical as a takeaway. It is in the nature of reality itself, of these many efforts towards virtue (as a secondary but exactly analogous point of view), that everything of value exists on a limit as x the chooser of that intent aims towards perfection, the impossible. But if we allow that what we consider as impossible is possible perhaps only once in all of existence effectively then ENDING existence when the impossible finally happens (perfection), then ... I ask ... in some humility, doesn't that make great sense?
Quoting Moliere
So you support accidental progress, random progress, amid chaos. You are leaning then desire side in my model, wallowing in worthlessness, making too much of it by choice.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, clearly. The fear-sided approach to reality is Pragmatic and proud, wallowing in JUST AS MUCH pride and worthiness as the chaos side does wallow in worthlessness (like you just did).
I agree that these self-made man types are annoying, and all of Pragmatism and that which serves the mind side, the fear-side of truth, order, is tedious in the extreme.
But your side, the chaos side, is JUST AS tedious.
Wisdom is the middle path, born of anger and respecting of the existence of and pursuit of perfection despite the foolish wallowing in delusional worthiness or worthlessness of MOST people, the unwise, at all times. Anger is the demand for rights, for worthiness EVEN amid error in choice. The wise person is neither allowed to maintain worthlessness (we just can't do it - we morons is only human) and worthiness (behold how I doth conquered the chaos fools around me). The first emphasizes equality only in worthlessness, neglecting the worthiness. The last emphasizes failure (of others) to underscore its success denying the unity principle, 'You are me and I am you. Your failures are mine as well!'
But just because we all belong and our failures are forgivable, that DOES NOT mean that there is not a right path and that that right path is not walkable.
Quoting Moliere
Myth is real. What about myth is not real?
Quoting Moliere
Yes, blind fools abound.
They without sin can call for the purge of the sinful. Since perfection is only amid ALL and since the unity principle is real, if any is without sin then all must be without sin. So there is no need for a purge ever. It is always a mistake of pride.
Truly, we're disputing words now. We both agree that there is something of great value in standing up for a principle even if it means enduring a dreadful death. You want to call this "something" a benefit, I do not. But is there anything more to it than this? I don't really mind what words we use to describe the problem, I only ask that it be seen as a problem.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That's exactly right. Virtue ethics commits you to finding a benefit in virtuous action, and I know it seems weird to you that virtue might not always be its own reward. (Maybe this is a bit of what MacIntyre was pointing to, in terms of the difficulty of building bridges between ethical systems.) But that's not at all the only way to see it. Deontology, as I've summarized it, asks us to ignore this question of self-benefit entirely. Or, if we must talk of benefits, let's stick to the ordinary usage and admire Socrates and Boethius precisely because they chose to forego any benefit for themselves by taking a virtuous course of action.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
So, again, this is only a contradiction if we insist on a link between "benefit" and "ethical goodness." From my point of view (which you may not agree with but I hope you will acknowledge is not unreasonable or ignorant), it makes perfect sense to say "It was greatly to Stalin's benefit [or substitute any wicked person who succeeded and died happy] to choose what was worse, that's part of why it was worse -- it was entirely selfish."
I'd like to invite us both to step back and consider this as a problem of the relation between personal and public goods. What I've been calling a "metaphysical union of goods" returns as an issue in political ethics. Or perhaps I shouldn't say "returns," since the Republic is full of discussion of this problem. We've been talking about this in highly abstract terms, but I submit that the issue is one of daily concern, as we attempt to navigate between personal, familial, community, national, human, and creation goods. I want to find a way to unite these goods, both philosophically and in my own life. Habermas opposes what he calls "a supposedly irreconcilable conflict between justice for all and the individual good"; when put this way, I think we can see that this is the same "benefit" problem, writ large. How do we further the goods or benefits of a life -- love, pleasure, family, achievement -- yet hold them in balance with our duties as citizens and members of a much larger ethical community?
This is a different subject, in some ways, but I thought I'd at least bring it up because I've found that, when sharp disagreements arise between intelligent people, it's often best to focus on their common beliefs and aims. I think we both want to keep searching for a resolution to this "supposedly irreconcilable conflict." Disputing how to use the word "benefit" probably isn't the way, and I apologize if I've encouraged too much logomachy.
This is the claim that needs arguing, I think. When you speak about something being "built into our motivational aims," are you describing it from the point of view of psychology? That is, as a description of the human animal, of how we behave? Or do you mean "built in" as a sort of stand-in for a transcendental argument that would show it must be the case? I think it will make a big difference, which way we understand it, because if I want to go on to say that we do need a separate motivational mechanism, I need to know whether I'm arguing against an empirical or a conceptual claim.
Quoting Joshs
The last part is certainly true. Even people who believe they enjoy hostile thinking can probably be shown to lack a level of self-awareness that would reveal something more fear-based. I'm not sure, though, whether hostile behavior is only a matter of one's own system of concepts and values being in jeopardy. Can we use the word "hostile" without also meaning "aggressive toward others"?
Of more concern is where this stands vis a vis ethics. Are you wanting to say that, when we give a correct, or at least perspicacious, analysis of the person who has raped and killed someone, we are no longer in a position to describe the actions as wrong?
Yes, but you have said that from your perspective the choices made by Boethius are better for them and "the best option they have available," and that it is better for them. But now you seem to think it is actually better for them to lack the strength of will to follow through on their convictions. Such a view also entails that Socrates, Boethius, etc. are simply wrong about what is truly to their benefit. Egoism is actually to their benefit. They are deluded in thinking it isn't.
As I have pointed out, I find this implausible.
Right, but now you seem to have stepped back from your previous positions to presupposing "morally good is a sui generis sort of good unrelated to other uses of the term. "
What's the justification for this? Where is the argument for it?
No it doesn't. It commits you to the idea that it is better for persons to be virtuous. People possess virtues primarily, not "actions." Actions cannot, for instance, become more self-determining by possessing virtue, nor can they come to more fully know what is truly good as opposed to what merely appears to be good. You keep returning to "virtue ethics as seen through the lens of presuppositions foreign to it."
Again, switching back to the focus on individual actions, when the question is "is it to our benefit be a virtuous person." And again, this also presupposes that Socrates and Boethius are both fundamentally deluded as to what is to their own benefit and would benefit from lacking the strength of will to follow through on their delusions.
I don't see how such a position doesn't require the presupposition that "benefit" means something like "egoistic pursuit of one's own pleasure," or something similar. Good luck building an ethics on that assumption, and good luck justifying it, given how many examples there are of people being ruined by such egoistic pursuits.
Or, conversely, this might be resolved as a sort of Protagorean "no one can ever be wrong about what is to their own benefit" position, but this is also implausible.
No, I'd argue precisely that such actions do represent ignorance. Stalin was ignorant of what was truly to his own benefit. Stalin lived a fairly miserable life, a life defined by constant paranoia and a lack of close relations.
Three stories about Stalin:
One of his son's shot himself in the chest in an attempt to commit suicide and lived. Stalin's first remark was: "I told you he cannot do anything right."
One of Stalin's sons was captured by the Germans. They offered to trade him for a high ranking German officer. Stalin's immediate reply, was a simple: "why would I trade a field marshal for a major?"
Shortly before Stalin had the stroke that would lead to his death he had flown into one of his customary rage and asked to be left alone. Everyone was so completely terrified of him that no one ventured into his chambers until three days later. During that time, Stalin had lain paralyzed and possibly conscious for long periods slowly dying of dehydration because no one was willing to risk his ire by going in to check on him.
Was it to Stalin's benefit to have this sort of relationship with his sons? Was it too his benefit to be a paranoid man who conducted his affairs in such a way that he also had good reason to be constantly paranoid?
Or likewise, was it to the benefit of the BTK killer to stay on the loose murdering and torturing families? More to the point, was it good "for him" to enjoy torturing families much more than a good father? (or was it only "bad for him" because he got caught doing this? Recall, virtue entails enjoying doing what is best.) Or was it to Jeffery Epstein's benefit to do what he did so long as he wasn't caught?
Or would it have been better for each one of these people to be virtuous, well-adjusted people who could partake in the common good of a marriage, family, etc.? I find it very hard to make a case that Stalin or Hitler benefited from being the type of people they were.
Do you think someone like the BTK killer or Jeffery Epstein's main problem was a crisis of intelligibility and sense-making? Or does this only cover part of ethics?
It seems to me that a lot of criminals, in interviews, understand why what they did is wrong at a deep level, and experience significant guilt and shame over it.
Psychopaths like the BTK killer might be a case where there is something of a deficit in an ability to fully recognize what is meant by moral terms or "common good," but in many cases they understand these well enough to do things like have successful careers, stable marriages, be leaders in social organizations, and, obviously, to hide their abhorrent interests and activities.
Certainly, we could fit all this into a totalizing lens of sense-making, in the same way the term "game" is sometimes stretched to incorporate virtually [I]anything[/I].
Plato also at times seems to present a view where all immoral behavior is simply an ability to grasp the full intelligibility of the good, and this can certainly be "made sense of" in his framework, but it always seemed like a weak spot to me. Psychology normally tends to separate an inability to make sense of ethical norms or to empathize and poor impulse control, an inability to emotionally regulate, etc.
I don't know how I can make any more compelling the idea that we're simply playing around with what "benefit" means. I don't think "the best option available" has to be beneficial for anyone; you do. I think it is a better thing for Socrates et al. to do right, but I don't equate this "better" with being beneficial for them; you do. If Socrates uses "benefit" the way I do, then he wouldn't say that doing the right thing is always necessarily a benefit. If he uses it your way, then he would. I would greatly like to know if there is a Greek word that discriminates here, allowing "beneficial" to break off into these two senses -- roughly, the benefit of personal goods and the benefit of acting well.
Which way is the "right" way to use the word? How do you think we should answer such a question?
Is there any way I can persuade you that we really aren't having a substantive disagreement here? This harks back to what I meant, earlier, when I said that all this discussion of "good" (and now "benefit") can only be coherent if there are different, equivocal meanings of "good" in play. It saddens me a bit, because it seems so clear that you and I are both on the side of the angels, as it were, and this kind of infighting when there is so much genuine ethical atrocity to call out, seems unfortunate.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No, it says nothing about motivation, and there are many things besides pleasure that are beneficial. It says that a benefit improves a person's lot in life, or something equally general. Again, I appeal to ordinary usage: If one's daughter is raped and murdered, she may have refused to give up a wanted man and been punished accordingly, and so acted virtuously, but what father would claim she had anything beneficial happen to her?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No, I think that's too strong. I don't believe the various usages of "good" are unrelated. Equivocation often occurs precisely because various usages are so closely related -- yet distinct. What I want is a union of these related goods, as do you.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Continuing this thought, my argument for the idea that usages of "good" differ significantly has, I think, already been made. Better, perhaps, to say "I've given my reasons," because, as I acknowledged, arguments from usage are tricky. Is it even an argument? Could I argue for the fact that "phrasing," in music, has been used to mean both the performance intentions of the composer, as found in the score, and also the practice of a particular performer, such that a passage can be "phrased" in different ways? All I can do is point out how I think educated musicians use the word, and I will be either right or wrong depending on how they do use it. That's not exactly an argument, but I don't know what more one could do.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, I was afraid, when I reached for Stalin as an example, that a biographer might reveal that he was actually miserable, confusing the issue. But that's beside the point -- unless you're wanting to say, with Plato, that every wicked person has to be miserable as a result. (I'm thinking of the tyrant in the Republic.) I'm sorry to say I've personally known a few exceptions. We're not talking about who's happy and who's miserable, because we both agree that these conditions aren't indicative of a virtuous life. What we want to know is whether the wicked person benefits from their wickedness. Well, certainly they do, especially if (unlike Stalin, evidently) they live a prosperous life and die happy. But then, I'm using "benefit" my way . . . part of why he's wicked is that he does act for his own benefit, rather than considering the welfare of others.
But that isn't what is required at all; that would be a straw man relying on extremes (Plato's point, for instance, requires significant nuance). Fortune, the acts of others, the social context, etc. are [I]all[/I] relevant to one's happiness. Aristotle makes this point explicitly at the outset of the ethics.
The point is rather that it's always better to possess the virtues than to lack them. "Jeffery Epstein if he never got caught and exposed" being relatively happy (in the common English use of the term), is not a counterexample for two reasons:
First, considering that Epstein was able to build a massive fortune, a great deal of influence, and to be successful in elite social and intellectual circles, it would seem that Epstein did possess many of the virtues to varying degrees. Perhaps luck played an outsized role in his success, but it does seem that he was intelligent, charming, not brash or reckless, prudent in some respects (or we might say cunning), etc.
Second, the proper counterexample would be a case where Epstein lives a better life (or to deflate the notion, is "more happy") and would benefit from being more cowardly or rash, more gluttonous, more irascible or lacking in spirit, or conversely less modest, less temperate, less honest, etc.
The other key point is that the state of virtue involves enjoying right action. Would Epstein's life have been worse if he had enjoyed deeper romantic partnerships based around a common good more than coercing adolescents into sex for his or gratification less? I think the answer is obvious.
The good always relates to the whole. Of course we can imagine a situation where someone who is born into modern Denmark and with great wealth, can, in many ways, live a life that is happier than someone born in Liberia, despite the latter being relatively more virtuous. The virtues, at the individual level, make the individual life better; they don't make context irrelevant.
If the virtues are attained to a high level of perfection (something far more difficult to accomplish in an unvirtuous society), then they do insulate one from future misery (e.g. Laozi and St. Francis happy in the wilderness with nothing, St. Paul sublime in prison).
This is no way entails that "being sent to prison is to one's benefit." It would have been better for Boethius to live in a more virtuous society, one that wouldn't execute him for fighting corruption. It would not have been to his benefit to be less virtuous.
Ok, but then it seems to me that you're committed to the idea that people can be profoundly wrong about what is truly to their own benefit, because in these examples (Boethius, St. Polycarp, St. Maximus, St. Paul, etc.) all think that would they do is to their benefit. But then if people, and indeed an entire epoch of ethics, can be profoundly wrong about what is actually to their own benefit, then I am not sure what your appeal to "common notions of benefit" is supposed to show exactly.
On the view that things can be truly better or worse for people, the one that is (more) accurate.
It isn't good for people like Epstein to be the type of people they are. It would be better for them to change. Is it good for them to go to prison? Not necessarily, but that's precisely because prison doesn't change the type of person you are. Indeed, it often makes people worse. Prison is often "an education in vice." This has to do with the way prisons work, particularly in the US. It would be better for prisoners if they lived in a more virtuous society that structured corrections better.
This example is confused, because the daughter is dead, but then doesn't want to give up her murderer? At any rate, you seem to be falling back on "virtues ethics requires you to benefit from being tortured, murdered, etc." again. It doesn't. It requires that you benefit from being virtuous, as in "possessing the virtues" not as in "completing isolated acts deemed good by some deontological framework."
You keep slipping into an entirely alien frame, which is MacIntyre's exact point. You hear "it's to your benefit to be virtuous," and it seems the only meaning you can take from that it "it is to your benefit (personal good) to complete acts deemed morally good according to some set of proper rules by which virtuous behavior is defined."
However, it means: "it is to your benefit to be courageous, temperate, prudent, generous, patient, honest, friendly, modest, loving, witty, etc." and "it is better for you to live with people who have these virtues," and "it is better to live in societies that embody and instill these virtues."
Edit:
In virtue of what is an option that benefits no one "best?"
This is part and parcel of the incoherence of Kantian ethics: right action absent motivation (because all motivation is selfish). @J keeps dancing around that without actually defending it. If he would actually defend his own Kantian position this could be a productive exchange.
Kantian ethics in a nutshell:
(The modern egoist uses the same premises, only denying the existence of moral acts.)
And J's argument:
---
If we follow J's version of Kant, then it would seem that Kant agrees that Socrates made the correct decision, but he can't figure out how that would be true given the ethical options available to him, so he tries to draw up something new. Kant's ethics makes most sense when considering these acts of extreme virtue or sacrifice.
For example:
Quoting J
For the Greeks the kalos is desirable but not base, and it retains its value even in cases of martyrdom. @Count Timothy von Icarus is right when he says that reducing all desirable objects to the base or selfish is the error. Kant seeks a guarantee on the moral character of an act, and that is the problem. It is a bit like trying to guarantee that you avoid gluttony by only eating food that tastes bad. Or more specifically, specifying sensuous taste as a non-moral category.
Here is the counterargument:
And @J has the same puzzle:
This claim can be justified on more than a psychological basis. I would hesitate to call it transcendental in the sense of an idealist ground. Rather, it is transcendental in a way that cannot be understood on the basis of an idealist-realist
distinction. Both idealism and realism are anchored in a sovereign notion of ontology. Realists and idealists ground psychological phenomena, either directly or indirectly, in the way the world supposedly is in itself, whether that be the non-human or the human world. But the motivational grounding I have in mind is tied to a world that recursively re-invents its basis, sense and meaning by existing in time. There can be no static principles of ethics for this reason, no sovereign principle of motivation , no concept of the Good, of right and wrong, that makes any sense outside of actual, contingent contexts of interaction. Our motives are not drivers that propel us into motion. We always already find ourselves in motion, thanks to the reciprocally changing nature of our involvement with things in the world. Our motives emanate not from somewhere inside us but from matters at hand.
There cannot be a disconnect between our schemes of knowing or ethics and the way things are or should be , since those schemes are built from actual relations with a world that we are immersed within, a world that is on the way to being transformed by our interaction with it, and whose responses to our actions will continually require new assessments of the basis of right and wrong , correct or incorrect, true or false.
Quoting J
Aggression in its basic sense simply means active engagement with things. But this meaning becomes confused with the kind of activity that is motivated by anger and hostility. Such action is not directed toward simple destruction, but toward correcting a perceived violation. Anger always perceives itself to be justified.
To recognize a wrong is to have a perspective on it unavailable to the wrongdoer, to already inhabit a different world from them. If we succeed in bringing them over to our world, they will see themselves as guilty. If we cannot, they will see us as committing a wrong by condemning them.
Im not denying that our ethical standards can progress, that the different worlds inhabited by diverse ethical communities dont belong to an overall developmental trajectory, but they evolve as a function of a complexification of sense-making that is built -in tendency of a complex dynamical system such as ours
The tendency to cite notorious media or historical figures as examples of evil (the Hitler effect) feeds into the Romantic conception of the autonomously willing ethical subject. Both the archetype of the lone killer and the solitary genius fit the bill here. But this thinking fails to do justice to the fact that the vast majority of individuals and groups who perform acts deemed as unethical by an aggrieved party believed themselves to be full justified. We have a strong need to believe that the evildoer knows in their heart of hearts that they strayed from the path of goodness, but the reality is that in most cases they are as convinced of the righteousness of their actions as we are of our condemnation of them.
You often raise this strawman. I don't see anyone thinking that Hitler self-consciously believed himself to be evil. The example of Hitler is often raised for the opposite reason: the self-righteous are not always righteous.
So this only covers part of ethics then?
Those are just examples. When I think of people who feel genuinely bad about what they have done I am thinking more about documentaries I've seen on prisoners and people I know who went to prison. I don't think BTK or the Gilgo Beach Killer are particularly remorseful. In some sense, they seem incapable of it.
Two is a false premise, yet it's easy to imagine an example where something like this might be successful. For example, the courageous fire fighter might die in a scenario where a coward lives, potentially without doing anyone any good through their sacrifice (and indeed hurting their wife and children).
However it would be foolish to think that individual virtue would somehow insulate someone from all bad fortune or all the consequences of living in an unvirtuous world and society. Virtue insulates us from bad fortune and make us relatively more self-determining. It doesn't make us invulnerable and absolutely self-determining. The virtues help us to live better lives, not perfect ones.
In general, it is better to be courageous than reckless or cowardly. In a case where we misjudge the risk as lower than it is, the rash person would seem to always fall victim when the courageous person does, and the converse is true vis-á-vis the coward if the risk is deemed higher than it really is.
But this doesn't mean that we, as people, shouldn't want to be courageous, prudent, wise, etc.to possess thess qualities [I] in general[/I].
Plus, I feel like courage is the easiest one to make this sort of example for because it involves our response to danger. It's harder to think of common examples where it would be better to be profligate or avaricious, as opposed to generous, or either gluttonous/lustful or anhedonic/sterile as opposed to temperate.
The difficulty of looking at isolated scenarios is the ubiquitous influence of fortune and the unknown. For consequentialists, there is the rape that leads to the conception of the person who invents technologies that remove our reliance on fossil fuels, saving millions from global warming related deaths and preventing several wars. Or the child who is murdered who would otherwise become the next Hitler or Stalin. Or the "life saving" technology developed with the best intentions that ends up harming millions. The same sorts of issues hold true for rules. You either have preverse counter-examples or else create rules so broad and immune to the viccistiudes of fortune and our own ignorance that they are completely unhelpful (e.g. "always choose the better over the worse.")
Fortune and misfortuneerror and ignorance, these always play a large role in our lives. Yet the virtuous person is best able to weather them, just as the virtuous state is best able to, be it through better fostering technological advancement, being able to better defend itself, or being more immune to political turmoil and economic disruptions (e.g., people do not tend to revolt against states they love and enjoy and systems they have "bought into"). And of course it's better for individuals, organizations, and states to live in a more virtuous world.
As yes well, I feel apologies are in order. Sorry if I offended.
We are, all of us, prone to orderly ruts, even the chaos-apologists. For me, the interesting thing is how this emotive stacking is within each person, each chooser. As the frequency of the wave between order and chaos increases the complexity and possible wisdom increase (the most folds approaching a theoretical all folds included state).
It can be confusing when assessment of these tendencies runs afoul of the folds. The chooser points to an inner fold as evidence that they are not primarily guided by the outer fold. But I labor under the impression that the choice in outer fold still has a primary or controlling influence. It can be indeed, quite subtle. I mean, really, there could never be a singular or integrated reason that academics are drawn to the same sorts of conclusions, group together, think and rethink tasks, right? The second fold of desire being pretentious image-consciousness, chaos, is a clever non-defense of the overriding order that is nonetheless present. This second fold allows orderly types to feel as if they are being varied in their approach. But the real variation is external to that scenario, found in the general population that is not indulging their order fixation. Of course this is only a theory.
It is always to your benefit to allow for the possibility of any death for the GOOD.
The difficulty or argument is only in what constitutes the GOOD.
Is that finally something that is objective or subjective?
We can try to differentiate or reduce further. Perhaps the GOOD is defined as effort towards an ideal. The subjective nature comes in amid the process of choosing the ideal. But this steers then away from objective morality by allowing for the chooser to choose the ideal.
What is the evidence, if any, of a choice that was made more objectively correct? This would be a choice that would then support the idea or ideal of an objective GOOD, eliminating point of view or subjectivity as ... well ... irrational.
I submit to you that such evidence does exists and can be measured at least in a repeatable way. That evidence is happiness. This concept, happiness, is not easy to define or understand.
Although this post is attempting to lend credence in belief towards objective morality, we must needs address the reason that the POV delusion of subjectivity exists in the first place. These two efforts, explaining happiness and the delusion of POV, are accomplished at the same time.
What is GOOD? On some level there are different things that seem to all be GOOD. We colloquially and historically refer to these things as virtues. But WITHIN each virtue there is a failing chance and a success chance. This MUST be true if morality is objective. One might assert circular reasoning to this argument or even something akin to confirmation bias. So, does that mean circles are wrong in some way? Are circles possessed of any virtues? So, lets pay attention to a 'what if'. What if there is an exception to the rule of circular reasoning? What if every circle is wrong except the one right one?
Where is this babble going? What is GOOD was the start of the last set of thoughts. It's a collection of virtues was the main thrust offered. OK, so these virtues then are like points of view. And there was earlier an assertion that points of view are all wrong, subjective, when we are trying to aim at objectivity. But there was also the exception. There is one POV that is right, perfect, the exception. THAT is the GOOD. The GOOD shines out as the least probable thing, the exception to every rule. This is its dangerous and combative truth with the other virtues.
Each virtue struggles on its own to be worthy, a part of perfection. But left to their own devices the virtues fail as singular thematic concentrated points of view. They are far more error than they are right. But remember that in one case they do intersect with what is right, perfection, the GOOD. This point causes great confusion. The "betting man's" Pragmatists assert safe probable 'truths' in the name of their point of view, not realizing that this safety delusion is cowardice born of fear, their pov error. Outside of this rigorous ATTEMPT at certainty lies a whole realm of indulgence in various pov errors. That is the realm of desire, of chaos.
The union and balance of these two polarities is indicative of the GOOD, of wisdom, as the middle path. Notice how my original statements are made with the exception of the GOOD included. THAT is why I did that. If the GOOD is objective, one MUST say such statements in such a way.
But that still leaves us with the evidence and the whole 'burden of proof' issue. Well, the need for certainty IS cowardice, as mentioned. But that need can serve us if we do not wholly surrender to its erroneous aims. We have to surrender only in the case of the exception of GOOD. It is the hardest thing anyone can do (a moral act or choice).
So, what is the evidence. I mentioned happiness. But cynics of feather would be right to begin flapping their wings in agitation that happiness seems often to be wrongly felt. Why is that? The emotional math is actually simple and it mirrors exactly the limit condition of all virtues. As we pursue a virtue is offers us what IT ALONE considers the consequence of happiness. And THAT happiness, that sub-form of it, is of course a part of the greater overall happiness of objective GOOD, the exceptional GOOD. Think about it. If the chooser has not experienced the happiness elements or contributions of other virtues, those virtues can be subtly downplayed. This is THE essence of immoral choice. Both under and over expression of virtues OUT OF BALANCE with all other virtues, is immoral. There is only one single path of actual exceptional GOOD leading to the concept and the instantiation of perfection itself.
We ignore the MUST of the exceptional GOOD (objective moral truth) at our peril.
Quoting Leontiskos
You mean they know not what they do?
Okay, but how so? What is a counterexample?
(And note that in following @J's argumentation I perhaps should have italicized "your". He is emphasizing personal gain or benefit.)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Right, and I agree that our way of doing ethics now puts too much emphasis on exceptional cases, but Socrates' hemlock is still an interesting example. Socrates dies willingly. Fortune does not intervene in an unanticipated way. On the contrary, Socrates probably foresaw his end a long way off.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I can think of some, but my argument is unique insofar as it involves death. If you could find another virtue that is capable of causing death you could run a similar argument.
Yes, and they would feel the same at random, according to arbitrary desires, so we should expect overlap to be roughly random.
So, supposing human desire is "arbitrary," why then have I never seen people slamming their hands in their car door for fun or having competitions to see how much paint they can drink? People tend to do a very narrow range of the things they could possibly do. Why do hot tubs sell so well when digging a hole so you can sit in a pool of muddy, fetid, cold water is so much easier and cheaper? Why is murder and rape illegal everywhere, but nowhere has decided to make pears or bronze illegal? What's with people going through such lengths to inject heroin but no one ever inject barbecue sauce, lemon juice, or motor oil?
Sure seems like a lot of similarity for something arbitrary.
So then they aren't desired arbitrarily. Science is pursued because it shows us how to do things, indeed, in a certain sense it makes us free to do things that we otherwise could not. At the same time, you also mention wonder. Science is sought for its own sake.
But I'd argue that the desire for truth and understanding is not properly a passion nor an appetite.
In his A Secular Age Charles Taylor does a pretty great job tracing this to the Reformation period and the rise of "neo-stoicism" and the idea of the "buffered self." So, the overlap with homuncular or "Cartesian theater" theories is no accident. Yet this is decidedly not how Plato was received when Platonism was particularly dominant. Aside from Taylor, C.S. Lewis's The Discarded Image does a good job capturing the old model of the porous self:
The daemons are 'between' us and the gods not only locally and materially but qualitatively as well. Like the impassible gods, they are immortal: like mortal men, they are passible (xiii). Some of them, before they became daemons, lived in terrestrial bodies; were in fact men. That is why Pompey saw Semidei Manes, demigod-ghosts, in the airy region. But this is not true of all daemons. Some, such as Sleep and Love, were never human. From this class an individual daemon (or genius, the standard Latin translation of daemon) is allotted to each human being as his ' witness and guardian' through life (xvi).It would detain us too long here to trace the steps whereby a man's genius, from being an invisible, personal, and external attendant, became his true self, and then his cast of mind, and finally (among the Romantics) his literary or artistic gifts. To understand this process fully would be to grasp that great movement of internalisation, and that consequent aggrandisement of man and desiccation of the outer universe, in which the psychological history of the West has so largely consisted.
People ask not to receive medical treatment all the time. My grandfather, for instance, was told he should undergo open heart surgery at 86, after having lost his wife and being ready for the end of life. It is hardly clear that it would have been to his benefit to spend his last days undergoing grueling, painful treatments to extend his life. And this sort of thing happens all the time.
If a grandmother attempts to save her grandchildren, and will die in the process of successfully rescuing them, it hardly seems clear that this cannot be to her benefit either.
Likewise, if a genie shows up and offers us 100 years of the life of our choice in perfect health, or an indeterminant amount of time (but at least 1,000 years) living in a concentration camp, it's hardly obvious that it's to our benefit to take the latter because it extends our lives.
Now you can say, "but people would like to live longer lives, just not sick or imprisoned, etc." And this might well be true, but it shows that life is not ultimately sought for its own sake, but rather as a prerequisite for other goods.
Okay, but this isn't really relevant to an argument regarding courage or virtue. The question here is, "Should we be virtuous, even if means dying?" When death is preferable to a burdensome life we are talking about something quite different.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Okay, but why? How is it to her benefit? J is obviously going to respond by pointing out that one who ceases to exist can no longer positively benefit.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think that life is intrinsically good. It's just not unconditionally good. It does not trump every other consideration. And this is where I would go with Socrates. Indeed, it is where Socrates goes himself.
"They conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; love for life did not deter them from death" (Revelation 12:11).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Desire is for the sake of that which staves off arbitrariness, chaos and disorganization. Human bodies are organized in similar ways, so in general what is necessary and what is toxic for our physiological health does not vary dramatically from one person to the next. But while bodily organization, and its needs , changes very little from generation to generation and culture to culture, the same cannot be said of cognitive -affective needs and desires. From the most general perspective, our cognitive desires, like our bodily needs, are for the sake of that which staves off arbitrariness, chaos and disorganization, what I have called anticipative sense-making. But while our boldly needs remain relatively static over time, our cognitive desires evolve along with cultural development. Does this mean that within a given community, ethical norms can be agreed upon, but the changes in these norms from one era to the next are arbitrary? I would say the evolution of ethical norms is no more arbitrary than the evolution of scientific paradigms. Ther is no linear progression, but there is a strengthening of adaptivity.
By contrast, the idea that ethical norms are grounded in something transhistorical forces us to explain the failure to live up to those norms in arbitrary ways. The unethical person was behaving irrationally, pathologically , deviantly, capriciously. The concept of evil is typically defined synonymously with arbitrariness.
Because it's generally bad to have one's grandchildren die. The one act, saving the kids, might entail dying. Which is to be preferred? The claim that it is simply impossible to rightly prize any goals more than temporarily extending one's (necessarily finite) mortal life seems like one that it will be very hard to justify.
"A society grows great when men plant trees in whose shade they know they will never sit," is not meant to be a proverb on the benefits of old men falling into delusions about what is truly to their benefit for instance.
Exactly. As St. Maximus says:
Food is not evil but gluttony is.
Childbearing is not evil but fornication is.
Money is not evil but avarice is.
Glory is not evil but vainglory is.
Indeed, there is no evil in existing things but only in their misuse."
Yes, that is a good argument. :up:
The virtuous person does not value their own life above every other thing.
I think it particularly makes sense from the perspective of virtue ethics, but I think it will make sense in almost any ethics.
Our lives are finite, so we are not talking death versus immortality, but "dying now" versus "dying somewhat later." To highlight the absurdity that it is "always better to die later," we need only consider the limit situation where everyone and everything we cherish is destroyed, subject to great suffering, etc. and we get just 5 more seconds of life, versus our simply dying, with none of these consequences, 5 second earlier. I don't think anyone wants to be committed to the idea that we should let our children be tortured so that we can take a couple more breaths, or even that those extra few breaths would benefit us.
Well, again, I think the question has to do with cases of heroic virtue. If a 110 year-old sacrifices their life there will almost certainly be less heroic virtue involved than if a 30 year-old sacrifices their life. It is one thing to be willing to accept a mortal cost for the sake of a virtuous act, and another to be circumstantially indifferent to death. So I would want to keep our eyes on cases where the person stands to lose something. You are giving cases where, for one reason or another, the person does not stand to lose much in dying.
Sure, I just think the extreme cases are useful to demonstrate how it is implausible, from the perspective of almost any ethics, that [i]we[/I] always benefit most from extending our own lives. For another thing, dramatic calorie restriction is pretty much the best way to ensure life extension in organisms, and yet very few would want to say we benefit from starving ourselves to get a few extra years of old age, even if we are "gaining years" at the cost of fleeting satiety.
But if we can have proper goals that trump life extension, then it is to our benefit to pursue them, and this can hold for greater sacrifices as well. This can mean self-sacrifice involving death, just as the bee prefers to sting and die rather than to flee the hive. The drive of beings to maintain their own form is absolute nowhere in nature.
We might say that it benefits us to have things we care about so much that we are willing to make such sacrifices. The egoist is, in a certain sense, "missing out" in their inability to so fully identify with things that transcend them.
Nor is the case of dying in this way really sui generis. We often take on all sorts of risk and suffering to accomplish goals. The duties that come with being a parent, learning to ride a bike, learning to read, starting an exercise regime or diet, etc. can all be unpleasant and risky, and yet it seems hard to claim that this entails that they cannot be to our benefit. The daily self-reported "happiness" of parents of young children is significantly lower on average, for years out, but I don't think this makes having children necessarily not to one's benefit.
It's the demand for a univocal measure of the good that leads towards such rigid pronouncements as "it is never to our benefit to do something that kills us."
Much like the rest of life the environmental pressures select for the passions which lead to reproductive fitness. I think something similar happened with societies, except the selection mechanism was justified cruelty -- insofar that a society can justify expansion and cruelty it will outgrow other societies which prioritize kindness and peace because the cruel will outwit the kind, take their stuff, and kill them.
We are the descendents of the barbarians ruthless enough to live.
Also, for each question you pose in order:
People do hurt themselves for fun sometimes.
Just recently people ate tidepods as a challenge.
Hot tubs sell because they are advertised -- though sometimes people seek out the muddy waters for those special minerals.
Murder and rape is not illegal everywhere -- but the preponderance of a legal system I think can be traced back to capitalist and colonial expansion.
And among the small group of people that inject heroin they do it because they are attached to that feeling or cycle -- a passion -- where the others don't provide that feeling.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Why?
It makes perfect sense to me: Why doesn't everyone enjoy science? They aren't attached to it, or feel a particular aversion to it for one or another reason. The teacher's job who teaches science is to figure that out to the extent that the student can be motivated to learn. If someone fears science because they've been told it's "for girls", for instance, it's important to attempt to assuage that fear. If a person feels frustration because they are unable to pay attention then it's important to accomodate that frustration.
Science is sought for its own sake -- by nerds. But not everyone. The nerds are the ones who are passionate about it such that it seems to have an intrinsic value, where it is done for its own sake; when one is passionate about something like that then it is a thirst that can never be fully quenched. One that maybe could be put to the side sometimes for other things, once one knows that there is no such state as fulfillment, but rather the pursuit itself is the point.
But surely not everyone can be so passionate about the same thing in a functioning society.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Cool.
A Secular Age is one of thems that's been on my mind as something that could be interesting, but it's thickness is intimidating for someone like me -- I know it'll be interesting, but I'm bound to disagree with a lot of it. :D
Quoting Moliere
Your analysis is closer to Nietzsches than it is to mine. Nietzsche argued that the Will to knowledge is a derivative of the Will to Power. Knowledge wants to control and subdue differences for the sake of an assimilating dominant interpretation (forcing, adjusting, shortening, omitting, filling-out, inventing, falsifying).
But while you distinguish between the motives behind cruelty and those behind kindness and peace, Nietzsche argues they are the same. Peace and kindness are themselves interpretations forced on others. This isnt the tyranny of egoism, since for Nietzsche the egoism itself just an invention, a product of the competition among myriad drives, from which struggle one emerges as temporarily dominant.
That's fair.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think self-preservation is a drive of nature.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Isn't is sui generis in the sense that it forces us to conceive of "our benefit" in a non-egoistic manner? After all, egoists don't balk at dieting to lose weight in the way they balk at martyrdom.
I agree that we are mistaken in thinking that egoism is the default or natural position, but it does have a basis in human experience.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, but the univocity is determined by egoism and the attendant interpretation of "our benefit." For Peter L. P. Simpson this is perhaps the characteristic moral marker of modernity. It is certainly the prima facie position for 21st century folk.
Kant is an inheritor of that modern way of thinking. He does not challenge it in any significant way. And his fideistic solution is characteristically Protestant.
No doubt, but other ends often loom larger. Stinging often kills bees, and yet they sting for the good of the hive. Male spiders, male praying mantis, etc. mate even though this generally means being eaten. Parts of organisms, with their own degree of form and drive to homeostasis, often self-terminate for the good of the whole, and this shows up in individuals in some superorganisms or in holobionts composed of multiple species.
Reproduction and the protection of young is another area where it is common to see even extreme levels of risk taken in pursuit of a goal that lies external to the organism.
Whitehead, in "The Function of Reason" speaks of the three drives:
To live
To live well
To live better
The modern evolutionary synthesis has tended to only focus on reproduction, in part because it is easier to study gene frequencies and model them. Part of what makes extended evolutionary synthesis so fascinating is that it attempts to avoid this reductionism (which is in part only justified by the methodological limits of its time, and then a dogmatic commitment to a particular mechanistic view of nature).
I don't think so. Any involvement in a common good or deep identification with institutions (e.g. the family, the church, the state, one's workplace, etc.) involves transcending egoism to [I]some[/I] degree. One of the reasons the egoist "misses out" on things that are to his benefit is because he cannot fully participate in these common goods.
The good of a "good marriage" or of a deep commitment to the church or one's vocation, can be a key element of human flourishing. The egoist cannot fully participate in these goods. They might get married, but their marriage has to be based around power struggles, manipulation, and quid pro quo arrangements.
Actual participation in the [I]common[/I] good, as opposed to merely receiving individual benefits from participation, is not a binary status. People can identify with (even love) and participate in institutions more or less fully. Likewise, Aristotle'sfriendship of the good doesn't require that we don't get the benefits of the friendship of pleasure or the friendship of utility (Ethics Book VIII), but rather than we get the extra benefits of the higher level, which transcends the lower (up to the "giving birth in beauty" of the Symposiumand such "giving birth in beauty" is part of "being like God.")
No doubt. So too does drunkenness, wrathfulness, sullenness, gluttony, licentiousness, adultery, murder, etc.
Egoism is atomization; yet goodness always relates to the whole, pointing to the One as against the slide into the Many.
That's Plato's whole point, that it is the pursuit of what is truly good, not what simply appears to be good or is said to be good, which allows us to transcend current beliefs and desireto not be ruled over by instinct, appetites, passions, and circumstance (or to be relatively less so).
Egoism is a sort of default that must be transcended. It is the sickness that prevails when good health is not fostered and nurtured. And this jives very well with the Orthodox notion of sin as disease and the Fall as a sort of cosmic corruption, a web of interconnecting, self-reinforcing lines of pathology.
Perhaps. I think there is a sort of positive feedback loop here. Univocity cuts off the option of understanding goodness analogically, which in turn makes it harder to see a coherent way out of egoism, while at the same time egoism makes one blind to the possibility of analogy. A negative side effect of the intense drive towards specialization in philosophy is that there isn't much focus on the ways ideas from different areas of philosophy interact.
This is part of what makes modern ethical treatments of the classical tradition often deficient. They are deflating them out the gate because the moral philosopher doesn't want to mess around with metaphysics and philosophy of nature, and yet for Aristotle notions of virtue ultimately tie back to metaphysics, the "queen of the sciences."
So, I see the two coming from different angles and reinforcing one another. Whereas this is a very different view from the idea that the One is also the Good itself (e.g., https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1006.htm)
Also, I think nihilism isn't so bad. And I question the extent to which suffering actually is meaningful. I think of pain as absolutely absurd -- there is no deep mystery or wisdom in pain. It is just a brute absurdity we have to learn to deal with.
And lastly I think Nietzsche valorizes heightened states or excellent persons far too much. While master/slave morality is descriptive I definitely get a sense throughout his writing that he prefers master morality, whereas I'd say I prefer slave morality, and the wisdom of the herd.
Lastly, I'm skeptical of hierarchies, where Nietzsche seems to almost equate hierarchies with value.
Quoting Moliere
Deleuze would say youre succumbing to a common misreading here.
I see the description as helpful as a descriptive frame. I'm skeptical of the valorization of master morality over slave morality, though -- so in the Deleuze quote he's saying that master morality is the good morality and slave morality is the bad morality of the people who are in control of our society.
But Nietzsche's solution to this problem strikes me as pretty unrealistic. For one it only applies to ubermensch -- people who act out of a sense of nobility for what is higher in spite of suffering, or even seek out suffering to improve themselves. The slaves can't even strive to this morality; their lesser morality is written by the masters.
Since the ubermensch doesn't even exist -- his book is for all and none -- it's very much a philosopher's solution to the problem of ethics. Further, if we are slaves, then it simply doesn't speak to us.
I think it fair to say, though we can re-interpret master morality in favor of what we care about, that Nietzsche holds contempt for the herd, for socialists, and all their ilk.
Quoting Moliere
Again, we need to redefine the way youre using terms like master and slave, good and bad, higher and lower, improvement and lack of improvement.
Slave morality has to be understood in relation to reactive values and the ascetic ideal. Nietzsche believed that the world, and the psyche, is composed of continually changing valuative differences. This is expressed by his notion of the eternal return of the same, which is the endless return of the same absolutely different . This means that concepts like purpose, goal, standard, identity and equality are fabrications which conceals the underlying changes in qualitative value. Reactive values assume an equal opposition that is ruled by an overarching concept or principle which remains the same. For instance, male vs female is ruled by the overarching concept of gender, good vs evil is ruled by the overarching concept of ethics. For Nietzsche slave morality, weakness, the ascetic ideal, and sickness in general have to do with believing in concepts, principles and truths which remain the same and rule over life. The notion of science as providing deeper truths that transcend mere appearance is an ascetic ideal, and as such
falsifies the actual creative becoming of life. The same is true of moral principles.
The ubermensch is not a higher man, it is a critique and overcoming of humanism. Not the elevation of man after the death of God , but the death of man. Not self-improvement but self-overcoming. As Foucault put it
The death of man implies the death of the subject and the ego. Nietzsche writes:
(Remember, the will to power does not mean "wanting to dominate" or "wanting power")
But does he overcome humanism, after all? Does the subject fade with Nietzsche's positive project, or does it resurface? It seems to me to resurface -- the "I" is a synthesis, one isn't acting from ego, but rather towards what is noble, healthy, flourishing. But we remain human all the same. We remain couched in our individuality.
Just what is "healthy" about the constant creation of value over the holding to a principle? I see no reason to reject principles just because they lead to nihilism.
Nietzsche's sickness appears to me to be a perfectly viable ethical frame. I don't see how it's a sickness -- I think it's just a matter of preference.
Further, I think you're showing just in what way Nietzsche's solution to the problem of ethics is unrealistic. I haven't said that his is an egoism. I see Nietzsche as a dreamer who dreams of a healthy existence, and so he feels a certain disdain for that unhealthy existence. It requires a constant striving, whereas humanity stays about neutral ethically speaking -- they want similar things now as they did back then. It is my belief that we are animals -- I am a materialist -- and nothing more than that.
Surely you agree that Nietzsche prefers the healthy and noble master morality, yes?
Quoting Moliere
Again, how are you understanding health and nobility for Nietzsche? It is not about a constant striving. Who is doing the striving? A self? Doesnt striving imply a pre-existing purpose or aim on the basis of which to strive? The creative becoming Nietzsche valorizes isnt something we have to decide to put into effect, like some sort of plan, as if a self sits there in the background judging the success of their striving. The point is that the self which would see itself as putting into effect such a plan doesnt exist in the next moment. It is already a different self. That is what self-overcoming means, not a substantive subject accumulating points, enjoying witnessing the progress in the direction of its increase in health, nobility and mastery. The very notion of health and nobility is the continual forgetting and displacing of the previous self. The ubermensch is beyond good and evil because it constantly erases and displaces its history, and with it previous standards and principles of morality.
It is not as if those who cling to traditional moralities are not also functioning as a continual becoming. The difference between them and the ubermensch is a question of awareness, not that humanity stays about neutral ethically speaking -- they want similar things now as they did back then. The will to nothingness, the ascetic ideal and slave morality which undergird staying neutral ethically and wanting similar things over time are themselves forms of the will to power. This means that we are displacing ourselves even as we desire to remain the same. We only succeed in remaining the same differently, in spite of our best efforts. But this doesnt keep us from trying to enforce repressive modes of conformity on others, based on our Platonic faith in constancy, eternity and fixity.
The healthy and the noble are those who follow the way of the overman. They are...
Quoting Joshs
They are the tablet breakers. They aspire to heights beyond; the mere enlightenment self is a concept. I'm not casting Nietzsche as an egoist, though that he can easily be read this way is a point in my favor in pointing out that he is unrealistic.
What I think is true of Nietzsche is he presents a kaleidoscopic mirror. The aphoristic approach makes it such that there is no true Nietzsche at all -- there are perspectives on Nietzsche, like Deleuze's, and there are other perspectives which read him more as a modernist. There isn't a true perspective so much as a perspectival truth. This applies to Nietzsche as well, such that there is no true reading of Nietzsche -- there was a Deleuzian reading of Nietzsche, and there was a fascist reading of Nietzsche, and there's the historical reading of Nietzsche, and there's the intentional reading of Nietzsche, and there's the leftist Nietzsche, the Christian Nietzsche, and the analytic Nietzsche, and the silly reading of Nietzsche which ought be included in the ever updating persona that is the new Nietzsche.
Nietzsche is a philosopher which can be read as giving mastery to many different preferences -- I think he purposefully contradicts himself in such a way that to insist on a reading is to already agree with his perspectivism because now you've adopted one of the perspectives he has presented.
So, what say you? Does Nietzsche prefer master morality or slave morality?
I have no qualms with defining slave morality by the ascetic ideal. I'm noting that people like the ascetic ideal. They want to be sick. They desire slavish morality.
If we follow the ascetic ideal then nihilism is a natural consequence. I'm contending that's not so bad after all, and the Nietzsche's heroic effort to save morality fails because when it's dissiminated it comes back to the very things he wants to overcome -- the reading at large is individualistic. Power is a craving from an individual standpoint to engage in the same old moralities which are nothing but economies of pain.
The overman would be beyond good and evil and overcome himself -- but we are merely human, and so the book is not for us. It's a philosophers' ideal which is good for reflection, and so I've been maintaining unrealistic for the question of ethics.
Sure, if we weren't animals born from an amoral process which allows us to be vicious or kind because both of these dispositions are needed for reproductive fitness then maybe there'd be some titanic conflict of forces we cannot help but participate in which brings us beyond good and evil.
But all is atoms and void, not pathos. We come from an absurd darkness and so we will return. So I find the various metaphysical theses of Nietzsche to be imaginative ways of overcoming the absurd nihilism staring him in the face -- hence the perspectivalism, the attack on truth, etc.
But what if people just didn't care about this higher reading of Nietzsche, and stuck to the sick truth of transcendent goods which they only do because it's good? What does "remembering" Nietzsche's true meaning matter? And given the emphasis on potency doesn't that indicate a kind of failure of overcoming The Subject, of becoming post-man or after the death of man?
Quoting Moliere
Yes, Nietzsche can be read in many ways. The same is true of any great philosopher, and I would add that natural scientific paradigms are interpretable in as many different ways, but the abstractive nature of vocabularies in the physical sciences masks this diversity. But if you are arguing that there is no consistent substantive set of philosophical ideas that we can locate in his work, then I side with Deleuze, Foucault , Derrida, Heidegger and others who differ with you.
Quoting Moliere
What people like is freedom from domination by others, but also freedom from inner chaos. Seeing the world as incoherent is just as imprisoning as being repressed by external authority. So this freedom for intelligibility from the vantage of ones own perspective requires a world that is made recognizable, and such recognizability is a product of discursive , languaged, conceptual interactions within a social milieu. This makes us free within the systems of discursive rationality that we participate in, until the not where we become the victim of someone elses interpretation of slavish morality, sovereign law of nature or doctrine of ethics. We are not forced into a way of understanding the world in a top-down fashion by the collective. Rather, such systems of rationality flow from one person to the next in our practices, and each interaction changes the nature of the system is some small fashion.
Eventually, a segment of the community can begin to diverge from the larger group such that they see what was formerly acceptable as repressive and unethical. What Nietzsche taught writes like Foucault and Deleuze was that it is possible el to insert oneself within a system of rationality such that one can be open to catalyzing and accelerating the transition from identified repressive structures. Its not a question of telling people they should be unhappy with their current system of rationality, but of showing them how they can better prepare themselves when it inevitably collapses. Master morality amounts to this eternal vigilance and preparation for self-transformation in the face of suffering.
Why?
I see no reason to pick a side.
I'm not against a Deleuzian reading; but if asked how I understand the text then I'm going to point out the Nietzsche is purposefully kalaidescopic, and master morality remains neutral to any particular preference.
Though I think there are misreadings -- like the fascist reading -- I don't think the the post modern reading is the correct reading because there isn't a correct reading.
Which means that master morality can "slot in" various ways that human beings want it to, and slave morality is the bad kind of morality, whatever the morality being thought of at the time is (Christianity, Socialism, Scientism, etc.)
In addition to not saying Nietzsche is an egoist, I'm not saying that he's wrong because science says it's so. I'm noting how I don't agree with Nietzsche, however, yes.
Quoting Joshs
How do we ascertain that?
If the world is absurd, incoherent, beyond knowledge then there's no point in arguing over what the world consists in and we can skip straight to the point: rather than making metaphysical theses which implicate a particular ethical frame we can just talk about the good, rather than being.
The old fact/value distinction I've been relying upon to give an against the grain reading of Aristotle is the same one I'm relying upon in giving an against the grain reading of Nietzsche. While I find the dithering of the distinction interesting -- just like I find the denial of The Subject interesting -- it seems to have a way of applying all over again.
To emphasize -- I like this reading very much. I think it's a good reading of Nietzsche, rather than a degenerate reading like the fascist reading. I'm not opposed to this so much as sticking to my criticism that Nietzsche doesn't answer the titular question -- why ought one do that which is good?
Does master morality always lead to an eternal vigilance and preparation for self-transformation in the face of suffering?
I think, rather, that suffering is as valorized as the other forces which lead one out of nihilism.
And, all the same, it does seem you agree that Nietzsche prefers master morality over slave morality, yes?
I would never claim there is a correct reading of Nietzsche or any other philosopher, so you should pick a side which reveals a philosophical interpretation of Nietzsche that is the most interesting to you, pushes Nietzsche to the limits of his thinking and offers the greatest potential for usefully guiding your understanding of the world. This is what I have done.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, that explains why you dont seem to get much use from his ideas. I wouldnt either with a reading like that.
Quoting Moliere
If the world were incoherent and beyond knowledge, we wouldnt be able to function in it, even on a perceptual level. The world we actually live in provides normative structures of intelligibility, recognizable patterns on the basis of which we can anticipate events, communicate and understand each other. All this without any way of grounding our pragmatic ways of knowing and getting along in a metaphysically certain basis of the way things really are.
Notions of the good emerge out of our ensconsement within actual contingent contexts of interaction within normatively patterned social practices. That is to say, ways of being. We could say with Heidegger that Being is the event of its myriad ways of being.
Quoting Moliere
I think the question of why one ought to do that which is good is a tautology. The justification is embedded within the historically, contextually created system of practices which provide the particular intelligibility of a way of being, a form of life, a language game. Each discursive system of rationality already implies its own criteria of good and bad. Its oughts are presupposed by the qualitative is of its value system, which is what any system of rationality is.
I wouldnt say that master morality leads to an eternal vigilance and preparation for self-transformation in the face of suffering, but that in some sense it is nothing but this vigilance.
Quoting Joshs
I think my reading has positive things to offer it; namely, that it cuts out the parts I don't like while keeping the parts I do :D
I'm keeping a rough approximation of his genealogy, for instance, and the master/slave distinction. I keep the notion of the overman because it's the fulcrum around which my criticism rests; empirically speaking Nietzsche can be interpreted in many ways, and the overman which overcomes himself is the overman that never exists (rather than comes about as the future state of post-humanity; or at least, not yet).
But I still get a great deal of use out of his ideas. I'm skeptical of the metaphysical project in general, and so it goes with Nietzsche. (and so the Will to Power)
And I see nothing sick about slave morality, or healthy about master morality. So while I accept the distinction I'm uncertain about Nietzsche's positive evaluation of master morality.
Quoting Joshs
I'm tempted to go down this rabbit hole, but won't for now. Mostly because the following looks pretty close to what I'm saying.
Except that I don't think the genealogy of notions of the good justifies the good -- that this is still an "is", and not an "ought"; it only becomes an ought if we are passionate about following the normative structures of intelligibility. This passion comes out of nothing. We are born out of an absurd darkness, a passion ignites a mind and suddenly the world is there for a particular Dasein, and then we eventually dissipate back to the absurd darkness. The "oughts" are fantasias passed on culturally as good-enough approximations that reproduce themselves, and the environment selects which reproductive morality gets to live.
Goodness is both invented and exterior. [s]It's t[/s]The absurd substratum [s]which[/s] explains this ever-changing position we find ourselves in with the desire for simple moral truths which are passed on and work, more or less, in spite of being false.
This is absurd because not only do people not have control over what is good for them, what is good for them changes on the basis of no reason whatsoever. If people desired a Master morality then, as you note, they'd be adjusted towards a healthier, gayer existence.
But factually people desire slave morality. So this tale of the overman doesn't do much for the herd.
Quoting Joshs
I agree. :D
But then everyone gets confused on what that tautology implies when we go about doing things.
What I think is easy to miss in both accounts is where I think goodness actually comes about as a topic in the first place -- ethics begins with others rather than the state of being or the choices of an individual.
Quoting Moliere
You say you have criticisms, and point out that Nietzsche can be interpreted in many ways. Im sure you would agree that in order to be fair (and accurate) in your critique, you ned to be acquainted with the way he is read by poststructuralists like Klossowski, Focault, Deleuze, Heidegger and Derrida, who have produced some of the
most influential interpretations of him. In order to understand how they read such concepts as the overman, master/ slave morality and Will to Power, it is essential that you grasp their deconstruction of the concept of the subject, of identity, of dialectical opposition and of traditional metaphysics. How, for instance. can one critique identity politics from a Nietzschean point of view?
How can one put into question distinctions between the individual and the social, the self and the Other, as reflected in your Levinasian statement that ethics begins with others rather than the state of being or the choices of an individual?
Quoting Moliere
Who is this subjective we that freely chooses in a Sartrean way to follow or not to follow the normative structures of intelligibility? Does a subject exist first and then choose to participate in normative epistemological or ethical systems? Or are subjects formed as an effect of social practices of subjectivation? Do we follow normative structures or do normative structures undergird, constrain and define the criteria of the ethical good and bad for us prior to our choosing as individual subjects? That is to say, do we choose the ethical norms that bind us or do we choose WITHIN the ethical norms that produce us?
It seems to me that we are the producers of value, and yet because of our thrownness we aren't blank slates in that production, per se -- but also I think there's a creative element to life such that new norms can be created ex nihilo, and frequently are created (and let go).
Who the subjective we that freely chooses is is pretty much the topic of my recent thread -- tl;dr, I don't know, but you're right to pinpoint Sartre as a beginning point (tho there's something in there that I don't like, I'm still working that out too -- it has to do with the emphasis on lack) -- and ultimately I'm tempted to include it in the list of fantasias.
Materially speaking we're individuated with government numbers and names which carry responsibilities and rights as well as by our passions.
But what gets synthesized unto this choosing subject changes with historical circumstance. In our case the capitalist-liberal bearer of responsibility and property. So, properly speaking, this cogito does not exist until it turns of age.
Quoting Joshs
I don't think that follows. I think that if I wanted post-structuralists to listen to me then that's certainly the case. And if I wanted to somehow displace Nietzsche in my critique then that'd also be wise to attend to these interpretations.
And, really, I wouldn't mind reading more anyways because that's kind of the whole thing -- just for my own edification and thinking. But for my purposes here the little interpretation is good enough for me. It's basically just Nietzsche on Nietzsche -- don't judge him on the basis of fairness and accuracy, but potency. And in particular I'm interested in popular potency amongst the herd, outside of the academy -- Nietzsche's cultural influence rather than his ideational meanings.
Basically the whole post-subject turn in philosophy is good and interesting for the academy and for people seeking a deeper Nietzsche, but that's not the Nietzsche that takes hold amongst the herd; and probably will never be in a society which emphasizes the individual.
Quoting Joshs
Is it important to do so?
It seems that identity politics would fall to the same criticism of slave morality as Christianity and Socialism, though, yes? That seems to me the most obvious move.
Easy -- "What's up with that distinction? What are you saying?"
Or note how the individual is predicated by the social, or the self is born in the face-to-face of the Other. The distinctions aren't truth-apt or metaphysical, from what I can tell, but phenomenological -- temporary historically actuated concepts that make one able to speak about truth or metaphysics in the first place.
Noting how philosophy can begin anywhere we'd then proceed to drop the distinction and proceed to something else.
BUT -- and this is the important part -- not everyone would come along with us. Some would take another path, and that's what I'm more interested in.
Here I believe we agree. The meaning is there -- but meaning and potency aren't always the same.
And I agree with this higher reading of Nietzsche. A commonsense way of putting it -- if we're "Human, all too human", and nihilism is overcome, then post-humanity is the healthier approach.
Another thought that comes to mind is that I don't believe Nietzsche thought himself the overman.
Another thought --
I have not but would like to distinguish between critique and criticism. I'd say what I'm presenting here of Nietzsche is more of a critique -- an evaluation of the limits, strengths, and qualities of a philosophy -- from the perspective of my own reading of Nietzsche. So I'm not saying something like "Nietzsche should have said this because he's wrong here for...", but instead responding to his work in the now, while using his work to read it.
Good question. You're right to notice that "good" and "ought" aren't automatically the same.
There's a missing layer most systems skip: why value exists at all.
One approach (Synthesis) argues that value only exists because life exists.
Without life, there's no perception, no judgment, no meaning, nothing to call anything "good" or "bad."
So why ought one do good?
Because to affirm good is to affirm life - and to deny it is to sabotage the very conditions that allow "ought" to even exist.
In that sense, "Life = Good" becomes the baseline, not by obligation, but by recognition.
Choosing good is choosing to live, choosing to be.
No external force needed, it's woven into existence itself.
You can find the formal paper HERE
I agree with the thought, "I don't think that good is synonymous with, "something one ought to do".
I think "good" is doing what gives you positive energy. Generally, you don't get positive energy from killing and stealing and whatnot, we're kinda hardwired that way.
No, they are perfectly synonymous. Good is what one ought to do and what one ought to do is good. How can what one ought to do be bad and how are bad things what one ought to do?
Quoting Hyper
The problem is that 'good' is a matte of perspective. The tacit assumption that is made in the OP and which is the heart of the problem is that there is some independent 'good', one ought to do in each and every situation. Selling all of your wordly belongings might well be good in some respect, say because you feed a starving child with it. However, it is bad for you yourself. We can try to weigh these goods and indeed if push comes to shove and you can rescue someone from certain death, the right thing to do might indeed be sell your worldly belongings. See here :
The problem is situations are never that clear cut. Moreover the equation is not that easy to make. You might have special obligations to persons near you. You may legitimately prioritize your own good ahead of the good of others if the difference is not exceedingly large. It is not that ought and good are not synonymous it is just hard t determine what the good is since good is a matter of tradeoffs and perspectives.
They're not synonymous - even by definition.
Good (adj.): morally right or beneficial.
Ought (verb): used to indicate duty or correctness.
You can say something is good without saying someone ought to do it. Plenty of things are good but not obligatory. The Synthesis view builds from this: good describes alignment with life; ought arises from recognising that alignment as meaningful. They're connected, but not the same.
This is axiomatic. What James, I think, is getting at is that this axiom is by no means fundamental and so cannot support a brute reading such as this.
How is this true? would get us a bit further...
Which sentences are synonymous? Surely not "X is good" and "I ought do X" because ought implies can but "X is good" does not seem to imply "I can do X".
Yes, that is what I said. Indeed, the same with ought. Without making it concrete it does not mean anything.
Quoting Michael
I do not know if ought implies can. If it does you have a point of course. We ought to end world poverty, no, even though it is impossible to do so for anyone in particular.
Quoting Ludovico Lalli
Not at all. Legality simply means sanctioned by law. Reporting enemies to Hitlers regime was not only legal under Nazi German law, it was illegal not to do so. Was it good to report enemies to Hitler's regime? Of course it was not. Ought we to report enemies to Hitler's regime, of course not.
So it's not that I ought to end world poverty, only that we ought to end world poverty. That's a pertinent distinction.
Perhaps, then, "X is good" is not synonymous with "I ought do X" but is synonymous with "we ought do X"?
But we're still missing something from which to derive a personal obligation. How do we get from "we ought do X" to "I ought do X"? The example of ending world poverty perhaps shows that the former does not logically entail the latter.
I do not see the distinction. You should end world poverty. The only problem is you cannot do it alone, so you need to find people to work with. One question is what should you do, well, you ought to do good. The other question is how you should do it.
Quoting Michael
It is synonymous with ''X' should be done', I guess.
Quoting Michael
In your example, you are part of the 'we' right? Even by definition, the I is first person singular and the 'we' first personal plural. If we ought to end world poverty than I have to aid in that cause. So if we ought to do good, than I ought to contribute to that doing of good. Since good is totally unspecified, we can just as well say" I ought to do good".
Well, "I" and "we" mean different things, so "I ought end world poverty" is not synonymous with "we ought end world poverty". Thats the (semantic) distinction.
Quoting Tobias
But does "X should be done" logically entail "I ought do X"?
Quoting Tobias
Perhaps, perhaps not. It's certainly not the case that the pronoun "we" necessarily includes every human, else a phrase like "we're going on holiday" would mean "every human is going on holiday".
So you need to clarify what you mean when you say "we ought end world poverty". Do you mean "every human ought end world poverty"?
Quoting Tobias
This seems to equivocate. You've been claiming that "good" is in some sense synonymous with "ought", in which case the claim "I ought do good" is synonymous with the claim "I ought do that which I ought do", which is admittedly a truism but also vacuous.
I think that we want "I ought do good" to mean more than just "I ought do that which I ought do", in which case we want "good" to not be synonymous with "ought", even if the one does entail the other.
But how can we get "good" and "ought" to each entail the other without being synonymous?
I do not claim they are the same thing. I just do not see how that matters. We are discussing 'ought' and 'good'. The distinction between 'I' and 'we' is one you made and one I do not buy. Quoting Michael
Well, at least that you should not hinder X. My actions should support the coming of X into being.
Quoting Michael
No, of course not, but if you state that 'we should do X', it does not make sense to say 'we', but not 'I'. I would be puzzled if you would say "We are going on holiday, but I am not".
Quoting Michael
Yes exactly and that is precisely what I told the OP and Amadeus. The mistake in the OP is that it asks for a justification for this vacuity, but it cannot be given because it is a truism.
Quoting Michael
I do not know what 'we want' or whether it 'should' mean anything more. My point is exactly to show the statement is insufficient. It may sound good, but has no meaning. The opposite statement, the one the OP asks, is equally meaningless, without any concretization. That is what the analysis shows I think.
My post may sound dismissive, but I think there is a lot of interesting stuff in here, the meaning of 'we' for instance and I think that uncovering a truism is also interesting. The nature of obligation is also interesting, that is why I referred to Peter Singer. However, for the OP to start if meaningful discussion more work should be done.
If "X is good" is synonymous with "we ought do X" and if "we ought do X" is not synonymous with "I ought do X" then "X is good" is not synonymous with "I ought do X".
So we're missing a step that gets us from "X is good" to "I ought do X". That's why it matters.
Quoting Tobias
You made the claim we ought end world poverty, not me. Did you mean to include me in that claim?
And this is where the claim "ought implies can" comes into play. If "we ought do X" implies "I ought do X" and if "I ought do X" implies "I can do X" then "we ought do X" implies "I can do X", and so "we ought end world poverty" implies "I can end world poverty". Therefore, if "I can end world poverty" is false then "we ought end world poverty" is false.
I think we need to disambiguate the claim "we ought do X". Consider these two claims:
1. Each person ought X
2. Humanity ought X
The phrase "we ought X" could mean either (1) or (2), but (1) and (2) do not prima facie mean the same thing, e.g. "humanity weighs 390 million tons" does not mean "each person weighs 390 million tons".
So even if "I ought X" follows from (1) it does not prima facie follow from (2). If it doesn't follow, and if "we ought X" only means (2), then "I ought X" does not follow from "we ought X".
Quoting Tobias
But a previous comment of yours hints at "I ought to do good" not being a vacuous truism:
"So if we ought to do good...".
The conditional here is telling. You don't seem to be saying "So if we ought to do that which we ought to do".
Purely trivial. It is synonymous with X ought to be done.
First person plural or singluar does not matter at all.
Quoting Michael
Yes, you should also strive to end world poverty.
Quoting Michael
But it does not imply that you can. You ought to save your daughter from a burning house. Perhaps you cannot and you will fail, but that des not imply you should not have tried. Likewise, in many case we do not know the outcome of our actions. We simply do not know if doing X is possible or impossible. We can therefore not say a priori that ought implies can because we only know a posteriori what we can or cannot do.
Quoting Michael
'Humanity' does not weigh anything. Only if you imply with humanity 'all human beings', I would not make that equation. Each person indeed ought to end world poverty. Not that each person can and certainly not on his or her own, but each person should indeed strive to end world poverty. If of course we think that ending world poverty is good, but apparently we are on the same page there.
Quoting Michael
Let me see where I wrote that, because it may well have been sloppy on my part, let's see...
I see this phrase: "So if we ought to do good, than I ought to contribute to that doing of good. Since good is totally unspecified, we can just as well say: "I ought to do good". Here I might have added: "If we ought to do good, and good is indeed what we ought to do, than I ought .... There also may be a problem with you substituting 'X' for good. The question is not if we need to do a specific X, the question is whether we need to do good (or: 'good ought to be done' or 'I ought to do good'). This is important. Helping an elderly person cross the road may well be considered good, but if in the meantime the house holding a couple of children is burning than not taking care of this first is not good. That is because taking care of those children is a greater good, and so should have priority. Substituting a concrete X for the abstract 'good', misses that point.
Is X ought to be done synonymous with I ought to X?
Quoting Tobias
Then thats the issue of contention. According to Kant, for if the moral law commands that we ought to be better human beings now, it inescapably follows that we must be capable of being better human beings. The action to which the ought applies must indeed be possible under natural conditions.
As a practical example, I ought breastfeed my child must be false because I am incapable of breastfeeding.
Quoting Tobias
So youve changed it slightly. Its no longer the case that X is good means X ought be done but X ought be tried?
Quoting Tobias
Again, your own wording suggests that these two mean different things:
1. Ought I do good?
2. Ought I do that which I ought do?
The second isn't in question; it's a vacuous truism that I ought do that which I ought do. So if the first is in question then it isn't synonymous with the second.
I do not really care about the exact relation. X ought to be done implies you ought to at least not hinder X being done. You should not oppose X, you should strive for the fulfillment of X. But again, the problem stems from your substitution of X for the unqualified, inconcrete universal 'Good'. Indeed, you should not oppose the good, you should strive for the fulfillment of good and good ought to be done. Indeed, all of these are true and all of these are also trivial because 'the good' is that which should be done. Substitute any given goal for 'the good', and ask a person why this goal should be achieved. In the end the person has nothing else but saying 'well it is good'. For Kant doing one's duty was good, for Aristotle being virtuous was good and for a utilitarian maximizing happiness is good.
Quoting Michael
No, breastfeeding is naturally impossible so you cannot breastfeed, but assuming breastfeeding is good, you should not thwart it either. You should make it possible. Against all odds? Of course not, because there are things that may outweigh the good of breastfeeding.
You again substitute again a particular kind of good, for 'good' by the way. That is problematic because any particular good is not the good in itself.
Quoting Michael
X ought to be pursued, yes. So indeed X ought to be done, if possible, but might not be done. My pursuing X (if X is the same as 'good', an abstract universal indicating an unqualified state of 'goodness', whatever that may amount to) might fail.
Quoting Michael
They seem different, but upon analysis they are not different at all. The second is a tautology, but the first one also is. Putting it in question is equally meaningless. the OP does that and I criticized the OP for it.
In fact it seems to me that it is just a case of 'pros hen'. You think of kinds of goods, I think of 'the good'.
What kind of reasons to do things would you like? There are many.
Coherent preference. That's all we have. Groups do it, and so we have morality. Swings and roundabouts.
I see many people who think they are good parents and I would differ vehemently on their opinion.
I try and live a good life but I'm sure many would judge me not that good at all.
Take the following exchanges:
Exchange 1
Michael: Why ought I give money to charity?
Tobias: Because giving money to charity is good.
Exchange 2
Michael: Why ought I give money to charity?
Tobias: Because you ought give money to charity.
Are these exchanges equivalent? I think prima facie they're not; the first appears to provide a reason why one ought give money to charity, whereas the second doesn't. So the suggestion that "X is good" is synonymous with "I ought X" doesn't seem to be consistent with how we actually understand moral language.
Carrying on from Exchange 1, the implicit syllogism is:
A1. Giving money to charity is good
A2. If giving money to charity is good then I ought give money to charity
A3. Therefore, I ought give money to charity
The problem is that if A2 is a tautology then A1 begs the question, assuming A3, and so the argument commits an informal fallacy. It would be equivalent to the following syllogism:
B1. I ought give money to charity
B2. If I ought give money to charity then I ought give money to charity
B3. Therefore, I ought give money to charity
Which returns us to Exchange 2.
I think that the uselessness of this second syllogism and of Exchange 2 shows that "good" and "ought" are not synonymous, even if there is a connection between the two, and so it's reasonable to ask for a justification for A2 (and for the more general and simplified "I ought do good").
I am not too sure, or at least not that relativist yet. There are of course grey areas where for instance a group is considered a legitimate armed resistance while others call it a terrorist group. However, I do think that in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, the concept of legitimate and illegitimate use of force exist. In the end some appeal to 'just' violence is made. We might all judge differently, but the appeal to justice seems similar enough to me. I all countries, lobbing someone's head of without a reason is not ok. We might differ in whether the reason is good or not, but without any reason at al, that is unacceptable to all. Some thin moral like-mindedness exists, I think.
Quoting Michael
I agree, prima facie they are not. However, when you enquire further the first is just as meaningless as the second one. Just saying giving money to charity is good begs the question, 'why is it 'good'? You might say you saying something more, but in fact you do not. You might think it provides for a reason, but what kind of reason is it? At least, it leaves me none the wiser as to why I should give money to charity.
It seems like exchange 1 is somehow informative but it is not. It simply tells you that you ought to give to charity because it is good. In fact it seems informative because you have already an implicit sense of what 'good' is, namely something you ought to do. Other then that it tells you nothing so it is a tautology, but dressed up differently.
In fact, you already have an inkling of this problem. Quoting Michael Notice your use of 'I think', 'prima facie' and 'appears'. Indeed, it appears to do something, but does not. The dialectic shows us that the abstract universal 'good', disappears and only forces one to become more concrete. I will only grant you this, the second type of exchange is more obvious and therefore does not give rise to such a dialectic. In that sense, you may say it does something different. The only difference is that it takes analysis to see that 'good' is the same as 'ought to', whereas 'ought to' and 'ought to', the tautology, does not force such an analysis. It should not distract from the fact that the question asked in the OP is equally unreasonable. It is not "reasonable to ask for a justification for A2", simply because 'good' is empty, it has no significance beyond 'that which one ought to do'.
This may be an interesting read: Good and Obligation.
I don't have access to the full paper, but I'll look to see if I can find it (for free) somewhere. I can see the appeal of the view, especially as I'm partial to Anscombe's remarks that the term "ought" lacks any real meaning but also do not agree with the moral nihilist who cannot draw a moral distinction between charity and genocide.
As a particular example, an ethical naturalist could claim that being good is a natural property without claiming that obligations are a natural property/phenomena.
And presumably my obligations, if such things exist, concern me, whereas the ethical goodness of charity has nothing (directly) to do with me at all.
Do you have this upload icon next to the floppy disk/save icon? It might be for mods/sponsors only?
So the summary of the argument of that paper is:
In other words, for some X it is conceivable that:
1. "X is good" is true
2. "You ought do X even if doing so makes you unhappy" is false
I don't suspect you find this argument particularly compelling. I probably wouldn't if I were committed to your position. I'd simply reject (2).
There is, however, a passage that might provide a good launchpad for further discussion:
The focus is on ethical non-naturalism. But what of ethical naturalism? Is the person who claims that goodness is a natural (i.e. empirical) property committed to the claim that obligations are a natural (i.e. empirical) phenomena? Can science determine the physical existence of moral obligations? It seems like an absurd notion. But is ethical naturalism absurd? If not then there must be a conceptual (and so semantic) distinction between something being good and someone having an obligation.
The divine law being mandated by God makes it righteous and thus 'good.' So really, you ought to do good because it is..... good. And since good is derived from God, you are basically pointing to a primal reason. Without this precedence, doing good sometimes becomes arbitrary (as some atheists claim such a position).